It is further to be borne in mind that, four months earlier, the Pope had levied a similar decima, or tax, upon the entire College of Cardinals and every official in the service of the Holy See, for the purposes of the expedition against the Muslim, who was in arms against Christianity.

Naturally that tax was not popular with luxurious, self-seeking, cinquecento prelates, who in the main cared entirely for their own prosperity and not at all for that of Christianity, and you may realize how, by levying it, Alexander laid himself open to harsh criticism.
The only impugnable matter in the deed lies, as has been said, in the number of cardinals so created at a batch.

But the ends to be served may be held to justify, if not altogether, at least in some measure, the means adopted.

The Romagna war for which the funds were needed was primarily for the advancement of the Church, to expunge those faithless vicars who, appointed by the Holy See and holding their fiefs in trust for her, refused payment of just tribute and otherwise so acted as to alienate from the Church the States which she claimed for her own.

Their restoration to the Church--however much it might be a means of founding a Borgia dynasty in the Romagna--made for the greater power and glory of the Holy See.