Castiglione, author of a book called _Il Cortegiano_, or “the perfect
courtier.” Struck by the qualities of the Italian people, the French
monarch cherished for them a peculiar love, and drew about him the most
celebrated men of the peninsula. Leonardo da Vinci died at Fontainebleau
almost in the arms of the king. Primaticcio, Il Rosso, Andrea del Sarto,
and Benvenuto Cellini came with alacrity at his call, and some of their
greatest works were destined to be the property of France. The early and
most illustrious French artists, among them Jean Goujon, were trained in
the school formed by these masters, and it was to the construction and
embellishment of Chambord and Fontainebleau that the king devoted their
inspired brushes and chisels.
The type of the old fortress-castle of feudal times gradually gave place
to another and less repellent one, that of the great pleasure-mansions
which included among their attractions everything that the most luxurious
and refined taste could devise. The court journeyed without ceasing from
castle to castle and from feast to feast, eliciting loud complaints from
the foreign ambassadors, who, though unable to afford the expense of such
continual moving about, were yet obliged to follow.
Not satisfied with the presence of foreign artists about him, Francis I
offered great inducements to men of science to visit his court. Erasmus,
the literary oracle of Europe, was warmly solicited to leave Holland and
establish himself in France, but he consented merely to make the voyage
thither. Many Italians, however, among whom was the poet Alamanni, and
a number of Greeks with the aged Lascaris at their head, established
for themselves a second fatherland in France. The famous Guillaume
Budé, guardian of the king’s library and one of the most learned men
of the century, was, with the Estiennes, deputed by the king to show
these colonists all the honours of the land. Francis I gave his envoys
to Turkey the mission of procuring for him manuscripts in Greek, and
the translation into French of ancient documents was undertaken; while
the art of printing, introduced in France during the reign of Louis XI,
underwent rapid development; the presses of Lyons, where a numerous
Italian colony had become established, gaining a celebrity for the town
almost rivalling that of Venice or Bâle.
The College of France, called in the beginning College of the Three
Tongues, was founded in 1529 after a plan indicated by Budé, less
with the object of giving general instruction than for the purpose
of promoting the study of the three languages of learning, Latin,
Greek, and Hebrew. The institution bore a great resemblance to the
Italian academies. Philology, its chief object, was the science most
in vogue at that time, as it was held to be the initiatory stage in
the study of antiquity. Thus conceived, the College of France left
all instruction, properly speaking, in the hands of the old Sorbonne,
the ancient university. True to its old scholastic spirit, opposed to
innovations, and attached to its ancient privileges which it now believed
to be menaced, the Sorbonne entered upon a bitter war against the new
institution; but the latter, strong in the royal favour and patronage,
issued victorious from the conflict. The number of chairs was increased,
to the study of languages was added that of science, particularly
mathematics, and beginning with the very first years of its existence the
College of France gained the reputation of being the most brilliant and
complete of all the European institutes of learning.
The reason for the creation of this college and for its rapid success
and growth may be found in the tendencies of an age that was rich in
discoveries of all kinds. There are, in the history of the human mind,
certain happy periods when the horizons of thought seem to become
enlarged on all sides at once. A new field was opened to philological
research, as the Middle Ages had had but little knowledge of Greek and
less of Hebrew. A corresponding progress was also made in geography and
the natural sciences by the study of climates and races hitherto unknown.
Always powerful over the entire country, the influence of the court
increased under Francis I, and was no less beneficial to letters and
society in general than it was to the cause of learning. The king,
beloved of his men-at-arms because he was the best knight in the kingdom;
of artists and scientists because he so generously patronised and
encouraged them, commended himself equally to courtiers, men of letters,
and ladies because no one in his realm carried to such a point as he
the love of the beautiful. Aided by his mother and sister and later by
his daughter-in-law Catherine de’ Medici, he made his court the most
remarkable in Europe, not only for the luxury it displayed but for its
wit and grace and a certain elegant not to say corrupt refinement of
manners that was best exemplified in the foreign princess brought up
under the eyes of Catherine, Mary Stuart.
Never had the French court counted so many members. Under Louis XII it
had been composed of a few favourites, a definite number of officers, and
a guard of a hundred nobles. Francis I increased in enormous proportion
the number of court officers, which he intended to bestow on upstarts
who could in this manner rise to nobility. The posts were mostly filled,
however, by landless gentlemen of birth upon whom were also bestowed
detached titles. Thus arose a company of marquises and dukes possessing
neither marquisates nor duchies. These two innovations alone would have
sufficed to make the court the point upon which converged all ambitions
and hopes of fortune. Francis I desired that women should share the
offices and dignities of the court, and should have a hierarchy of their
own; he loved to shower upon them, as upon his nobles, the marks of his
liberality. Two of his mistresses, Madame de Châteaubriant, sister of
Lautrec and of Lescun; and afterwards Mademoiselle de Heilly, whom he
made Duchess d’Étampes, reigned for a long time side by side with the
king, and patronised artists as well as distributed remunerative posts.
Unfortunately one cannot have much to say about this court without
speaking of its corruption, to which Francis I himself contributed by the
changes he brought about and by his personal example. Destroying as they
did the simplicity of former modes of living, the innovations introduced
by him resulted in confusion to the rules and usages of the nobility, and
fostered fawning and intrigues. His own many scandalous deeds as well as
those that were with impunity committed around him, have heavily burdened
his memory with the charge of violating the public morality.
It would, however, be most unjust to view the court of the Valois only
through the biased medium of Brantôme’s[p] chronicle of scandals, or the
writings of contemporaneous Calvinists. As for these latter, they have
neglected no means by which they could blacken the fame of the prince and
personages who were the first to persecute their co-religionists; hence,
on many points, their testimony is not to be believed. The letters of
Venetian envoys, on the other hand, who were observers of great depth
and keenness, reveal the warmest admiration for a court of which they,
among all foreigners, were the quickest to feel the great seduction and
charm. All the literature of this century, in fact, imaginative as well
as historical, attests with striking force the elevated character of the
influence exercised by the court of Francis I over public opinion.
Particularly prominent among the writers of that time are Marguerite
de Valois[q] and Marot,[r] the king’s valet, from whose works the
fairest judgments may be formed concerning the tastes of the court--its
gallantry, its love of wit and social pleasures, the esteem in which it
held pure learning and the tolerance it accorded free thought. Severely
as we may condemn certain of their works, they are nevertheless worthy to
serve as models for sentiment, beauty of form, and light, poetic grace.
To these two writers compare Rabelais, the author of the people, the
creator of that strange and inexplicable encyclopædia wherein, as the
product of a great intellectual debauch, the whole sixteenth century
passes by us in review, and you will be able to judge on which side
lay delicacy and taste, in what degree the literature of the court was
qualified to elevate and refine the literature of the people.[f] But,
on the other hand, Rabelais[70] remains a classic in our own day, while
these other writers are forgotten. Rabelais, indeed, is not merely the
greatest writer of this time, but by common consent he is named as one
of the three or four greatest humourists of any age or country.[a] His
work is in itself sufficient proof that Francis I destroyed neither the
liberty of his subjects nor their originality. Although more absolute
than his predecessors, Francis always took account of public opinion and
had the insight to distinguish, as Ranke[s] ingeniously puts it, enforced
obedience from that which is rendered voluntarily.
