Michelotto (Miguel) Corella

“Michelotto was interrogated about the deaths of a long list of people, including Gandia and Alfonso Bisceglie, but even on the rack he apparently refused to implicate Cesare.”
(Ch XIV, pg 269)

This Corella was a captain of foot, a soldier of fortune, who from the earliest days of Cesare's military career had followed the duke's fortunes--the very man who is alleged to have strangled Alfonso of Aragon by Cesare's orders. He is generally assumed to have been a Spaniard, and is commonly designated as Michelotto, or Don Miguel; but Alvisi supposes him, from his name of Corella, to have been a Venetian, and he tells us that by his fidelity to Cesare and the implicit manner in which he executed his master's orders, he earned--as is notorious--considerable hatred. He has been spoken of, indeed, as the ame damnee of Cesare Borgia; but that is a purely romantic touch akin to that which gave the same designation to Richelieu's Father Joseph.