Kitabı oku: «The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France», sayfa 8
Domestic policies
Historians have given so much attention to the Italian Wars that they have barely noticed the government of France under Charles VIII and Louis XII. Yet, as Russell Major has shown, it was under these kings that the monarchy which had begun to take shape under Charles VII was ‘cemented’. Louis XII’s contribution was especially notable: he provided France with ‘the most efficient government that it enjoyed during the Renaissance’. His reign produced a large number of edicts and ordinances aimed for the most part at improving the administration of justice. How far they represented his own ideas or those of his ministers is hard to say. There is not enough evidence to support the view of one historian (J.-A. Neret) that Louis came to the throne with a plan of reform inspired by Machiavelli. He certainly combined maturity with a long experience of variable political fortunes.
From the start of his reign Louis tried to be popular. This could best be done by sparing his subjects’ pockets. Charles VIII had left a treasury so empty that it could not even pay his funeral costs (estimated at 45,000 livres), so Louis announced that he would pay for them out of his private purse. He also paid for the festivities marking his own entry into Paris on 2 July and released royal officials and pensioners from the traditional obligation of making an accession gift. Louis announced that he would limit taxes to the minimum required by the defence of the realm, and kept his word for as long as possible. Except for a few years, he kept down the level of the taille almost till the end of the reign, and even lowered it on occasion. Around 1500, the taille amounted to only about 2.3 million livres annually, as compared with 3.9 million under Louis XI. Louis once ordered his agents to stop collecting a surtax when the reason for it – the Genoese revolt – had ended. When he came under pressure, he preferred to alienate parts of the royal domain or rely on loans or forced loans rather than raise taxes. He was able to do this because for many years his campaigns in Italy more than paid for themselves through plunder. At the end of his reign Louis ran into difficulties and taxes rose; yet he continued to be regarded, even as late as the seventeenth century, as a king who had spared his subjects.
Believing that a king should ‘live of his own’ (i.e. on the income from his domain), Louis avoided excessive expenditure on his court and on gifts to courtiers. He reduced the annual total of gifts and pensions from over 500,000 livres around 1500 to less than half that sum by 1510. However, in the last two years of the reign it went up again. Disappointed courtiers called Louis ‘le roi roturier’ (the commoner king) and his parsimony was mocked in satirical plays staged in Paris by the Basoche. But Louis was unrepentant. ‘I much prefer’, he said, ‘to make dandies laugh at my miserliness than to make the people weep at my open-handedness.’ Apart from curbing expenditure, he trebled the revenue from his domain by more efficient accounting. It reached a total of 231,000l. annually, or 6.3 per cent of the total royal revenues.
The sale of offices was a fiscal expedient used by Louis XII. By the end of the fifteenth century a distinction was made between financial and judicial offices: only the sale of the former was tacitly allowed. The ban on the sale of judicial offices had been affirmed by Charles VIII in July 1493: a candidate for office was only to be admitted after swearing an oath that he had paid nothing for it. Louis XII repeated the ban in March 1498. He admitted that he had allowed such sales in the past and foresaw that he might do so again ‘out of importunity or otherwise’. The chancellor was instructed not to seal such letters of provision, and royal officers were not to implement them if the letters had been sealed inadvertently. However, Louis could hardly expect his servants to obey a law which he had broken himself. In April 1499 he appointed Jean le Coq as conseiller général des aides ‘notwithstanding … his promise to pay a certain sum’. Office-holders, notably members of the Parlement of Paris, were allowed by Louis to resign their offices in return for a payment. Sometimes a fiction was used – such as the exchange of one office for another – to conceal an original payment.
Louis XII was one of the last kings of France to listen to pleadings in the parlement. The great Ordinance of Blois (March 1499) was aimed at ‘upholding justice, shortening trials and giving relief to the people’. Its 162 clauses dealt with many matters, not all judicial. While prescribing severe penalties for vagabonds and accepting the need for interrogation under torture, the ordinance sought to promote fair and prompt justice. Magistrates were to be worthy of their responsibilities; they were not to delegate them or be absent without leave. Proper legal qualifications were laid down for service on the judicial bench. No fathers, sons or brothers were to serve in the same court, and the sale of offices was banned, not for the first time. However, the ordinance seems to have been poorly enforced, for several of its provisions had to be repeated in another ordinance of 1510. This contained new clauses directed against usurers and regulations concerning notaries.
