Kitabı oku: «The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France», sayfa 12

War with the emperor (1521)

Charles of Habsburg was crowned King of the Romans at Aachen on 23 October 1520. Two days later Pope Leo X allowed him to use the title of ‘Roman emperor elect’. Charles hoped to go to Italy soon for his imperial coronation, but various matters detained him in Germany, among them the Lutheran Reformation. Francis hoped to return to Italy himself, but was prevented by a serious accident. However, he added to Charles’s problems in order to keep him out of Italy. Among visitors to the king’s bedside were Robert de La Marck, seigneur de Sedan, and Henri d’Albret, king of Navarre. Soon afterwards they invaded Luxemburg and Navarre respectively. Francis disclaimed any responsibility for their actions, but Charles was not deceived. He accused the king of waging war covertly and warned him of the risks involved. Soon afterwards an imperial army led by the count of Nassau threw La Marck out of Luxemburg, overran Sedan and threatened France’s northern border. In the south, Marshal Lescun’s army was routed at Ezquiros, and Spanish Navarre, which he had invaded, reverted to Castilian rule.

In Italy, too, Francis ran into serious trouble. On 29 May, Leo X came to terms with Charles V. The latter promised to restore Parma and Piacenza to the Holy See, to assist the pope against the duke of Ferrara and to take the Medici under his protection, while Leo promised to crown Charles emperor in Rome and signified his willingness to invest him with Naples. The treaty, however, was kept secret until Leo was given a pretext to break his alliance with France. In June, Lescun, who had been left in charge of Milan, invaded the States of the Church in pursuit of some rebels. His action gave the pope the pretext he had been waiting for. When an ammunition dump in Milan exploded, killing many French soldiers, Leo acclaimed the event as an act of God and made public his treaty with Charles. Soon afterwards they formed a league for the defence of Italy. Denouncing the pope’s ingratitude on 13 July, Francis banned the export of all ecclesiastical revenues to Rome and imposed heavy fines on Florentine merchants in France. He boasted that before long he would enter Rome and impose laws on the pope.

By the summer of 1521, Francis had cause to rethink his policies. The emperor was threatening his northern border, Navarre was again under Castilian rule, the pope had turned imperialist and the French hold on Milan was precarious. On 9 June the king accepted an offer of mediation from Henry VIII, and in July an international conference met at Calais under Wolsey’s chairmanship. Francis wanted peace, not a truce, but Mercurino di Gattinara, the imperial chancellor, wanted neither. He was anxious to prove that Francis had been the aggressor as the first step towards forming an Anglo-imperial alliance.

On 20 August the emperor invaded northern France. For three weeks Mézières was heavily bombarded, but the garrison, commanded by Bayard, put up a stout resistance. This gave Francis time to gather an army near Reims. He still hoped for peace, but the Calais conference was getting nowhere. Wolsey, who had paid a mysterious visit to the emperor in Bruges, seemed to be playing for time. In late September the title of war suddenly turned in France’s favour. On 26 September, Nassau lifted the siege of Mézières and retreated into Hainault; in Italy, Lautrec relieved Parma; and on 19 October, Bonnivet captured Fuenterrabía on the Franco-Spanish border. These French victories naturally affected the talks in Calais. When Wolsey suggested a truce, Francis was no longer interested. He planned to relieve Tournai which was being besieged by the imperialists, but on 23 October he missed a unique opportunity of defeating the enemy, and on 1 November he began retreating towards Arras. Nine days later he disbanded his army; soon afterwards Tournai capitulated. Francis was hoping for better news from Italy, but on 19 November the league’s army captured Milan. The French were then driven out of other towns in the duchy. The Calais conference, meanwhile, came to an end. On 24 November, in the Treaty of Bruges, Wolsey committed England to enter the war on the emperor’s side in 1522.