Thus even in those personal memoirs wherein the individuality of the
writer is most wholly revealed, it is to be observed that the tendency of
the century was all toward expansion, in height as well as breadth. We
note the origin, the preliminary flights of that freedom of thought and
research that was later to soar so high. Apparent as are the excesses of
the age, we must not judge it by its faults alone; its very shortcomings
raised controversies that served to form public opinion in a graver,
sterner mould. More ado was made about the use or abuse of supreme
power, which was for the first time subjected to control. The writer who
passes the severest judgment on Francis I and his court is Gaspard de
Saulx-Tavannes, the representative of the most radical of the independent
nobility.[f]
A word must be said about another phase of intellectual development--that
which found expression in the words and deeds of Luther and Calvin and
their followers.[a] The new opinions early crept into France; their
first converts were men of letters. All the great French jurisconsults
of that century, in secret or openly accepted the Reformation. A party
at the court itself inclined towards it. Louise of Savoy appears not
to have been opposed to it. Her daughter Marguerite, queen of Navarre,
an independent genius and the author of mysteries and novels, openly
professed the principles of the German reformers; the duchess of Étampes,
the king’s mistress, made a point of protecting them. Lefèbre d’Étaples
(Faber Stapulensis), and Louis Berquin, both men of learning known and
esteemed by Francis, sustained these in their favour: the first had
begun six years before Luther. Finally the favourite court poet, Clement
Marot, abandoned his elegies and epigrams to translate the psalms of
David, which the reformists of Paris sang about the Pré-aux-Clercs. At
first Francis, far from being alarmed at these symptoms, would fain have
attached to himself Erasmus of Rotterdam, the king of the learned and of
the men of letters of the century, who was accused of having prepared the
way for Luther by his attacks on the monks. But when the German peasants,
following out the new doctrines to their socialistic consequences, would
have overturned all authority, Francis I thought that the Reformation,
which was a revolt against the pope, was in danger of leading politically
to a revolt against the king; and if he remained the interested friend of
the German Protestants he had no wish to allow their doctrines to gain
ground in his own states.
During the king’s captivity two Lutherans had been burned in the capital.
He had put a stop to these executions, but in 1528 a statue of the Virgin
was mutilated at Paris. Francis declared that “if he knew one of his
own members to be infected with this doctrine he would tear it away for
fear lest the rest should be corrupted,” and from that day he persecuted
the innovators. Berquin, who refused to retract, was burned on the
place de Grève (1529); at Vienne, at Séez, at Toulouse there were other
executions. The necessity of propitiating the Protestants of Germany
mitigated the persecution. Again in 1536 six unfortunates were sacrificed
on different squares in Paris in presence of the court.[m]
WAR AGAIN BETWEEN FRANCIS I AND CHARLES V
[Sidenote: [1528-1535 A.D.]]
But we must not pause for further details of this character;[71] we
must return to the sweep of political events in France, and the renewed
quarrels of Francis and his old enemy Charles V. A lasting peace between
such rivals as Charles and Francis was not to be expected. Even if
the latter could have confined himself to the pursuit of pleasure, to
the internal regulation of his kingdom, and to the patronage of the
arts, the spirit of Charles, ever restless in the cabinet, could not
fail to have provoked him. At one time the emperor sent him a summons,
requiring his aid against the Turks, and ending with the accusation
that he had called Suleiman to invade Europe. Francis was now on the
closest terms of alliance with Henry VIII, who was bent on divorcing the
emperor’s aunt. The French king used all his influence with the pope
to procure the necessary license for Henry, but was still baffled by
the influence of Charles. Clement VII was the potentate whose alliance
was most warmly disputed by the rival sovereigns. And both assailed the
pontiff on a pontiff’s weak side, by the offer of aggrandisement to his
family. Charles proposed that Clement’s niece, Catherine de’ Medici,
should espouse Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan; by which means the
Medici would necessarily be ever adverse to the claims of the French
kings on Milan. Francis, in opposition, offered his second son, Henry,
duke of Orleans, as a husband for Catherine; and Clement, elated by the
honour of an alliance with the royal house of France, exulted at the
proposal. The emperor, who knew the proud character of Francis, could
not believe that he would sincerely permit his son to ally with such
upstarts as the Medici; and this incredulity neutralised the exertions
that he might otherwise have made to obstruct the match. It took place,
however, in 1533, at Marseilles, where Clement and Francis met to
honour the ceremonial, and to arrange the conditions of their future
friendship. One of these, there is no doubt, was the vigorous prosecution
and extirpation of heresy. Francis, however, reaped as usual little
advantage from the negotiation. He failed to obtain for Henry VIII the
dispensation required, and that impatient monarch broke with the church
in consequence. Clement himself died in the year following, and was
succeeded by Paul III of the house of Farnese.[i]
[Sidenote: [1535-1537 A.D.]]
Francis I and Charles V vied with each other in seeking alliance with the
church. Francis burned heretics in the great cities, and made adhesion
to the new opinions a crime against the crown. Charles, on the other
hand, led an expedition into Africa, and slaughtered the infidels in a
new crusade (1535). Victorious over Barbarossa, the usurper of Tunis, and
followed by the blessings of the thousands of Christian captives whom he
had delivered from slavery, he made his way to Rome. There, in presence
of the pope, he stood forth and made his complaint against Francis. He
declared his readiness to invest one of his sons with Milan, on such
conditions of suzerainty and subjection as he should afterwards choose to
name; failing that, to meet his enemy foot to foot, on horseback, or in a
boat, armed _cap-à-pie_ or naked to their shirts; or, finally, to declare
internecine war upon him, binding himself by an oath never to sheathe the
sword till he had made him the poorest gentleman that ever lived. After
this decent and courageous bravado, at which the pontiff must have been
greatly amazed, the assembly broke up in most admired disorder, and the
dogs of war were let loose. An invasion of France was resolved on, and
Charles already counted his victory so secure that he distributed the
estates of the French nobility among his favourites (1536). An army of
Spaniards and Italians was to overrun Provence, and another of Flemings
to break in on Picardy. Between the two, Francis was to be crushed.
[Illustration: A FRENCH NOBLEMAN, TIME OF FRANCIS I]
Misfortunes crowded, not in single file but in battalions, upon the
thoughtless but affectionate king. His eldest son Francis, the dauphin,
died at this time [suddenly; there were suspicions, probably unfounded,
of poisoning]. Defection deprived him of some of the strongest fortresses
in Savoy; and the forces of his enemy were reported to be on the soil of
France. Instantly the courageous Francis was roused from his grief and
dejection. The territory in front of the Spaniards was made a desert; the
cattle were driven away, the villages burned, and parties of resolute
horsemen sent forth to harass them on the march. Charles expected that
all would be risked on the arbitrament of one great engagement, and was
foiled by the unexpected tactics. He marched without glory, for he saw no
enemy; and without food, for every field was bare. Sickness came to aid;
and, in frightful disorganisation, the starving hordes hurried across
the Alps, slain and pillaged on their way by the angry peasantry, and
perishing in the clefts of the rocks of hunger and fatigue. Thus fell the
pride of the invader almost without a blow.
Francis took now the lofty part which hitherto had been played by his
rival; and at a bed of justice in the palace of the Louvre, summoned
his rebellious vassal before his feudal court (1537), stripped him by
solemn sentence of his tenures of Artois, Flanders, and Charolais, which
always had been held of the French crown, and of which his renunciation
at the Treaty of Madrid was null and of no effect, as having been
obtained by violence and fraud. Beside him, on this great occasion, sat
the king of Navarre and James V of Scotland, who had just married the
short-lived Madeleine of France--a more dignified, though not a more
useful demonstration than the quarrel-scene of his rival at Rome. The
forms of feudalism were occasionally revived to gratify a hatred, as
the forms of chivalry were retained to justify a duel; but the hatred
of the two greatest sovereigns in Europe carried them beyond the bounds
both of feudalism and chivalry. Their language, by their respective
heralds, would have done honour to two English prize-fighters. They
interchanged the names of perjurer and liar, and reminded each other of
the discomfitures they had sustained; Charles being particularly caustic
on the subject of Pavia and the prison of Madrid, and Francis retorting
with reminiscences of the emperor’s overthrow in Provence, and starvation
among the hills. Yet, in a year after this time, the enemies met, and
spent four of the happiest days of their lives in unrestrained intimacy
at Aigues Mortes, a small seaport on the Mediterranean. Charles arrived
in a galley. Francis went on board, and grasping his hand said, “My
brother, you see I am your prisoner again.” Charles returned the visit
on shore; listened well-pleased to the open unsuspecting talk of his
companion, and put down all his sayings, and plans, and recollections in
his memory, to be used against him at the proper time. He promised him
great things in return for all his confidence; the investiture of Milan
for his son, and aid in all his schemes.
[Sidenote: [1537-1544 A.D.]]
