Duke Cesare de Valentinois della Romagna occupied Pesaro. This was the fief of that young Tyrant, Don Giovanni Sforza, whose marriage with Madonna Lucrezia Borgia had been annulled by a canonical impediment. The spoliation of his appanage was a ground of fresh offence. The rupture between the Houses of Borgia and Sforza was irremediable. People spoke of Duke Cesare, now, as the Caesar Augustus of a new Roman Empire, independent, and ruled by the sceptre of a Princeps of the House of Borgia. After the execution of the conspirators at Sinigaglia, the Venetian chronicler Priuli, who loathed the very name of Borgia, wrote on the eleventh of January 1503: “Some wish to make and crown him King of Italy; others wish to make him Emperor: for he prospers so that no one dare forbid him anything.”[55] The establishment of a Borgia Dynasty would have been no treason against the rights of the Papacy. The rebellious tyrants whom Duke Cesare had overthrown were unprofitable and even menacing. In their place was the Duke who brought law, order, and prosperity. Of course Duke Cesare derived benefit from his victories. The labourer is worthy of his hire, and even successful English generals are not begrudged their peerages. Duke Cesare’s duchy of Romagna, his commanding position, his power to enrich himself by the taxation of his subjects, were a fair reward for the immense services which he had rendered. The Papacy had now, instead of a lost territory infested by the scum of European ruffianry refusing to acknowledge authority or natural law, a vast province inhabited by law-abiding prosperous contented vassals ready and glad to pay the traditional tribute to their over-lord, in return for the unwonted safety of their lives and property. Duke Cesare was in the position of a viceroy. He held office at the pleasure of the Roman Pontiff. He was persona ingrata to the rulers of the other Italian states, who were envious of his splendid beauty, of his imperious character, of his extraordinary success, and of his tremendous potentiality. And they feared this tawny prince who had the tiger-strength to crush them one and all. Backed by the spiritual and temporal influence and wealth of the Pontiff, he could keep his irresistible army of veterans always on a war-footing, and himself its generalissimo; and so the Papacy itself acquired, through him, and in him, and for the first time, a material basis of independence: while, in opposition to the Pope, he could not exist. There was the policy of the Lord Alexander P.P. VI.