time a prince almost as handsome as Henry, and nearly as popular
with his people, with as little real cause. In 1515, Francis
the First was twenty years of age, a perfect specimen of manly
strength,--accomplished in all knightly exercises,--generous and
magnificent in his intercourse with his nobility,--and the greatest
_roué_ and debauchee in all the kingdom of France. Here, then, at the
beginning of the age we have now to examine, were the three mightiest
sovereigns of Europe, all arriving at their crowns before attaining
their majority; and with so many years before them, and such powerful
nations obeying their commands, great prospects for good or evil were
opening on the world. But in the early years of the century no human
eye perceived in what direction the future was going to pursue its
course. People were all watching for the first indication of what was
to come, and kept their eyes on the courts of Paris and London and
Madrid; but nobody suspected that the real champions of the time were
already marshalling their forces in far different situations. There
was a thoughtful monk in a convent in Germany, and a Spanish soldier
before the walls of Pampeluna. These were the true movers of men's
minds, of the great thoughts by which events are created; and their
names were soon to sound louder than those of Henry or Charles or
Francis; for one was Martin Luther, the hero of the Reformation, and
the other was Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits. Take note
of them here as mere accessories to the march of general history: we
shall return to them again as characteristics of the century on which
they placed their indelible mark. At this time, in the gay young days
of the three crowned striplings, these future combatants are totally
unknown. Brother Martin is singing charming hymns to the Virgin, in a
voice which it was delightful to hear; and Don Ignacio is also singing
to his guitar the praises of one of the beautiful maidens of his native
land. Public opinion was still stagnant with regard to home-affairs,
in spite of the efforts of the infant press. People, bowed down by the
claims of implicit obedience exacted from them by the Church, accepted
with wondering submission the pontificate of such an atrocious murderer
as Alexander the Sixth; and some even ingeniously founded an argument
of the divine institution of the Papacy upon its having survived the
eleven years' desecration of that monster of cruelty and unbelief. Yet
now it happened by a strange coincidence that the chair of St. Peter
was to be filled by a gayer and more accomplished ruler than any of the
earthly thrones we have mentioned. In 1513, Leo the Tenth, the most
celebrated of the family of the Medicis of Florence, put on the tiara
at the age of thirty-six, a period of life which was considered as
youthful for the father of Christendom as even the boyish years of the
temporal kings. And Leo did not belie the promise of his juvenility.
None of the dulness of age, or even the caution of maturity, was
perceived in his public or private conduct. He was a patron of arts
and sciences, and buffoonery, and infidelity; and it is curious to
observe how the pretensions of Rome were more shaken by the frivolous
magnificence of a good-hearted, graceful voluptuary than they had been
by the crimes of his two immediate predecessors, the truculent Borgia
and the warlike Julius the Second.
This latter pontiff was intended by nature for a leader of Free Lances,
to live forever in "the joy of battle," and must have felt a little
out of his element as the head of the Christian Church. However, he
rapidly discovered that he was a secular prince as well as a spiritual
teacher, and cast his eyes in the former capacity with ominous ill will
on the industrious Republic of Venice. The fishermen and fugitives of
many centuries before, who had settled among the Adriatic lagoons,
had risen into the position of princes and treasurers of Europe. By
their possessions in the East, and their trading-factories established
along the whole route from India to the Mediterranean, they had made
themselves the intermediaries between the barbaric pearls and gold,
the silks and spices, of the Oriental regions, and the requirements
of the West. Their galleys were daily bringing them the commodities
of the Levant, which they distributed at an exorbitant profit among
the nations beyond the Straits of Gibraltar. Mercantile wealth and
maritime enterprise elevated the taste and confidence of those Venetian
traffickers, till their whole territory, amid the lifeless waters
of their canals, was covered with stately palaces, and their fleets
assumed the dominion of the inland seas. On the mainland they had
stretched their power over Dalmatia and Trieste, and in their own
peninsula over Rimini and Ferrara and a great part of the Romagna. Two
ruling passions agitated the soul of Julius the Second: one was to
recover whatever territory or influence had once belonged to the Holy
See; the other was to expel the hated barbarian, whether Frenchman,
or Swiss, or Austrian, from the soil of Italy. To achieve this last
object he would sacrifice any thing except the first; and to unite
the two was difficult. He made his approaches to Venice in a gentle
manner at first. He asked her to restore the lands she had lately won,
which he claimed as appendages of his chair, because they had been
torn unjustly from the original holders by Cæsar Borgia, the son of
Alexander the Infamous; and if she had agreed to this he would no doubt
have proceeded with his further scheme of banishing all ultramontane
invaders. But as the commercial council of the great emporium hesitated
at giving up what they had entered in their books as fairly their
own, he altered his note in a moment, put on the insignia of his holy
office, and, denouncing the astonished republic as rebellious and
ungrateful to Mother Church, he called in the aid of the very French
whom he was so anxious to get quit of, to execute his judgment upon the
offending State. Venice was rich, and France at that time was poor and
at all times is greedy. So preparations were made for an assault with
the readiness and glee with which a party of freebooters would make a
descent on the Bank of England. The temptation also was too great to be
resisted by other kings and princes, who were as hungry for spoil and
as attached to religion as the French. So in an incredibly short space
of time the league of Cambrai was joined by Maximilian, the Emperor of
Germany, and Ferdinand of Spain, and dukes and marquesses of less note.
