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SIX Francis I: The first decade(1515–25)

‘Kingship is the dignity, not the property, of the prince.’ These words spoken by a deputy at the Estates-General of 1484 embody the theory of royal succession which prevailed in late mediaeval France. The king, however absolute he might deem himself to be, was not free to dispose of the crown; he had to be succeeded by his nearest male kinsman. It was in accordance with this principle that François duc de Valois and comte d’Angoulême, Louis XII’s cousin, succeeded to the throne on 1 January 1515 at the age of twenty-one. His right to do so was unimpeachable, for it was a clearly established principle that ‘the king never dies’; he was to be followed immediately by his lawful successor. There was no possibility of an interregnum.

In the words of the English chronicler Edward Hall, Francis I was ‘a goodly prince, stately of countenance, merry of chere, brown coloured, great eyes, high nosed, big lipped, fair breasted and shoulders, small legs and long feet’. Ellis Griffith, a Welsh soldier in the service of Henry VIII, who was able to observe the French king closely at the Field of Cloth of Gold in 1520, tells us that he was six feet tall. His head was rightly proportioned for his height, the nape of his neck was unusually broad, his hair brown, smooth and neatly combed, his beard of three months’ growth darker in colour, his nose long, his eyes hazel and bloodshot, and his complexion the colour of watered-down milk. He had muscular buttocks and thighs, but his legs below the knees were thin and bandy, while his feet were long, slender and completely flat. He had an agreeable voice and, in conversation, an animated expression marred only by the unkingly habit of continually rolling up his eyes.

Contemporaries often remarked on Francis’s eloquence and charm. He would talk easily on almost any subject, though sometimes with more self-assurance than knowledge; he could also write well. The letters he wrote to his mother during his first Italian campaign are spontaneous and vivid; his verses display emotional sincerity. But Francis was first and foremost a man of action: he delighted in hunting, jousting and dancing. Dangerously realistic mock battles capable of inflicting serious injuries were a stock entertainment at his court. In hunting, as in war, Francis showed outstanding courage. During celebrations at Amboise in June 1515 he had to be dissuaded from engaging a wild boar in single combat.

Francis has gone down in history as a great lover. Women certainly loomed large in his life, though many stories about his amours are pure fantasy. That is not to say that his morals were irreproachable. He was dissolute and had probably contracted syphilis before 1524. About the time of his accession he was having an affair with the wife of Jacques Disomme, a distinguished parlementaire. Truth, however, is not easily distilled from gossip. Even the king’s first official mistress, Françoise de Foix, comtesse de Châteaubriant, is a shadowy figure. She seems to have had little or no political influence.

Three women were pre-eminent at Francis I’s court in the early part of his reign: his mother, his sister and his wife. Louise of Savoy, being a widow in her early forties, was free to devote herself to her son’s service. She was given a powerful voice in government and her influence was felt especially in foreign affairs. The king’s sister Marguerite was intelligent, vivacious, and quite attractive. In 1509 she married Charles duc d’Alençon, but the match proved unhappy. Marguerite found consolation in pious meditation and good works. She became attracted to the ideas of Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples, leader of an evangelical group known as the Cercle de Meaux, and wrote religious poems which offended the narrowly orthodox ‘Sorbonne’, as the Paris Faculty of Theology is commonly known. Marguerite shared her mother’s interest in public affairs; foreign ambassadors often mentioned her in their dispatches. As for Queen Claude, she was widely renowned for her sweet, charitable and pious nature. Over a period of nine years she bore the king three sons and four daughters.

The new administration

The funeral of Louis XII took place at the abbey of Saint-Denis on 12 January 1515. Francis meanwhile organized his administration. Though not bound by the obligations of his predecessor, he chose to confirm many existing office-holders and privileges. On 2 January, for example, he confirmed members of the Parlement of Paris. Among members of Louis XII’s administration who were kept in office was Florimond Robertet, ‘the father of the secretaries of state’. The new reign also brought new blood into the administration. Antoine Duprat became Chancellor of France. The son of a merchant of Issoire, he had entered the law and had risen from the Parlement of Toulouse to that of Paris, becoming its First President. He gained the favour of Anne of Brittany and, after her death, joined the service of Louise of Savoy. It was doubtless with her support that he became chancellor. Duprat was hard-working and shrewd, but also ruthless and grasping. He became almost universally unpopular. Another great office that had fallen vacant was the constableship of France. Charles III duc de Bourbon, the king’s most powerful vassal, was now given the office. He had a distinguished war record, having fought bravely at Agnadello in 1509 and against the Swiss in 1513. Bourbon was also governor of Languedoc and Grand chambrier de France. The marshals of France, though subordinate to the constable, were on a par with dukes and peers. At Francis’s accession they numbered only two: Stuart d’Aubigny and Gian Giacomo Trivulzio. Francis created two more: Odet de Foix, seigneur de Lautrec, and Jacques de Chabannes, seigneur de Lapalice. On becoming marshal, Lapalice relinquished the office of Grand Master of France (Grand maître de France), which was given to Francis’s erstwhile governor, Artus Gouffier, seigneur de Boisy.