The financial crisis of 1521–3

It was only in 1521, after Francis had gone to war with the emperor, that the gap between his income and expenses became almost unbridgeable. For war had become very expensive, especially the hire of Swiss mercenaries. ‘These people’, wrote Anne de Montmorency, ‘ask for so much money and are so unreasonable that it is almost impossible to satisfy them.’ Yet Francis could not dispense with them. Within a few months his indebtedness to moneylenders rose alarmingly. By the spring of 1522 he owed them one million livres. At the beginning of 1521, Semblançay had in his keeping 300,000 écus which the king had received from Charles V as part of the Neapolitan pension and 107,000 livres belonging to Louise of Savoy. When she implored Semblançay to do everything in his power to assist her son, he assumed that she meant him to use her savings as well as the king’s. But this money was very soon swallowed up. On 13 September, Semblançay informed the king that he had only enough money left for one month. As the war dragged on through the winter, Francis created offices, and in February 1522 alienated crown lands worth 200,000 livres. The taille of 1523 was anticipated to the tune of 1,191,1841. The king called on a number of towns to pay for infantry. He also seized church treasures worth 240,000l. The silver grille enclosing the shrine of St Martin at Tours was torn down by royal agents, melted down and turned into coin. At Laon cathedral four statues of apostles in gold were given the same treatment.

On 22 September the government raised a loan of 200,000l. from the Parisian public against the security of the municipal revenues. This marked the beginning of the system of public credit, known as the Rentes sur l’Hôtel de Ville. Each contributor to the loan was assured of a life annuity or rente, carrying a rate of interest of 8¹/₃ per cent which was paid out of the receipts from various local taxes. As the interest was paid by municipal officials of the same social background as the lenders, the system rested on a fair measure of mutual trust, yet Parisians showed little enthusiasm for the scheme.

The battle of La Bicocca (27 April 1522)

The sudden death of Leo X on 1 December 1521 changed the situation in Italy. As the flow of money from papal coffers to Colonna’s army dried up, the French under Marshal Lautrec reorganized themselves. Much, however, hung on the result of the next papal conclave. Francis threatened to sever his allegiance to the Holy See if Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, leader of the imperial faction in the Sacred College, were elected. In the event, the cardinals chose Adrian of Utrecht, Charles V’s old tutor and regent in Spain. Francis was understandably furious, but Adrian, who took the name of Hadrian VI, approached his new duties in a truly Christian spirit. Denying that he owed his election to Charles, he refused to be drawn into the anti-French league. His main objective was to pacify Christendom as the first step towards arranging a crusade against the Turks, who now threatened Rhodes, the last Christian outpost in the eastern Mediterranean. Francis, however, was more interested in regaining Milan.

In March 1522, Lautrec, whose army had been reinforced by 16,000 Swiss, laid siege to Milan, but, finding the city too strong, he turned his attention to Pavia. Francesco Sforza was thus able to put more troops into Milan, much to the chagrin of Francis who accused his captains in Italy of incompetence. He declared his intention of returning there himself, but was overtaken by events. Emerging from Milan, Colonna threatened Lautrec’s rear, whereupon the marshal lifted the siege of Pavia and marched to Monza. Colonna followed at a safe distance and encamped in the grounds of a villa north-west of Milan, called La Bicocca. He fortified his camp with ditches, ramparts and gun platforms. Lautrec saw the madness of attacking it, but his Swiss troops, who had grown tired of marching and counter-marching to no purpose, threatened to leave unless he engaged the enemy at once. He begged them to think again, but eventually conceded their demand. On 27 April they attacked the imperial camp only to be decimated. Some 3000 were killed, leaving the rest to return to Switzerland utterly humiliated. Lautrec, after a vain attempt to hang on to Lodi, returned angrily to France. His brother Lescun surrendered Cremona soon afterwards. On 30 May, Genoa capitulated. Only the castles of Milan and Cremona remained in French hands. The French débâcle in Italy was soon followed by England’s entry into the war. On 29 May an English herald appeared before Francis in Lyon and declared war in Henry’s name. Hostilities began in July when the earl of Surrey raided Morlaix. In September he led an army out of Calais and tried unsuccessfully to provoke the French into giving battle. Within a month, however, his supplies ran out, forcing him to withdraw to Calais.

While the princes of Christendom were fighting each other, Rhodes fell to the Turks. Hadrian VI urged the princes to sink their differences and join a crusade; but Francis insisted on Milan being restored to him first. The pope, he said, had no canonical right to impose a truce under threat of spiritual sanctions. He reminded Hadrian of the fate that had befallen Pope Boniface VIII in the fourteenth century when he had opposed the French king Philip the Fair. In June he banned the export of money from France to Rome and dismissed the papal nuncio from his court. These measures only served to drive Hadrian into the imperial camp. On 3 August he joined a league for the defence of Italy.