There were few of the Southern potentates, indeed, who had not some
cause of complaint against the haughty Venetians. [A.D. 1508.] Some
(as the German Maximilian) they had humbled by defeat; others they had
insulted by their purse-proud insolence; others, again, by superiority
in commercial skill; and all, by the fact of being wealthy and, as they
fancied, weak.
Louis the Twelfth of France was first in the field. He conquered at
Agnadello, and, forcing his way to the shore, alarmed the marble halls
of the Venetians with the sound of his harmless cannonade. The Pope
was next, and took possession of the towns he wanted. The Duke of
Ferrara laid hold of some loose articles in the confusion, and the
Marquis of Mantua got back some villages which his grandfather had
lost. Maximilian was disconsolate at not being in time for the general
pillage, and had to content himself with Padua and Vicenza and Verona.
Maximilian was a gentleman in difficulties, who has the misfortune to
be known in history as Max the Penniless. The Venetians sent to tell
him they were ready to acknowledge his suzerainty as emperor, and to
pay him a tribute of fifty thousand ducats. The man would have forgiven
them a hundred times their offences for half the money, and was anxious
to close with their offer. But they had made no similar proposition
to the French king, nor to Ferdinand, nor even of a ten-pound note
to the Mantuan Marquis or the Magnifico of Ferrara. Wherefore they
all began to hate the emperor. Louis declined to give him any more
assistance. Julius sent a secret message to the Venetians that Holy
Church was not inexorable; and Venice, relying on the placability of
Rome, hung out her flag against her secular foes in prouder defiance
than ever. She knelt at the feet of the Pope, and allowed him to retain
his acquisitions in Romagna and elsewhere; and as his first object,
the enrichment of his domain, was accomplished, he lost no time in
carrying out the second. [A.D. 1510.] By the fortunate possession
of an unlimited power of loosing mankind from unpleasant oaths and
obligations, he astonished his late confederates by publishing a
sentence releasing the Venetians from the censures of the Church and
the Allies from the covenants of the Treaty of Cambrai. He then joined
the pontifical forces to the troops of Venice, and in hot haste made a
rush upon the French. He bought over Ferdinand of Spain to the cause
by giving him the investiture of Naples, hired a multitude of Swiss
mercenaries, and, drawing the sword like a stout man-at-arms as he was,
he laid siege to Mirandola. In spite of his great age,--he was now past
seventy,--he performed all the offices of an active general, visited
the trenches, encouraged his army, and after a two months' bombardment
disdained to enter the city by the opened gate, but was triumphantly
carried in military pomp through a breach in the shattered wall. His
perfidy as a statesman and audacity as a soldier were too much for the
Emperor and the King of France. [A.D. 1511.] They collected as many
troops as they could, and threatened to summon a general council; for
what excommunication as an instrument of offence was to the popes, a
general council was to the civil power. The French clergy met at Tours,
and supported the Crown against Julius. The German emperor was still
more indignant. He published a paper of accusations, in which the
bitterness of his penniless condition is not concealed. "The enormous
sums daily extracted from Germany," he says, "are perverted to the
purposes of luxury or worldly views, instead of being employed for
the service of God or against the Infidels. So extensive a territory
has been alienated for the benefit of the Pope that scarcely a florin
of revenue remains to the Emperor in Italy." Louis and the French
appeared triumphant in the field; but their triumphs threw them into
dismay, for their protean adversary, when defeated as temporal prince,
thundered against them as successor of St. Peter, and taught them that
their victories were impiety and their acquisitions sacrilege. A hard
case for Louis, where if he retreated his territories were seized,
and if he advanced his soul was in danger. The war, which had begun
as a combination against Venice, was now converted into a holy league
in defence of Rome. Spaniards came to the rescue; and Henry, the
youthful champion of England, and all who either thought they loved
religion or who really hated France, were inspired as if for a crusade.
