Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love and Death in Renaissance Italy by Sarah Bradford

Isabella.
    Throughout May, Lucrezia wrote frequently to Alfonso on military matters, sending him the latest news and asking his opinion on various matters. These were dangerous times of frequent troop movements; on one day alone she wrote to him three times, once to report that a force of some 1,500 troops was nearing Ferrara and had sent to ask her for free passage, allegedly to go and fight for the King of France; secondly, to report on the capture of Venetian infantry by the podestà of Porto, and the last asking his advice as to whether she should restore their arms to a body of troops to whom she had given free passage on the grounds that they disarmed. On May 31 she had letters from the podestà of Codigoro reporting on the presence of armed Venetian ships which they had followed for eight miles. They wanted artillery from Alfonso but Lucrezia advised that they should think only of their own defence and not begin skirmishes which could result in the Venetians reinforcing their fleet in greater numbers. Later that day, the news came to Ferrara of victory for Alfonso, who had recovered his former possession of the Polesine di Rovigo from Venice; Lucrezia wrote an enthusiastic letter of congratulations. The ambassadors of France and the Empire had arrived in Ferrara; she had arranged an honourable reception for them and had given them audience. Would Alfonso please let her know whether he would come to Ferrara to meet them or whether they should go to him because they were most anxious to talk to him. On 1 June she acknowledged Alfonso’s letter saying the ambassadors should go to meet him at La Abbatia where he was about to besiege two towers; in wifely fashion she was sending ‘a little tapestry and silver to entertain them’. On 4 June she had received news from the Governor of Ravenna, brother of Julius’s legate at Bologna, complaining that the men of Codigoro had attacked his men and taken their goods. She had immediately written to order their restitution and had also tactfully smoothed things over in a letter to the Governor, assuring him of Alfonso’s displeasure at such acts and that he intended to live on good terms with all his neighbours and especially the Pope’s officers.
    On 10 June, to the sound of gunfire and trumpets, Alfonso returned triumphant; mass was sung in the piazza, watched by the couple from their separate windows. Little Ercole had recovered and was seen by di Prosperi playing in his mother’s room where Lucrezia was resting despite the turmoil in other parts of the apartment. That month a fire in the Palazzo del Corte destroyed the Sala dei Paladini and several other rooms with their curtains and hangings (pavaglioni). Alfonso was away again in July: the Venetians, intent on recovering the lands they had disgorged after Agnadello, retook Padua and then Este which, Lucrezia wrote to him, ‘grieves me to my heart’. She had received appeals for help from the podestà of Lendinara and had sent telling him not to fear; she had also sent out reinforcements to various fortresses. She was by now accustomed to dealing with such matters and, she said, she would continue to do so until he returned to Ferrara ‘which I hope can be soon: [meanwhile] in every occurrence I shall not for my part fail in every diligence and vigilance for the good and conservation of your affairs’. 2
    At the end of July, di Prosperi reported that Lucrezia had engaged a wet nurse and must be approaching the end of her term. He was premature: it was a difficult pregnancy, and early in August she was still heavily pregnant and felt pains. Angela Borgia arrived to keep her company. A few weeks later, on 18 August, desperate to get out of her apartments and possibly to pray for Gonzaga, news of whose capture by the Venetians she had received the previous day, she went to Corpus Domini in a carriage which almost precipitated the birth at the convent. She returned to Isabella’s former rooms to await her delivery where,