A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times Volume IV Part 3

2. "To the Emperor Charles V.: If liberty had been sooner granted me by my cousin the viceroy, I should not have delayed so long to do my duty towards you, according as the time and the circ.u.mstances in which I am placed require; having no other comfort under my misfortune than a reliance on your goodness, which, if it so please, shall employ the results of victory with honorableness towards me; having steadfast hope that your virtue would not willingly constrain me to anything that was not honorable; entreating you to consult your own heart as to what you shall be pleased to do with me; feeling sure that the will of a prince such as you are cannot be coupled with aught but honor and magnanimity. Wherefore, if it please you to have so much honorable pity as to answer for the safety which a captive King of France deserves to find, whom there is a desire to render friendly and not desperate, you may be sure of obtaining an acquisition instead of a useless prisoner, and of making a King of France your slave forever."

The former of these two letters has had its native hue somewhat altered in the majority of histories, in which it has been compressed into those eloquent words, "All is lost save honor." The second needs no comment to make apparent what it lacks of kingly pride and personal dignity.

Beneath the warrior's heroism there was in the qualities of Francis I.

more of what is outwardly brilliant and winning than of real strength and solidity.

But the warrior's heroism, in conjunction with what is outwardly brilliant and winning in the man, exercises a great influence over people. The Viceroy of Naples perceived and grew anxious at the popularity of which Francis I. was the object at Pizzighittone. The lanzknechts took an open interest in him and his fortunes; the Italians fixed their eyes on him; and Bourbon, being reconciled to him, might meditate carrying him off. Lannoy resolved to send him to Naples, where there would be more certainty of guarding him securely. Francis made no objection to this design. On the 12th of May, 1525, he wrote to his mother, "Madame, the bearer has a.s.sured me that he will bring you this letter safely; and, as I have but little time, I will tell you nothing more than I shall be off to Naples on Monday--, and so keep a lookout at sea, for we shall have only fourteen galleys to take us and eighteen hundred Spaniards to man them; but those will be all their arquebusiers.

Above all, haste: for, if that is made, I am in hopes that you may soon see your most humble and most obedient son." There was no opportunity for even attempting to carry off the king as he went by sea to Naples; instead of taking him to Naples, Lannoy transported him straight to Spain, with the full a.s.sent of the king and the regent themselves, for it was in French galleys manned by Spanish troops that the voyage was made.

Instead of awaiting the result of such doubtful chances of deliverance as might occur in Italy, Francis I., his mother, and his sister Margaret, entertained the idea that what was of the utmost importance for him was to confer and treat in person with Charles V., which could not be done save in Spain itself. In vain did Bourbon and Pescara, whose whole influence and ambitious hopes lay in Italy, and who, on that stage, regarded Francis I. as their own prisoner rather than Charles V.'s, exert themselves to combat this proposal; the Viceroy of Naples, in concert, no doubt, with Charles V. himself as well as with Francis I. and his mother, took no heed of their opposition; and Francis I., disembarking at the end of June at Barcelona first and then at Valentia, sent, on the 2d of July, to Charles V. the Duke de Montmorency, with orders to say that he had desired to approach the emperor, "not only to obtain peace and deliverance in his own person, but also to establish and confirm Italy in the state and fact of devotion to the emperor, before that the potentates and lords of Italy should have leisure to rally together in opposition."

The regent, his mother, and his sister Margaret congratulated him heartily on his arrival in Spain, and Charles V. himself wrote to him, "It was a pleasure to me to hear of your arrival over here, because that, just now, it will be the cause of a happy general peace for the great good of Christendom, which is what I most desire."

It is difficult to understand how Francis I. and Charles V. could rely upon personal interviews and negotiations for putting an end to their contentions and establishing a general peace. Each knew the other's pretensions, and they knew how little disposed they were, either of them, to abandon them. On the 28th of March, 1525, a month after the battle of Pavia, Charles V. had given his amba.s.sadors instructions as to treating for the ransom and liberation of the King of France. His chief requirements were, that Francis I. should renounce all attempts at conquest in Italy, that he should give up the suzerainty of the countships of Flanders and Artois, that he should surrender to Charles V.

the duchy of Burgundy with all its dependencies, as derived from Mary of Burgundy, daughter of the last duke, Charles the Rash; that the Duke of Bourbon should be reinstated in possession of all his domains, with the addition thereto of Provence and Dauphiny, which should form an independent state; and, lastly, that France should pay England all the sums of money which Austria owed her. Francis I., on hearing, at Pizzighittone, these proposals read out, suddenly drew his sword as if to stab himself, saying, "It were better for a king to end thus." His custodian, Alancon, seized his arm, whilst recalling him to his senses.

Francis recovered calmness, but without changing his resolution; he would rather, he said, bury himself in a prison forever than subscribe to conditions destructive of his kingdom, and such as the States General of France would never accept. When Francis I. was removed to Spain he had made only secondary concessions as to these requirements of Charles V., and Charles V. had not abandoned any one of his original requirements.

