The Life of Cesare Borgia

Of France, Duke of Valentinois and Romagna, Prince of Andria and Venafri
Count of Dyois, Lord of Piombino, Camerino and Urbino, Gonfalonier and
Captain-General of Holy Church

A History and Some Criticisms

by Raphael Sabatini




PREFACE

This is no Chronicle of Saints. Nor yet is it a History of Devils. It
is a record of certain very human, strenuous men in a very human,
strenuous age; a lustful, flamboyant age; an age red with blood and pale
with passion at white-heat; an age of steel and velvet, of vivid colour,
dazzling light and impenetrable shadow; an age of swift movement,
pitiless violence and high endeavour, of sharp antitheses and amazing
contrasts.

To judge it from the standpoint of this calm, deliberate, and correct
century--as we conceive our own to be--is for sedate middle-age to judge
from its own standpoint the reckless, hot, passionate, lustful humours of
youth, of youth that errs grievously and achieves greatly.

So to judge that epoch collectively is manifestly wrong, a hopeless
procedure if it be our aim to understand it and to be in sympathy with