A French king at that time would have sacrificed anything for the
vainglory of establishing himself in Italy. Charles saw his triumph,
confirmed it by a friendly visit to Paris, and made use of it by
obtaining permission to pass through France to punish the men of Ghent
who had rebelled (1539). And, when thus the whole advantages of his
superior policy were secured, he denounced his friend to the indignation
of every Christian, as an ally of Suleiman the chief of the unbelievers,
and bestowed the duchy of Milan on his own son, Philip, the prince of
Spain. Five armies sprang up at the king’s lifting his hand, to revenge
this wrong and insult. But though indignation may raise troops, it
cannot raise money. Fresh burdens were imposed; church ornaments were
coined into crowns, but still the chest was empty. La Rochelle set the
dangerous example of rebellion on account of its over-taxation, and was
only quelled by alleviation of its payments and pardon of its behaviour.
Assistance was greedily looked to by both parties. Suleiman, the champion
of Mohammedanism, on the side of Francis, was balanced by Henry, the
defender of the Protestant faith, on the side of Charles. The Turks,
under the same Barbarossa whom Charles had displaced from Tunis, besieged
Nice, and ravaged the shores of Catalonia. Henry did little but keep
Scotland from aiding France by the intrigues and menaces with which he
sued for the hand of the unfortunate Mary Stuart, now queen, for his son
Edward. A great victory at Ceresoles, in 1544, added another useless
wreath to the chaplet of French achievements, and for a moment Milan
opened its gates. But Charles and Henry were by this time on the soil
of France. The Spaniards were at St. Dizier, the English at Boulogne.
Troops were summoned from Italy, and collected from all quarters. Charles
steadily advanced, seized Épernay, and rested in Château-Thierry. Paris
almost heard the thunder of his guns; and, flushed with the possession of
Boulogne, Henry was reported to be upon the march to join the army.
[Sidenote: [1544-1547 A.D.]]
But other sounds reached the ears of the belligerents. The Protestants in
Germany were sharpening their swords, and Charles feared the men of the
confession of Augsburg more than the Catholic French. A peace was patched
up at Crespy in the Valois (1544) which left things as they were, and
enabled the two monarchs to turn their religious minds to the extirpation
of heresy. The royal heretic [Henry VIII] who had been the faithful
ally of one of them, and the considerate foe of the other, contented
himself with demanding a bribe of 2,000,000 crowns for the restitution
of his conquests. From this time Francis and Charles had more interests
in common. Both glowed with a hatred of the Reformation such as only
tyrants can feel. They persuaded the pope to summon a general council to
extirpate Lutheranism and Calvinism at once, and while the famous council
of Trent was gathering from all the orthodox nationalities, they occupied
themselves in cruel persecutions of their suspected subjects (1545).[v]
LAST YEARS AND DEATH OF FRANCIS I
Francis, however, was growing feeble. He was no longer the brilliant
knight of Marignano or Pavia, the friend of Leonardo da Vinci and of
Erasmus. Worn out before his time by excesses, at fifty-one he was a
morose old man. The greatest blot on his reign belongs to these last
unhappy years. So long as the war with Charles V continued, Francis
I was careful not to offend the dissenters; the Edict of Coucy had
even ordered, in 1535, the suspension of all persecution on account
of religion. The peace concluded, men of harsh and sinister counsel,
such as Montmorency and Cardinal de Tournon, resumed the upper hand.
They attributed the king’s reverses to the relaxation of severity and
he allowed himself to be persuaded to order new executions. At Meaux
fourteen pyres were erected in one day (1546); at the place Maubert
Étienne Dolet was hanged and then burned.
The most odious execution was that of a whole inoffensive population,
the Vaudois, whose beliefs were more than three centuries old. In 1540
they had been condemned as heretics. The execution of the sentence had
been suspended in favour of a peaceable peasantry who paid their taxes
regularly and merely offered the spectacle of pure and simple manners
in the two little towns of Mérindol and Cabrières and in some thirty
villages of the Alps of Provence.
But in the month of April, 1545, precise and rigorous orders from the
court reached the parliament of Aix. Without warning, the baron de la
Garde, assisted by the president D’Oppède and the _avocat-général_ Guérin
and accompanied by soldiers, entered the territory of these unfortunate
people: 3,000 were massacred or burned in their dwellings; 660 sent to
the galleys; the rest dispersed in the woods and mountains, where the
greater part died of hunger and privation. For fifteen leagues round not
a house, not a tree was left.
Francis I, who perhaps did not know all the details of this execrable
drama, approved what had taken place and ordered the persecution to be
continued. Foreign affairs went no better. It was the time when Charles
V, no longer trammelled by the war with France and assured of peace with
the Turks, turned his forces against the Protestants of Germany and,
under pretext of stifling heresy, sought to stifle German liberty; the
battle of Mühlberg seemed to lay the empire at his feet. Francis I did
not see this great success of his rival; he had died three weeks before
at the château of Rambouillet, at the age of fifty-two years (31st
of March, 1547).[m] He was buried with a magnificence far surpassing
anything which had yet been witnessed in France; eleven cardinals
assisted at his obsequies, and the ceremony extended over two and twenty
days. The bodies of his two sons, the dauphin Francis and Charles duke
of Orleans, were conveyed to St. Denis together with his own, and Henry
II succeeded to the vacant throne.[n] Before we take up the events of
that monarch’s reign, let us listen to an estimate of the character and
influence of the showy ruler whose life story we have just followed to
its close.[a]
GAILLARD’S ESTIMATE OF FRANCIS I
[Sidenote: [1515-1547 A.D.]]
Charles V and Francis I (says Gaillard) perhaps owe it to each other
that they were great men; each had some advantages that were denied the
other. The leading characteristic of Charles was diplomacy, of Francis
straightforwardness. If we compare the two princes as warriors, the sum
total of their military exploits appears about equal; nevertheless the
deeds of Francis are more famous. His early career was so brilliant that
it has shed a lustre over his whole life, even over his misfortunes. To
gain a victory at twenty makes a man famous forever. Charles V began his
career, or at any rate distinguished himself in it, too late. His first
important expedition was the one against the Turks in 1532; for the time
when he appeared at Valenciennes only to fly on the approach of the king,
and the occasion of his failure before Bayonne, when he was enabled to
regain Fuenterrabia by the treachery of a coward, must count for nothing.
The expedition to Tunis in 1536 was the first exploit of Charles V
which can be compared with the battle of Marignano; nevertheless it was
certainly better to gain the battle of Mühlberg than to lose that of
Pavia. On the whole Charles V was perhaps the greater general and Francis
I the better soldier, and this division of military talent is very
much what might be expected from their individual characters, the one
deliberate and thoughtful, the other ardent and impetuous.
[Illustration: THE BOUNDARIES OF FRANCE IN THE TIME OF FRANCIS I]
In the matter of policy it cannot be denied that Charles V was much
greater than Francis I. He kept or gained everything that was contested
between him and his rival; he obtained the empire and took possession of
the duchy of Milan, and he kept the kingdom of Naples. Nor did he owe his
success entirely to the favour of blind fortune; it was rather the result
of wise conduct, well-thought-out methods, and the adoption of measures
likely to bring about the end he had in view. He was fortunate, and would
have been thoroughly worthy of his good fortune had he not so often used
fraudulent means to bring about success. He possessed in a high degree
the royal faculty of understanding men. The greatest generals in Europe
were to be found at the head of his armies; his ministers had no sway
over him, and he always employed them in the matters for which they were
most suitable. He understood both his own subjects and foreigners; he
knew that Bourbon was a hero and that Saluzzo was only a traitor. He
therefore made use of Bourbon for conquest and Saluzzo for treachery.
Bourbon was a hero, but he was a French refugee, so Charles placed
Pescara to act as a spy over him. Pescara was almost on an equality with
Bourbon and was jealous of him. Both men however were ambitious and not
very faithful, so Charles employed the trustworthy and useful Lannoy to
watch them both. He won over from France La Marck, Sickingen, the sublime
Bourbon, the prince of Orange, and Andrea Doria, the greatest men of
his time, while Francis only took from him the obscure prince of Melfi.
