Kitabı oku: «The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France», sayfa 6

On 15 January, Charles and the pope came to an agreement and next day the king knelt before the Vicar of Christ after attending mass at St Peter’s. On 20 January, Alexander celebrated mass in the basilica before the king and a congregation of 15,000 people. Among the cardinals present was the newly created Guillaume Briçonnet. The service lasted five hours, after which the pope blessed the French troops and gave them general absolution. Charles took his leave of the pope on 28 January. He had gained right of passage for his army through the States of the Church, but Alexander had not given him the investiture of Naples.

The French now resumed their southward advance. On 4 February they attacked the fortress of Monte San Giovanni. As the king wrote:

My cousin Montpensier had arrived before me with my artillery … and after firing for four hours my said artillery had made a breach wide enough for an assault. I ordered it to be made by men-at-arms and others, and though the place was held by 5–600 good fighting men as well as its inhabitants, they went in in such a manner that, thanks to God [the town] has been taken with little loss to me, and to the defenders great loss, punishment and great example to those others who might think of obstructing me.

As the French were entering the kingdom of Naples, its people rose in rebellion. King Alfonso fled to Sicily after abdicating in favour of his son Ferrandino, who, finding himself abandoned by most of his followers, shut himself up in the Castel Nuovo in Naples. On 19 February the first French troops entered the city. Soon afterwards Ferrandino accepted the offer of honourable retirement in France.

Charles VIII had improved on Caesar’s achievement for, as Guicciardini wrote, the king had conquered even before he had seen. This he owed largely to the reputation which had preceded him, clearing obstacles from his path. Without exception every town on his march south had opened its gates to him, making possible the spanking pace of his progress. In the words of Marsilio Ficino, Charles ‘had shaken the world by a nod of his head’. Chroniclers were dumbfounded by the effortlessness of his victory. One remarked that he had conquered Naples with a falcon on his wrist. Some contemporaries looked for rational explanations of his triumph; others just called it a miracle.

The king’s first task was to reward all the people who had assisted him in his campaign. They were showered with offices and lands. Eleven Frenchmen and only one Neapolitan were appointed to the council of state (sacro consilio). Frenchmen also acquired the principal offices of state, the only notable exceptions being the prince of Salerno and Giacomo Caracciolo, who recovered their offices of admiral and chancellor respectively. The governorships of provinces and towns were distributed in the same way. Etienne de Vesc, one of the main promoters of the Neapolitan expedition, acquired a veritable principality: he became duke of Nola and Ascoli, count of Avellino, great chamberlain and president of the Sommaria or chamber of accounts. The Colonna family was rewarded with dozens of fiefs. Several profitable marriages were also concluded between French noblemen and Neapolitan heiresses. Thus Louis de Luxembourg married Eleonora de Guevara, whose lands in Apulia yielded an annual income of 30,000 to 40,000 ducats, and Pierre de Rohan, marshal de Gié, married Eleonora’s younger sister.

However, the French conquest of Naples was not acceptable in the long term to other Italian states. In March 1495, as the king of France and his troops were enjoying the pleasures, reputable and disreputable, of Naples, four states – Milan, Venice, the papacy and Mantua – formed a league aimed at their expulsion from the peninsula. They planned to sever Charles’s communications with France. The king’s position was made all the more critical by the material aid promised to the league by Maximilian (who had succeeded as emperor in 1493) and King Ferdinand of Aragon. Maximilian recalled that the French expedition had been intended as a crusade, not a conquest, while Ferdinand argued that Charles had broken the Treaty of Barcelona. The league was the beginning of official interference by Spain in Italian affairs and more generally of foreign domination of the peninsula; it soon reached out beyond Italy, becoming a European coalition. Not all the Italian states joined the league. Florence and Ferrara abstained, and the hostility that divided the latter from Venice showed that the league could not eradicate internal rivalries. In spite of the challenge posed by the French conquest of Naples, Italian politics continued to focus on local interests. However, contemporary historians and chroniclers argued that the Italian states needed to work more closely together. As from 1494 the political outlook of many Italians, notably Machiavelli, was not entirely devoid of a certain national consciousness.

