The 50th Law (with 50 Cent)

partnership with Rome was now more important than ever. She
quickly installed herself in Rome. There she would have to play the
exemplary wife and keep on the good side of her husband. But the
more she saw of Girolamo, the less she respected him. He was a
hothead, making enemies wherever he turned. She had not imagined

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that a man could be so weak, and compared with her father he failed by
every measure.
She turned her attention to the pope. She worked hard to gain his
favor and that of his courtiers. Caterina was now a beautiful young
woman with blond hair, a novelty in Rome. She ordered the most
elaborate gowns to be sent from Milan. She made sure to never be seen
wearing the same outfit twice. If she sported a turban with a long veil,
it suddenly became the latest craze. She reveled in the attention she
received as the most fashionable woman in Rome, Botticelli using her
as a model for some of his greatest paintings. Being so well read and
cultivated, she was the delight of the artists and writers in town, and
the Romans began to warm up to her.
Within a few years, however, everything unraveled. Her husband
instigated a feud with one of the leading families in Italy, the Colonnas.
Then in 1484 the pope suddenly died, and without his protection
Caterina and her husband were in grave danger. The Colonnas were
plotting their revenge. The Romans hated Girolamo. And it was almost
a certainty that the new pope would be a friend of the Colonnas, in
which case Caterina and her husband would lose everything, including
the towns of Forlì and Imola. Considering the weak position of her own
family in Milan, the situation began to look desperate.
Until a new pope was elected, Girolamo was still the captain of the
papal armies, now stationed just outside Rome. For days Caterina
watched her husband, who was paralyzed with fear and unable to make
a decision. He dared not enter Rome, fearing battle with the Colonnas
and their many allies in the crowded streets. He would wait it out, but
with time their options seemed to narrow, and the news kept getting
worse—mobs had sacked the palace they lived in; what few allies they
had in Rome had now deserted them; the cardinals were congregating
to elect the new pope.
It was August and the sweltering heat made Caterina—seven
months pregnant with her fourth child—feel faint and continually
nauseated. But as she contemplated the impending doom, the thought
of her father began to occupy her mind; it was as if she could feel his
spirit inhabiting her. Thinking as he would think about the
predicament she faced, she felt a rush of excitement as she formulated
an audacious plan. Without telling a soul of her intentions, in the dark

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of night she mounted a horse and snuck out of camp, riding as fast as
she could to Rome.
As she had expected, in her condition no one recognized her and
she was allowed to enter the city. She headed straight for the Castel
Sant’Angelo, the most strategic point in Rome—just across the Tiber
River from the city center and close to the Vatican. With its
impregnable walls and its cannons that could be aimed at all parts of
Rome, the person who controlled the castle controlled the city. Rome
was in tumult, mobs filling the streets everywhere. The castle was still
held by a lieutenant loyal to Girolamo. Identifying herself, Caterina
was let into Sant’Angelo.
Once inside, in the name of her husband she took possession of the
castle, throwing out the lieutenant, whom she did not trust. Sending
word out through the castle to soldiers who swore loyalty to her, she
managed to smuggle in more troops. With the cannons of Sant’Angelo
now pointing at all roads leading to the Vatican, she made it
impossible for the cardinals to meet in one location and elect the new
pope. To make her threats real, she had her soldiers fire the cannons as
a warning. She meant business. Her terms for surrendering the castle
were simple—that all of the property of the Riarios be guaranteed to
remain in their hands, including Forlì and Imola.
A few evenings after she had taken over Sant’Angelo, wearing some
armor over her gown, she marched along the ramparts of the castle. It
gave her a feeling of great power, so far above the city, looking down at
the frantic men below, helpless to fight against her, a single woman
hobbled by pregnancy. When an envoy of the cardinal who was
organizing the conclave to elect the new pope was sent to negotiate
with her and seemed reluctant to agree to her conditions of surrender,
she shouted down from the ramparts, so all could hear, “So [the
cardinal] wants a battle of wits with me, does he? What he doesn’t
understand is that I have the brains of Duke Galeazzo and I am as
brilliant as he!”
As she waited for their response, she knew she controlled the
situation. Her only fear was that her husband would surrender and
betray her, or that the August heat would make her too ill to wait it out.
Finally, sensing her resolve, a group of cardinals came to the castle to
negotiate, and they acceded to her demands. The following morning, as
the drawbridge was lowered to let the countess leave the castle, she