Charles V greatly excelled his rival also in steadiness and energy.
Francis I was capable of actions which dazzle us, but he was only
energetic by fits and starts, with long intervals of lethargy and
languor; while with Charles V there were no such intervals. Always full
of energy, he made his preparations, he carried them out, he plotted,
he sowed dissension where it suited his purpose to do so, he went to
Germany, to Italy, to Spain; he controlled the great powers and subdued
the lesser ones, he fettered them all by his negotiations. Bayle remarks
that since there were many more leagues formed against Francis I than
against Charles V, the former must have been more feared than the latter;
but it was the emperor’s cleverness which made people believe that
Francis I was so formidable. Moreover such leagues do not always prove
that the power of the person against whom they are formed is greatly
feared. After the defeat of the De Foix and the expulsion of the French
in 1522, the whole of Italy formed a league against them; was it because
she had more fear of Francis I, who was routed and expelled, than of the
emperor, who was master of the Milanese and of the kingdom of Naples?
No, but she thought she would be more likely to be left in peace if she
submitted quietly to the emperor, than if she made an effort to help the
fallen king to rise, by lending him a helping hand.
Henry VIII, it is true, more often allied himself with Charles V than
with Francis I. He thought he had some claim to France; he knew he had
none to Italy, to Germany, or to Spain. Charles V knew how to turn to
his own advantage the power of his rival, which he exaggerated in order
to injure him. But Francis I was far superior to his rival when he was
defending Provence against his attacks, and Bayle is right in saying
that he deserved more glory for preserving his own kingdom, in spite of
circumstances, than Charles V, who failed to do this notwithstanding his
great power and numerous intrigues, deserved for all his other conquests.
Again, Francis was superior to Charles when he warned the latter that the
people of Ghent were in rebellion, and allowed him to pass through France
on his way to subdue them; when he pardoned the rebels of La Rochelle;
when he behaved with such moderation after the scandalous scene in Rome;
and when, Charles having calumniated him throughout Germany, he took no
further vengeance than heaping benefits on the German merchants.
Finally, in military ability Francis I was at least the equal of Charles
V; in political genius he was his inferior, but he surpassed him in
honour: indeed his political inferiority was partly the result of a
greater moral delicacy, which made him more fastidious than Charles as to
the means by which he tried to gain his ends. In drawing this parallel
we have been looking at Francis I as a politician and a soldier, but the
point of view is not advantageous to him. He will perhaps shine more
brightly in the history of literature and of art.[o]
CHARACTER AND POLICY OF HENRY II
Henry II, at the age of twenty-eight, displayed all the military
qualities that had distinguished his father in his youth. He was trained
in every kind of physical exercise, and enjoyed the reputation of
being a most accomplished knight. “He possessed,” says Brantôme,[p]
“majesty and grace, and manners that were suavely royal. He loved war,
and never found life so much to his liking as when he was in the midst
of battle.” His enterprising character had revealed itself in the last
two struggles against Charles V, in which he had taken part under
Montmorency and D’Annebaut. Cavalli, the Venetian envoy, who erred on
the side of leniency, said of Henry that his excellent qualities gave
promise to France of the worthiest monarch that had reigned there in two
centuries. Like his father he made it a point to become acquainted with
every gentleman in his realm. He detested Charles V, and took no pains
to hide his feeling. The emperor well knew the bellicose humour of the
king towards him and exerted every effort to furnish it satisfaction.
“Henry’s father,” wrote Charles V to his ambassador at Rome, “drew the
Turk towards him by the hair of his head; Henry will seize him by hair,
hands, and feet.”
One thing, however, was wanting in the new king: though a poet, and
possessing like all his race a cultivated taste in literature, he lacked
that personal charm which made of Francis I the natural head of the most
cultured court in Europe. The men of letters in general have little to
say in his praise, and the Calvinists, whose numbers were constantly
increasing and whom he persecuted with relentless rigour, have least of
all been inclined to spare him.
COURT FAVOURITES
Scarcely had Henry II ascended the throne when he recalled Montmorency,
the master who had instructed him in the art of war and who had beguiled
the tedium of a recent period of disgrace by building the superb mansions
of Écouen and Chantilly. Montmorency immediately became all-powerful,
and showered upon his family the highest dignities and honours. Claude
of Guise, his brother the cardinal De Lorraine, and his six sons, all
destined to attain the highest eminence, were also given great prominence
in the councils of the new reign; they literally blocked the approaches
to the throne. “It seemed,” says Tavannes, “as though the king had sworn
to partition France among them.” Diane de Poitiers, grand sénéschale of
Normandy and mistress of Henry II, though many years his senior, wielded,
under the title of duchess of Valentinois, an influence far wider and
more powerful than that exerted by the duchess d’Étampes during the
preceding reign. By the marriage of her daughter she became allied to the
family of Guise, with whom all her future movements were made in concert.
Lastly Saint-André, a former governor of the king, was elevated to the
position of marshal, and the pope bestowed the cardinal’s hat upon two
favourite prelates, Charles de Bourbon, brother of the duke de Vendôme,
and Charles de Lorraine, archbishop of Rheims.
D’Annebaut, to whom Henry attributed the defeat of Perpignan; the
cardinal De Tournon, and several gentlemen who had served as secretaries
of state under Francis I were banished from the court. Out of eleven
cardinals who sat in the council seven were sent to Rome, partly with
the intention of propitiating the new ministry, and partly to strengthen
French influence with the government of Rome, and to establish a French
party in the sacred college. The duchess d’Étampes was also requested to
withdraw, the king even taking from her the diamonds she had received
from Francis I to present them to the duchess of Valentinois.
These many changes resulted, as was inevitable, in widespread discontent.
The new councillors were accused of rapacity, and the spirit of jealous
distrust in which they arrogated all the power to themselves highly
incensed the people, while the king was reproached with the weakness
which made him so readily yield himself over to be governed. The
highest personages made open traffic of court dignities and positions;
Montmorency in particular being accused of having furthered his own and
his kinsmen’s interests by bribes given to the highest nobles, and by
peopling the courts of justice with magistrates and councillors of his
own creation. Venality and corruption everywhere prevailed, and the
spirit manifested by new ministers in entering upon their office was
almost that of dogs rushing upon a quarry.
Not one of the writings, in which speaks prejudice or passion, that has
come down to us from that day is unquestioningly to be believed; it
is an unfortunate fact that many of our most entertaining historical
memoirs are little better than chronicles of scandals, since, however
incontestable may be the facts they contain, the manner in which these
are dressed is invariably calculated to mislead.
On the other hand these memoirs enable us to form an excellent idea
of the brilliancy of the court, of the intellectual standard of its
members, of the political ability of the councillors surrounding Henry
II, of the sentiments of honour and obedience by which were actuated the
nobility. It is seen that to untrammelled liberty of opinion, whether
in praise or blame, was allied a deep-seated reverence for law, for the
government, and for the king. Indeed many diplomatic documents, which for
a long time remained unknown, are to the honour of Montmorency, Diane de
Poitiers, and the Guises, attesting a truth that contemporaneous writers
of military memoirs seem scarcely to suspect--namely, that diplomacy can
accomplish more than arms. From the additional circumstance that the
records of the relations with Venice are mainly favourable to the court,
it will be seen that, strange though it may appear, it was the Frenchmen
of that day who contributed the most towards blackening the national
character.
Catherine de’ Medici, wife of Henry II, and Jeanne d’Albret, queen
of Navarre, also played parts during this reign, small at first but
increasing to great prominence as time went on. Catherine, whom Francis I
had loved and protected against her enemies, gave as yet no evidence of
personal ambition or greed for authority. She passively submitted to the
rule of the duchess of Valentinois, but worked stealthily all the time to
strengthen her own private influence--an influence which Diane herself
finally came to second, and which paved the way to the reign upon which
Catherine was soon to enter.[f]
RELIGIOUS PERSECUTIONS AND ROYAL MARRIAGES
The first days of his accession were employed by Henry in royal
progresses through his domains, and in shows and spectacles. In the last
of these he was himself a chief performer, and no one held the lists with
a firmer lance, or overthrew his opponent with a more scientific thrust.