Marshal de Montmorency, when sent by the king to the emperor on the 2d of July, 1525, did not enter at all into the actual kernel of the negotiation; after some conventional protestations of a pacific kind, he confined himself to demanding "a safe conduct for Madame Marguerite of France, the king's only sister, d.u.c.h.ess of Alencon and Berry, who would bring with her such and so full powers of treating for peace, the liberation of the king, and friendly alliance to secure the said peace, that the emperor would clearly see that the king's intentions were pure and genuine, and that he would be glad to conclude and decide in a month what might otherwise drag on for a long while to the great detriment of their subjects." The marshal was at the same time to propose the conclusion of a truce during the course of the negotiations.

Amongst the letters at that time addressed to Francis I., a prisoner of war, is the following, dated March, 1525, when he was still in Italy:--

"My lord, the joy we are still feeling at the kind letters which you were pleased to write yesterday to me and to your mother, makes us so happy with the a.s.surance of your health, on which our life depends, that it seems to me that we ought to think of nothing but of praising G.o.d and desiring a continuance of your good news, which is the best meat we can have to live on. And inasmuch as the Creator bath given us grace that our trinity should be always united, the other two do entreat you that this letter, presented to you, who are the third, may be accepted with the same affection with which it is cordially offered you by your most humble and most obedient servants, your mother and sister-- LOUISE, MARGUERITE."

This close and tender union of the three continued through all separations and all trials; the confidence of the captive king was responsive to the devotion of his mother the regent and of his sister who had become his negotiatrix. When the news came of the king's captivity, the regency threatened for a moment to become difficult and stormy; all the ambition and the hatred that lay dormant in the court awoke; an attempt was made to excite in the Duke of Vendome, the head of the younger branch of the House of Bourbon, a desire to take the regent's place; the Parliament of Paris attacked the chancellor, Duprat, whom they hated--not without a cause; but the Duke of Vendome was proof against the attempts which were made upon him, and frankly supported the regent, who made him the chief of her council; and the regent supported the chancellor. She displayed, in these court-contentions, an ability partaking both of firmness and pliancy. The difficulties of foreign policy found her equally active and prudent. The greatest peril which France could at that time incur arose from the maintenance of the union between the King of England and Charles V. At the first news of the battle of Pavia, Henry VIII. dreamed for a moment of the part.i.tion of France between Charles and himself, with the crown of France for his own share; demonstrations of joy took place at the court of London; and attempts were made to levy, without the concurrence of Parliament, imposts capable of sufficing for such an enterprise. But the English nation felt no inclination to put up with this burden and the king's arbitrary power in order to begin over again the Hundred Years' War.

The primate, Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote to Cardinal Wolsey, "It is reported to me that when the people had orders to make bonfires for the capture of the King of France, many folks said that it was more reason for weeping than for rejoicing. Others openly expressed their desire that the King of France might be set at liberty, that a happy peace might be concluded, and that the king might not attempt to conquer France again, a conquest more burdensome than profitable, and more difficult to keep than to make." Wolsey himself was cooled towards Charles V., who, instead of writing to him as of old, and signing with his own hand, "your son and cousin," now merely put his name, Charles.

The regent, Louise of Savoy, profited ably by these feelings and circ.u.mstances in England; a negotiation was opened between the two courts; Henry VIII. gained by it two millions of crowns payable by annual instalments of fifty thousand crowns each, and Wolsey received a pension of a hundred thousand crowns. At first a truce for four months, and then an alliance, offensive and defensive, were concluded on the 30th of August, 1525, between France and England; and the regent, Louise of Savoy, had no longer to trouble herself about anything except the captivity of the king her son and the departure of her daughter Margaret to go and negotiate for the liberation of the prisoner.

The negotiation had been commenced, as early as the 20th of July, at Toledo, between the amba.s.sadors of Francis I. and the advisers of Charles V., but without any symptom of progress. Francis I., since his arrival in Spain, had been taken from strong castle to strong castle, and then removed to Madrid, everywhere strictly guarded, and leading a sad life, without Charles V.'s coming to visit him or appointing him any meeting-place. In vain did the emperor's confessor, the Bishop of Osma, advise him to treat Francis I. generously, and so lay upon him either the obligation of thankfulness or the burden of ingrat.i.tude; the majority of his servants gave him contrary counsel. "I know not what you mean to do," wrote his brother, the Archduke Ferdinand; "but, if I were wise enough to know how to give you good counsel, it seems to me that such an opportunity should not be lost, but that you should follow up your good fortune and act in such wise that neither the King of France nor his successors should have power hereafter to do harm to you or yours."

That, too, was Charles V.'s own way of thinking; but, slow and patient as he was by nature, he relied upon the discomforts and the wearisomeness of prolonged captivity and indecision for tiring out Francis I. and overcoming his resistance to the harsh conditions he would impose upon him. The regent, Louise, made him an offer to go herself and treat with him, at Perpignan, for the king's liberation; but he did not accept that overture. The Duke of Alencon, son-in-law of Louise, had died at Lyons, unable to survive the shame of his flight at the battle of Pavia; and the regent hinted that her daughter Marguerite, three months a widow, "would be happy if she could be agreeable to his Imperial Majesty," but Charles let the hint drop without a reply. However, at the end of August, 1525, he heard that Francis I. was ill: "from great melancholy he had fallen into a violent fever." The population of Madrid was in commotion; Francis I. had become popular there; many people went to pray for him in the churches; the doctors told the emperor that there was fear for the invalid's life, and that he alone could alleviate the malady by administering some hope. Charles V. at once granted the safe-conduct which had been demanded of him for Marguerite of France, and on the 18th of September he himself went to Madrid to pay a visit to the captive.