In distributing favours Francis did not forget his relatives and friends. He allegedly handed over to his mother all the revenues accruing from the confirmation of existing office-holders. Her county of Angoulême was raised to ducal status and she was also given the duchy of Anjou, the counties of Maine and Beaufort-en-Vallée and the barony of Amboise. Her half-brother René, ‘the great bastard of Savoy’, was appointed Grand sénéchal and governor of Provence. Francis’s brother-in-law, Charles d’Alençon, officially recognized as ‘the second person of the kingdom’, was made governor of Normandy. The house of Bourbon was also honoured: the vicomté of Châtellerault, which belonged to François, the constable’s brother, was turned into a duchy. The county of Vendôme, belonging to a second brother called Charles, was likewise elevated in status. Guillaume Gouffier, seigneur de Bonnivet, one of Francis’s childhood companions at Amboise, was appointed Admiral of France, though at this time the office did not imply service at sea.

On 25 January, Francis was crowned in Reims cathedral. Though no longer regarded as essential to the exercise of kingship, the coronation or sacre remained an important symbol of the monarchy’s supernatural quality and close alliance with the church. From Reims, Francis went first to the shrine of Saint-Marcoul at the priory of Corbeny, a pilgrimage closely connected with his thaumaturgical powers, then to the shrine of the Black Virgin at Notre-Dame de Liesse. At Saint-Denis, burial place of his royal predecessors, he confirmed the abbey’s privileges and underwent another, less elaborate, coronation. Finally, on 15 February, he made his joyful entry (entrée joyeuse) into Paris.

Marignano (13–14 September 1515)

By January 1515, France had lost all her Italian conquests. The house of Sforza held Milan in the person of Massimiliano Sforza, Genoa was an independent republic, and the kingdom of Naples belonged to Aragon. Francis I was expected to regain the ground lost by his immediate predecessors and to avenge the defeats recently suffered by French arms. Veterans of the Italian wars whose reputations had been dented and young noblemen anxious to show their valour looked to him for satisfaction. His youth and powerful physique seemed perfectly suited to the part they expected him to play. But before he could launch a new Italian campaign, Francis needed to neutralize his more powerful neighbours. Charles of Habsburg, a shy and unprepossessing youth of fifteen, was the son of Archduke Philip the Fair and the grandson of the Emperor Maximilian and Ferdinand of Aragon. On his father’s death in 1506 he had inherited the territories of the house of Burgundy (Franche-Comté, Luxemburg, Brabant, Flanders, Holland, Zeeland, Hainault and Artois) as well as a claim to the duchy of Burgundy, which France had annexed in 1477. A Burgundian by birth and upbringing, Charles longed to rebuild his mutilated inheritance, hoping eventually to be buried in Dijon cathedral. He was encouraged by his aunt Margaret of Savoy, who ruled the Low Countries in his name. Shortly after Francis’s coronation, ambassadors from Charles came to Compiègne with their master’s homage for Flanders and other fiefs. An alliance soon followed: under the Treaty of Paris (24 March 1515), Charles was promised the hand of Louis XII’s infant daughter Renée.

Henry VIII, king of England, a robust young man of twenty-four, was anxious not to be outshone by the new king of France, yet did not wish to pick a quarrel with him at this stage. Having recently tasted victory on the Continent, he was content to enjoy himself at home and leave policy-making to his chief minister, Thomas Wolsey. On 5 April the Anglo-French Treaty of London was given a new lease of life, Francis promising to honour his predecessor’s debt to England of one million gold écus over ten years.