The enquiry commissions of 1523–4 and fiscal reform

By 1523 there was not enough money in the king’s coffers to pay for the war. Francis had to look for new sources of income. He suspected that he was being cheated by his own fiscal officials, and set up a commission to audit their accounts and to punish any malpractices. Not even Semblançay, who had done so much to assist the king out of his difficulties, was spared, yet his only fault had been not to distinguish between the king’s purse and his mother’s. At the end, the commissioners found that he owed Louise 707,267 livres, but that he was owed 1,190,374 livres by the king.

Francis and his ministers also began reforming the fiscal administration. The revenues most susceptible to corruption were the irregular ones, which were collected and handled in an ad hoc way by many officials. A measure of centralization was needed to ensure that they were properly collected, used and accounted for. The first step taken in this direction was the creation on 18 March of the Trésorier de l’Epargne with powers to collect and disburse all royal revenues save those from the demesne and from regular taxation. Alone among the fiscal officials, he was exempt from supervision by the trésoriers de France and généraux des finances. He took his oath of office to the king alone. The first man appointed to the post was Philibert Babou. In December his powers were considerably enlarged. He was now to receive all royal revenues after deduction of customary local expenses and authorized to make disbursements sanctioned only by royal warrants. This, however, was too heavy a burden. In June 1524, Babou was made responsible only for revenues from the demesne and taxation, while another official, called Receveur des parties casuelles, was put in charge of the rest.

In July 1524 an edict claimed that the new fiscal system had proved a success. The king had apparently been spared the need to cut back wages and pensions and had cleared many debts. Although part of his revenues continued to be spent locally, the fact that all payments now had to be authorized by a single official instead of a dozen meant that the king had a tighter control of expenditure. He was also better able to know how much cash he disposed of for emergencies. Another effect of the reforms was the destruction of the influence of the trésoriers de France and généraux des finances. Their offices survived, but their powers were drastically reduced: they continued to carry out inspections in their respective districts, but policy-making was left firmly in the hands of the king and his council.

The treason of Bourbon (1523)

Francis now prepared to lead a new invasion of Italy. On 23 July he went to Saint-Denis and, as was the custom, placed the relics of the patron saint on the high altar, where they were to remain for the duration of the military campaign. On 12 August, at Gien, he appointed his mother as regent for the second time. Four days later, however, he received a letter from Louis de Brézé, sénéchal of Normandy, warning him of a treason plot by the Constable of Bourbon.

Charles duc de Bourbon was Francis I’s most powerful vassal. He owned three duchies, seven counties, two vicomtés and seven seigneuries. All these territories, save three, formed a compact bloc in central France. In addition to his French fiefs, Bourbon also had three lordships within the Holy Roman Empire, making him the vassal of both the emperor and the king of France. Within his domain he was virtually all-powerful: he raised troops, levied taxes, dispensed justice and summoned the estates. His chateau at Moulins was one of the finest in France. As constable, Bourbon had charge of the king’s army in peacetime: he enforced discipline, supervised supplies, appointed commissioners of musters, authorized military expenditure and allocated troops to garrison towns. In wartime he commanded the army in the king’s absence or the vanguard in his presence. On ceremonial occasions he carried the king’s naked sword. Bourbon was also Grand chambrier, responsible for the smooth running of the king’s chamber, and governor of Languedoc, where he represented the king though he delegated his functions to a lieutenant. The duke was related to Francis by marriage, for his wife Suzanne was Louise of Savoy’s first cousin.

Relations between Francis and Charles de Bourbon were good, if not intimate, during the first five years of the reign. No special significance need be attached to the fact that Bourbon was recalled from Milan in 1516 and replaced as lieutenant-general by Marshal Lautrec. He continued to appear at court fairly often. In 1521, however, he was not chosen to lead the vanguard during the campaign in northern France, his rightful place being taken by the king’s brother-in-law, Alençon. This was a snub, which it is tempting to link to the death of Bourbon’s wife in April of that year. She had made a will in her husband’s favour, which was challenged by the king and his mother.

