Kitabı oku: «The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France», sayfa 15

EIGHT Defeat, captivity and restoration(1525–7)

In September 1524 everything seemed set fair for the king of France. The threat of internal rebellion had been removed; Bourbon was beating a hasty retreat to Italy after failing to capture Marseille. Though advised to wait until the spring before invading Italy, Francis was keen to reach Lombardy before the imperial forces could regroup. On 17 October he appointed his mother as regent and soon afterwards led a powerful army across the Alps. The weather being exceptionally mild, he accomplished the crossing in record time. As he pressed forward into Lombardy, the imperialists retreated to Lodi, abandoning Milan. Francis now had the choice of either pursuing them to Lodi or besieging Pavia. He chose the latter, prompting the imperial captain, the marquis of Pescara, to exclaim: ‘We were defeated, soon we shall be victorious.’ For Pavia was a hard nut to crack, protected on three sides by a wall and on the south side by the River Ticino. The garrison, consisting of German and Spanish veterans, was commanded by Antonio de Leyva, one of the ablest captains of his day.

The battle of Pavia (24 February 1525)

The French began bombarding Pavia on 6 November. Within three days they had breached the wall, but an assault by them was repulsed with heavy losses. They then tried to divert the Ticino by building a dam, but it was washed away by torrential rains. The siege degenerated into a blockade punctuated by skirmishes and artillery duels. Francis then made a controversial move: he detached 6000 troops from his army and sent them under the duke of Albany to conquer Naples. The idea may have been to draw the viceroy of Naples away from Lombardy, but he chose to stay put. Had Albany moved faster, he might have taken advantage of popular unrest in Naples; but instead he allowed himself to get bogged down in Sienese politics. His expedition, however, did help to bring the new pope into the war on the French side. Clement VII had so far remained neutral in order not to jeopardize the rule of his Medici kinsmen in Florence, but on 25 January 1525 he allowed Albany free passage through the States of the Church.

The siege of Pavia was a grave tactical error. Though Francis was advised to retire to Milan for the winter, he refused on the ground that no king of France had ever besieged a town without capturing it. Believing that Pavia would soon capitulate, he sentenced his men to spend four months in appalling conditions outside the town. Their main camp on the east side of Pavia was strongly fortified. They also occupied the walled park of Mirabello to the north of the town. Within the park the terrain was open and rolling with clumps of trees and shrubs; it was also criss-crossed by numerous brooks and streams. On 22 January the imperialists marched out of Lodi as if they intended to attack Milan. Then, as the French failed to react, they veered south-west and pitched camp within a stone’s throw of the French. Only the Vernavola, a small tributary of the Ticino, kept the two armies apart.

On 23 February the imperial commanders, Charles de Lannoy, viceroy of Naples, and Bourbon, tried to break the deadlock. They moved out of their camp after nightfall, leaving only a token force behind, and marched north along the east wall of the park. Two hours later they halted near the north side, and sappers, using only picks and battering rams, opened up three gaps in the wall. At dawn the first troops entered the park. Despite a heavy mist they were spotted by the French, who opened fire with their guns. The rest of the imperial army, meanwhile, had entered the park. The sequel is not clear, but it seems that Francis and his cavalry had formed up within the park. As the imperialists advanced, the king led a cavalry charge and got in the way of his artillery which had to stop firing. His infantry was left far behind. After breaking through the enemy line, Francis and his men-at-arms came within range of Spanish arquebusiers who had been carefully concealed in copses around the northern edge of the park. The French nobles with their suits of armour, plumed helmets and distinctive horse trappings offered easy targets. As they were picked off by the arquebusiers they crashed to the ground like so many helpless lobsters. After the king’s horse had been killed, he continued to fight on foot, valiantly striking out with his sword (now on display at the Musée de l’Armée, Paris), but was gradually surrounded by enemy soldiers anxious to earn a king’s ransom. In their eagerness to snatch pieces of his armour as evidence for their claim, they might easily have killed him. At this juncture Lannoy appeared and Francis surrendered to him. Meanwhile, the battle raged in various parts of the field. As huge blocks of French and imperial infantry collided there was terrible carnage, and many Swiss troops were drowned as they tried to ford the Ticino. By noon on 24 February the battle was over. The imperialists had won the day and Francis was their prisoner.

