But the Roman corruption,
which seemed to culminate in this family, was already far advanced when
they came to the city.
What they were and what they did has been often and fully described.
Their immediate purpose, which, in fact, they attained, was the
complete subjugation of the pontifical State. All the petty despots,
who were mostly more or less refractory vassals of the Church, were
expelled or destroyed; and in Rome itself the two great factions were
annihilated, the so-called Guelph Orsini as well as the so-called
Ghibelline Colonna. But the means employed were of so frightful a
character that they must certainly have ended in the ruin of the
Papacy, had not the contemporaneous death of both father and son by
poison suddenly intervened to alter the whole aspect of the situation.
The moral indignation of Christendom was certainly no great source of
danger to Alexander; at home he was strong enough to extort terror and
obedience; foreign rulers were won over to his side, and Louis XII even
aided him to the utmost of his power. The mass of the people throughout
Europe had hardly a conception of what was passing in Central Italy.
The only moment which was really fraught with danger--when Charles VIII
was in Italy--went by with unexpected fortune, and even then it was not
the Papacy as such that was in peril, but Alexander, who risked being
supplanted by a more respectable Pope.
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