Francis, on seeing him enter the chamber, said, "So your Majesty has come to see your prisoner die?" "You are not my prisoner," answered Charles, "but my brother and my friend: I have no other purpose than to give you your liberty and every satisfaction you can desire." Next day Marguerite arrived; her mother, the regent, had accompanied her as far as Pont-Saint-Esprit; she had embarked, on the 27th of August, at Aigues-Mortes, and, disembarking at Barcelona, had gone to Madrid by litter; in order to somewhat a.s.suage her impatience she had given expression to it in the following tender stanzas:

"For the bliss that awaits me so strong Is my yearning that yearning is pain; One hour is a hundred years long; My litter, it bears me in vain; It moves not, or seems to recede; Such speed would I make if I might: O, the road, it is weary indeed, Where lies--at the end--my delight!

"I gaze all around me all day For some one with tidings to bring, Not ceasing--ne'er doubt me--to pray Unto G.o.d for the health of my king I gaze; and when none is descried, Then I weep; and, what else? if you ask, To my paper my grief I confide This, this is my sorrowful task.

"O, welcome be he who at length Shall tap at my door and shall cry, 'The king to new health and new strength Is returning; the king will not die!'

Then she, who were now better dead, Will run, the news-bearer to see, And kiss him for what he hath said, That her brother from danger is free."

Francis was not "free from danger" when his sister arrived; she took her post at his side; on the 25th of September a serious crisis came on; and he remained for some time "without speaking, or hearing, or seeing."

Marguerite had an altar set up in her chamber; and all the French, of the household, great lords and domestics, knelt beside the sick man's sister, and received the communion from the, hands of the Archbishop of Embrun, who, drawing near the bed, entreated the king to turn his eyes to the holy sacrament. Francis came out of his lethargy, and asked to communicate likewise, saying, "G.o.d will cure me, soul and body." He became convalescent, and on the 20th of October he was sufficiently recovered for Marguerite to leave Madrid, and go and resume negotiations at Toledo, whither Charles V. had returned.

The day but one after her arrival she wrote to the king, "The emperor gave me courteous and kind reception, and, after coming to meet me at the entrance of this house, he used very kind and courteous language to me.

He desired that he and I should be alone in the same room, and one of my women to keep the door. This evening I will send you word of what has been done; entreating you, my lord, to put on before Sieur Alancon (the king's custodian) an air of weakness and weariness, for your debility will strengthen me and will hasten my despatch, which seems to me slower than I can tell you; as well for the sake of seeing you liberated, which you will be by G.o.d's help, as of returning and trying whether your dear hand can be of any use to you." Marguerite was impressed by the good-will she discovered at the court of Toledo in respect of the King of France, his liberation, and the establishment of peace; she received from the people in the streets, as well as from the great lords in their houses, the most significant proofs of favor. Charles V. took umbrage at it, and had the Duke of Infantado, amongst others, informed that, if he wished to please the emperor, neither he nor his sons must speak to Madame d'Alencon. "But," said she, "I am not tabooed to the ladies, to whom I will speak double." She contracted a real intimacy with even the sister of Charles V., Eleanor, widow of the King of Portugal, whom Charles had promised to the Duke of Bourbon, and between whom and her brother, King Francis, Marguerite set brewing a marriage, which was not long deferred. But, in spite of her successes at the court, and even in the family of the emperor, Marguerite had no illusions touching the small chance of bringing her grand object of negotiation to a happy issue.

"Every one tells me," she wrote, "that he loves the king; but there is small experience of it. . . . If I had to do with good sort of people, who understand what honor is, I would not care; but the contrary is the case." She did not lose courage, however: "she spoke to the emperor so bravely and courteously," says Brantome, "that he was quite astounded, and she said still worse to those of his council, at which she had audience; there she had full triumph of her good speaking and haranguing, with an easy grace in which she was not deficient; and she did so well with her fine speaking that she made herself rather agreeable than hateful or tiresome, that her reasons were found good and pertinent, and that she remained in high esteem with the emperor, his council, and his court."

But neither good and pertinent reasons, nor the charm of eloquence in the mouth of a pleasing and able woman, are sufficient to make head against the pa.s.sions and interests of the actors who are at a given moment in possession of the political arena; it needs time, a great deal of time, before the unjust or unreasonable requirements and determinations of a people, a generation, and the chief of a state become acknowledged as such and abandoned. At the negotiations entered upon, in 1525, between Francis I. and Charles V., Francis I. was prompt in making large and unpalatable concessions: he renounced his pretensions, so far as Italy was concerned, to the duchy of Milan, to Genoa, and to the kingdom of Naples; his suzerainty over the countships of Flanders and Artois, and possession of Hesdin and Tournay; he consented to reinstate Duke Charles of Bourbon in all his hereditary property and rights, and to pay three millions of crowns in gold for his own ransom; but he refused to cede Provence and Dauphiny to the Duke of Bourbon as an independent state, and to hand over the duchy of Burgundy to Charles V., as heir of his grandmother, Mary of Burgundy, only daughter of Charles the Rash.