Pavia was the greatest slaughter of French noblemen since Agincourt. Among the dead were many illustrious captains and also close friends of the king. They included Bonnivet, Giangaleazzo da San Severino, Marshal Lapalice, François de Lorraine and Richard de la Pole, the so-called ‘White Rose’. Marshal Lescun and the king’s uncle, the Bastard of Savoy, had been fatally wounded. Apart from the king, prisoners included Henri d’Albret, king of Navarre, Louis comte de Nevers, Anne de Montmorency, and the seigneurs of Florange, Chabot de Brion, Lorges, La Rochepot, Annebault and Langey. Among important French nobles only the king’s brother, Charles d’Alençon, escaped death and capture. He died on 15 April, soon after returning to France, some said of shame, others of sorrow. About 4000 French prisoners who were not worth a ransom were freed on parole.

After the battle, Francis was taken to the Certosa at Pavia and allowed to write to his mother. ‘All is lost’, he said, ‘save my honour and my life.’ He asked Louise to take care of his children and allow free passage to a messenger whom he was sending to the emperor in Spain. In his letter, Francis appealed to Charles’s magnanimity: by accepting a ransom, he said, Charles would turn his prisoner into a lifelong friend.

The emperor was in Madrid when he received news of his victory on 10 March. He instructed the viceroy of Naples to treat Francis well and to give Louise frequent news of him. The king was, in fact, well treated. He was imprisoned at first in the castle of Pizzighettone, near Cremona, where he remained for nearly three months in the custody of a Spanish captain called Fernando de Alarçon. He was allowed companions, visitors and physical exercise. Montmorency, who shared the king’s captivity, kept his sister Marguerite informed about his health. She urged Francis to stop fasting and sent him the Epistles of St Paul to read. On 18 May he was taken to Genoa, where a fleet of Spanish galleys waited to carry him off to Naples. The prospect terrified Francis, for Naples had the reputation among Frenchmen of being a graveyard. He begged Lannoy to take him instead to Spain, where he hoped to win over the emperor by exercising his charm. The viceroy agreed on condition that French galleys were placed at his disposal. This was duly arranged, and on 19 June Francis landed at Barcelona to a tumultuous welcome. He attended mass in the cathedral and hundreds of sick people came to be touched by him. The king was then taken by sea to Tarragona, where he was nearly killed by a stray bullet as he looked out of a castle window. At the end of June he was moved to Valencia, then to an agreeable Moorish villa at Benisanó.

In the meantime, Montmorency carried three requests from Francis to the emperor in Toledo. The first was for a safe-conduct for the king’s sister Marguerite d’Angoulême to come to Spain as a peace negotiator; the second was for Francis to be brought nearer to the peace table so that he might be more easily consulted; and the third was for a truce to last as long as the talks. All three requests were conceded. At the end of July, Francis was taken to Madrid. His journey, which lasted three weeks, was like a royal progress. At Guadalajara he was lavishly entertained by the duke of Infantado, a leading Spanish grandee; at Alcalá de Henares he visited the university recently founded by Cardinal Jimenez de Cisneros. In Madrid, where he arrived on 11 August, the king was given a room in the Alcázar, which stood on the site of the present royal palace.

The regency of Louise of Savoy

Francis’s captivity lasted just over a year, until 17 March 1526. In his absence France was governed by his mother from the abbey of Saint-Just, near Lyon, assisted by Duprat and by Robertet. Their first task was to provide for the kingdom’s defence. Pavia had not ended the war. France continued to be threatened with invasion for several months, mainly from England. ‘Now is the time’, Henry VIII wrote, ‘for the emperor and myself to devise means of getting full satisfaction from France. Not an hour is to be lost.’ He sent an embassy to Spain with proposals for the dismemberment of France. Henry hoped to be crowned in Paris and to recover all that was his ‘by just title of inheritance’. At the very least, he expected to acquire Normandy or Picardy and Boulogne.

