Georges d'Amboise

Georges d'Amboise is presented as a cardinal and influential figure within the French political order, but his significance lies less in a developed personal biography than in the judgments attached to his counsel, alliances, and position at the papal election. He becomes a vehicle for the book's central criticism of French policy in Italy: France helped enlarge powers that later contributed to its own ruin, and d'Amboise's own political connections placed him among the rare candidates whom Cesare Borgia could regard without fear.

Identity and Political Position

Georges d'Amboise is identified as a cardinal connected to the French Court and as an interlocutor capable of discussing the conduct of war and government. His importance derives from this dual position. He belongs to the ecclesiastical and diplomatic elite, yet he is also tied to the monarchy whose Italian interventions the narrator examines with sustained criticism. In the account of the papal succession, d'Amboise stands apart from most of the cardinals whom Cesare Borgia had offended: unlike those men, he was protected by the power he derived through his relations with the French Court.

That connection made d'Amboise politically useful to Cesare Borgia, but it did not make his candidacy wholly equivalent to the safer possibility of a Spanish pope. The narrator's ranking of the alternatives shows the narrow field in which Cesare had to maneuver. He should first have worked for the election of a Spanish pope; if that failed, he should have accepted d'Amboise; what he should never have accepted was the election of San Pietro ad Vincula, later Pope Julius II, a cardinal who had reason to fear him.

The Nantes Conversation

The most direct scene involving Georges d'Amboise occurs at Nantes, while Cesare Borgia was occupying Romagna. D'Amboise remarked that the Italians did not understand war. The narrator answered that the French did not understand statecraft, because, had they understood it, they would never have allowed the Church to become so powerful. The exchange turns a casual national comparison into a diagnosis of political failure: military competence without institutional judgment can produce victories that ultimately destroy the victor's position.

The later course of events is offered as confirmation of the narrator's rebuke. France had helped produce the aggrandizement of the Church and of Spain in Italy, and those enlarged powers contributed to France's ruin. D'Amboise therefore occupies an important place in the book's argumentative structure even though he is not followed through an independent dramatic arc. His conversation with the narrator supplies the setting for a general political maxim: a power that makes another power great may itself be undone, because the means used to raise the new power—whether persuasion or force—create distrust in the person raised.

The Papal Election and Cesare Borgia's Error

D'Amboise is also central to the assessment of Cesare Borgia's final political miscalculation. After Pope Alexander VI's death, Cesare could not guarantee the election he wanted, but he could have prevented the election of a candidate who had been injured by him or who would fear him once elevated to the papacy. The narrator names several such cardinals, including San Pietro ad Vincula, Colonna, San Giorgio, and Ascanio. Most of the remaining cardinals likewise had reasons to fear Cesare, with two notable exceptions: d'Amboise and the Spanish cardinals.

The Spanish cardinals were considered dependable because of their connections and obligations, while d'Amboise was considered acceptable because of the power he possessed through his relations with the French Court. The recommended course was consequently precise: Cesare should have labored first for a Spanish pope and, failing that, agreed to the election of d'Amboise. By contrast, San Pietro ad Vincula represented a danger that recent benefits could not neutralize. The narrator insists that new favors do not erase old injuries, and Cesare's failure to act on that principle made his participation in the election a decisive error.

Relations with France and the Wider Italian Struggle

D'Amboise's role is inseparable from the French monarchy's conduct in Italy. France ceded Romagna to Pope Alexander VI and Naples to Spain in attempts to avoid war, while also making political concessions connected with the dissolution of the King's marriage and the conferral of a cardinal's hat on d'Amboise. The narrator rejects the idea that such arrangements justified abandoning strategic designs. War, in this analysis, is not truly avoided by surrendering the conditions of power; it is merely deferred until the disadvantage falls on the side that yielded.

The connection between d'Amboise's cardinalate and French diplomacy therefore carries an irony. The very relationship that made him a plausible and comparatively safe papal candidate also exemplifies the larger entanglement of ecclesiastical advancement, royal bargaining, and territorial policy. France sought immediate advantages and temporary relief, but its concessions helped strengthen the Church and Spain in Italy. D'Amboise is thus positioned at the intersection of personal political favor and the structural consequences of international statecraft.

Narrative Function and Evaluation

Georges d'Amboise is not portrayed through private motives, interior reflection, or a sequence of personal actions. Instead, he functions as a sharply placed political interlocutor and as a test case in the book's analysis of judgment. His statement about Italian military weakness provokes a counterstatement about French political weakness; the scene then expands into a historical demonstration that France's own decisions helped create the forces that undermined it.

His presence also clarifies the standards by which the narrator evaluates a new ruler. Cesare Borgia's error was not simply that he failed to secure his preferred pope. It was that he failed to block a dangerous one, even though a less threatening alternative—d'Amboise—was available. Georges d'Amboise consequently represents a missed political possibility: a candidate acceptable because his French connections gave him protection from Cesare's enemies, but not chosen because Cesare misjudged the lasting force of resentment and fear. His limited but strategically important appearances reinforce the book's larger lesson that power depends not only on acquiring allies, but on anticipating what those allies, rivals, and beneficiaries will become once circumstances change.