This conclusion, however, it is fair to draw: if, on Capello's evidence, we are to accept it that Cesare Borgia is responsible for the death of Alfonso of Aragon, then, on the same evidence, we must accept the motive as well as the deed.

We must accept as equally exact his thrice-repeated statement in letters to the Senate that the prince had planned Cesare's death by posting crossbow-men to shoot him.( 1) 1 It is extremely significant that Capello's Relazione contains no mention of Alfonso's plot against Cesare's life, a matter which, as we have seen, had figured so repeatedly in that ambassador's dispatches from Rome at the time of the event.

This omission is yet another proof of the malicious spirit by which the "relation" was inspired.

The suppression of anything that might justify a deed attributed to Cesare reveals how much defamation and detraction were the aims of this Venetian.
Either we must accept all, or we must reject all, that Capello tells us.
If we reject all, then we are left utterly without information as to how Alfonso of Aragon died.

If we accept all, then we find that it was as a measure of retaliation that Cesare compassed the death of his brother-in-law, which made it not a murder, but a private execution--justifiable under the circumstances of the provocation received and as the adjustment of these affairs was understood in the Cinquecento..