Volume IV Part 1 (1/2)
A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times.
by Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot.
CHAPTER XXVIII.----FRANCIS I. AND CHARLES V.
The closer the study and the wider the contemplation a Frenchman bestows upon his country's history, the deeper will be his feelings of patriotic pride, dashed with a tinge of sadness. France, in respect of her national unity, is the most ancient amongst the states of Christian Europe. During her long existence she has pa.s.sed through very different regimens, the chaos of barbarism, the feudal system, absolute monarchy, const.i.tutional monarchy, and republicanism. Under all these regimens she has had no lack of greatness and glory, material power and intellectual l.u.s.tre, moral virtues and the charms of social life. Her barbarism had its Charlemagne; her feudal system St. Louis, Joan of Arc, and Bayard; her absolute monarchy Henry IV. and Louis XIV. Of our own times we say nothing. France has shone in war and in peace, through the sword and through the intellect: she has by turns conquered and beguiled, enlightened and troubled Europe; she has always offered to the foreigner a spectacle or an abode full of the curious and the attractive, of n.o.ble pleasures and of mundane amus.e.m.e.nts. And still, after so many centuries of such a grand and brilliant career, France has not yet attained the end to which she ever aspired, to which all civilized communities aspire, and that is, order in the midst of movement, security and liberty united and lasting. She has had shortcomings which have prevented her from reaping the full advantage of her merits; she has committed faults which have involved her in reverses. Two things, essential to political prosperity amongst communities of men, have hitherto been to seek in her; predominance of public spirit over the spirit of caste or of profession, and moderation and fixity in respect of national ambition both at home and abroad. France has been a victim to the personal pa.s.sions of her chiefs and to her own reckless changeability.
We are entering upon the history of a period and a reign during which this intermixture of merits and demerits, of virtues and vices, of progress and backsliding, was powerfully and attractively exhibited amongst the French. Francis I., his government and his times commence the era of modern France, and bring clearly to view the causes of her greatnesses and her weaknesses.
Francis I. had received from G.o.d all the gifts that can adorn a man: he was handsome and tall and strong; his armor, preserved in the Louvre, is that of a man six feet high; his eyes were brilliant and soft, his smile was gracious, his manners were winning. From his very childhood he showed that he had wits, enterprise, skill, and boldness. He was but seven years old when, ”on the day of the conversion of St. Paul, January 25, 1501, about two P. M., my king, my lord, my Caesar, and my son, was run away with, near Amboise, by a hackney which had been given him by Marshal de Gye; and so great was the danger that those who were present thought it was all over; howbeit G.o.d, the protector of widowed women and the defender of orphans, foreseeing things to come, was pleased not to forsake me, knowing that, if accident had so suddenly deprived me of my love, I should have been too utter a wretch.” Such is the account given of this little incident by his mother, Louise of Savoy, who was at that time habitually kept, by Anne of Brittany's jealousy, at a distance from Paris and the court. [_Journal de Louise de Savoie_ in the Pet.i.tot collection of _Memoires sur l'Histoire de France,_ Series I. t. xvi.
p. 390.] Some years later the young prince, who had become an ardent huntsman, took the fancy into his head one day to let loose in the courtyard of the castle of Amboise a wild boar which he had just caught in the forest. The animal came to a door, burst it open with a blow of his snout, and walked up into the apartments. Those who were there took to their heels; but Francis went after the boar, came up with him, killed him with a swordthrust, and sent him rolling down the staircase into the courtyard. When, in 1513, Louis XII. sent for the young Duke of Angouleme and bade him go and defend Picardy against the English, Francis had scarcely done anything beyond so employing his natural gifts as to delight the little court of which he was the centre; an estimable trait, but very insufficient for the government of a people.
