Nothing occurred at first to give the lie to Alexander's professions of principle in the discourse he addressed to Caesar, and the first year of his pontificate exceeded all the hopes of Rome at the time of his election.He arranged for the provision of stores in the public granaries with such liberality, that within the memory of man there had never been such astonishing abundance; and with a view to extending the general prosperity to the lowest class, he organised numerous doles to be paid out of his private fortune, which made it possible for the very poor to participate in the general banquet from which they had been excluded for long enough.The safety of the city was secured, from the very first days of his accession, by the establishment of a strong and vigilant police force, and a tribunal consisting of four magistrates of irreproachable character, empowered to prosecute all nocturnal crimes, which during the last pontificate had been so common that their very numbers made impunity certain:
these judges from the first showed a severity which neither the rank nor the purse of the culprit could modify.This presented such a great contrast to the corruption of the last reign,--in the course of which the vice-chamberlain one day remarked in public, when certain people were complaining of the venality of justice, "God wills not that a sinner die, but that he live and pay,"--that the capital of the Christian world felt for one brief moment restored to the happy days of the papacy.So, at the end of a year, Alexander VI had reconquered that spiritual credit, so to speak, which his predecessors lost.His political credit was still to be established, if he was to carry out the first part of his gigantic scheme.To arrive at this, he must employ two agencies--alliances and conquests.
His plan was to begin with alliances.The gentleman of Aragon who had married Lucrezia when she was only the daughter of Cardinal Roderigo Borgia was not a man powerful enough, either by birth and fortune or by intellect, to enter with any sort of effect into the plots and plans of Alexander VI; the separation was therefore changed into a divorce, and Lucrezia Borgia was now free to remarry.
Alexander opened up two negotiations at the same time: he needed an ally to keep a watch on the policy of the neighbouring States.John Sforza, grandson of Alexander Sforza, brother of the great Francis I, Duke of Milan, was lord of Pesaro; the geographical situation of this place, an the coast, on the way between Florence and Venice, was wonderfully convenient for his purpose; so Alexander first cast an eye upon him, and as the interest of both parties was evidently the same, it came about that John Sforza was very soon Lucrezia's second husband.