Henry assessed the situation correctly: France had been largely denuded of troops, armaments and supplies in the interest of Francis’s Italian campaign. Such troops as remained in the north were unpaid and lived off the countryside, striking terror in villages and even in the suburbs of Paris. In the south the situation was less critical, as remnants of the royal army drifted back across the Alps. In April, Albany’s troops returned home by sea almost intact. But the regent could only pay some of them; the rest she sent north to swell the marauding bands. A joint invasion by Henry VIII and Charles V would almost certainly have brought the kingdom to its knees; but Henry failed to get the co-operation of Charles, who had to cope with many urgent problems in various corners of Europe. His troops in Italy were unpaid and mutinous, if they had not already deserted. In Germany the Peasants’ War was threatening the very fabric of society, while further east the Turkish threat loomed large. The Sultan Suleiman, having conquered Rhodes in 1522, was preparing to attack Hungary whose king, Louis II, was Charles V’s brother-in-law.

In providing for the defence of France, Louise of Savoy concentrated her efforts on Burgundy. She posted lookouts along the River Saône and sent the comte de Guise to inspect the province’s fortifications. However, in June 1525 her cousin Margaret of Savoy, governor of the Netherlands, renewed the truce neutralizing the frontier dividing the two Burgundies. In the north, Louise relied on help from the parlement. It purchased and sent grain to towns in Picardy and persuaded the Parisian authorities to send arms and ammunition.

Perhaps the most important task facing the regent was to maintain the king’s authority. Some people believed that the regency should be exercised by the king’s nearest adult male kinsman and an attempt was apparently made to put the duc de Vendôme in Louise’s place, but he refused to act in a way likely to divide the kingdom. In March 1525 the parlement assured Louise of its support, but it was keen to reverse the trend towards a more absolute, less consultative, monarchy.

On 23 March the parlement set up a commission to draw up remonstrances for presentation to the regent. Normally, remonstrances were concerned with a particular piece of legislation, but the commissioners chose to examine a wide range of royal policies. They saw the hand of God in the misfortunes that had befallen the kingdom. Penitence and prayer were needed to put matters right, but also measures to root out heresy. Here the parlement was tilting at Marguerite d’Angoulême’s protection of the Cercle de Meaux and at royal interference with the Berquin trial. The parlement also called for the annulment of the Concordat with the Holy See and for a return to the Pragmatic Sanction. It objected to the government’s use of évocations whereby lawsuits were referred to the Grand conseil, which was under the king’s immediate influence. Another area of concern was the fiscal administration. The parlement believed that fiscal officials were thieves and that public money was being wasted. It deplored alienations of the royal demesne regardless of the ‘fundamental law’ that forbade the practice.

When the regent received the remonstrances on 10 April she described them as ‘to the honour of God, exaltation of the faith, and very useful and necessary to the good of the king and commonwealth’. She explained that the Concordat could be revoked only by the king, but promised to satisfy the parlement’s other demands. However, Louise never again spoke about the remonstrances, and only in respect of heresy did she go some way towards meeting the parlement’s wishes. Recent disturbances at Meaux had alarmed the parlement. Bishop Briçonnet was ordered to set up a tribunal comprising two parlementaires and two theologians to try heresy cases. Its competence, which was at first limited to his diocese, was soon extended to include all dioceses within the parlement’s ressort or area of jurisdiction, in effect removing heresy cases from the episcopal courts which had traditionally judged them. The parlement also wanted the new court to try bishops suspected of heresy, but this required papal consent. On 29 April, Louise asked Clement VII for the necessary rescript, which he duly conceded. As the new judges thus exercised papal jurisdiction, they became known as the juges délégués (delegated judges). An appeals procedure was set up from them to the parlement, which consequently achieved overall control of heresy cases.

