In the third week of November 1499, Cesare Borgia arrived secretly in Rome and stayed with his father, the Pope for a few days. Cesare's sister Lucrezia Borgia had just had her first born son and the baby's baptism was carried off as quite the success with a parade thru the city afterward. But what would happen next would spell the eventual end of independent rule by the Sforza clan in Forli and the Romagna.
The reasons for this from the point of view of Forli and Caterina Sforza are seen clearly in Elizabeth Lev's beautiful biography The Tigress of Forli. The ramifications are also many and varied and brings the force, methods and consequent memory of Cesare Borgia into focus.
The facts of the matter are simple. Immediate sources for this episode are in Burchard's At The Court of the Borgia pp 166-8, and Lev's The Tigress of Forli pp. 211-33.
If I had time I would make detailed notes and write out calendars and contexts, commentaries. But in the present there is an impeachment hearing of the US President and that takes everyone's attention while the world burns, floods and states collapse, people all over riot and do business, get attacked, go to work, pay bills, find food, raise kids.