Henry next proceeded to the slaughter of such of his people as began to
think for themselves on religious subjects. Gibbets were erected on the
side of the road by which he made his entrance into the good city of
Paris, and unhappy Protestants were suspended from them by cords round
their bodies, and dropped into a slow fire, which was kindled under them,
till they expired. The Protestant princes of the league of Smalkald had
been completely beaten at the great battle of Mühlberg within a month of
Francis’ death. The elector of Saxony and the landgraf of Hesse were
taken prisoners, their military followers dispersed, and to all human
appearance the cause of the Reformation on the continent was at an end.
Before the fruits of the battle of Mühlberg could be gathered by the
victors, news reached the confederated Protestants that a quarrel had
broken out between the French king and the emperor, and between the
emperor and the pope. They actually became the arbiters of these great
dissensions, and were courted by all parties. Charles, in order to
intimidate his holiness, insisted on the return of the general council
to Trent, where it had been originally summoned in 1544, and its removal
from Bologna, to which it had been transferred by Paul. This was to
place it where the influence of Protestant belief was greatest, and
already there were hopes of a compromise, by which Germany might become
an undivided power. England was under an eclipse at this time, and was
nearly forgotten outside of her guardian seas. Edward VI was on the
throne, Somerset was protector, and both were too weak to do anything
more than defend their authority against the cabals of the political and
religious parties into which the nation was split.
[Illustration: HENRY II]
The career was therefore open to the rival crowns. Charles, in entering
on the new contest, showed his usual sagacity, and made concessions
after having obtained all the advantages of force. He granted liberty
of worship to the Protestants by an imperial rescript, marriage of
their priests, and communion in both kinds, till the council of Trent
should come to a final decision. But this was assuming too much of the
pontifical authority to be pleasing to the pope. He protested against the
Interim, as this act was called, and prosecuted his schemes in favour of
France more zealously than ever. Persecution and toleration therefore
became the conflicting arms of the champions in this great struggle;
and it shows us how completely the political view at this time excluded
the religious, that the heretics were slain and tortured by a man who
was utterly regardless of the great question in dispute, while their
liberties were defended by a gloomy and unrelenting bigot, who looked on
them as the enemies of God and man.
Henry, too thoughtless to take warning by the sudden change in his
adversary’s treatment of the innovators, sought to strengthen his cause,
and increase the papal influence, by double severity against the new
faith. The massacres and atrocities perpetrated under Francis at Mérindol
and Cabrières rested for a long time in the memory of the people, till
they were expelled by still wilder excesses of fanaticism and hatred.
Rebellions, prompted by despair and over-taxation, broke out in several
places, and an expedition into Italy was thwarted by the necessity of
hurrying back to punish refractory Bordeaux. Disregarding the protest of
the local parliament, the edict of the king had imposed a duty on salt,
which maddened the consumers; for the article lay at their doors, and
the commissaries were inquisitorial as well as unjust. Montmorency, the
favourite, was in his element now. He was sent down to execute justice
on the revolters, and spared neither sex nor age. A hundred of the chief
artisans of Bordeaux were ignominiously hanged; crowns of red-hot iron
were placed on other sufferers’ heads while they were broken alive on the
wheel. The bells were taken down, in sign of the withdrawal of the city’s
municipal powers; and a breach was made in the walls, in sign of its
subjection to military law. Wherever the constable went, he was preceded
by the executioners of his vengeance; and having spread desolation and
misery through the whole south of the kingdom, he returned to Paris
in time to take part in the rejoicings which had been going on while
these terrible events occurred, for the marriage of Anthony de Bourbon
with Jeanne d’Albret. The mother of this Jeanne was the Protestant and
poetess, Marguerite of Navarre, the sister of Francis I; and the eldest
son of this marriage was Henry IV. These blood-stained espousals were the
connecting link between the follower of Bayard and the friend of Sully.
It is a great step when we come, with only one life between, from the
armed bravo of Marignano to the author of the Edict of Nantes.
[Sidenote: [1547-1548 A.D.]]
At this time also another marriage was resolved on, and another royal
bride made her appearance at the court of France. A beautiful and
graceful child she was, whose life has been studied with more zeal, and
fate lamented with more tears, than those of any other queen; for it was
the fair and unfortunate Mary of Scotland, transplanted now, in her sixth
year, from the bleak land which scarcely owned its allegiance, and always
refused its affections--to appear for a brief moment on the brightest
and gayest throne in Europe, and go back to the toils and struggles, the
errors and sorrows of her native realm. She was betrothed in 1548 to
Francis the dauphin, who later ascended the throne as Francis II. The
rejoicings on these two auspicious events were soon interrupted; for all
the nations were in a roused and unsettled state, and every day brought
forth some new complication of parties, or totally unexpected turn in the
progress of affairs.
A distinction seems always to have been drawn between the doctrines of
the Lutherans and the Calvinists. The Lutherans were considered merely
dissidents from the papal church, but the Calvinists were thought rebels
against royal authority. Excesses on both sides justified to superficial
observers the opinion, which inflamed the Catholics and reformers
with unappeasable rage, that their joint existence was impossible.
Catholicism, when it was triumphant, trampled on the faintest spirit of
dissent; and dissent, when it had the opportunity, retorted with almost
insane retribution. The release from the darkness in which all men’s
minds had been avowedly kept was too sudden to be wisely borne. The light
blinded their eyes, and the persecutors could point to their victims’
acts in justification of their own. This will account for the tragedies
and nameless horrors of the next half century in France, in which the
national character entirely changed. Jacques Bonhomme became a ravening
savage instead of a complaining drudge, and knight and cavalier became
brutalised below the standard of a Chinese mandarin or maddened Hindu.
WAR WITH CHARLES V AND HIS SUCCESSOR
[Sidenote: [1548-1552 A.D.]]
National efforts, however they might ostensibly be only on temporal
or political subjects, borrowed their spirit from these theological
dissensions. Wars, sieges, marriages, all had reference to the
great argument of the time; for it was felt on both sides that the
preponderance of either of the parties in the religious struggle would
decide the predominance of the political opinions which were supposed
to be involved. Protestantism and free government, if not the cry, was
already the sentiment of all the peoples, and Catholicism and loyalty
to the crown were the counterblasts on the other side. If Charles V,
therefore, at any time, perceived that the pope himself relaxed in his
opposition to the Calvinist reformers, he opposed the person of his
holiness without the least compunction, but with an unabated reverence
for his office; and if Henry II saw, in the midst of his executions of
the Protestants of his own kingdom, that encouragement of the Lutherans
of Germany would weaken his rival’s forces, he sent assistance to the
confederated princes. But both were equally bent on maintaining their
individual authority. It will therefore not surprise us when we perceive
that, in the year 1552, the part played by these unprincipled potentates
became reversed. Charles, the publisher of the Interim which secured the
Protestant demands, is at open war with them in Germany; and Henry, the
torturer of the reformers of his own kingdom, is armed in their defence.
Maurice of Saxony, however, saved the French king the trouble of crossing
the Rhine, for he secretly placed himself at the head of a band of
determined Protestants, forced the passes of the Tyrol, and scattered the
council of Trent, which was still carrying on its labours. Without check
or pause they marched without beat of drum, and got so close to the house
in Innsbruck where Charles was in bed with a slight illness, that his
imperial majesty had to fly with no more dignified apparel than his shirt
and stockings.
While the confederated princes were lamenting the escape of their
expected prisoner, they were cheered with a message from the emperor
himself offering terms of accommodation. The rapidity of his flight had
been increased by the knowledge, which reached him in his retreat, that
Henry, with a great French army, was on the borders of Germany, and ready
to cross over to the assistance of his enemies. Better, he thought,
to yield at once than allow his French rival to gain the glory of a
reconciliation. The princes accepted the offer, and wrote to beg Henry to
discontinue his advance. Henry yielded to their request by discontinuing
his advance; but indemnified himself by turning to one side, and seized
by main force the cities of Metz, Toul, and Verdun, spread his legions
over Lorraine, and made an attempt on Strasburg and the county of Alsace.