[A.D. 1512.] And Maximilian himself, poor and friendless,--how was it
possible for him to continue obstinately to reject the overtures of the
Pope, the purse of the Venetians, or the far more tempting whisperings
of Ferdinand of Aragon, who said to him, "Julius is very old. Would
it not be possible to win over the cardinals to make your majesty his
successor?" Such a golden dream had never suggested itself to the
pauperized emperor before. He swallowed the bait at once. He determined
to bribe the Sacred College, and, to raise the necessary funds, pawned
the archducal mantle of Austria to the rich merchants, the Fuggers
of Antwerp, for a large sum, and wrote to his daughter Margaret,
"To-morrow I shall send a bishop to the Pope, to conclude an agreement
with him that I may be appointed his coadjutor and on his death succeed
to the Papacy, that you may be bound to worship me,--of which I
shall be very proud." This may appear a rather jocular announcement
of so serious a design; but there is no doubt that the project was
entertained. Matters, however, advanced at too rapid a pace for the
slow calculations of politicians. The French, by a noble victory at
Ravenna, established their fame as warriors, and roused the fear of
all the other powers. Maximilian grasped at last the Venetian ducats
which had been offered him so long before, and turned suddenly against
his ally. Ferdinand and Henry pressed forward on France itself on the
side of the Pyrenees. Foot by foot the land of Italy was set free from
the French invaders, and Julius the Second, dying before the emperor's
plans were matured, left the tangled web of European politics to be
unravelled by a younger hand.
We have dwelt on this strange contest, where many sovereign states
combined to overthrow a colony of traders, and failed in all their
attempts, because it is the last great appearance that Venice has made
in the general history of the world. From this time her power rapidly
decayed. Her galleys lay rotting at their wharves, and the marriage of
her Doge to the Sea was a symbol without a meaning. The discovery of
a passage to India by the Cape, which we saw announced to Europe by
Vasco da Gama in the last year of the late century, was a sentence of
death to the carriers of the Adriatic. Commerce sought other channels
and enriched other lands. Wherever the merchant-vessels crowded the
harbour, whether with the commodities of the East or West, the war-ship
was sure to follow, and the treasures gained in traffic to be guarded
by a navy. All the ports of Spain became rallying-places of wealth
and power in this century. Portugal covered every sea with her guns
and galleons; Holland rose to dignity and freedom by her heavy-armed
marine; and England began the career of enterprise and liberty which
is still typified and assured by the preponderance of her commercial
and royal fleets. Questions are asked--which the younger among us, who
may live to see the answer, may amuse themselves by considering--as to
the chance of Venice recovering her ancient commerce if the pathway of
Eastern trade be again traced down the Mediterranean, when the Isthmus
of Suez shall be cut through by a canal or curtailed by a railway.
In former times the whole civilized world lay like a golden fringe
round the shores of that one sea, and the nation which predominated
there, either in wealth or arms, was mistress of the globe. But
the case is altered now. If the Gates of Hercules were permanently
closed, the commerce of the world would still go on; and, so far from
a Mediterranean supremacy indicating a universal pre-eminence, it is
perhaps worthy of remark that the only Mediterranean nations which have
in later times been recognised as of first-rate rank in Europe have had
their principal ports upon the Atlantic and in the Channel.
There is a circumstance which we may observe as characteristic of many
of the European states at this time,--the desire of combination and
consolidation at home even more than of foreign conquest. In Spain the
cessation of the oligarchy of kingships had established a national
crown. The hopes of recasting the separated and mutilated limbs of
ancient Latium into a gigantic Italy were rife in that sunny land of
high resolves and futile acts. In Germany, the official supremacy
of the emperor was insufficient to prevent the strong definement of
the corporate nationalities. Holland secured its individuality by
unheard-of efforts; and in England the great thought took possession
of the political mind of a union of the whole island. Visions already
floated before the statesmen on both sides of the Tweed of a Great
Britain freed from intestine disturbance and guarded by undisputed
seas. But the general intelligence was not yet sufficiently far
advanced. [A.D. 1502.] The Scotch were too Scotch and the English too
English to sink their national differences; and we can only pay homage
to the wisdom which by a marriage between the royal houses--James
the Fourth, and Margaret of England--planted the promise which came
afterwards to maturity in the junction of the crowns in 1603, and the
indissoluble union of the countries in 1707.
Meantime, the wooing was of the harshest. The last great battle,
Flodden, that marked the enmity of the kingdoms, was decided in this
century, and has left a deep and sorrowful impression even to our
own times. There is not a cottage in Scotland where "The Fight of
Flodden" is not remembered yet. And its effects were so desolating and
dispiriting that it may be considered the death-bed to the feeling of
equality which had hitherto ennobled the weaker nation. From this time
England held the position of a virtual superior, regulating her conduct
without much regard to the dignity or self-respect of her neighbour,
and employing the arts of diplomacy, and the meaner tricks of bribery
and corruption, only because they were more easy and less expensive
than the open method of invasion and conquest. "Scotland's shield" was
indeed broken at Flodden, but her character for courage and honour
remained. It was the treachery of Solway Moss, and the venality of most
of the surviving nobility, that were the real causes of her weakness,
and of the subordinate place which at this time she held in Europe.
Thus the object which in other nations had been gained by a union of
crowns was attained also in our island by the absence of opposition
between the peoples. Flodden and Pinkie may therefore be looked upon
with kindlier eyes if they are regarded as steps to the formation of
so great a realm. No nation retained its feudal organization so long
as Scotland, or so completely departed from the original spirit of
feudalism. Instead of being leaders and protectors of their dependants,
and attached vassals of the kings, the barons of the North were an
oligarchy of armed conspirators both against the crown and the people.
Few of the earlier Stuarts died in peaceful bed; for even those of
them who escaped the dagger of the assassin were hunted to death by
the opposition and falsehood of the chiefs. Perpetually engaged in
plots against the throne or forays against each other, the Scottish
nobility weakened their country both at home and abroad. Law could
have no authority where mailed warriors settled everything by the
sword, and no resistance could be offered to a foreign enemy by men
so divided among themselves. Down to a period when the other nations
of Europe were under the rule of legal tribunals, the High Street of
Edinburgh was the scene of violence and bloodshed between rival lords
who were too powerful for control by the civil authority. A succession
of foolishly rash or unwisely lenient sovereigns left this ferocity and
independence unchecked; and though poetry and patriotism now combine
to cast a melancholy grace on the defeat at Flodden, from the Roman
spirit with which the intelligence was received by the population
of the capital, the unbiassed inquirer must confess that, with the
exception of the single virtue of personal courage, the Scottish array
was ennobled by no quality which would have justified its success. It
was ill commanded, ill disciplined, and ill combined. The nobility, as
usual, were disaffected to the king and averse to the War. But the
crown-tenants and commonalty of the Lowlands were always ready for an
affray with England; and James the Fourth, the most chivalrous of that
line of chivalrous and unfortunate princes, merrily crossed the Border
and prepared for feats of arms as if at a tournament. [A.D. 1513.]
The cautious Earl of Surrey, the leader of the English army, availed
himself of the knightly prepossessions of his enemy, and sent a herald,
in all the frippery of tabard and cross, to challenge him to battle
on a set day, when Lord Thomas Howard would run a tilt with him at
the head of the English van. James fell into the snare, and regulated
his movements, in fact, by the direction of his opponent. When, in a
momentary glimpse of common sense, he established his quarters on the
side of a hill, from which it would have been impossible to dislodge
him, Surrey relied on the absurd generosity of his character, and sent
a message to complain that he had placed himself on ground "more like
a fortress or a camp than an ordinary battle-field." James pretended
to despise the taunt, and even to refuse admission to the herald; but
it worked on his susceptible and fearless nature; for we find that he
allowed the English to pass through difficult and narrow ways, which
were commanded by his guns, and when they were fairly marshalled on
level ground he set fire to his tents and actually descended the hill
to place himself on equal terms with the foe. Such a beginning had
the only possible close. Strong arms and sharp swords are excellent
supports of generalship, but cannot always be a substitute for it.
Never did the love of fight so inherent in the Scottish character
display itself more gallantly than on this day. Again and again the
Scottish earls dashed forward against the English squares. These were
composed of the steadiest of the pikemen flanked by the wondrous
archers who had turned so many a tide of battle. Fain would the veteran
warriors have kept their men in check; fain would the commanders of
the French auxiliaries have restrained the Scottish advance. But the
Northern blood was up. Onward they went, in spite of generalship and
all the rules of discipline, and with a great crash burst upon the wall
of steel. It was magnificent, as the Frenchmen said at Balaklava, but
it was not war. Repelled by the recoil of their own impetuous charge,
they fell into fragments and encumbered the gory plain. Very few fled,
very few had the opportunity of flying; for the cloth-yard shaft never
missed its aim. There was no crying for quarter or sparing of the
flashing blade. Both sides were irritated to madness. James pushed on,
shouting and waving his bloody sword, and was wounded by an arrow and
gashed with a ponderous battle-axe when he had forced himself within a
few paces of Surrey. Darkness was now closing in. The king's death was
rapidly known, but still the struggle went on. At length the wearied
armies ceased to kill. The Scotch retreated, and in the dawn of the
next morning a compact body of them was seen still threatening on the
side of a distant hill. But the day was lost and won. The chivalry of
Scotland received a blow from which it never recovered. What Courtrai
had been to the French, and Granson and Nanci to the Burgundians, and
Towton and Tewkesbury to the English, the 9th of September, 1513,
was to the peerage of the North. Thirteen earls were killed, fifteen
barons, and chiefs and members of all the gentle houses in the land.
Some were stripped utterly desolate by this appalling slaughter; and
from many a hall, as well as from humble shieling, rose the burden of
the tearful ballad, "The flowers o' the forest are a' wedd awa'." There
were ten thousand slain in the field, the gallant James cut off in
the prime of strength and manhood, and the sceptre which required the
grasp of an Edward the First left to be the prize of an unprincipled
queen-mother, or any ambitious cabal which could conspire to seize it.
James the Fifth was but a year or two old, and the country discouraged
and demoralized.
But Henry the Eighth was destined to some other triumphs in this
fortunate year. First there was the victory which his forces won at
Guinegate, near Calais, where the French chivalry fled in the most
ignominious manner, and struck their rowels into their horses' flanks,
without remembering that they carried swords in their hands. This
is known in history as the second Battle of the Spurs,--not, as at
Courtrai, for the number of those knightly emblems taken off the heels
of the dead, but for the amazing activity they displayed on the heels
of the living. And, secondly, he could boast that the foremost man
in Christendom wore his livery and pocketed his pay; for Maximilian
the Penniless, successor of Charlemagne and Constantine and Augustus,
enlisted and did good service as an English trooper at a hundred crowns
a day. Let Henry rejoice in these achievements while he may; for the
time is drawing near when the old sovereigns of Europe are to be moved
out of the way and France and Spain are to be governed by younger men
and more ambitious politicians than himself. Evil times indeed were
at hand, when it required the strength of youth and wisdom of policy
to guide the bark not only of separate states, but of settled law and
Christian civilization. For, however pleasant it may be to trace Henry
through his home-career and Francis and Charles in their national
rivalries, we are not to forget that the real interest of this century
is that it is the century of the Reformation,--a movement before whose
overwhelming importance the efforts of the greatest individuals sink
into insignificance,--an upheaving of hidden powers and principles,
which in truth so altered all former relations between man and man that
it found the most influential personage in Europe, not in the Apostolic
Emperor, or the Christian King, or the Defender of the Faith, but in a
burly friar at Wittenberg, whose name had never been heard before.