Charles de Bourbon belonged to the younger branch of the house founded in the fourteenth century by Robert de Clermont, sixth son of King Louis IX. In 1443 its lands were divided between the two sons of duc Jean I and it looked for a time as if the two branches would go their separate ways; but in 1488 the lands of the elder branch passed into the hands of Pierre de Beaujeu, who, having no son, bequeathed them to his daughter Suzanne. When she married Charles the lands of both branches were reunited. Even so, her inheritance comprised lands of three kinds: first, lands which had originally been detached from the royal demesne as apanages and which, in theory, were to revert to it on the extinction of the family for which they had been created; secondly, lands due to escheat to the crown in the event of a failure of the direct or male line; and thirdly, lands that could be passed on to heirs male or female, direct or collateral.

In April 1522, Louise of Savoy claimed Suzanne’s inheritance as her first cousin and nearest blood relative. At the same time Francis claimed the return to the crown of all her fiefs that were only transmissible to male heirs. The two claims were contradictory, but Francis and his mother were obviously working towards the same end: the dismantling of the Bourbon demesne. As the duke was a peer of the realm, it was up to the parlement to decide the rights and wrongs of the various claims, but on 7 October, before it could pass judgement, Louise paid homage to the king for most of the disputed lands. By accepting her oath, he implicitly recognized her claim, and soon afterwards he gave her lands and revenues pertaining to the inheritance of Suzanne’s mother, Anne de France, who had died in November. On 6 August 1523 the parlement ordered the sequestration of Bourbon’s lands.

The death of Suzanne had also created another problem. As her only son had died, Charles needed to remarry in order to perpetuate his line. At thirty-one he was a most eligible widower. Even in Suzanne’s lifetime he had been offered the hand of one of the emperor’s sisters, an offer that was now renewed. Such a marriage would seriously threaten the territorial integrity of France. At the same time, it seems, Bourbon found himself under pressure to marry a French princess of royal blood. Louise herself may have been a suitor. Be that as it may, the duke grew increasingly restless. Early in 1523, during a visit to Paris, he allegedly quarrelled with the king, who had accused him of planning a secret marriage. In fact, Bourbon had been dabbling in treason for some time.

In August 1522 the imperial chamberlain, Beaurain, was informed that Bourbon was prepared to lead a rebellion and eight months later was empowered to negotiate with him on behalf of Charles V and Henry VIII. He met the constable secretly at Montbrison on 11 July and signed a treaty. Bourbon was promised the hand of one of Charles’s sisters and a dowry of 100,000 écus. The emperor was to invade Languedoc from Spain and place 10,000 landsknechts at Bourbon’s disposal. Henry was to invade Normandy and subsidize the constable to the tune of 100,000 écus. Bourbon’s plan was to wait for Francis to invade Italy, then to rise in his rear, using the emperor’s landsknechts. But news of the plot soon leaked out. Two noblemen informed their confessor, the bishop of Lisieux, who passed the information to Louis de Brézé. On 10 August he wrote the letter which Francis received as he was travelling south to join his army.

The king’s reaction to the disclosure of Bourbon’s plot was remarkably cool. He went to Moulins with an armed escort and, finding the duke ill in bed, told him of the warning he had received. Pretending not to believe it, he made various promises to Bourbon on condition that he accompanied him to Italy. The constable agreed, but asked for time to recover from his illness. This was granted and the king continued his journey to Lyon. A few days later Bourbon left Moulins, only to turn back almost at once. On 6 September he met Henry VIII’s envoy, Sir John Russell, at Gayette and formalized his relations with England. By now Francis was convinced of the duke’s treason. On 5 September three of Bourbon’s accomplices – Jean de Poitiers, seigneur de Saint-Vallier, Antoine de Chabannes, bishop of Le Puy, and Aymar de Prie – were arrested. Two days later Bourbon, who had retired to the fortress of Chantelle, severed his allegiance. Next day he fled with a few companions and, after wandering through the mountains of Auvergne, crossed the Rhône into imperial territory.

The plot had failed, but Francis was unsure of its extent. He decided to remain in France to face developments and handed over his command in Italy to Bonnivet. The wisdom of his change of plan was soon demonstrated when a large English army under the duke of Suffolk invaded Picardy on 19 September. Suffolk’s initial objective was Boulogne, but he was persuaded to march on Paris instead. By late October he was only fifty miles from the capital. Francis dispatched Philippe Chabot to reassure the panic-stricken population, but the English withdrew of their own accord. By mid-December they were back in Calais. Bourbon, meanwhile, prepared to invade Franche-Comté, but he failed to receive the landsknechts he had been promised by Charles V. So he retired to Italy, hoping eventually to join the emperor in Spain.