In this he was only repulsed by the Protestantism of the people. They
feared the most Christian king and had more confidence in the Catholic
emperor, who, to the great satisfaction and at the powerful request of
sixty thousand armed Lutherans, had just signed his name to the Treaty of
Passau. This Treaty of Passau was the termination for a long time of the
German strife. Equal rights were secured by it to Protestant and papist;
equal eligibility to seats in the great council of Speier, and mutual
freedom of worship in the states of both communions.
The war henceforth became a petty personal quarrel between the
sovereigns. Charles, having pacified the reformers, swore he would die
before the walls of Metz, which the king had taken, before he would raise
the siege; and Henry swore he would lose his last man before a Spaniard
crossed the ditch. It was a duel with the world gathered round the
lists. Metz was a wretchedly placed town, with no regular fortifications,
no bastions or towers, and was commanded by hills in the immediate
neighbourhood. But Francis, duke of Guise, threw himself into the place,
and made preparations for defence.[v]
_The Siege of Metz (1552 A.D.)_
[Sidenote: [1552 A.D.]]
On approaching the place, the 120,000 men who accompanied Charles V found
neither food nor trees nor shelter in a province which the stupidity of
the men of Brandenburg had ravaged without aim or profit, as completely
as the defenders of Metz might have done systematically in their own
interest. Albert, their markgraf, with the improvidence of a savage, had
reduced himself to famine. Charles V remained for a long time encamped at
Saarbrücken and at Forbach, waiting for his heavy artillery.
Guise had no intention of letting himself be surprised by this army,
masked as it was behind the forests, and most frequently employed himself
in visiting the guards and sentinels. He established a “watch” of mounted
men at St. Julien, to give warning of the approach of the enemy. In the
beginning of October, the imperial army came and encamped at St. Avold,
and on the 19th Metz was invested. Under fire of the enemy’s cannon,
Guise continued the defensive works. Frequent sorties kept up the ardour
and health of his garrison and exhausted the enemy by continual alarms
and losses. Every day brought some damage to the enemy, taking soldiers
and horses and spoiling the provisions that were being brought to them.
At the very beginning the emperor sent a trumpeter to Guise to announce
that Hesdin had been taken from the king of France and that his
brother, the duke d’Aumale, had fallen into the hands of the markgraf
of Brandenburg. But Guise did not heed these communications; himself
informed of what was passing outside, he was in constant communication
with the king, and imparted to him every episode of the siege, his hopes,
his checks, and the movements of the besieging army. His quarters were
near the Champagne gate, the principal object of attack, that he might
be at all hours on the spot where action and the greatest danger were
making ready. He had about five thousand men under his orders in the town
a few days before the investment, but he was entirely without artillery.
He sent a letter to the king, through the enemy’s lines, on the 29th of
October: “Having already split and cracked four of the seven pieces of
artillery I have had fired, am decided on careful consideration to load
them only with half charges, and to use them to terrify more by their
noise than their effect, and to employ falconets and other small pieces,
it not having depended on me to give warning of what I needed in good
time, when means to assist me were available.” He had a double cannon
on the Ste. Marie platform, but “one of the pins of the said piece is
sticking out; the other large culverin is burst at the front end, about
a foot and a half, and I have had it sawn off and shall still be able
to use it. I assure you, sire, that the fault was not that they were
overloaded, but they are so badly cast and of such brittle material that
they cannot bear even the smallest charge.”
Thus reduced to make use of his artillery only for noise, he still did
not hesitate to announce that he could defend himself for ten months.
Every two or three days he sent despatches to Fontainebleau or to the
relieving army; he indicated means of supplying him with news and of
seizing convoys. He wrote to his brother, the cardinal De Lorraine, to
the constable, to the marshal De Saint-André; he excited everyone to an
interest in the honour of saving his town. The cardinal shared this
passion with all the ardour of his vehement temperament. To relieve his
brother, to save Metz, to hurry to the king at any moment to suggest an
idea, propose a surprise of the besiegers, and--noteworthy solicitude
which shows the party leader still hidden behind the courtier--commend
to him those gentlemen whom his brother singled out for their gallant
conduct in the sorties, name those who were wounded, demand for his
partisans the offices of those who had just been killed, were the
occupations of his every moment.
On the 20th of November, Charles V approached the ramparts of Metz,
believing that in a few days they were to fall into his hands; but at
this moment his engineers judged it necessary to change the point of
attack. Whilst they opened new trenches in front of the Tour d’Enfer, not
a day passed but some troops of French horse went to alarm the enemy and
ransack the highways, where spoil was made of provisions and booty of
prisoners. On the 28th of November the Tour d’Enfer fell with a crash.
Guise wrote to the king that the breach was three hundred paces in width,
but that he did not fear the assailants, for “St. Rémy swears by all the
gods he will make them a tasty dish. I think, sire, they will not be cold
when they go out.” The whole garrison awaited the assault with the same
gaiety. The ensigns and standards were planted on the breach to defy the
enemy and every morning on mounting guard new colours were seen to float.
While filling the sacks of earth, the men-at-arms removed their cuirasses
and worked clothed in their “woollen liveries.” Bales of wool were rolled
by women beside the sacks of earth in the space left empty where the
rampart had fallen in. One evening Guise, between two of these bales,
was watching the preparations for an attack, when the engineer, Camillo
Marini, putting his head in the place whence Guise had just withdrawn his
own, suddenly received a discharge from an arquebuse which scattered his
brains.
[Illustration: THE DUKE OF GUISE
(From an old French print)]
[Sidenote: [1552-1553 A.D.]]
Only on the 7th of December did the assault seem imminent. Guise hurried
to the breach with all his volunteers whom he encouraged “by many of
those good words which incite to honour, to virtue, and to victory.”
The assault was not attempted, but the besieged had no time to rejoice
at this, for the next day they learned that Henry II was on the march
to besiege Hesdin, instead of advancing to the relief of Metz. It is
true that they showed no appearance of desiring to be relieved, but they
began to be sparing of provisions; Guise had the pack-horses of the
foot-soldiers killed and salted, in order to husband the forage for his
cavalry. The Tour de Wassieux fell in near the Champagne gate and left
a new breach a hundred paces wide: this opening was closed up like the
first, with sacks of earth; the sorties went on; sometimes two or three
were made the same day, by different gates. The wounded in the place were
numerous. For their benefit Guise sent for the surgeon Ambrose Paré,
who had drawn the lancehead from his cheek when he was wounded before
Boulogne, and an Italian officer of the imperial army consented for a
hundred crowns to introduce him into Metz by night with “his apothecary
and his drugs.” The privations and sufferings which the emperor’s army
had to endure rendered treasons of this kind possible, especially amongst
the Italians, bewildered as they were at finding themselves transported
to the north in the middle of winter for the sake of a German quarrel.
Whole bands of these Italians deserted from the camp of the besiegers
and went to take service with Henry’s army, detachments of which were
overrunning Lorraine and intercepting all the convoys of provisions sent
from Franche-Comté to the emperor.
The garrisons of Verdun and Toul intercepted food and reinforcements,
which were arriving from other points for the besieging army, carried off
the famished soldiers who wandered from the camp, and held enclosed in
mud and snow this confused multitude of men of all nations. The imperial
leaders were not in agreement. The duke of Alva would not allow his
veteran Spanish soldiers to be sacrificed under the eyes of the Germans,
who refused to advance for an assault. Charles V, exasperated at seeing
such weak walls and crumbling ramparts resist so formidable an army,
exclaimed: “How, by the wounds of God, is it that they do not enter? By
the virtues of God, what is the meaning of it?” He grew irascible, ill,
discouraged. He was heard to exclaim: “Ha, I renounce God; I see well
that I have no men left; I must bid farewell to the empire, and shut
myself up in some monastery, and, by God’s death, in three years I will
become a Franciscan!” Finally, beaten in several sorties, and embarrassed
by the capture of his provisions, he opened a furious cannonade without
attaining the foot of the wall, took to mining, in which he was not more
fortunate, and withdrew shamed and desperate on the 26th of December,
1552, leaving his army orders to raise the siege after his departure and
execute a retreat on Thionville and Treves, under cover of some cannon
mounted at the château de Ladonchamp. He had lost thirty thousand men
during the siege.