Charles V., after somewhat lukewarmly persisting, gave up the demand he had made on behalf of the Duke of Bourbon, for having Provence and Dauphiny erected into an independent state; but he insisted absolutely, on his own behalf, in his claim to the duchy of Burgundy as a right and a condition, sine qua non, of peace. The question at the bottom of the negotiations between the two sovereigns lay thus: the acquisition of Burgundy was for Charles V. the crowning-point of his victory and of his predominance in Europe; the giving up of Burgundy was for Francis I. a lasting proof of his defeat and a dismemberment of his kingdom: one would not let his prisoner go at any price but this, the other would not purchase at this price even his liberty and his restoration to his friends. In this extremity Francis I. took an honorable and n.o.ble resolution; in October, 1525, he wrote to Charles V., "Sir, my brother, I have heard from the Archbishop of Embrun and my premier-president at Paris of the decision you have expressed to them as to my liberation, and I am sorry that what you demand of me is not in my power. But feeling that you could not take a better way of telling me that you mean to keep me prisoner forever than by demanding of me what is impossible on my part, I have made up my mind to put up with imprisonment, being sure that G.o.d, who knows that I have not deserved a long one, being a prisoner of fair war, will give me strength to bear it patiently. And I can only regret that your courteous words, which you were pleased to address to me in my illness, should have come to nothing." [_Doc.u.ments inedits sur l'Histoire de France. Captivite du roi Francois I._, p. 384.]

The resolution announced in this letter led before long to the official act which was certain to be the consequence of it. In November, 1525, by formal letters patent, Francis I., abdicating the kingship which he could not exercise, ordered that his eldest son, the dauphin Francis, then eight years old, should be declared, crowned, anointed, and consecrated Most Christian King of France, and that his grandmother, Louise of Savoy, d.u.c.h.ess of Angouleme, or, in default of her, his aunt Marguerite, d.u.c.h.ess of Alencon, should be regent of the kingdom: "If it should please G.o.d that we should recover our personal liberty, and be able to proceed to the government and conduct of our kingdom, in that case our most dear and most beloved son shall quit and give up to us the name and place of king, all things re-becoming just as they were before our capture and captivity." The letters patent ordered the regent "to get together a number of good and notable personages from the three estates in all the districts, countries, and good towns of France, to whom, either in a body or separately, one after another, she should communicate the said will of the king, as above, in order to have their opinion, counsel, and consent." Thus, during the real king's very captivity, and so, long as it lasted, France was again about to have a king whom the States General of France would be called upon to support with their counsels and adhesion.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Louise of Savoy and Marguerite de Valois----102]

This resolution was taken and these letters patent prepared just at the expiry of the safe-conduct granted to the Princess Marguerite, and, consequently, just when she would have to return to France. Charles V.

was somewhat troubled at the very different position in which he was about to find himself, when he would have to treat no longer at Madrid with a captive king, but at Paris with a young king out of his power and with his own people about him. Marguerite fully perceived his embarra.s.sment. From Toledo, where she was, she wrote to her brother, "After having been four days without seeing the emperor, when I went to take leave I found him so gracious that I think he is very much afraid of my going; those gentry yonder are in a great fix, and, if you will be pleased to hold firm, I can see them coming round to your wishes. But they would very much like to keep me here doing nothing, in order to promote their own affairs, as you will be pleased to understand."

Charles V., in fact, signified to the king his desire that the negotiations should be proceeded with at Madrid or Toledo, never ceasing to make protestations of his pacific intentions. Francis I. replied that, for his part, "he would not lay any countermand on the d.u.c.h.ess, that he would willingly hear what the emperor's amba.s.sadors had to say, but that, if they did not come to any conclusion as to a peace and his own liberation, he would not keep his own amba.s.sadors any longer, and would send them away." Marguerite set out at the end of November; she at first travelled slowly, waiting for good news to reach her and stop her on the road; but, suddenly, she received notice from Madrid to quicken her steps; according to some historians, it was the Duke of Bourbon who, either under the influence of an old flame or in order to do a service to the king he had betrayed, sent word to the princess that Charles V., uneasy about what she was taking with her to France, had an idea of having her arrested the moment her safe-conduct had expired. According to a more probable version, it was Francis I. himself who, learning that three days after Marguerite's departure Charles V. had received a copy of the royal act of abdication, at once informed his sister, begging her to make all haste. And she did so to such purpose that, "making four days'

journey in one," she arrived at Salces, in the Eastern Pyrenees, an hour before the expiry of her safe-conduct. She no doubt took to her mother, the regent, the details of the king's resolutions and instructions; but the act itself containing them, the letters patent of Francis I., had not been intrusted to her; it was Marshal de Montmorency who, at the end of December, 15225, was the first bearer of them to France.

