The treaty signed, the two monarchs seemed to become at once the best of
friends. They often appeared together in public; they had long conferences
in private; they travelled in the same litter and joined in the same
amusements; the highest confidence and affection seemed to exist between
them. Yet this love was all a false show,--Francis still distrusted the
emperor, and Charles still had him watched like a prisoner.
In about a month the ratification of the treaty was brought from France,
and Francis set out from Madrid with the first true emotions of joy which
he had felt for a year. He was escorted by a body of horse under Alarcon,
who, when the frontiers of France were reached, guarded him as
scrupulously as ever. On arriving at the banks of the Andaye River, which
there separated the two kingdoms, Lautrec appeared on the opposite bank,
with a guard of horse equal to that of Alarcon. An empty bark was moored
in mid-stream. The cavalry drew up in order on each bank. Lannoy, with
eight gentlemen and the king, put off in a boat from the Spanish side of
the stream. Lautrec did the same from the French side, bringing with him
the dauphin and the Duke of Orleans. The two parties met in the empty
vessel, where in a moment the exchange was made, Francis embracing his
sons and then handing them over as hostages. Leaping into Lautrec's boat,
he was quickly on the soil of France.
Mounting a Barbary horse which awaited him, the freed captive waved his
hand triumphantly over his head, shouted joyfully several times, "I am yet
a king!" and galloped away at full speed for Bayonne. He had been held in
captivity for a year and twenty-two days.
Our tale of the captivity of the king ends here, but the consequences of
that captivity must be told. A league was immediately afterwards formed
against Charles, named the Holy League, from the Pope being at its head.
The nobles of Burgundy refused to be handed over to the imperial realm,
and an assembly called by Francis absolved him from his oath to keep the
treaty of Madrid. Francis, bewailing his lack of power to do what he had
promised in regard to Burgundy, offered to pay the emperor two millions of
crowns instead. In short, Charles had overreached himself through his
stringency to a captive rival, and lost all through his eagerness to
obtain too much.
Ten years afterwards the relations between the two monarchs were in a
measure reversed. A rebellion had broken out in Flanders which needed the
immediate presence of Charles, and, for reasons satisfactory to himself,
he wished to go through France. His counsellors at Madrid looked upon such
a movement as fatally rash; but Charles persisted, feeling that he knew
the character of Francis better than they. The French king was ready
enough to grant the permission asked, and looked upon the occasion as an
opportunity to show his rival how kings should deal with their royal
neighbors.
Charles was received with an ostentatious welcome, each town entertaining
him with all the magnificence it could display. He was presented with the
keys of the gates, the prisoners were set at liberty, and he was shown all
the honor due to the sovereign of the country itself. The emperor, though
impatient to continue his journey, remained six days in Paris, where all
things possible were done to render his visit a pleasant one. Had Francis
listened to the advice of some of his ministers, he would have seized and
held prisoner the incautious monarch who had so long kept him in
captivity. But the confidence of the emperor was not misplaced; no
consideration could induce the high-minded French king to violate his
plighted word, or make him believe that Charles would fail to carry out
certain promises he had made. He forgot for the time how he had dealt with
his own compacts, but Charles remembered, and was no sooner out of France
than all his promises faded from his mind, and Francis learned that he was
not the only king who could enter into engagements which he had no
intention to fulfil.