When, on the 2nd of January, 1553, Guise perceived the men in full
retreat, he precipitated himself with his garrison into the camp, to
seize the artillery and cut to pieces those who had lagged behind. But
a heartrending spectacle presented itself to the eyes of the French.
Whichever way they looked, lay so many dead, and an infinity of sick were
heard groaning in the huts. In every quarter were great cemeteries, newly
dug, tents, arms, and other abandoned furniture. Some of the sick were
lying in the mud, others were seated on great stones, with their legs
frozen up to the knees in mire, so that they could not withdraw them.
More than three hundred were rescued from this horrible condition, but
the greater number were obliged to have their legs cut off.
As if by magic, the French forgot their own sufferings, the dangers they
had just escaped, the martial ardour which had animated them, and thought
of nothing but how to succour these unfortunate Germans, thus abandoned
with their feet in the snow, administering all necessaries and such
comforts as poor sick foreigners want. Guise had them taken in boats to
the duke of Alva at Thionville.[u]
_Minor Engagements; the Abdication of Charles V_
[Sidenote: [1552-1557 A.D.]]
The following year the emperor besieged Thérouanne in Artois. The little
garrison which held it did not capitulate till after a valiant defence;
he had the town levelled with the ground and it was never rebuilt. Hesdin
was treated in the same fashion. Charles was avenging his humiliated
pride by a savage war. In 1554 Henry II paid him ravages for ravages in
Hainault and Brabant; he sacked Mariembourg, Dinant, and, at the other
extremity of the Low Countries, he attacked Renty, not far from St. Omer.
The emperor tried to relieve the place, Guise and Tavannes defied his
cavalry; but the French army was compelled by lack of provisions to raise
the siege.
At the same time, Brissac, by a series of campaigns which have remained
the model of their kind, maintained himself with a small army in
Piedmont, in spite of the duke of Alva, and seized Casale, capital of
Montferrat; Strozzi and Montluc defended Siena in Tuscany against the
Florentines and imperialists; the Turks menaced Naples; finally the
baron de la Garde, the French admiral in the Levant, sacked the island
of Elba and set foot in Corsica. Thus the check given at Metz was not
counterbalanced; France seemed to have recovered her youth with her new
king: Charles V grew weary of a struggle which he had now sustained for
five-and-thirty years. Frustrated alike by France and by the princes of
Germany, he ceded the Low Countries, Italy, and Spain to his son Philip
II, and sought at the monastery of San Yuste that repose which is never
to be found by the ambitious great (1556).
Charles V had not been able to deliver all his crowns to his son; Austria
and the title of emperor remained to his brother Ferdinand. The house of
Austria was divided. But at the moment in which Philip II lost Germany
he seemed to gain England by a second marriage with the queen of that
country, Mary Tudor. He had already one son, Don Carlos; he reserved
for him all the Spanish possessions, and it was agreed that the child
who might be born of this new union should reign over both the Low
Countries and England, that is to say, that London and Antwerp should
be under the same master, the Thames and the Schelde under the same
laws, and that the North Sea should become an English lake. Thus both
for the present and the future France was seriously threatened by that
domination which was pressing on her from three sides, which might bring
upon her an English invasion against which she could no longer hope for
aid from Germany. At the beginning of 1556 Henry II had signed the Truce
of Vaucelles with Charles V: he broke it the same year (November), that
he might not leave Philip II time to establish himself firmly. The holy
see was then occupied by a fiery old man, Paul IV, who was alarmed to
see the Spaniards beside and above him, at Naples and Milan. The king
and the pontiff made alliance. An army under command of Montmorency was
sent to the Low Countries; another under the duke of Guise into Italy.
The object was to confine Philip II to Spain; Henry II was to enlarge
his dominions on the north by neighbouring provinces which it would be
easy to retain, and one of his sons received the promise of the crown of
Naples, which Duke Francis of Guise, descended in the female line from
the house of Anjou, counted on taking for himself. The plan was well
thought out. The energetic Paul IV placed his spiritual power at the
service of France and the Italian cause; he lanced an excommunication
against the most Catholic king.
_Battle and Defence of St. Quentin (August 10th, 1557)_
[Sidenote: [1557-1558 A.D.]]
Against Montmorency, Philip II opposed the duke of Savoy, Emmanuel
Philibert, who, despoiled of his states by Francis, rested all his
hopes on Spain; and against Francis of Guise, the duke of Alva, a true
Spaniard, devoted to the church more even than to his king. Guise,
received in triumph at Rome by Paul IV, penetrated into the Abruzzi, but
failed near Civitella before the scientific tactics of his adversary.
Emmanuel Philibert, after a feigned attack on Champagne, suddenly turned
on St. Quentin where he was joined by seven thousand English. This was
a place without walls, without munitions, without provisions. Admiral
Coligny threw himself into it with seven hundred men; Montmorency
approached with supplies; but came so near to the enemy with an army
very inferior in numbers and took so few precautions to preserve for
himself freedom of movement, that he was obliged to fight without
securing his rear. Emmanuel Philibert turned his flank, attacked him
in front and rear, and completely defeated him. A Bourbon, the duke
d’Enghien, and a viscount of Turrenne were slain; another Bourbon, the
duke de Montpensier, and the constable De Montmorency, the marshal De
Saint-André, the duke de Longueville were taken with four thousand men,
the artillery, and the baggage. There were more than ten thousand killed
or wounded.
“Is my son at Paris?” cried Charles V on learning in the depths of his
retreat of San Yuste of this great disaster to France. Philip II was not
at Paris and did not get there. Cold and methodical of temperament, and
obstinate but without dash, he had not thought it prudent to follow up
his victory. Before taking another step he wished to have St. Quentin,
and St. Quentin did not allow itself to be taken for seventeen days.
Coligny, knowing that the salvation of France was in question, had made
heroic efforts to prolong the defence. There had been time to collect
forces and Philip II, after having taken Ham and Le Catelet, re-entered
the Low Countries with the slender results of a victory which had
promised to be as disastrous to France as Poitiers or Agincourt.
_The Retaking of Calais (1558 A.D.)_
[Sidenote: [1558-1559 A.D.]]
Henry II had recalled the duke of Guise in all haste from Italy. The
conqueror of Metz left the duke of Alva to impose, one knee on the
ground, the Spanish will on the pope, and came to receive the title
of lieutenant of the kingdom with unlimited power. All the nobility
flocked round him; Guise responded to the universal expectation. Whilst
a movement of the troops was attracting the attention of the enemy on
the side of Luxemburg, the duke hastened to Calais which he immediately
invested on the 1st of January, 1558. The English, reckoning on the
fortifications of the place and on the marshes which envelop it, had
left in it but nine hundred men. Two forts cover the town: that of
Nieullay on the land side and that of Rysbank on the side of the sea.
Guise attacked the first with fury and carried it on the 3rd of January.
The fort of Rysbank fell into his power the same day. On the 6th the
castle was attacked; on the 8th the garrison capitulated. The last and
shameful memorial of the Hundred Years’ War was thus effaced; the English
no longer possessed an inch of territory in France. In an attempt to
compensate themselves by an attack on Brest they were unsuccessful, for
the troops landed at Le Conquet were driven back into the sea by the
peasants of lower Brittany. This was the death-blow of Queen Mary. “If
they open my heart,” she said when she was dying, “they will read upon
it the name of Calais.” The same blow ended the Anglo-Spanish alliance.
Elizabeth, who succeeded her sister Mary on the English throne, made
Protestantism triumphant in the island and became the irreconcilable
enemy of the king of Spain.