In Italy, Francis’s diplomacy was less successful. The Venetians agreed to help him militarily in return for assistance against the emperor, and the Genoese reverted to their allegiance to France in exchange for local concessions, but other powers proved less co-operative. The Swiss, in particular, had not forgotten Louis XII’s refusal to ratify the Treaty of Dijon; nor were they prepared to surrender territories in Lombardy which Sforza had ceded to them or the pension they received from him in return for their armed protection. Sforza was also supported by Ferdinand of Aragon and Pope Leo X. Ferdinand did not wish to see any change in the Italian situation which might endanger his hold on Naples, while Leo was anxious to avoid a repetition of the events of 1494 which had led to the overthrow of his Medici kinsmen in Florence. He was also keen to retain the towns of Parma and Piacenza which Sforza had ceded to him. As for the emperor, being at war with the Venetians, he was not prepared to treat with their ally the king of France.

The most urgent military task facing Francis I in 1515 was to raise enough infantry. France had the largest standing army in Christendom, but it consisted almost entirely of cavalry. By the early sixteenth century wars could no longer be won by cavalry alone, as had been demonstrated by the victories of the Swiss infantry over the Burgundians in the late fifteenth century. But infantry of good fighting quality was not easily raised. The king could rely to some extent on native volunteers, called aventuriers, but the best infantry were foreign mercenaries. Until 1510, France had been able to hire the Swiss, but, as they were now employed by the enemy, he had to look elsewhere. In 1515 he raised 23,000 German landsknechts, who were less disciplined than the Swiss.

Mercenaries made heavy demands on the royal purse. The main source of royal revenue was the taille which fell on commoners, especially the peasantry. The king also asked his subjects for a contribution of 2,900,000 livres in celebration of his accession, but this took a long time to collect. Francis thus had to resort to various expedients: his gold plate was melted down, forced loans were exacted from the ‘good towns’, financial officials advanced loans to the crown, and parts of the royal domain were mortgaged. By such means the king managed to create a sizeable army, which in April began to assemble near Lyon and Grenoble. It consisted of about 6000 cavalry and 31,500 infantry, but its pride was the artillery, comprising some sixty large cannon and many lighter pieces.

On 26 June, Francis informed the ‘good towns’ of his imminent departure for Italy and of his mother’s regency in his absence. At the same time he obtained from his wife Claude formal cession of her rights to Milan. Next day the king left Amboise for Lyon, where a spectacular entry awaited him on 12 July. Francis spent nearly three weeks there putting the finishing touches to his invasion plan. On 15 July he appointed his mother as regent, but her powers were limited as the chancellor accompanied the king to Italy, taking the Great seal with him. The enemy, meanwhile, prepared to bar the king’s way. They assumed that he would cross the Alps by way of either the Mont Genèvre or Mont Cenis pass. On 17 July the duke of Milan, the pope, the king of Aragon and the emperor signed a league for the defence of Italy. As the Swiss had no cavalry, the pope sent 1500 horse under Prospero Colonna to Piedmont. Francis had either to fight his way past the Swiss or by-pass them. He decided to use the Col de Larche, a pass frequented only by peasants, and sent a force of sappers ahead of the army to bridge torrents and remove obstacles. On 11 August the vanguard under Bourbon crossed the mountains and, entering the plain of Piedmont, surprised and captured the papal commander Colonna and his men at Villafranca. The Swiss thus lost their cavalry support.

The king of France, in the meantime, set off with the rest of the army. He found the crossing of the Alps arduous. The descent into Italy was so precipitous that many horses and mules fell into ravines, while cannon had to be dismantled and lowered on ropes. On reaching the plain, Francis advanced rapidly eastward. The Swiss, meanwhile, fell back to Lake Maggiore and Francis agreed to negotiate with them through his uncle, René of Savoy. A treaty was drafted, but a new round of talks began at Gallarate. The king, meanwhile, drew closer to Milan, hoping to effect a junction with the Venetian army under d’Alviano. On 9 September, Francis received the text of a treaty signed at Gallarate. The Swiss agreed to give up their Milanese territories, except Bellinzona, in return for a subsidy of one million gold écus of which 150,000 were to be paid in cash immediately. Sforza was to surrender Milan in exchange for the duchy of Nemours. Francis was to be allowed to raise troops in Switzerland in return for a subsidy to each canton. He immediately obtained the sum of 150,000 écus from his entourage and sent it to Gallarate. Meanwhile, he encamped at Marignano (now Melegnano), a village situated between Milan and Pavia.