Did Francis I. flatter himself that his order to have his son the dauphin declared and crowned king, and the departure of his sister Marguerite, who was going, if not to carry the actual text of the resolution, at any rate to announce it to the regent and to France, would embarra.s.s Charles V. so far as to make him relax in his pretensions to the duchy of Burgundy and its dependencies? There is nothing to show that he was allured by such a hope; any how, if it may have for a moment arisen in his mind, it soon vanished. Charles V. insisted peremptorily upon his requirements; and Francis I. at once gave up his att.i.tude of firmness, and granted, instead, the concession demanded of him, that is, the relinquishment of Burgundy and its dependencies to Charles V., "to hold and enjoy with every right of supremacy until it hath been judged, decided, and determined, by arbiters elected on the emperor's part and our own, to whom the said duchy, countships, and other territories belong. . . . And for guarantee of this concession, the dauphin, the king's eldest son, and his second son, Henry, Duke of Orleans, or other great personages, to the number of twelve, should be sent to him and remain in his keeping as hostages." The regent, Louise, was not without a hand in this determination of the king; her maternal affection took alarm at the idea of her son's being for an indefinite period a prisoner in the hands of his enemy. Besides, in that case, war seemed to her inevitable; and she dreaded the responsibility which would be thrown upon her. Charles V., on his side, was essentially a prudent man; he disliked remaining, unless it were absolutely necessary, for a long while in a difficult position. His chancellor, Gattinera, refused to seal a treaty extorted by force and violated, in advance, by lack of good faith.

"Bring the King of France so low," he said, "that he can do you no harm, or treat him so well that he can wish you no harm, or keep him a prisoner: the worst thing you can do is to let him go half satisfied."

Charles V. persisted in his pacific resolution. There is no knowing whether he was tempted to believe in the reality of Francis I.'s concession, and to regard the guarantees as seriously meant; but it is evident that Francis I. himself considered them a mere sham; for four months previously, on the 22d of August, 1525, at the negotiations entered into on this subject, he had taken care to deposit in the hands of his negotiators a nullifying protest "against all pacts, conventions, renunciations, quittances, revocations, derogations, and oaths that he might have to make contrary to his honor and the good of his crown, to the profit of the said emperor or any other whosoever." And on the 13th of January, 1526, four weeks after having given his amba.s.sadors orders to sign the treaty of Madrid containing the relinquishment of Burgundy and its dependencies, the very evening before the day on which that treaty was signed, Francis I. renewed, at Madrid itself, and again placed in the hands of his amba.s.sadors, his protest of the 22d of August preceding against this act, declaring "that it was through force and constraint, confinement and length of imprisonment, that he had signed it, and that all that was contained in it was and should remain null and of no effect." We may not have unlimited belief in the scrupulosity of modern diplomats; but a.s.suredly they would consider such a policy so fundamentally worthless that they would be ashamed to practise it. We may not hold sheer force in honor; but open force is better than mendacious weakness, and less debasing for a government as well as for a people.

"As soon as the treaty of Madrid was signed, the emperor came to Madrid to see the king; then they went, both in one litter, to see Queen Eleanor, the emperor's sister and the king of Portugal's widow, whom, by the said treaty, the king was to espouse before he left Spain, which he did."

[_Memoires de Martin Du Bellay,_ t. ii. p. 15.] After which Francis was escorted by Lannoy to Fontarabia, whilst, on the other hand, the regent Louise, and the king's two sons who were to go as hostages to Spain, were on their way to Bayonne. A large bark was anch.o.r.ed in the middle of the Bida.s.soa, the boundary of the two kingdoms, between Irun and Andaye.

Lannoy put the king on board, and received in exchange, from the hands of Marshal Lautrec, the little princes Francis and Henry. The king gave his children his blessing, and reached the French side whilst they were being removed to the Spanish; and as soon as he set foot on sh.o.r.e, he leaped upon a fine Turkish horse, exclaiming, as he started at a gallop for Bayonne, where his mother and his sister awaited him, "So now I am king again!"

On becoming king again, he fell under the dominion of three personal sentiments, which exercised a decisive influence upon his conduct, and, consequently, upon the destiny of France joy at his liberation, a thirsting for revenge, we will not say for vengeance, to be wreaked on Charles V., and the burden of the engagement he had contracted at Madrid in order to recover his liberty, alternately swayed him. From Bayonne he repaired to Bordeaux, where he rea.s.sembled his court, and thence to Cognac, in Saintonge, where he pa.s.sed nearly three months, almost entirely abandoning himself to field-sports, galas, diversions, and pleasures of every kind, as if to indemnify himself for the wearisomeness and gloom in which he had lived at Madrid. "Age subdues the blood, adversity the mind, risks the nerve, and the despairing monarch has no hope but in pleasures," says Tavannes in his Memoires: "such was Francis I., smitten of women both in body and mind. It is the little circle of Madame d'Etampes that governs." One of the regent's maids of honor, Anne d'Heilly, whom Frances I. made d.u.c.h.ess of Etampes, took the place of the Countess of Chateaubriant as his favorite. With strange indelicacy Francis demanded back from Madame de Chateaubriant the beautiful jewels of gold which he had given her, and which bore tender mottoes of his sister Marguerite's composition. The countess took time enough to have the jewels melted down, and said to the king's envoy, "Take that to the king, and tell him that, as he has been pleased to recall what he gave me, I send it back to him in metal. As for the mottoes, I cannot suffer any one but myself to enjoy them, dispose of them, and have the pleasure of them." The king sent back the metal to Madame de Chateaubriant; it was the mottoes that he wished to see again, but he did not get them.

At last it was absolutely necessary to pa.s.s from pleasure to business.

The envoys of Charles V., with Lannoy, the Viceroy of Naples, at their head, went to Cognac to demand execution of the treaty of Madrid.