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noticed an enormous crowd pushing close to her. Romans of all classes
had come to catch a glimpse of the woman who had controlled Rome
for eleven days. They had taken the countess for a rather frivolous
young woman addicted to clothes, the pope’s little pet. Now they stared
at her in astonishment—she was wearing one of her silk gowns, with a
heavy sword dangling from a man’s belt, her pregnancy more than
evident. They had never seen such a sight.
Their titles now secure, the count and countess moved to Forlì to
rule their domain. With no more funds coming from the papacy,
Girolamo’s main concern was how to get more money. And so he
increased the taxes on his subjects, stirring up much discontent in the
process. He quickly made enemies of the powerful Orsi family in the
region. Fearing plots against his life, the count holed himself up in
their palace. Slowly Caterina took over much of the day-to-day ruling
of their realm. Thinking ahead, she installed a trusted ally as the new
commander of the castle Ravaldino, which dominated the area. She did
everything she could to ingratiate herself with the locals, but in a few
short years her husband had done too much damage.
On April 14, 1488, a group of men, clad in armor and led by
Ludovico Orsi, stormed into the palace and stabbed the count to death,
throwing his body out the window and into the city square. The
countess, dining with her family in a nearby room, heard the shouts
and quickly shuffled her six children into a safer room in the palace’s
tower. She bolted the door and from a window, under which several of
her most trusted allies had gathered, she shouted instructions to them:
they were to notify the Sforzas in Milan and her other allies in the
region and urge them to send armies to rescue her; under no
circumstances should the keeper of Ravaldino ever surrender the
castle. Within minutes the assassins had broken into her room, taking
her and her children captive.
Several days later, Ludovico Orsi and his fellow conspirator
Giacomo del Ronche marched Caterina up to Ravaldino—she was to
order the castle’s commander to surrender it to the assassins. As the
commander she had installed, Tommaso Feo, looked down from the
ramparts, Caterina seemed to fear for her life. Her voice breaking with
emotion, she begged Feo to give up the fortress, but he refused.
As the two of them continued their dialogue, Ronche and Orsi
sensed the countess and Feo were playing some sort of game, talking in

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code. Ronche had had enough of this. Pressing the sharp edge of his
lance tight against her chest, he threatened to run her through unless
she got Feo to surrender, and he gave her the sternest glare. Suddenly
the countess’s expression changed. She leaned further into the blade,
her face inches from Ronche, and with a voice dripping with disdain,
she told him, “Oh, Giacomo del Ronche, don’t you try to frighten
me. . . . You can hurt me, but you can’t scare me, because I am the
daughter of a man who knew no fear. Do what you want: you have
killed my lord, you can certainly kill me. After all, I’m just a woman!”
Confounded by her words and demeanor, Ronche and Orsi decided
they had to find other means to pressure her.
Several days later Feo communicated with the assassins that he
would indeed hand over the fortress, but only if the countess would
pay him his back wages and sign a letter absolving him of any guilt for
such surrender. Once again, Orsi and Ronche led her to the castle and
watched her closely as she seemed to negotiate with Feo. Finally Feo
insisted that the countess enter the fortress to sign the document. He
feared the assassins were trying to trick him and he insisted she enter
alone. Once the letter was signed, he would do as he had promised.
The conspirators, feeling they had no choice, granted his request
but gave the countess a brief time frame to conclude the business. For
a fleeting moment, just as she disappeared over the drawbridge into
Ravaldino, she turned with a sneer and gave the Italian equivalent of
“the finger” to Ronche and Orsi. The entire drama of the past few days
had been planned and staged by her and Feo, with whom she had
communicated through various messengers. She knew that the
Milanese had sent an army to rescue her and she only had to play for
time. A few hours later Feo stood on the ramparts and yelled down that
he was holding the countess hostage and that was that.
The enraged assassins had had enough. The next day they returned
to the castle with her six children and called Caterina to the ramparts.
With daggers and spears pointed at them in the most menacing
fashion, and with the children wailing and begging for mercy, they
ordered Caterina to surrender the fortress or they would kill them all.
Surely they had already proven they were more than willing to shed
blood. She might be fearless and the daughter of a Sforza, but no
mother could possibly watch her children die before her eyes. Caterina
wasted no time. She shouted down: “Do it then, you fools! I am already
pregnant with another child by Count Riario and I have the means to