One of Louis XII’s major reforms was the reorganization of the Grand conseil, or king’s council acting as a lawcourt. It can be traced back to 1469 and a continuous series of archives, starting in 1483, shows that by then the council was meeting regularly and beginning to acquire a distinct identity. But it was Louis who, in August 1497, gave it a permanent staff of legal experts capable of coping with its growing legal business. Their competence included disputes between sovereign courts, complaints levelled at royal officials, quarrels over fiefs or ecclesiastical benefices, as well as appeals in civil and criminal cases. Being directly under the king, the council facilitated his intervention in criminal cases which touched him personally, such as that of Marshal Gié. Regarding the Grand conseil as a rival, the parlement showed its hostility on several occasions; but Louis placated it by giving it precedence and allowing its members to sit in the Grand conseil whenever they wished.
Louis’s concern to streamline the judicial system extended to France’s newest provinces. In Normandy the highest court of law, dating from the time of the dukes, was the Echiquier which met occasionally and had no permanent staff. Louis turned it into a permanent body with four presidents and 28 councillors. Under Francis I it became the Parlement of Rouen. In Provence, the Conseil éminent of the old counts of Provence was turned by Louis into a parlement with one president and eleven councillors. Finally, in Brittany justice was administered by the Grands Jours, a commission renewable each year. The members were partly Bretons and partly recruits from the Parlement of Paris. It functioned alongside a council, which was an administrative and judicial body. Gradually the commission developed at the expense of the council: in 1491 it acquired a permanent staff and fixed annual sessions. However, it did not become a parlement till 1554.
A major obstacle to judicial efficiency in early modern France was the survival of unwritten customary law. This varied from one locality to another; it was entirely pragmatic, serving particular needs as they arose. Because customs were variable and ill-defined, they needed to be validated by a judge before they could be used as evidence. In the Middle Ages attempts had been made by various kings to distinguish good customs from bad ones. Royal intervention took the form of a written declaration establishing what customs were to apply to a particular area. Professional jurists also produced coutumiers in which the customary law of whole provinces was written down. But it was only in the fifteenth century, when the kingdom was sufficiently unified politically, that the crown was able to think of providing an official, authenticated and coherent set of customs. The lead was given by Charles VII, but little further progress was made till 1497, when Charles VIII altered the procedure by which definitive customary laws were arrived at. Henceforth, a royal judge in a given area drew up a tentative list of customs after consulting his colleagues and local worthies. Representatives of the three estates then met to discuss the draft, which had to be approved by a majority of each estate’s representatives before being published in the king’s name. Much of this work was done under Louis XII, who commissioned two distinguished parlementaires – Roger Barme and Thibaut Baillet – to write down the customs of northern France. Till the end of the reign these two legists, acting in concert with the baillis, sénéchaux and representatives of the three estates in each area, verified and confirmed many customs after weeding out accretions. Georges d’Amboise signed the first rédaction at Tours on 5 May 1508 and many others quickly followed, but the task was unfinished when Louis died. Several provinces had to wait a century before their customs were verified.
In 1506, Louis was acclaimed by the spokesman of the notables at Blois as ‘father of the people’. He became renowned for his efforts to spare his subjects taxes, to give them justice and to provide them with security. His praises were sung throughout the sixteenth century. Even after Henry IV’s reign there were demands for a return to the time of Louis XII. His role, according to Russell Major, was ‘more to make the monarchy beloved than to change its character’.