Francis waited, ere he gave them an answer, for the arrival of the delegates from the estates of Burgundy, whom he had summoned to have their opinion as to the cession of the duchy. These delegates, meeting at Cognac in June, 1527, formally repudiated the cession, being opposed, they said, to the laws of the kingdom, to the rights of the king, who could not by his sole authority alienate any portion of his dominions, and to his coronation-oath, which superseded his oaths made at Madrid.

Francis invited the envoys of Charles V. to a solemn meeting of his court and council present at Cognac, at which the delegates from Burgundy repeated their protest. Whilst availing himself of this declaration as an insurmountable obstacle to the complete execution of the treaty of Madrid, Francis offered to give two million crowns for the redemption of Burgundy, and to observe the other arrangements of the treaty, including the relinquishment of Italy and his marriage with the sister of Charles V. Charles formally rejected this proposal. "The King of France," he said, "promised and swore, on the faith of an honest king and prince, that, if he did not carry out the said rest.i.tution of Burgundy, he would incontinently come and surrender himself prisoner to H. M. the emperor, wherever he might be, to undergo imprisonment in the place where the said lord the emperor might be pleased to order him, up to and until the time when this present treaty should be completely fulfilled and accomplished.

Let the King of France keep his oath." [_Traite de Madrid,_ 14th of January, 1526: art. vi.]

However determined he was, at bottom, to elude the strict execution of the treaty of Madrid, Francis was anxious to rebut the charge of perjury by shifting the responsibility on to the shoulders of the people themselves and their representatives. He did not like to summon the states-general of the kingdom, and recognize their right as well as their power; but, after the meeting at Cognac, he went to Paris, and, on the 12th of December, 1527, the Parliament met in state with the adjunct of the princes of the blood, a great number of cardinals, bishops, n.o.blemen, deputies from the Parliaments of Toulouse, Bordeaux, Rouen, Dijon, Gren.o.ble, and Aix, and the munic.i.p.al body of Paris. In presence of this a.s.sembly the king went over the history of his reign, his expeditions in Italy, his alternate successes and reverses, and his captivity. "If my subjects have suffered," he said, "I have suffered with them." He then caused to be read the letters patent whereby he had abdicated and transferred the crown to his son the dauphin, devoting himself to captivity forever. He explained the present condition of the finances, and what he could furnish for the ransom of his sons detained as hostages; and he ended by offering to return as a prisoner to Spain if no other way could be found out of a difficult position, for he acknowledged having given his word, adding, however, that he had thought it pledged him to nothing, since it had not been given freely.

This last argument was of no value morally or diplomatically; but in his bearing and his language Francis I. displayed grandeur and emotion. The a.s.sembly also showed emotion; they were four days deliberating; with some slight diversity of form the various bodies present came to the same conclusion; and, on the 16th of December, 1527, the Parliament decided that the king was not bound either to return to Spain or to execute, as to that matter, the treaty of Madrid, and that he might with full sanction and justice levy on his subjects two millions of crowns for the ransom of his sons and the other requirements of the state.

Before inviting such manifestations Francis I. had taken measures to prevent them from being in vain. Since the battle of Pavia and his captivity at Madrid the condition and disposition of Europe, and especially of Italy, had changed. From 1513 to 1523, three popes, Leo X., Adrian VI., and Clement VII. had occupied the Holy See. Adrian VI.

alone embraced the cause of Charles V., whose preceptor he had been; but he reigned only one year, eight months, and five days; and even during that short time he made only a timid use of his power on his patron's behalf. His successor, Clement VII., was a Florentine and a Medici, and, consequently, but little inclined to favor the emperor's policy. The success of Charles V. at Pavia and the captivity of Francis I. inspired the pope and all Italy with great dread of the imperial pretensions and predominance. A league was formed between Rome, Florence, Venice, and Milan for the maintenance of Italian independence; and, as the pope was at its head, it was called the Holy League. Secret messages and communications were interchanged between these Italian states, the regent Louise of Savoy at Paris, and King Henry VIII. in London, to win them over to this coalition, not less important, it was urged, for the security of Europe than of Italy. The regent of France and the King of England received these overtures favorably; promises were made on either side and a commencement was even made of preparations, which were hastily disavowed both at Paris and in London, when Charles V. testified some surprise at them. But when Francis I. was restored to freedom and returned to his kingdom, fully determined in his own mind not to execute the treaty of Madrid, the negotiations with Italy became more full of meaning and reality. As early as the 22d of May, 1526, whilst he was still deliberating with his court and Parliament as to how he should behave towards Charles V. touching the treaty of Madrid, Francis I.

entered into the Holy League with the pope, the Venetians, and the Duke of Milan for the independence of Italy; and on the 8th of August following Francis I. and Henry VIII. undertook, by a special treaty, to give no a.s.sistance one against the other to Charles V., and Henry VIII.

promised to exert all his efforts to get Francis I.'s two sons, left as hostages in Spain, set at liberty. Thus the war between Francis I. and Charles V., after fifteen months' suspension, resumed its course.

It lasted three years in Italy, from 1526 to 1529, without interruption, but also without result; it was one of those wars which are prolonged from a difficulty of living in peace rather than from any serious intention, on either side, of pursuing a clear and definite object.

Bourbon and Lannoy commanded the imperial armies, Lautrec the French army. Only two events, one for its singularity and the other for its tragic importance, deserve to have the memory of them perpetuated in history.