In the meantime, a special commission was set up by Francis to try Bourbon’s accomplices. The four judges were ordered to use torture if necessary to gain information and to mete out exemplary punishments to all the plotters save the constable, whose fate was reserved to the king’s judgement. The commissioners thought the parlement was the appropriate tribunal, and Francis eventually deferred to their wishes. In December, Bourbon’s accomplices were moved from their prison at Loches to Paris for trial. Saint-Vallier was sentenced to death on 16 January, but was reprieved just as he was about to be beheaded and remained a prisoner at Loches until his release in 1526. Legend has it that his daughter, Diane de Poitiers, had given her favours to the king in return for her father’s life. Other plotters were treated even more leniently, presumably because they incriminated friends who had fled abroad.

Francis needed to regain the confidence of Parisians, who felt that he had left them defenceless while pursuing his Italian adventures. On 6 March, at the Hôtel de Ville, he presented himself as the innocent victim of Bourbon’s treachery. Many Parisians, it seems, sympathized with the constable, whose trial in absentia opened in the parlement on 8 March. Pierre Lizet, the avocat du roi, demanded that he be sentenced to death and all his property confiscated, but the parlement merely ordered his arrest and imprisonment along with the seizure of his property. At a lit de justice on 9 March, Francis expressed dismay that the property of Bourbon’s accomplices had not been seized. Their crime, he said, ought not to be treated merely as a civil case. On 16 May he ordered a retrial and appointed nineteen new judges to sit alongside the original ones. Yet Bourbon’s accomplices were not sentenced till July. While De Prie, Popillon and d’Escars were lightly punished, savage, albeit unenforceable, sentences were passed on the constable’s men who had fled abroad. The only sentence left outstanding was Bourbon’s own which had to await the king’s pleasure.

Meanwhile, Bonnivet made some headway in northern Italy: after crossing the Ticino on 14 September, he forced the imperialists under Colonna to fall back on Milan. But, failing to press home his advantage, he allowed Colonna time to prepare Milan’s defences. When Bonnivet resumed his advance, the city was too strong to be stormed; he tried to starve it out, but, as winter closed in, he withdrew to Abbiategrasso. In March 1524, Charles de Lannoy, viceroy of Naples, launched a powerful counteroffensive. After suffering terrible hardship during the winter, Bonnivet’s army lacked food and ammunition; so many horses had died that the men-at-arms were reduced to riding ponies. As Bonnivet retreated across the River Sesia, he was badly wounded by a sniper’s bullet and had to hand over his command to the comte de Saint-Pol. On 30 April, Bayard, the chevalier sans peur et sans reproche, was fatally wounded. On reaching the Alps, the French and the Swiss parted on the worst possible terms. Their defeat had been truly crushing.

In May 1524, Henry VIII and Charles V signed a new treaty. Each agreed to contribute 100,000 crowns towards an invasion of France led by Bourbon, who somewhat reluctantly agreed to put the crown of France on Henry’s head. On 1 July, acting as the emperor’s lieutenant-general, he invaded Provence from Italy. The French under Lapalice were too weak to offer resistance. Town after town fell to the invaders. Bourbon entered Aix on 9 August and declared himself count of Provence. Ten days later he laid siege to Marseille as Francis brought an army to Avignon. On 21 September the constable ordered his men to storm Marseille through a breach in its wall which his guns had opened up, but, seeing the obstacles that awaited them beyond, they refused. On the brink of despair, Bourbon thought of engaging Francis in battle, but was persuaded by his captains not to be so reckless. So, lifting the siege of Marseille, he retreated along the coast towards Italy, leaving the way clear for Francis to cross the Alps once more.

Success can smile on a monarch too soon. The victory Francis had won at Marignano in 1515 had given him an inflated view of his generalship. Believing that only the incompetence of his lieutenants had lost him Milan, he now imagined that he would only need to reappear in Italy at the head of his troops to win back all the lost ground. Events were to prove him wrong.