The parlement took advantage of the king’s absence to launch an attack on religious dissenters. In February 1526 heresy was defined so broadly as to take in even the smallest deviation from religious orthodoxy. The censorship of books was tightened up, printers and booksellers being forbidden to publish or stock religious works in French. The parlement was particularly anxious to seize copies of Lefèvre d’Etaples’ Epitres et évangiles des cinquante et deux dimanches which had been published anonymously. However, books were not the only victims of the persecution. The juges délégués were asked to prosecute Lefèvre, Caroli, Mazurier and Roussel. This attack on the Cercle de Meaux prompted Francis’s only known intervention in the domestic affairs of his kingdom during his captivity. In November 1525 he ordered the parlement to suspend proceedings against Lefèvre, Caroli and Roussel, holding them to be innocent victims of persecution by the ‘Sorbonne’. But the parlement stuck to its guns: on 29 November the juges délégués were instructed by the court to press on with their activities regardless. Lefèvre and Caroli fled to Strassburg, while Mazurier recanted. As for Briçonnet, he decided to fall into line with orthodoxy. Another victim was Berquin, who was rearrested in January 1526, found guilty of heresy and sent to the parlement to be sentenced, but the court desisted when it learned that Francis was about to come home.

A serious bone of contention between the regent and the parlement was the Concordat. On 24 February 1525, Etienne Poncher, archbishop of Sens and abbot of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, died. In response to a request from Chancellor Duprat, who had recently taken holy orders, Louise appointed him to both benefices. However, both Sens and Saint-Benoît were exempt from the Concordat’s provisions and the chapters proceeded to elect their superiors: Jean de Salazar at Sens and François Poncher (Etienne’s nephew) at Saint-Benoît. Duprat promptly appealed to the papacy which quashed the elections; the chapters appealed to the parlement. A protracted legal struggle ensued which was inflamed when Duprat sent an armed force to occupy Saint-Benoît, and the parlement tried to dislodge it. The regent evoked both lawsuits to the Grand conseil which consequently found itself in dispute with the parlement. On 24 June the two courts were ordered to hand over the lawsuits to a special commission appointed by Louise. At the same time she sent troops to Paris, presumably to force the parlement’s compliance.

The quarrel was given a dangerous new twist in July, when the parlement mounted an attack on Duprat, whom it had never forgiven for his part in securing the Concordat. He was summoned to Paris to answer certain charges, but the regent would not let him go. She asked for an explanation of the parlement’s conduct and kept its representatives waiting several weeks before granting them an audience. Her procrastination paid off. The parlement dropped its attack on the chancellor and agreed not to judge the affairs of Sens and Saint-Benoît if the Grand conseil would do likewise. This satisfied Louise, who allowed matters to rest there until her son’s return.

The Treaty of Madrid (January 1526)

Foreign policy was the most successful aspect of Louise of Savoy’s regency. While negotiating with Charles V for her son’s freedom, she worked to break up the Anglo-imperial alliance and stirred up trouble for the emperor in Italy and elsewhere. His terms for the release of Francis were anything but generous. The king was to give up Burgundy and all other territories owned by Charles the Bold in 1477; also Thérouanne and Hesdin. Bourbon’s property was to be restored; an independent kingdom, including Provence, was to be created for him; and his accomplices were to be pardoned. Henry VIII’s French claims were to be satisfied and Francis was to settle an indemnity owed by the emperor to Henry. The prince of Orange, whom the French had taken prisoner, was to be released and his principality restored. Peace was to be sealed by a marriage between Charles’s niece Mary and the Dauphin. Finally, the king’s release was to be conditional on the peace treaty being ratified by the French estates and parlements.

When these terms were laid before Francis in April 1525, he refused to discuss them, and referred the imperial envoy Beaurain to Louise. She appointed François de Tournon, archbishop of Embrun, as ambassador. His instructions stated that no part of France was to be ceded to the emperor. Tournon was soon joined in Spain by Jean de Selve. Both men saw Charles V in Toledo on 17 July, when he refused ever to accept a ransom for Francis. Burgundy was the main stumbling-block in the negotiations. On 16 August, Francis made a secret declaration to the effect that he would never cede the duchy of his own free will, and that if he were compelled to do so his action would be null and void.