When, two years afterwards, on the 1st of January, 1515, he ascended the throne before he had attained his one and twentieth year, it was a brilliant and brave but spoiled child that became king. He had been under the governance of Artus Gouffier, Sire de Boisy, a n.o.bleman of Poitou, who had exerted himself to make his royal pupil a loyal knight, well trained in the moral code and all the graces of knighthood, but without drawing his attention to more serious studies or preparing him for the task of government. The young Francis d'Angouleme lived and was moulded under the influence of two women, his mother, Louise of Savoy, and his eldest sister, Marguerite, who both of them loved and adored him with pa.s.sionate idolatry. It has just been shown in what terms Louise of Savoy, in her daily collection of private memoranda, used to speak to herself of her son, ”My king, my lord, my Caesar, and my son!” She was proud, ambitious, audacious, or pliant at need, able and steadfast in mind, violent and dissolute in her habits, greedy of pleasure and of money as well as of power, so that she gave her son neither moral principles nor a moral example: for him the supreme kings.h.i.+p, for herself the rank, influence, and wealth of a queen-mother, and, for both, greatness that might subserve the gratification of their pa.s.sions--this was all her dream and all her aim as a mother. Of quite another sort were the character and sentiments of Marguerite de Valois. She was born on the 11th of April, 1492, and was, therefore, only two years older than her brother Francis; but her more delicate nature was sooner and more richly cultivated and developed. She was brought up with strictness by a most excellent and most venerable dame, in whom all the virtues, at rivalry one with another, existed together. [Madame de Chatillon, whose deceased husband had been governor to King Charles VIII.] As she was discovered to have rare intellectual gifts and a very keen relish for learning, she was provided with every kind of preceptors, who made her proficient in profane letters, as they were then called. Marguerite learned Latin, Greek, philosophy, and especially theology. ”At fifteen years of age,” says a contemporary, ”the spirit of G.o.d began to manifest itself in her eyes, in her face, in her walk, in her speech, and.
generally in all her actions.” ”She had a heart,” says Brantome, ”mighty devoted to G.o.d, and she loved mightily to compose spiritual songs. . . . She also devoted herself to letters in her young days, and continued them as long as she lived, loving and conversing with, in the time of her greatness, the most learned folks of her brother's kingdom, who honored her so that they called her their Maecenas.”
Learning, however, was far from absorbing the whole of this young soul.
”She,” says a contemporary, ”had an agreeable voice of touching tone, which roused the tender inclinations that there are in the heart.”
Tenderness, a pa.s.sionate tenderness, very early a.s.sumed the chief place in Marguerite's soul, and the first object of it was her brother Francis.
When mother, son, and sister were spoken of, they were called a Trinity, and to this Marguerite herself bore witness when she said, with charming modesty,--
”Such boon is mine, to feel the amity That G.o.d hath putten in our trinity, Wherein to make a third, I, all unfitted To be that number's shadow, am admitted.”
Marguerite it was for whom this close communion of three persons had the most dolorous consequences: we shall fall in with her more than once in the course of this history; but, whether or no, she was a.s.suredly the best of this princely trio, and Francis I. was the most spoiled by it.
There is nothing more demoralizing than to be an idol.
The first acts of his government were sensible and of good omen. He confirmed or renewed the treaties or truces which Louis XII., at the close of his reign, had concluded with the Venetians, the Swiss, the pope, the King of England, the Archduke Charles, and the Emperor Maximilian, in order to restore peace to his kingdom. At home Francis I.
maintained at his council the princ.i.p.al and most tried servants of his predecessor, amongst others the finance-minister, Florimond Robertet; and he raised to four the number of the marshals of France, in order to confer that dignity on Bayard's valiant friend, James of Chabannes, Lord of La Palice, who even under Louis XII. had been ent.i.tled by the Spaniards ”the great marshal of France.” At the same time he exalted to the highest offices in the state two new men, Charles, Duke of Bourbon, who was still a mere youth, but already a warrior of renown, and Anthony Duprat, the able premier president of the Parliament of Paris; the former he made constable, and the latter chancellor of France. His mother, Louise of Savoy, was not unconcerned, it is said, in both promotions; she was supposed to feel for the young constable something more than friends.h.i.+p, and she regarded the veteran magistrate, not without reason, as the man most calculated to unreservedly subserve the interests of the kingly power and her own.
These measures, together with the language and the behavior of Francis I., and the care he took to conciliate all who approached him, made a favorable impression on France and on Europe. In Italy, especially, princes as well as people, and Pope Leo X. before all, flattered themselves, or were pleased to appear as if they flattered themselves, that war would not come near them again, and that the young king had his heart set only on making Burgundy secure against sudden and outrageous attacks from the Swiss. The aged King of Spain, Ferdinand the Catholic, adopting the views of his able minister, Cardinal Ximenes, alone showed distrust and anxiety. ”Go not to sleep,” said he to his former allies; ”a single instant is enough to bring the French in the wake of their master whithersoever he pleases to lead them; is it merely to defend Burgundy that the King of France is adding fifteen hundred lances to his men-at-arms, and that a huge train of artillery is defiling into Lyonness, and little by little approaching the mountains?”