Charles wisely decided not to linger in his southern kingdom but to return home as quickly as possible. He divided his army into two parts: one to defend Naples under Gilbert de Montpensier as viceroy, the other to escort him back to France. On 20 May, Charles left Naples and travelled to Rome in only ten days. To avoid meeting him the pope retired first to Orvieto, then to Perugia. Meanwhile, in northern Italy, Louis d’Orléans, acting on his own authority, pre-empted a move by Lodovico Sforza against Asti by attacking the Milanese town of Novara. As this was an imperial fief, Louis’s move offered Maximilian a legitimate pretext for armed intervention. Charles, much alarmed by this turn of events, asked Pierre de Bourbon to send reinforcements in haste to Asti. Meanwhile, the king continued his march northward: he was at Siena on 13 June and at Pisa on the 20th, having by-passed Florence. While part of his army moved on Genoa, the bulk crossed the Appenines. Waiting for them on the north side was the league’s much larger army commanded by the marquis of Mantua. Charles was inclined to seek terms for a free passage, but Marshal Trivulzio argued successfully in favour of engaging the enemy. On 6 July the armies collided at Fornovo during a thunderstorm. Charles was nearly captured several times in the course of the battle which was extremely bloody, especially for the league. The marquis of Mantua claimed it as a victory, but it was really a draw; the French got through, admittedly with the loss of much baggage.

After covering 200 kilometres in seven days, Charles reached Asti on 15 July. Although annoyed with his cousin Louis for his unauthorized attack on Novara, he went to his assistance early in September. As he marched on Vercelli, the league opened talks which ended in a treaty (9 October): Novara was handed back to Milan, Orléans kept Asti, and Genoa was ‘neutralized’, though the French were still allowed to use its harbour facilities. Even more important, however, was Lodovico’s decision to abandon the league which promptly fell apart. On 15 October the situation in north Italy was sufficiently settled for Charles to undertake his homeward journey across the Alps.

Meanwhile, in the kingdom of Naples, the French under Montpensier found themselves subjected to mounting pressure as the Venetians attacked several towns along the Adriatic coast, and Ferrandino reoccupied Naples itself and laid siege to a number of fortresses within the city. Charles sent a fleet to Naples, but it was scattered by storms and never reached its destination. On 5 October, Montpensier signed a truce which prepared for his capitulation on 2 December unless he received help by that date. When it failed to materialize, several French garrisons surrendered. Gaeta and a few strongholds in Apulia held out longer, but they gradually fell to Ferrandino. Charles VIII clung to his rights in the kingdom, but the death of his infant son, Charles-Orland, prevented him from leading a rescue operation, for the king was traditionally bound to stay at home as long as his succession was not assured. He was also short of money. Even so, he spent the spring of 1496 in Lyon trying to organize two expeditions: one to relieve Montpensier, who was besieged in Atella, the other to defend Asti against attack by the duke of Milan. Early in 1498, Charles managed to win over his erstwhile opponent, the marquis of Mantua; but the king died on 7 April, before he was able to send a new expedition to Italy.

It is difficult to regard Charles’s Italian campaign as anything other than a disaster for France. One of its consequences was the demystification of the French king in Italian eyes. They had looked up to him as the heir of Charlemagne and as a benefactor chosen by God to bring them freedom and liberty. Instead, they had found him to be a repulsively ugly little man betraying a character not much better than his physique. His policies too upset them by their waywardness. The Florentines, in particular, felt betrayed by his apparent encouragement of the Pisan rebellion. In Naples he came to share in the execration aroused by the viciousness of his entourage. Italians everywhere believed that Charles had failed in his mission: he had brought them neither liberty nor justice; he had not reformed the church; and, far from leading a crusade, he had exacerbated the Turkish threat. The war he had unleashed had brought famine and inflation in its wake. In brief, Charles now appeared not as a benefactor but as an oppressor. As for the French soldiers and their captains, they had shown themselves to be worse than Turks or Moors: they were barbarians without regard for human life, who desecrated churches and turned palaces into pigsties.