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make more!” at which she lifted her skirts, as if to emphasize her
meaning.
Caterina had foreseen the maneuver with the children and had
calculated that the assassins were weak and indecisive—they should
have killed her and her family on that first day, amid the mayhem.
Now they would not dare to kill them in cold blood: the assassins knew
that the Sforzas, on their way to Forlì, would take terrible revenge on
them if they ever did such a deed. And if she surrendered now, she and
her children would all be imprisoned, and some poison would find its
way into their food. She didn’t care what they thought of her as a
mother. She had to keep stalling. To emphasize her resolve, after
refusing to surrender, she had the cannons of the castle fire at the Orsi
palace.
Ten days later a Milanese army arrived to rescue her, and the
assassins scattered. The countess was quickly restored to power, the
new pope himself confirming her rule as regent until her eldest son,
Ottaviano, came of age. And as word of all that she had done—and
what she had yelled down to the assassins from the ramparts of
Ravaldino—spread throughout Italy, the legend of Caterina Sforza, the
beautiful warrior countess of Forlì, began to take on a life of its own.
Within a year after the death of her husband, the countess had
taken a lover, Giacomo Feo, the brother of the commander she had
installed in Ravaldino. Giacomo was seven years younger than
Caterina, and he was the polar opposite of Girolamo—handsome and
virile, he had come from the lower classes, having served as the stable
boy to the Riario family. Most important, he not only loved Caterina,
he worshipped her and showered her with attention. The countess had
spent her whole life mastering her emotions and subordinating her
personal interests to practical matters. Suddenly feeling herself
overwhelmed by Giacomo’s affection, she lost her habitual self-control
and fell hopelessly in love.
She made Giacomo the new commander of Ravaldino. As he now
had to live in the castle, she built a palace for herself inside it and soon
barely left its confines. Giacomo was decidedly insecure about his
status. Caterina had him knighted, and in a secret ceremony they
married. To allay his self-doubts, she increasingly handed over to him
governing powers of Forlì and Imola, and began to retire from public
affairs. She ignored the warnings of courtiers and diplomats that

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Giacomo was out for himself and was in over his head. She did not
listen to her sons, who feared Giacomo had plans to get rid of them. In
her eyes, her husband could do no wrong. Then one day in 1495, as she
and Giacomo left the castle for a picnic, a group of assassins
surrounded her husband and killed him before her eyes.
Caught off guard by this action, Caterina reacted with fury. She
rounded up the conspirators and had them executed and their families
imprisoned. In the months after this, she fell into a deep depression,
even contemplating suicide. What had happened to her over the past
few years? How had she lost her way and given up her power? What
had happened to her girlhood dreams and the spirit of her father that
was her own? Something had clouded her mind. She turned to religion
and she returned to ruling her realm. Slowly she recovered.
Then one day she received a visit from Giovanni de’ Medici, a thirty-
year-old member of the famous family and one of Florence’s leading
businessmen. He had come to forge commercial ties between the cities.
More than anyone else, he reminded her of her father. He was
handsome, clever, extremely well read, and yet there was a softness to
his character. Finally here was a man who was her equal in knowledge,
power, and refinement. The admiration was mutual. Soon they were
inseparable, and in 1498 they married, uniting two of the most
illustrious families in Italy.
Now she could finally dream of creating a great regional power, but
events beyond her control would spoil her plans. That same year
Giovanni died from illness. And before she had time to grieve for him,
she had to deal with the latest and most dangerous threat of all to her
realm: The new pope, Alexander VI (formerly known as Roderigo
Borgia), had his eye on Forlì. He wanted to extend the papal domains
through conquest, his son Cesare Borgia serving as the commander of
the papal forces. Forlì would be a key acquisition for the pope, and he
began to maneuver to politically isolate Caterina from her allies.
To prepare for the imminent invasion, Caterina forged a new
alliance with the Venetians and built an elaborate series of defenses
within Ravaldino. The pope tried to pressure her to surrender her
domain, making her all kinds of promises in return. She knew better
than to trust a Borgia. But by the fall of 1499, it seemed that the end
had finally come. The pope had allied himself with France, and Cesare
Borgia had appeared in the region with an army of twelve thousand,