[Ill.u.s.tration: Cardinal Ximenes----14]
Ferdinand urged the pope, the Emperor Maximilian, the Swiss, and Maximilian Sforza, Duke of Milan, to form a league for the defence of Italy; but Leo X. persisted in his desire of remaining or appearing neutral, as the common father of the faithful. Meanwhile the French amba.s.sador at Rome, William Bude, ”a man,” says Guicciardini, ”of probably unique erudition amongst the men of our day,” and, besides, a man of keen and sagacious intellect, was unfolding the secret working of Italian diplomacy, and sending to Paris demands for his recall, saying, ”Withdraw me from this court full of falsehoods; this is a residence too much out of my element.” The answer was, that he should have patience, and still negotiate; for France, meeting ruse by ruse, was willing to be considered hoodwinked, whilst the eyes of the pope, diverted by a hollow negotiation, were prevented from seeing the peril which was gathering round the Italian league and its declared or secret champions.
[Gaillard, _Histoire de Francois 1er,_ t. i. p. 208.]
Neither the king nor the pope had for long to take the trouble of practising mutual deception. It was announced at Rome that Francis I., having arrived at Lyons in July, 1515, had just committed to his mother, Louise, the regency of the kingdom, and was pus.h.i.+ng forward towards the Alps an army of sixty thousand men and a powerful artillery. He had won over to his service Octavian Fregoso, Doge of Genoa; and Barthelemy d'Alviano, the veteran general of his allies the Venetians, was encamped with his troops within hail of Verona, ready to support the French in the struggle he foresaw. Francis I., on his side, was informed that twenty thousand Swiss, commanded by the Roman, Prosper Colonna, were guarding the pa.s.ses of the Alps in order to shut him out from Milaness. At the same time he received the news that the Cardinal of Sion, his most zealous enemy in connection with the Roman Church, was devotedly employing, with the secret support of the Emperor Maximilian, his influence and his preaching for the purpose of raising in Switzerland a second army of from twenty to five and twenty thousand men, to be launched against him, if necessary, in Italy. A Spanish and Roman army, under the orders of Don Raymond of Cardone, rested motionless at some distance from the Po, waiting for events and for orders prescribing the part they were to take. It was clear that Francis I., though he had been but six months king, was resolved and impatient to resume in Italy, and first of all in Milaness, the war of invasion and conquest which had been engaged in by Charles VIII. and Louis XII.; and the league of all the states of Italy save Venice and Genoa, with the pope for their half-hearted patron, and the Swiss for their fighting men, were collecting their forces to repel the invader.
It was the month of August; the snow was diminis.h.i.+ng and melting away among the Alps; and the king, with the main body of the army, joined at Embrun the Constable de Bourbon, who commanded the advance-guard. But the two pa.s.ses of Mount Cenis and Mount Ginevra were strongly guarded by the Swiss, and others were sought for a little more to the south. A shepherd, a chamois-hunter, pointed out one whereby, he said, the mountains might be crossed, and a descent made upon the plains of the marquisate of Saluzzo. The young constable went in person to examine the spots pointed out by the shepherd; and, the statement having been verified, it did not seem impossible to get the whole army over, even the heavy artillery; and they essayed this unknown road. At several points, abysses had to be filled up, temporary bridges built, and enormous rocks pierced; the men-at-arms marched on foot, with great difficulty dragging their horses; with still greater difficulty the infantry hauled the cannon over holes incompletely stopped and fragments of yawning rock.
Captains and soldiers set to work together; no labor seems too hard to eager hope; and in five days the mountain was overcome, and the army caught sight of the plain where the enemy might be encountered. A small body of four hundred men-at-arms, led by Marshal de Chabannes, were the first to descend into it; and among them was Bayard. ”Marshal,” said he to Chabannes, ”we are told that over the Po yonder is Sir Prosper Colonna, with two thousand horse, in a town called Villafranca, apprehending nought and thinking of nought but gaudies. We must wake up his wits a little, and this moment get into the saddle with all our troops, that he be not warned by any.” ”Sir Bayard,” said the marshal, ”it is right well said; but how shall we cross the River Po, which is so impetuous and broad?” ”Sir,” said Bayard, ”here is my Lord de Morette's brother, who knows the ford; he shall cross first, and I after him.” So they mounted their horses, crossed the Po, and ”were soon there, where Sir Prosper Colonna was at table and was dining, as likewise were all his folk.”