Louise, meanwhile, set about destroying the Anglo-imperial alliance. The English government, fearing a separate peace between Francis and Charles, resumed secret negotiations with the regent which Pavia had interrupted. On 30 August the Treaty of the More was signed, restoring peace between England and France and drawing them together in a defensive alliance. Henry VIII undertook to use his influence with Charles to obtain Francis’s release. Francis, for his part, promised to pay Henry two million écus in annual instalments of 100,000 écus. Maritime disputes between the two countries were to be settled. The Scots were to stop armed raids across the border and Albany was banned from Scotland during James V’s minority. France agreed to indemnify Louis XII’s widow Mary, now duchess of Suffolk, for losses she had incurred during the war. Because Francis was not free to ratify the treaty, the English demanded special guarantees in the form of registration by four parlements and two provincial estates as well as financial pledges from nine major towns, including Paris, and eight noblemen. Louise asked the parties concerned to signify their acceptance of these terms, but they viewed them as a serious breach of their privileges. The Parlement of Paris waited till 28 October before ratifying the treaty and the estates of Normandy never did so. The eight noblemen complied with the regent’s request, but the towns, especially Paris, proved troublesome. Fortunately for Louise, she was able to persuade the English government to postpone the deadline for the surrender of the pledges.

In June 1525, Louise offered the pope and Venice an alliance aimed at driving the imperialists out of Italy and forcing Charles to release her son. It was not concluded, however, because Louise was only willing to give financial help to her allies: she was afraid of alienating the emperor permanently by offering them military aid. Her diplomacy also encompassed the eastern Mediterranean. John Frangipani was dispatched to the sultan with an appeal for aid from Francis and his mother. Suleiman promised in reply to lead an expedition against the emperor.

On 11 September, Francis fell gravely ill and the emperor, who so far had avoided seeing him, hastened to his bedside. The two rivals embraced and exchanged friendly greetings. Next day Marguerite arrived, after travelling post-haste from France. On 22 September, Francis lapsed into a semi-coma, but a ‘miracle’ suddenly occurred: an abscess inside the king’s head burst, his fever dropped and his spirits revived. His companions were soon able to inform the regent and the parlement that he was out of danger.

Marguerite now went to Toledo to negotiate her brother’s release; but the imperial council held out no hope of concessions. Francis declared that he would rather remain a prisoner for good than dismember his kingdom. In November he abdicated in favour of his seven-year-old son, the Dauphin François, but the deed of abdication was not sent to the parlement for registration. It was almost certainly nothing more than a ploy aimed at frightening Charles into making concessions. In November, after Marguerite had decided to go home, Louise instructed her envoys to make peace at any price. ‘What was the point of losing a kingdom’, she asked, ‘for the sake of a duchy?’ Francis apparently came round to this view: he accepted the emperor’s terms on condition that his release preceded the surrender of Burgundy; as he explained, he alone could persuade his subjects to give up the duchy. Going against Gattinara’s advice, Charles agreed to this condition in return for guarantees: Francis had to swear on the Gospels and give his word as a nobleman that he would hand over the Dauphin and his brother as hostages and would return to prison in the event of the treaty not being fulfilled. Charles needed peace, for he was in dire financial straits. He also knew that a new coalition, including England, Venice and the papacy, was being formed against him. The German situation remained bleak and, further east, the Turks were preparing the offensive which was to destroy the Hungarian monarchy on the field of Mohácz.

On 14 January 1526 the text of the Treaty of Madrid was brought to Francis. In it, he agreed to abandon Burgundy and Tournai, give up his rights in Italy, and rehabilitate Bourbon and his accomplices. He also deserted his allies, the king of Navarre, the duke of Guelders and Robert de La Marck. His two sons were to replace him as hostages in Spain. However, on the eve of signing the treaty, Francis formally protested before several French witnesses, including two notaries, that the concessions he was about to make were null and void. That afternoon, in front of all the plenipotentiaries, he swore to observe the treaty and to return to prison within four months if its ratification failed to materialize.

Francis was detained at the Alcázar, probably for health reasons, till mid-February. On 20 January he was betrothed by proxy to Charles’s sister Eleanor, and on 13 February, Charles came to Madrid and spent six days in his company. The two monarchs went to Illescas where Francis was introduced to Eleanor. On 19 February, Charles left for Seville to marry Isabella of Portugal, while Francis set off on his journey back to France. He was exchanged for his sons on 17 March on an island in the River Bidassoa. After setting foot on French soil, he rode full tilt to Bayonne where his mother, sister, ministers and friends were waiting for him. On 20 March he attended a service of thanksgiving in Bayonne cathedral.