_The Treaty of Câteau-Cambrésis (1559 A.D.)_
Indeed Philip II, that sombre and fanatical spirit, desired to attain the
dominion of Europe by another road than his father’s. Half of Germany
and the Scandinavian states had separated themselves from Rome, and
the Reformation, stifled in Italy and Spain, was fermenting in France,
spreading in the Netherlands, triumphing in Scotland and England. Philip
II conceived the design of crushing Protestantism. He wished to make
himself the armed leader of Catholicism throughout Europe, the secular
arm of the holy see, the executor of the sentences of the church. His
faith and his ambition were in agreement; for he doubtless calculated
that if he stifled heresy it would not be to the profit of orthodox
Christianity alone, but to that of his own power, and that the unity
of religion would bring about the unity of the empire. In this idea a
war with France for a few towns on the frontiers seemed at the moment
impolitic and he desired to treat with its king in order to win him to
his own plan. Before the peace was concluded some further encounters took
place; Guise seized Thionville and Therme, captured Dunkirk, Bergues,
and Nieuwport, but suffered a defeat by allowing himself to be caught at
Gravelines between the count of Egmont who attacked him in front, and an
English fleet whose cannon belaboured his flanks. On the 3rd of April,
1559, peace was at last signed.
By this treaty France kept the Three Bishoprics (Metz, Toul, and Verdun
with their territory). She had already re-entered into possession of
Boulogne; she also retained Calais, engaging to pay a sum of 500,000
crowns to the English if she had not restored that city at the end of
eight years--which she took good care not to do. The two kings of France
and Spain mutually restored each other their conquests on the frontiers
of the Low Countries and in Italy, with the exception of Piedmont where
Henry retained several towns[72] until the claims of Louise of Savoy,
grandmother of the king of France, should be settled. The acquisitions
of France were valuable and protected her against England and Germany.
Nevertheless, one of the negotiators, Montmorency, has been accused of
having sacrificed his country’s interests to the desire of recovering his
own liberty more quickly; France ceded the county of Charolais, and 189
towns or castles, which she was occupying in the Low Countries or in
Italy, in return for St. Quentin, Ham, Le Catelet and a few unimportant
places which the Spaniards surrendered to her. “Sire,” Guise and Brissac
said bitterly, “you give in one day what would not be taken from you in
thirty years of reverses.” Some towns in Italy were neither necessary nor
desirable for the French, for they would have served them as a perpetual
temptation to return across the Alps. But they were abandoning French
territories which should have been preserved at all costs, especially as
the Spaniards did not restore Jeanne d’Albret the portion of her kingdom
of Navarre which they had held for half a century.[m]
Thus the great game of international politics that for half a century
had been played on the boards of Europe was brought to apparent
termination,--and France had lost. Since the time of Charles VIII,
France, as represented by its king, had longed for foreign conquests.
We have seen Francis I in a life-long struggle with Charles V, striving
vainly to give imperial influence to his kingly office. Henry II has kept
up the game, with Philip II for his counter-player. But now, after all
these struggles, all this loss of property and life, the bounds of France
still remain almost the same as they were when Francis I came to the
throne in 1515. The glamour of the deeds of Francis I may have given a
certain added éclat to the French name; but the actual extra-territorial
influence of France has shrunk rather than extended since the time when
Charles VIII marched practically unopposed to the confines of Italy
(1494).
On the other hand, the duchy of Bourbon has reverted to the crown,
and the recovery of Calais is an event of real significance. With the
expulsion of the English troops from this last coign of vantage, the work
begun by Joan of Arc a century before is finished. If the imperial hopes
of the French kings have been doomed to disappointment, at least France
is now mistress of her own territory; hers is a compact and unified
kingdom, if not an empire in the modern sense of the word.
THE LAST DAYS OF HENRY II
It is not to be supposed, however, that the French king regarded the
imperial contest as really over. Doubtless Henry II, while momentarily
turning his attention to the interior of his kingdom, dreamed of a future
day when he should return to the imperial struggle. But if so, the dream
was not to be realised. The end of his life was at hand. The same year
that witnessed the signing of the treaty of Câteau-Cambrésis was to see
Henry II pass finally from the scene; indeed there is nothing more to
record of him except the manner of his death. This came about in a way
characteristic of the times, but impossible in any other age; it was
the accidental outgrowth of the festivities that marked in a sense the
culminating features of the treaty.
It had been arranged that a double marriage of international significance
should be effected. Henry’s daughter was to marry the king of Spain; his
sister to marry the duke of Savoy. Thus the great imperial drama was
to close in the conventional way amidst the peal of wedding bells. The
weddings took place; but the fates mocked at such an ending, and insisted
that what had commenced as a tragedy should remain a tragedy to the
end.[a] In scandalous contrast to the feverish agitation--an exaltation
mingled with dread--that pervaded all France, the court had given itself
over to pleasures and festivities: nothing but balls, masquerades,
jousts, and banquets on the occasion of the double marriage of the
princesses of France. But the joyous sounds were soon to be changed to
the silence of death. On the 20th of June, 1559, Madame Elizabeth of
France, daughter of the king, was married at Notre Dame to the duke of
Alva, proxy of the king of Spain. On the 27th the contract of the duke
of Savoy and Madame Marguerite, the king’s sister, was signed. Splendid
lists were marked out, at the end of the rue St. Antoine, facing the
royal palace des Tournelles, and almost at the foot of the Bastille where
the deposed magistrates were imprisoned. During three days the princes
and lords tilted there in presence of the ladies. On the 29th of June the
champions (challengers) of the tournament were the dukes of Guise and
Nemours, the son of the duke of Ferrara and the king in person, wearing
the colours of his sexagenarian lady, the white and black of widows,
which Diana had never left off. When the passage at arms was finished the
king who had ridden in several races as “swift and expert rider” wished
to break another lance before retiring, and in spite of the entreaties of
the queen he ordered that the count de Montgomery should be his opponent.
Montgomery in vain tried to be excused. The two jousters rushed violently
against each other and broke their lances with dexterity. But Montgomery,
forgetting to throw away instantly the fragment remaining in his hand as
the rule was, involuntarily struck the helmet of the king, penetrating
the bars of his visor, and thrusting a splinter of wood into his eye. The
king fell on the neck of his horse, which carried him to the end of the
enclosure; here his equerries received him in their arms, and carried him
to Tournelles amidst the greatest confusion and indescribable dismay. All
the aids of science were ineffectual; the wood had penetrated into the
brain. Vainly the renowned Vesale hastened from Brussels on the command
of Philip II; Henry II languished eleven days, and expired on the 10th of
July after having the marriage of his sister Marguerite with the duke of
Savoy celebrated in his chamber the day before his death. He was a few
months over forty years of age. All Protestant Europe hailed the arm of
the Almighty in this thunderbolt which had struck down the persecuting
king in the midst of his “impious” festivities.
The reformers were not mistaken. The race of Valois was doomed. Restored
in the fifteenth century by the greatest marvel in French history, it had
disregarded the will of God as indicated by Joan of Arc. In the sixteenth
century it outraged humanity and hampered the natural development of
France. Its days were numbered. Now replacing the fanaticism of Henry
II by a policy devoid of principle or sincerity, it was to strive at
random during thirty years against the tempests of the religious wars, to
disappear finally in a sea of blood.[k]
FOOTNOTES
[67] [See vol. IX, Chapter XV, for the complementary account of this and
the subsequent Italian campaigns of Francis I.]
[68] [Charles had succeeded Ferdinand the Catholic, who died in 1516.
Francis made no murmur when Charles entered into his vast heritage;
indeed, he signed a treaty of offensive and defensive alliance with him
at Nyon in 1516. France gained nothing by it except the restitution
to Jeanne d’Albret of Basse-Navarre, which Ferdinand had seized. But
Maximilian’s death in 1519 changed the whole face of affairs.]
[69] [“I purposely make use of this Protestant term,” says Martin,
himself a Catholic, “as expressing a particular form of Catholicism.”]
[70] [The work of Rabelais is discussed in Chapter XIV of the present
volume.]
[71] [For a study of the Reformation, see vol. XIII.]
[72] The treaty of 1562 with Savoy finally left France only Pinerolo,
Perosa, and Savigliano, which were restored by Henry III in 1574. The
marquisate of Saluzzo which Francis I had snatched from the family of
that name was usurped by Savoy in 1588 and in 1601 exchanged for Bresse.
[Illustration]