However, not all the Swiss wanted peace. While the men of Berne, Fribourg and Solothurn were keen to go home, those from other cantons refused to give up the fruits of their recent victories without a fight. They were encouraged by Cardinal Schiner, a bitter enemy of France, who made a stirring speech in Milan on 13 September. A minor skirmish with French scouts outside the city precipitated an armed decision. About midday the Swiss, most of them barefoot, hatless and without armour, swarmed out of the city. Their artillery consisted of only eight small guns; Schiner and about 200 papal horse followed in the rear. Hoping to catch the French by surprise, the Swiss marched briskly and in silence, but inevitably they threw up a cloud of dust.

A party of French sappers, spotting the cloud, alerted the French camp, which was soon ready for action. As usual, the Swiss advanced in an echelon of three compact squares of 7000 or 8000 pikemen each. The first crossed a ditch protecting the French guns and scattered the infantry, leaving the gunners isolated. The landsknechts then moved forward, and two gigantic squares of pikemen collided. Once again the Swiss broke through. A counterattack by the French cavalry was thrown back. The fighting continued until midnight, when the moon vanished, plunging the field into complete obscurity. The two armies then separated, the French responding to shrill trumpet calls and the Swiss to the deep bellowing of their war-horns. Francis used the interval to redeploy his army. Duprat, meanwhile, wrote to Lautrec, instructing him not to hand over the money to the Swiss at Gallarate. When battle was resumed at dawn, the Swiss adapted their tactics to the new French formation. Instead of advancing in echelon, they engaged the entire French line. Braving the fire of the French guns, they forced back the landsknechts in the centre, but were themselves driven back by Francis and the gendarmerie. On the left, however, the Swiss overwhelmed the French guns, scattered the infantry and lunged into the landsknechts. The French left was about to collapse when the Venetian cavalry arrived, shouting: ‘San Marco! San Marco!’ Their spirits revived, the French mounted a counterattack. By 11 AM the Swiss had been routed.

Marshal Trivulzio, a veteran of seventeen battles, described Marignano as a ‘battle of giants’ beside which the others were but ‘children’s games’. The gravediggers reported burying 16,500 corpses, but the exact number of French and Swiss losses is not known. Many French noblemen lost their lives; their bodies were embalmed and sent back to their estates for burial. Reviewing the battle, Francis singled out for praise Galiot de Genouillac, whose guns had slowed down the Swiss attack, and Pierre du Terrail, seigneur de Bayard. The king allegedly crowned his victory by having himself knighted by Bayard on the battlefield as a tribute to his bravery.

The immediate result of Marignano was the capitulation of Milan on 16 September. Sforza gave up its castle on 6 October and retired to France, where he died in May 1530. Francis entered Milan in triumph on 11 October and stayed there till the end of the month, when he entrusted the city to Bourbon and Duprat. The latter was appointed chancellor of Milan in addition to his existing office, and the Senate originally set up by Louis XII was revived. The citizens were asked to pay a huge fine as a punishment for their rebellion and to surrender hostages.

No sixteenth-century ruler could afford to alienate the Swiss. As Charles V once said, the ‘secret of secrets’ was to win them over. In October, therefore, Francis sent an embassy to thank the cantons that had pulled out of the war and to seek a settlement with the others. On 7 November the Treaty of Geneva was signed with ten cantons, but only eight ratified it; the rest offered their services to the emperor.

No one was more upset by Francis’s victory than Pope Leo X, who had backed the wrong horse; but he had nothing to fear as Francis needed his friendship. Recent history had shown that a king of France could not establish a lasting foothold in Italy without papal co-operation. Despite his victory, Francis’s position in Italy remained precarious. He was faced by the possibility of a coalition between the hostile Swiss cantons, the emperor and England. This threat made it all the more urgent for Francis to gain the pope’s friendship, or at least his neutrality. Thus a treaty was soon arranged: in exchange for Parma and Piacenza, the king gave the duchy of Nemours to Leo’s brother Giuliano, along with a fat pension, and another pension to the pope’s nephew Lorenzo. This, however, was only the first step. The two rulers needed to discuss other matters, notably the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (1438) whose abrogation the papacy had long demanded. They arranged to meet in Bologna.

Francis reached Bologna on 11 December, three days after the pope. Both resided at the Palazzo Pubblico. Though shrouded in secrecy, their talks were, it seems, much concerned with Italian affairs. Leo may have hinted at the possibility of Francis being given Naples on the death of Ferdinand of Aragon in return for a promise of French aid to the Medici in Florence. Agreement was also reached on the need for a crusade, Francis being allowed to levy a clerical tenth, but the most important decision taken at Bologna was to substitute a Concordat for the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges.