Sixtus IV and Innocent VIII had similarly aimed at founding dynasties in Romagna for their families, but, lacking the talents and political acuteness of Alexander and a son of the mettle and capacity of Cesare Borgia, the feeble trail of their ambition is apt to escape attention.

It is also to be remembered that, whatever Alexander's ulterior motive, the immediate results of the campaign with which he inspired his son were to reunite to the Church the States which had fallen away from her, and to re-establish her temporal sway in the full plenitude of its dominion.
However much he may have been imbued with the desire to exalt and aggrandize his children politically, he did nothing that did not at the same time make for the greater power and glory of the Church.
His formidable Bull published in October set forth how, after trial, it had been found that the Lords or Vicars of Rimini, Pesaro, Imola, Forli, Camerino and Faenza, with other feudatories of the Holy See (including the duchy of Urbino) had never paid the yearly tribute due to the Church, wherefore he, by virtue of his apostolic authority, deprived them of all their rights, and did declare them so deprived.
It has been said again and again that this Bull amounting to a declaration of war, was no more than a pretext to indulge his rapacity; but surely it bears the impress of a real grievance, and, however blameable the results that followed out of it, for the measure itself there were just and ample grounds.
The effect of that Bull, issued at a moment when Cesare stood at arms with the might of France at his back, ready to enforce it, was naturally to throw into a state of wild dismay these Romagna tyrants whose acquaintance we shall make at closer quarters presently in the course of following Cesare's campaign.

Cesare Borgia may have been something of a wolf; but you are not to suppose that the Romagna was a fold of lambs.
Giovanni Sforza--Cesare's sometime brother-in-law, and Lord of Pesaro--flies in hot haste to Venice for protection.

There are no lengths to which he will not go to thwart the Borgias in their purpose, to save his tyranny from falling into the power of this family which he hates most rabidly, and of which he says that, having robbed him of his honour, it would now deprive him of his possessions.

He even offers to make a gift of his dominions to the Republic.
There was much traders' blood in Venice, and, trader-like, she was avid of possessions.