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fortified by the addition of two thousand experienced French soldiers.
They quickly took Imola and easily entered the city of Forlì itself. All
that remained was Ravaldino, which by late December was surrounded
by Borgia’s troops.
On December 26, Cesare Borgia himself rode up to the castle on his
white horse, dressed all in black—quite a sight. As Caterina looked
down from the ramparts and contemplated the scene, she thought of
her father. It was the anniversary of his assassination. He represented
everything she valued, and she would not disappoint him. She was the
most like him of all his children. As he would have done, she had
thought ahead—her plan was to play for time until her remaining allies
could come to her defense. She had cleverly fortified Ravaldino in a
way that would allow her to keep retreating behind barricades if the
walls were breached. In the end, they would have to take the castle
from her by force, and she was more than prepared to die in defense of
it, sword in hand.
As she listened to Borgia address her, it was clear he had come to
flatter and flirt—everyone knew his reputation as a devilish seducer,
and many in Italy thought Caterina had rather loose morals. She
listened and smiled, occasionally reminding him of her past deeds and
her reputation as a Sforza—if he wanted her to surrender, he would
have to do better. He persisted in his courtship and asked to parley
with her personally.
She appeared to finally succumb to his charm; she was a woman,
after all. She ordered the drawbridge to be lowered and started walking
toward him. He continued to press his case, and she gave him certain
looks and smiles that indicated she was falling under his spell. Now
only inches away, he reached for her arm, and she playfully withdrew
it. They should discuss matters in the castle, she said with a coy
expression, and began to walk back, inviting him to follow. As he
stepped onto the drawbridge to catch up with her, it began to rise, and
he leaped back to the other side just in time. Enraged and embarrassed
by the trick she had tried to play, he swore revenge.
During the next few days he unleashed a torrent of cannon fire at
the castle walls, finally opening a breach. Borgia’s troops flooded in,
led by the more experienced French. It was now hand-to-hand combat,
and at the front of her remaining troops was Caterina. The head of the
French troops, Yves d’Allegre, stared at her in amazement as the

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beautiful countess—her ornamented cuirass over her dress—charged at
his men from the front line, handling her sword deftly, without a trace
of fear.
She and her men were about to withdraw further into the castle,
hoping to prolong the battle for days, as she had planned, when one of
her own soldiers grabbed her from behind and, his sword at her throat,
marched her over to the other side. Borgia had put a price on her head,
and the soldier had betrayed her for the reward. The siege was over,
and Borgia himself took possession of his great prize. That night he
raped her and kept her confined in his rooms, trying to make it seem to
the world that the infamous warrior countess had willingly succumbed
to his charms.
Even under duress she refused to sign away her domain, and so she
was brought to Rome and soon thrown into the dreaded prison at
Castel Sant’Angelo. For one long year, in a small and windowless cell,
she endured her loneliness and the endless tortures devised by the
Borgias. Her health deteriorated and she seemed destined to die in
prison, defiant to the end, but the chivalric French captain Yves
d’Allegre had fallen under her spell. He persisted in demanding, in the
name of the French king, to have her freed, and he finally succeeded,
getting her safe passage to Florence.
In retirement from public life, Caterina began to receive letters from
men from all parts of Europe. Some had seen her over the years; most
had only heard of her. They obsessed over her story, confessed their
love, and begged for some memento, some relic to worship. One man
who had caught a glimpse of her when she had first come to Rome
wrote to her, “If I sleep, it seems that I am with you; if I eat, I leave my
food and talk to you. . . . You are engraved in my heart.”
Weakened by her year in prison, the countess died in 1509.
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