Bayard, who marched first, found the archers on guard in front of the Italian leader's quarters. ”Yield you and utter no sound,” cried he, ”else you are dead men.” Some set about defending themselves; the rest ran to warn Colonna, saying, ”Up, sir; for, here are the French in a great troop already at this door.” ”Lads,” said Colonna to them, ”keep this door a little till we get some armor on to defend ourselves.” But whilst the fight was going on at the door Bayard had the windows scaled, and, entering first, cried out, ”Where are you, Sir Prosper? Yield you; else you are a dead man.” ”Sir Frenchman, who is your captain?” asked Colonna. ”I am, sir.” ”Your name, captain?” ”Sir, I am one Bayard of France, and here are the Lord of La Palice, and the Lords d'Aubigny and d'Himbercourt, the flower of the captains of France.” Colonna surrendered, cursing Fortune, ”the mother of all sorrow and affliction, who had taken away his wits, and because he had not been warned of their coming, for he would at least have made his capture a dear one;” and he added, ”It seems a thing divinely done; four n.o.ble knights at once, with their comrades at their backs, to take one Roman n.o.ble!”
Francis I. and the main body of his army had also arrived at the eastern foot of the Alps, and were advancing into the plains of the country of Saluzzo and Piedmont. The Swiss, dumbfounded at so unexpected an apparition, fell back to Novara, the scene of that victory which two years previously had made them so proud. A rumor spread that negotiation was possible, and that the question of Milaness might be settled without fighting. The majority of the French captains repudiated the idea, but the king entertained it. His first impulses were sympathetic and generous. ”I would not purchase,” said he to Marshal de Lautrec, ”with the blood of my subjects, or even with that of my enemies, what I can pay for with money.” Parleys were commenced; and an agreement was. .h.i.t upon with conditions on which the Swiss would withdraw from Italy and resume alliance with the French. A sum of seven hundred thousand crowns, it was said, was the chief condition; and the king and the captains of his army gave all they had, even to their plate, for the first instalment which Lautrec was ordered to convey to Bufalora, where the Swiss were to receive it. But it was suddenly announced that the second army of twenty thousand Swiss, which the Cardinal of Sion had succeeded in raising, had entered Italy by the valley of the Ticino. They formed a junction with their countrymen; the cardinal recommenced his zealous preaching against the French; the newcomers rejected the stipulated arrangements; and, confident in their united strength, all the Swiss made common accord.
Lautrec, warned in time, took with all speed his way back to the French army, carrying away with him the money he had been charged to pay over; the Venetian general, D'Alviano, went to the French camp to concert with the king measures for the movements of his troops; and on both sides nothing was thought of but the delivery of a battle.
On the 13th of September, 1515, about midday, the Constable de Bourbon gave notice to the king, encamped at Melegnano (a town about three leagues from Milan), that the Swiss, sallying in large ma.s.ses from Milan, at the noisy summons of the bull of Uri and the cow of Unterwalden, were advancing to attack. ”The king, who was purposing to sit down to supper, left it on the spot, and went off straight towards the enemy, who were already engaged in skirmis.h.i.+ng, which lasted a long while before they were at the great game. The king had great numbers of lanzknechts, the which would fain have done a bold deed in crossing a ditch to go after the Swiss; but these latter let seven or eight ranks cross, and then thrust you them back in such sort that all that had crossed got hurled into the ditch. The said lanzknechts were mighty frightened; and but for the aid of a troop of men-at-arms, amongst the which was the good knight Bayard, who bore down right through the Swiss, there had been a sad disaster there, for it was now night, and night knows no shame. A band of Swiss came pa.s.sing in front of the king, who charged them gallantly.
There was heavy fighting there and much danger to the king's person, for his great buffe [the top of the visor of his helmet] was pierced, so as to let in daylight, by the thrust of a pike. It was now so late that they could not see one another; and the Swiss were, for this evening, forced to retire on the one side, and the French on the other. They lodged as they could; but well I trow that none did rest at ease. The King of France put as good a face on matters as the least of all his soldiers did, for he remained all night a-horseback like the rest (according to other accounts he had a little sleep, lying on a gun-carriage).
[Ill.u.s.tration: All Night a-horseback----19]
On the morrow at daybreak the Swiss were for beginning again, and they came straight towards the French artillery, from which they had a good peppering. Howbeit, never did men fight better, and the affair lasted three or four good hours. At last they were broken and beaten, and there were left on the field ten or twelve thousand of them. The remainder, in pretty good order along a high road, withdrew to Milan, whither they were pursued sword-in-hand.” [_Histoire du bon Chevalier sans Peur et sans Reproehe,_ t. ii. pp. 99-102.]