The Genoese rebellion
Although Louis XII had relinquished his rights in Naples, he had not abandoned all his Italian interests. His authority as duke of Milan had been legitimized in April 1505 by the emperor’s investiture and he was also count of Asti and ‘protector’ of Genoa. Early in 1506 a popular rising in Genoa against the rule of the local patricians turned into a revolt against the French. At first Louis tried to temporize, but the rebels set up a new administration headed by a doge. On 12 March they massacred Frenchmen who had taken refuge in a fort. Taking this as a personal affront, Louis gathered a large army in the spring of 1507 and invaded Genoa. The doge fled and the city surrendered. Louis annexed Genoa to his domain, destroyed its charters, executed sixty rebels and threatened to impose a huge fine on the inhabitants. Later he relented: most of the citizens were allowed to keep their lives and property, and their fine was reduced. A new governor, Raoul de Lannoy, was ordered to run the city humanely and fairly. The king appreciated Genoa’s importance as a commercial and financial centre. He did not want to see it destroyed and therefore refused to allow the bulk of his army into it. He did, however, impose his authority in an entry acclaimed by contemporaries as the ceremonial climax of his reign. Wearing full armour, a helmet with white plumes and a surcoat of gold cloth, he rode a richly caparisoned black charger beneath a canopy carried by four Genoese notables dressed in black. Along the route young girls holding olive branches begged for mercy.
France and Venice had been allies since 1500. The Venetians had taken advantage of the French conquest of Milan by nibbling at the eastern edge of the duchy. But the long-term objectives of the allies were not necessarily identical. The Venetians were alarmed by the closeness of the French to their own terra firma. The two powers also differed about the emperor. In February 1508, Maximilian attacked the Venetians. Louis was about to send a force to help them, when he learned that they had signed a truce with Maximilian. He felt badly let down as they had not consulted him. The pope, meanwhile, had his own reasons for falling out with the Venetians. His desire to extend the States of the Church into the Romagna ran counter to Venice’s territorial ambitions. Moreover, Venetian policy towards the Turks contradicted the pope’s aim of mounting a crusade.
In December 1508 representatives of the emperor, the kings of France and Aragon, and the pope met at Cambrai. However divergent their individual aims may have been, they all wanted to abase the pride of Venice. Anticipating her defeat, they agreed to share the spoils: Verona and control of the Adige valley would go to Maximilian, Brescia to Louis XII, Ravenna to the pope and Otranto to Ferdinand of Aragon, now king of Naples. For some unknown reason, Louis decided to fire the opening shot, while his allies undertook to declare themselves one month later. The pope simply placed Venice under an interdict.
On 16 April 1509, three days after declaring war on Venice, Louis crossed the Alps to take charge of military operations. An important innovation was the decision to place infantry under the command of noblemen, who previously would have considered such a role beneath their dignity. In addition to 20,000 infantry (including 8000 Swiss mercenaries) the king disposed of about 2000 men-at-arms. His lieutenants included names familiar from earlier campaigns such as Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, La Trémoïlle, La Palice, Chaumont d’Amboise and San Severino. Among younger men, going into action for the first time, were the king’s cousin, Charles de Bourbon-Montpensier, and his nephew, Gaston de Foix. The Venetian army was larger: it comprised, according to Guicciardini, 2000 Italian lances, 3000 light cavalry (including Albanian stradiots) and 20,000 infantry. The commanders included Bartolomeo d’Alviano and Niccolò Orsini, count of Pitigliano.
On 14 May the two armies faced each other at Agnadello. Instead of attacking the French as they crossed the river Adda, Pitigliano preferred to wait for them within a well-fortified camp. He was ordered, however, to move to higher ground, and this gave the French a chance to attack him in the open. D’Alviano, commanding the Venetian vanguard, bore the brunt of the attack and repulsed it, but the rest of the Venetian army was too widely spread out to come to his aid. He and his cavalry were consequently surrounded and captured. His infantry fought on bravely, only to be annihilated by a much larger force of Swiss and Gascons.
Following their victory the French captured Cremona, Crema and Brescia. The pope, meanwhile, pushed towards Ravenna with his army, but Maximilian failed to appear in Italy. So Louis returned to France after celebrating his triumph in Milan. Venice, for its part, allowed imperial troops to occupy Treviso, Verona and Padua, handed over ports in southern Italy to Ferdinand of Aragon, released the people of the terra firma from their allegiance and accepted the pope’s occupation of towns in the Romagna. The Venetians, however, had enough experience of foreign affairs (their diplomats were the best in Europe at the time) to know that time was on their side: they felt sure that sooner or later the coalition against them would break up.