The French were to pay a heavy price for their debauches in Naples. They brought home a new and terrible disease, syphilis, which they called the ‘Neapolitan sickness’ while the Italians called it the ‘French sickness’. The first descriptions of it date from the battle of Fornovo. Cumano, a military doctor to the Venetian troops, relates that he saw ‘several men-at-arms or foot soldiers who, owing to the ferment of the humours, had “pustules” on their faces and all over their bodies’. Benedetto, another Venetian doctor, reported: ‘Through sexual contact, an ailment which is new, or at least unknown to previous doctors, the French sickness, has worked its way in from the West to this spot as I write. The entire body is so repulsive to look at and the suffering is so great, especially at night, that this sickness is even more horrifying than incurable leprosy or elephantiasis, and it can be fatal.’ Charles VIII’s mercenaries, who were disbanded in the summer of 1495, spread the new disease when they returned to their own countries. France was the first affected. Jean Molinet, the official historian of the house of Burgundy, blamed the king for bringing home the ‘pox’. In Lyon an agreement was made in March 1496 between the city magistrates and the king’s officers to expel from the city ‘persons afflicted with the great pox’. In Besançon, in April, the municipal authorities granted compensation to several victims of ‘what is known as the Neapolitan sickness’. Paris was affected by the autumn of 1496 at the latest, as we are informed by a ledger at the Hôtel-Dieu. Although by 1497 almost the entire kingdom was experiencing the epidemic, certain towns were particularly badly hit, such as Bordeaux, Niort, Poitiers and Rouen. Less than ten years after Fornovo the whole of Europe was affected. The scourge stimulated various theories as to its origin. Ambroise Paré, along with many others, was to invoke ‘God’s wrath, which allowed this malady to descend upon the human race, in order to curb its lasciviousness and inordinate concupiscence’.

FOUR Louis XII, ‘Father of the people’(1498–1515)

Louis duc d’Orléans was 36 years old when he succeeded his cousin as king of France on 7 April 1498. He was physically unattractive and subject to frequent bouts of ill-health, yet he was always a keen huntsman and took part in much violent exercise. From the start of his reign he sought popularity. He showed goodwill to the house of Bourbon by allowing the marriage of Suzanne, daughter of Pierre and Anne de Beaujeu, to her cousin, Charles de Bourbon-Montpensier, and he sought the loyalty of former opponents like Louis de La Trémoïlle. When delegates from Orléans excused themselves for not giving him more support in the past, Louis said that a king of France ought not to avenge the quarrels of a duc d’Orléans.

Louis XII ruled with a small council of less than ten members. Foremost among them was Georges d’Amboise, archbishop of Rouen, an old friend of the king whom he had served in various capacities. He had been imprisoned for two years (1487–90) for his part in Louis’s rebellion against the Beaujeus, and during Charles VIII’s Italian campaign he had helped to relieve Louis in Novara. Amboise became one of Louis XII’s most influential advisers. He combined a long experience of public affairs with dogged loyalty, but he lacked the duplicity needed for success in politics. That may be why he failed in his ambition to become pope. Another important member of the council was Florimond Robertet, an experienced civil servant with an unusual competence in foreign languages. After serving Charles VIII as a notary and secretary, he was drawn into the orbit of the house of Orléans by his marriage to the daughter of the treasurer, Michel Gaillard. Louis XII confirmed him as councillor and maître des comptes and Robertet later became secrétaire des finances and trésorier de France; but it was as the king’s personal secretary that he exercised an influence which may have been at least equal to that of Georges d’Amboise.

The king’s remarriage

One thought preoccupied Louis XII at his accession: to rid himself of his barren and deformed wife, Jeanne de France, and remarry Charles VIII’s widow, Anne of Brittany. He had been forced to marry Jeanne by her father Louis XI as a sinister ploy to ensure the early termination of the Orléans branch of the royal family and the absorption of its lands into the royal domain. For a long time Louis had refused to live with Jeanne, preferring a life of unrestrained debauchery, but eventually he had accepted the marriage to the extent of seeing his wife from time to time. He even slept with her, despite the physical revulsion which she inspired in him. He made no attempt to repudiate her during her father’s lifetime or that of her brother, Charles VIII, but only his conscience could stop him now that he was king if the pope would declare his marriage null and void.