After the battle of Pavia and whilst Francis I. was a captive in Spain, Bourbon, who had hitherto remained in Italy, arrived at Madrid on the 13th of November, 1525, almost at the same time at which Marguerite de Valois was leaving it for France. Charles V. received the hero of Pavia with the strongest marks of consideration and favor; and the Spanish army were enthusiastic in their attachment to him. Amongst the great Spanish lords there were several who despised him as a traitor to his king and country. Charles V. asked the Marquis de Villena to give him quarters in his palace. "I can refuse the king nothing," said the marquis; "but as soon as the traitor is out of the house, I will fire it with my own hand; no man of honor could live in it any more." Holding this great and at the same time doubtful position, Bourbon remained in Spain up to the moment when the war was renewed between Francis I. and Charles V. The latter could not at that time dispense with his services in Italy for the only soldier who could have taken his place there, the Marquis of Pescara, had died at Milan on the 30th of November, 1525, aged thirty-six. Charles V. at once sent Bourbon to take the command of the imperial armies in Italy. On arriving at Milan in July, 1527, Bourbon found not only that town, but all the emperor's party in Italy, in such a state of disorder, alarm, and exhaustion as to render them incapable of any great effort. In view of this general disturbance, Bourbon, who was as ambitious as able, and had become the chief of the great adventurers of his day, conceived the most audacious hopes. Charles V. had promised him the duchy of Milan; why should he not have the kingdom of Naples also, and make himself independent of Charles V.? He had immense influence over his Spanish army; and he had recruited it in Germany with from fourteen to fifteen thousand lanzknechts, the greater part of them Lutherans, and right glad to serve Charles V., then at war with the pope.

Their commander, Freundsberg, a friend of Bourbon's, had got made a handsome gold chain, "expressly," he said, "to hang and strangle the pope with his own hand, because 'honor to whom honor is due;' and since the pope called himself premier in Christendom, he must be deferred to somewhat more than others." [Brantome, t. i. p. 354.] On the 30th of January, 1527, at Piacenza, Bourbon, late Constable of France, put himself at the head of this ruck of bold and greedy adventurers. "I am now," said he to them, "nothing but a poor gentleman, who hasn't a penny to call his own any more than you have; but, if you will have a little patience, I will make you all rich or die in the attempt;" and, so saying, he distributed amongst them all he had left of money, rings, and jewels, keeping for himself nothing but his clothes and a jacket of silver tissue to put on over his armor. "We will follow you everywhere, to the devil himself!" shouted the soldiers; "no more of Julius Caesar, Hannibal, and Scipio! Hurrah! for the fame of Bourbon!" Bourbon led this mult.i.tude through Italy, halting before most of the towns, Bologna and Florence even, which he felt a momentary inclination to attack, but, after all, continuing his march until, having arrived in sight of Rome on the 5th of March, 1527, in the evening, he had pitched his camp, visited his guards, and ordered the a.s.sault for the morrow. "The great chances of our destiny," said he to his troops, "have brought us. .h.i.ther to the place where we desired to be, after traversing so many bad roads, in midwinter, with snows and frosts so great, with rain, and mud, and encounters of the enemy, in hunger and thirst, and without a halfpenny.

Now is the time to show courage, manliness, and the strength of your bodies. If this bout you are victorious, you will be rich lords and mighty well off; if not, you will be quite the contrary. Yonder is the city whereof, in time past, a wise astrologer prophesied concerning me, telling me that I should die there; but I swear to you that I care but little for dying there, if, when I die, my corpse be left with endless glory and renown throughout the world." Afterwards he gave the word for retiring, some to rest, and some on guard, and for every one to be ready to a.s.sault on the morrow early. . . . "After that the stars became obscured by the greater resplendency of the sun and the flashing arms of the soldiers who were preparing for the a.s.sault, Bourbon, clad all in white that he might be better known and seen (which was not the sign of a coward), and armor in hand, marched in front close up to the wall, and, when he had mounted two rungs of his ladder, just as he had said the night before, so did it happen to him, that envious, or, to more properly speak, traitorous Fortune would have an arquebuse-shot to hit him full in the left side and wound him mortally. And albeit she took from him his being and his life, yet could she not in one single respect take away his magnanimity and his vigor so long as his body had sense, as he well showed out of his own mouth, for, having fallen when he was. .h.i.t, he told certain of his most faithful friends who were nigh him, and especially the Gascon captain, Jonas, to cover him with a cloak and take him away, that his death might not give occasion to the others to leave an enterprise so well begun. . . . Just then, as M. de Bourbon had recommended,--to cover and hide his body,--so did his men; in such sort that the escalade and a.s.sault went on so furiously that the town, after a little resistance, was carried; and the soldiers, having by this time got wind of his death, fought the more furiously that it might be avenged, the which it certainly was right well, for they set up a shout of, 'Slay, slay! blood, blood! Bourbon, Bourbon!'" [Brantome, t. i. pp. 262-269.]

The celebrated artist-in-gold, Benvenuto Cellini, says, in his Life written by himself, that it was he who, from the top of the wall of the Campo Santo at Rome, aiming his arquebuse at the midst of a group of besiegers, amongst whom he saw one man mounted higher than the rest, hit him, and that he then saw an extraordinary commotion around this man, who was Bourbon, as he found out afterwards. [_Vita di Benvenuto Cellini,_ ch. xvii. pp. 157-159.] "I have heard say at Rome," says Brantome on the contrary, "that it was held that he who fired that wretched arquebuse-shot was a priest." [Brantome, t. ii. p. 268.]