Early in July the Venetians recaptured Padua from the emperor. He appealed for help to Louis XII, who promptly sent a force under La Palice, which was soon joined by a large army led by Maximilian himself; but he did not lay siege to Padua till mid-September. After breaching its wall, he prepared an assault, but the French nobles refused to fight as infantry as long as the German nobles remained mounted. In the end, the assault was abandoned. On 30 September, Maximilian angrily lifted the siege. He left that night for Austria, soon to be followed by the rest of his army. La Palice and his men returned to Milan.
Julius II, meanwhile, began to detach himself from the league; he did not wish to see Venice destroyed, for her maritime co-operation was essential to his crusading plans. Nor was he keen to see France or the Empire strongly entrenched in north Italy. In February 1510 he lifted the interdict on Venice. He then detached Ferdinand of Aragon from the coalition. In return for the investiture of Naples, Ferdinand agreed to be neutral for the present. Henry VIII of England was also won over. But the pope’s most resounding diplomatic coup was to persuade the Swiss to debar France from raising mercenaries in the cantons. In the summer of 1510, Julius attacked Ferrara, seemingly an easy prey. The duke, Alfonso d’Este, appealed to Louis XII for help. Having recently abandoned the siege of Padua, the French army under Chaumont returned to the Milanese. They had to face a Swiss invasion, but it did not last long. Fighting around Ferrara continued for more than a year without giving the pope a decisive victory. Following the death of Chaumont on 11 February 1511, command of the French army in Italy was given first to Trivulzio, then to Gaston de Foix, duc de Nemours. He was young, handsome and brave, and his presence in Italy raised French morale, putting new life into the campaign.
So far the pope had failed to detach Maximilian from his alliance with France. What is more, Louis and Maximilian were in agreement over the need to reform the church in its head and members. They supported the idea, put forward two hundred years earlier, that a General Council of the church was superior in authority to the pope. At their bidding five cardinals who had fallen out with the pope called a General Council to Pisa for the autumn of 1511. Julius was ordered to appear before this body under threat of deposition, but he was not easily intimidated: he replied by summoning an alternative council to Rome for April 1512.
The battle of Ravenna
Meanwhile, the French army in north Italy, now commanded by Gaston de Foix, invaded the Romagna, relieving Ferrara and capturing Mirandola. As it drew near to Bologna, the pope’s army fell back on Ravenna. Early in October 1511 a so-called Holy League was formed between the pope, Ferdinand of Aragon and Venice. Its avowed aim was to reconquer the lands recently taken from the Holy See, but its real purpose was to drive the French out of Italy.
Gaston reorganized his army to face the threat of a triple invasion of Lombardy: by the Swiss in the north, by papal and Spanish forces from the south and by the Venetians in the east. The Swiss were the first to attack, capturing Bellinzona in December; but Gaston wisely remained inside Milan instead of coming out to meet them. He knew that if he left the city, the people of Milan would rebel. His caution was justified when the Swiss returned home of their own accord. The army of the Holy League, meanwhile, tried to win back lost ground in the Romagna, prompting Gaston to send reinforcements to Bologna. In February he marched to the relief of Brescia which was under attack from the Venetians. A fierce struggle ended in their defeat. When the pope heard the news, he is said to have torn off his beard. He could draw comfort, however, from the dismal failure of the Council of Pisa. It had been unable to gather international support and was disbanded soon after moving to Milan.
In November, Henry VIII joined the Holy League and prepared to invade Picardy. The threat of such an attack, coupled with indications that Maximilian might change sides, impressed upon Louis XII the need for a decisive victory in Italy. While Gaston de Foix had been fighting near Brescia, a Hispano-papal army under Ramon de Cardona, viceroy of Naples, had reconquered most of the Romagna. Gaston marched on Ravenna in the hope of luring the enemy into the open. Although the viceroy’s army was smaller than that of the French, he came down from Imola and pitched camp on marshy ground outside Ravenna. It was protected by a deep trench, behind which was arrayed a battery of thirty guns and strange war machines which contemporaries compared to the scythed chariots used in antiquity. Gaston’s artillery consisted of thirty French guns and twenty-four supplied by the duke of Ferrara.