Fortunately for Louis, Pope Alexander VI was prepared to subordinate spiritual values to his own temporal interests, notably the advancement of his illegitimate son Cesare Borgia, who was looking for a wife and rich fiefs. France could provide both, so Alexander sent Cesare to congratulate Louis on his accession and acceded to his matrimonial designs: on 29 July he issued a brief listing eight reasons for regarding the king’s marriage as null and void and Louis expressed his gratitude by making Cesare duc de Valentinois. The pope next set up a tribunal in France. It was generally assumed that Queen Jeanne would not face up to the ordeal of litigation, but she decided to defend herself. Many people, however, refused to assist her for fear of offending the king. When the tribunal met at Tours on 10 August 1498, the procureur du roi asked for the annulment of Louis’s marriage and that he should be allowed to remarry. Jeanne denounced the procureur’s statements as unworthy of refutation. Even so, she answered intimate questions with dignity. She denied that violence had been used to extort Louis’s consent to the marriage and, while conceding that she lacked the beauty of most other women, denied that she was incapable of sexual intercourse. While the tribunal was still sitting, Cesare Borgia arrived in Lyon bearing papal gifts: a cardinal’s hat for Georges d’Amboise and the dispensations required by Louis XII to marry Anne of Brittany. But, perhaps deliberately, Cesare did not reach the French court till judgement had been given in the king’s matrimonial suit.

Between 25 September and 15 October the tribunal examined witnesses – four for the queen and twenty-seven for the king. Jeanne’s counsel pointed out that Louis had frequently slept with her. He also produced a dispensation from Sixtus IV which had removed impediments to their marriage. On 27 October, Louis was himself interrogated, but his answers were so inconclusive that he had to be questioned again, this time under oath. He solemnly swore that he had never had intercourse with Jeanne. Since royal perjury was unthinkable, the tribunal felt bound to accept his word.

On 17 December the cardinal of Luxemburg announced the court’s verdict: the king’s marriage had never taken place. Not everyone, however, would accept this outcome. Some well-known preachers spoke in support of Jeanne, who had won much public support during her ordeal. Rather than stifle such opinions, Louis allowed time to silence them. He was also generous to Jeanne. She was promised for the rest of her life ‘the fine and honest train’ due to the daughter, sister and ex-wife (even though the marriage was allegedly non-existent) of three successive monarchs. She was also given the duchy of Berry and devoted the rest of her life to the service of God. She founded an order of nuns, the Annonciades, and began building a convent in Bourges. In 1503 she took the veil herself and won admiration by her self-mortification. She died two years later and was canonized in 1950.

Louis was now free to marry Charles VIII’s widow. Anne attracted him for at least two reasons: first, she was only twenty-two years old and had proved herself capable of childbearing; secondly, by marrying her he would retain control of Brittany. While mourning her late husband, Anne asserted her independence as duchess. She appointed Jean de Chalon, prince of Orange, to administer Brittany in her name and instructed various towns in the duchy to send representatives who would accompany her to Paris for her meeting with the king.

Anne could drive a hard bargain. When Louis first proposed to her, she reminded him that he was not yet free to marry and seemed doubtful about his chances of getting his marriage annulled. She even declared that no verdict on this matter, however authoritative, would satisfy her conscience. Yet Anne’s religious scruples were, it seems, less strong than her desire to become queen for the second time. On 19 August she and Louis reached an agreement at Etampes. He promised to hand over to her representatives three Breton towns which had been under French occupation. Anne, for her part, promised to marry Louis as soon as he was free. Shortly afterwards she returned to Brittany.

On 7 January 1499, Anne and Louis signed their marriage contract in Nantes. This laid down that in the event of issue from the marriage, the second male child, or a female in default of a male, would inherit Brittany. If only one son were born, the heir to the duchy would be his second son. In any event, Anne would administer the duchy in her lifetime and draw its revenues. If she died first, Louis was to administer Brittany during his life; it would then revert to Anne’s relatives and heirs exclusively. On 19 January, Louis undertook to respect all the rights and privileges traditionally enjoyed by the Bretons.

Meanwhile, on 8 January, Louis and Anne were married in the château of Nantes. Though often praised for her beauty, Anne had one leg shorter than the other, an infirmity which she concealed by wearing a high heel. Her genetic antecedents were poor, which doubtless explains why so many of her pregnancies failed. Her first child by Louis, Claude, born on 13 October 1499, was for eleven years the only child in the royal nursery and the pivot of Louis’s matrimonial diplomacy. Though plain, Claude was a desirable match on account of her rich dowry which included the Orléans patrimony, the duchy of Brittany, and the French claims to Asti, Milan, Genoa and Naples.