Whatever hand it was that shot down Bourbon, Rome, after his death, was plundered, devastated and ravaged by a brutal, greedy, licentious, and fanatical soldiery. Europe was moved at the story of the sack of Rome and the position of the pope, who had taken refuge in the castle of St.

Angelo. Francis I. and Henry VIII. renewed their alliance; and a French army under the command of Lautrec advanced into Italy. Charles V., fearing lest it should make a rapid march to Rome and get possession of the pope whilst delivering him from captivity, entered into negotiations with him; and, in consideration of certain concessions to the emperor, it was arranged that the pope should be set at liberty without delay.

Clement VII. was so anxious to get out of his position, lately so perilous and even now so precarious, that he slank out of the castle of St. Angelo in the disguise of a tradesman the very night before the day fixed by the emperor for his liberation; and he retired to Orvieto, on the territory occupied by the French army. During this confusion of things in Italy, Charles V. gave orders for arresting in Spain the amba.s.sadors of Francis I. and of Henry VIII., who were in alliance against him, and who, on their side, sent him two heralds-at-arms to declare war against him. Charles V. received them in open audience at Burgos, on the 22d of January, 1528. "I am very much astonished," said he to the French envoy, "to find the King of France declaring against me a war which he has been carrying on for seven years; he is not in a position to address to me such a declaration; he is my prisoner. Why has he taken no notice of what I said to his amba.s.sador immediately after his refusal to execute the treaty of Madrid?" Charles V. now repeated, in the very terms addressed to the French amba.s.sador, the communication to which he alluded: "The king your master acted like a b.a.s.t.a.r.d and a scoundrel in not keeping his word that he gave me touching the treaty of Madrid; if he likes to say to the contrary, I will maintain it against him with my body to his." When these words were reported to Francis I., he summoned, on the 27th of March, 1528, the princes of the blood, the cardinals, the prelates, the grandees of the kingdom, and the ministers from foreign courts, and, after having given a vivid account of his relations with Charles V., "I am not the prisoner of Charles," he said: "I have not given him my word; we have never met with arms in our hands."

He then handed his herald, Guyenne, a cartel written with his own hand, and ending with these words addressed to Charles V.: "We give you to understand that, if you have intended or do intend to charge us with anything that a gentleman loving his honor ought not to do, we say that you have lied in your throat, and that, as often as you say so, you will lie. Wherefore for the future write us nothing at all; but appoint us the time and place of meeting, and we will bring our sword for you to cross; protesting that the shame of any delay in fighting shall be yours, seeing that, when it comes to an encounter, there is an end of all writing." Charles V. did not receive Francis I.'s challenge till the 8th of June; when he, in his turn, consulted the grandees of his kingdom, amongst others the Duke of Infantado, one of the most considerable in rank and character, who answered him in writing: "The jurisdiction of arms extends exclusively to obscure and foggy matters in which the ordinary rules of justice are at a discount; but, when one can appeal to oaths and authentic acts, I do not think that it is allowable to come to blows before having previously tried the ordinary ways of justice. . .

It seems to me that this law of honor applies to princes, however great they may be, as well as to knights. It would be truly strange, my lord, that a debt so serious, so universally recognized, as that contracted by the King of France, should be discharged by means of a personal challenge." Charles V. thereupon sent off his herald, Burgundy, with orders to carry to Francis I. "an appointment for a place of meeting between Fontarabia and Andaye, in such a spot as by common consent should be considered most safe and most convenient by gentlemen chosen on each side;" and this offer was accompanied by a long reply which the herald was at the same time to deliver to the King of France, whilst calling on him to declare his intention within forty days after the delivery of that letter, dated the 24th of June, "in default whereof," said Charles, "the delay in fighting will be yours."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Francis I.----115]

On arriving at the frontier of France the Spanish herald demanded a safe-conduct. He was made to wait seven weeks, from the 30th of June to the 19th of August, without the king's cognizance, it is said. At last, on the 19th of September, 1528, Burgundy entered Paris, and was conducted to the palace. Francis I. received him in the midst of his court; and, as soon as he observed the entrance of the herald, who made obeisance preliminary to addressing him, "Herald," cried the king, "all thy letters declare that thou bringest appointment of time and place; dost thou bring it?" "Sir," answered the Spaniard, "permit me to do my office, and say what the emperor has charged me to say." "Nay, I will not listen to thee," said Francis, "if thou do not first give me a patent signed by thy master, containing an appointment of time and place." "Sir, I have orders to read you the cartel, and give it you afterwards." "How, pray!" cried the king, rising up angrily: "doth thy master pretend to introduce new fashions in my kingdom, and give me laws in my own court?" Burgundy, without being put out, began again: "Sir, . . . " "Nay," said Francis, "I will not suffer him to speak to me before he has given me appointment of time and place. Give it me, or return as thou hast come." "Sir, I cannot, without your permission, do my office; if you will not deign to grant it to me, let me have your refusal handed me, and your ratification I of my safe-conduct for my return." "I am quite willing," said the king; "let him have it!"

Burgundy set off again for Madrid, and the incident was differently reported by the two courts; but there was no further question of a duel between the two kings.