At dawn on 11 April, Gaston, after crossing the River Ronco, formed his army into a crescent with infantry in the middle and cavalry on the wings. Closing in on the viceroy’s camp, he began a fierce bombardment. The Spanish guns responded, inflicting heavy losses on the French infantry. Eventually the Spanish cavalry came out and engaged the French men-at-arms in a bloody encounter which ended in a Spanish rout. The infantry, meanwhile, moved into action. More fierce fighting ended in victory to the French. But as Gaston tried to intercept some Spaniards who were fleeing from the field, his horse stumbled, enabling the enemy to fall on him and wound him fatally. Thus ended the career of a military leader of great promise. His death, Bayard wrote, made the victory seem like a defeat.
The battle of Ravenna was one of the bloodiest on record. Both sides suffered heavily. Ramon de Cardona returned to Naples with only 300 horse and 3000 foot, having started out with 16,000 men. Among Spaniards taken prisoner were Fabrizio Colonna, general of the horse, and Pedro Navarro, general of the foot. A more unusual captive was the papal legate, Giulio de’ Medici, the future Pope Clement VII. French losses, though fewer, were none the less severe: 3000 to 4000 infantry, 80 men-at-arms, several gentlemen of the king’s household and nine archers of his guard. From the tactical standpoint, Ravenna is remembered as the first Italian battle in which cannon decided the day. Gaston de Foix saw that Spanish tactics could be overcome by superior artillery strength. His only serious mistake was to bring his infantry too far forward at the start so that it suffered heavier losses than necessary.
Even if Gaston had survived, it is doubtful if the French could have taken advantage of their victory, for the odds were heavily against them. On 6 May, 18,000 Swiss troops led by Cardinal Schiner descended into Italy and joined the Venetian army near Verona. Together they marched on Milan. La Palice, the new French commander, retreated westward from Ravenna with an army much reduced in size after the recent battle to which disease and desertion had added their toll. The retreat soon turned into a headlong flight. By the end of June, France had lost the Milanese and her army was back in Dauphiné. The few French garrisons that had been left behind in Italy gradually capitulated.
Ferdinand took advantage of Louis’s difficulties to invade Navarre in pursuit of the claim which his wife, Germaine de Foix, had inherited from her brother Gaston. Louis, who had supported Gaston’s claim against the ruling house of Albret, was obliged to support the rival claim of Jean d’Albret. However, Ferdinand, having occupied Spanish Navarre, declared himself its lawful sovereign. Louis despatched an army under the nominal command of François d’Angoulême, the effective commanders being marshals La Palice and Lautrec. They laid siege to Pamplona, but the arrival of Aragonese reinforcements forced them to withdraw. Spanish Navarre was irretrievably lost. All that remained to Jean d’Albret was a small portion of his kingdom on the French side of the Pyrenees.
In Italy, meanwhile, important political changes were taking place. In November 1512 the emperor joined the Holy League, causing the Venetians to abandon their hostility to France. Within the Milanese, the departure of the French released the conflicting ambitions of former allies. The Swiss wanted Como and Novara; the marquis of Mantua claimed Peschiera; the pope wanted Parma and Piacenza; the duke of Savoy asked for Vercelli; and the Venetians were keen to recover Brescia. In December 1512 the Swiss set up Massimiliano Sforza, the son of Lodovico il Moro, as duke of Milan. Soon afterwards, in February 1513, Pope Julius II died. He was succeeded by Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici, who took the name of Leo X. Although no friend of France, he was more peaceable than his predecessor. Louis skilfully exploited the changed situation. In March 1513, Venice reached an agreement with him regarding the partition of north Italy. France renewed her ‘Auld Alliance’ with Scotland in the hope of containing Henry VIII, who was anxious to cut a dash on the Continent. Louis also signed a truce with Ferdinand: each agreed to respect the status quo in Navarre. All that remained of the Holy League was a coalition of England, the Empire and the Swiss Confederation.
