Caterina Sforza (1463 – May 10, 1509), countess of Forlì, was an illegitimate daughter of Galeazzo Maria Sforza and Lucrecia Landriani.In 1473, she was betrothed to Girolamo Riario, a nephew (though rumors persisted that he was a son) of Pope Sixtus IV, who was thus able to regain possession of Imola, that city being made a fief of the Riario family. After a triumphal entry into Imola in 1477, Caterina Sforza went to Rome with her husband, who, with the help of the pope, wrested the lordship of Forlì from Francesco V Ordelaffi.
Riario, by means of many crimes for which his wife seems to have blamed him, succeeded in accumulating great wealth, and on the death of Sixtus in August 1484, he sent Caterina to Rome to occupy the Castel Sant'Angelo, which she defended gallantly until, on October 25, she surrendered it by his order to the Sacred College. They then returned to their fiefs of Imola and Forlì, where they tried to win the favour of the people by erecting magnificent public buildings and churches and by abolishing taxes, but want of money obliged them to levy the taxes once more, which caused dissatisfaction.
Riario's enemies conspired against him with a view to making Franceschetto Cybo, nephew of Pope Innocent VIII, lord of Imola and Forlì in his stead. Riario thereupon instituted a system of persecution against all whom he suspected of treachery. In 1488 he was murdered by three conspirators, his palace was sacked, and his wife and children were taken prisoner. The chief conspirators were members of the Orsis, a noble family of Forlì.
The citadel of Forlì, however, held out in Caterina's interest. The countess convinced the conspirators that if she were allowed to go to the citadel she would arrange for the governor to hand it over. Leaving her children as hostages she went to the citadel, but once inside she let loose a barrage of threats and promises of vengeance against her former captors. When they threatened to kill her children still in captivity she exposed her genitals from the castle walls and said that she didn't mind as she was still capable of bearing more. With the assistance of her uncle Ludovico il Moro, Duke of Milan, she was able to defeat her enemies and to regain possession of all her dominions; she wreaked vengeance on those who had opposed her and re-established her power.
As a widow she had several lovers, and by one of them, Giacomo Feo, whom she afterwards married, she had a son. Feo, who made himself hated for his cruelty and insolence, was murdered before the eyes of his wife in August 1495; Caterina had all the conspirators and their families, including the women and children, massacred. She established friendly relations with the new pope, Alexander VI, and with the Florentines, whose ambassador, Giovanni de' Medici il Popolano, she secretly married in 1496. Giovanni died in 1498, but Caterina managed with the aid of Ludovico il Moro and of the Florentines to save her dominions from the attacks of the Venetians.
Pope Alexander VI, however, angered at her refusal to agree to a union between his daughter Lucrezia Borgia and her son Ottaviano, and coveting her territories as well as the rest of Romagna for his son Cesare, issued a bull on March 9, 1499, declaring that the house of Riario had forfeited the lordship of Imola and Forlì and conferring those fiefs on Cesare Borgia.
The latter began his campaign of conquest with Caterina Sforza's dominions and attacked her with his whole army, reinforced by French troops and by Louis XII. Caterina placed her children in safety and took strenuous measures for defense. The castle of Imola was held by her henchman Dionigi Naldi of Brisighella, until resistance being no longer possible he surrendered in December 1499 with the honours of war. Caterina absolved the citizens of Forlì from their oath of fealty, and defended herself in the citadel. She repeatedly beat back the Borgia's onslaughts and refused all his offers of peace.
Finally, when her orders for the magazine to be blown up were ignored, Caterina surrendered after a battle in which large numbers were killed on both sides to Antoine Bissey, bailli of Dijon, entrusting herself to the honour of France (January 12, 1500). Thus her life was spared, but she was not saved from the outrages of the treacherous Cesare; she was afterwards taken to Rome and held a prisoner for a year in the Castel Sant'Angelo, whence she was liberated by the same bailli of Dijon to whom she had surrendered at Forlì.
She took refuge in Florence to escape from persecution from the Borgias, and the power of that sinister family having collapsed on the death of Alexander VI in 1503, she attempted to regain possession of her dominions. In this she failed owing to the hostility of his brother-in-law Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici and the latter's son Pierfrancesco, as they wished to get her son Ludovico (afterwards Giovanni dalle Bande Nere) into their hands. She took refuge with him in the convent of Annalena, where she remained until her death.
In her book The Warrior Queens: Boadicea's Chariot, British historian Antonia Fraser presents Caterina Sforza as a contrasting figure to her contemporary Isabella of Castile. Fraser points out that whilst the murders ordered by Caterina were no worse than the massacres ordered by Isabella, historians have been much harsher in their judgement of the former. Fraser accounts for this fact by pointing out that Isabella's actions were spiritually sanctioned, carried out in the name of Catholicism, whilst Caterina's were motivated by the personal, secular desire to preserve her property and rights.
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Sources
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
Machiavelli, The Discourses, English translation by Fr Leslie J. Walker, S.J. (1929). The countess is featured in Bk III, Ch 6 in relating examples of dangers that can arise subsequent to a successful conspiracy.
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