had grown up neglected in the castle of Amboise, far from the Court,
alone with his gentle forsaken mother, Charlotte of Savoy, who had
taught him the only thing she knew, the plots of innumerable romances of
chivalry. For Louis XI., partly afraid of injuring the delicate
constitution of his only heir, and partly remembering his own dangerous
and rebellious childhood, denied any solid education to his son. He
never saw the boy, leaving him for years at a time to grow up as best he
might alone with his mother at Amboise. “Let the body grow strong
first,” said the King; “the mind will look to itself.” And, according to
tradition, the sole food that he provided for the eager mind of his son
was one single Latin maxim: _Qui nescit dissimulare nescit regnare_.
This was all the Latin that was taught to Charles VIII., and on this
solitary morsel of classic attainment he was never known to act. Louis
XI., for all his subtlety, had forgotten that by simply withholding one
sort of education you cannot insured vacuity. The child at Amboise knew
nothing of history, nothing of geography, nothing of the classics. But
his mind was stuffed with the deeds of Roland and Ogier, and the beauty
of _La belle dame sans merci_. Suddenly one summer day, unwonted
messengers knocked at the gates of Amboise; they fetched the child away
to see an old, misshapen, suspicious man, whom he did not know—who was
his father. The next day Charles VIII. was king of France under the
regency of his married sister, Anne de Bourbon. Madame Anne inherited
her father’s dislike and distrust of Orleans; but her sister was his
wife and adored him, and her brother, the king, admired him. She did her
best to repress Orleans in France; but her hand, though firm, had not
the solidity of her father’s. Orleans grew and expanded.
Just at this moment Venice was in sore distress. Almost every power in
Italy was against her, and she turned for help to France. On January 16,
1484, she sent Antonio Loredan to Charles VIII., complaining of the
aggressions of Naples, Milan, and Ferrara, and desiring a resumption of
the Franco-Venetian league of Louis XI. That league had been a very tame
and passive piece of policy; the Venetians hoped a bolder favour from a
younger king. Loredan was bidden to insist upon the suggestion that the
kingdom of Naples occupied by Ferdinand of Arragon, belonged in fact to
France.[95] “Nor content with that,” run the instructions of the Senate,
“this king it was who instigated Lodovico Sforza to the usurpation of
Milan.” Lodovico il Moro,[94] the fourth son of Count Francesco Sforza,
had, as a matter of fact, usurped the position of his nephew in 1481,
and, though nominally regent, conducted himself as Duke of Milan. But
this intrusion was not the seizure which now the Venetians meant to
blame. They wished to suggest, as the lawful claimant, not the young son
of Galeazzo Sforza, but the Duke of Orleans.
“Express to the Duke of Orleans in secret our desire for his exaltation
[run the instructions given to Loredan], and explain to him how good is
the opportunity for him to recover the Duchy of Milan, which belongs to
him by right; and how his claim would be favoured by the differences and
dissidences at present existing between ourselves and Milan, as also by
the discontent of the Milanese with their tyrants. Inform the Duke that
Lodovico Sforza aspires to seize the sovereignty for himself, amid the
murmurs of his people, and that he will certainly massacre all who
uphold the claim of the Duchess Bona. Inflame and excite as best you can
the Duke of Orleans to pursue this enterprise, ... and if the French
should choose to make good their claim to Naples as against the tyrant
Ferdinand, they could not find a better time than now.”[93]
Footnote 93:
MSS. Secreta del Senato, Reg. 31, fol. 123, tergo.
Footnote 94:
Many reasons have been given for the assumption of this surname. As a
fact it appears to have been a baptismal name. In February, 1461,
Bianca Maria Sforza sent to the shrine of the Santo at Padua the
silver image of a child, _ex voto_ for the recovery of her fourth son,
Ludovicus Maurus, _filius quartus masculus_, aged five years.
(“Archivio Storico Lombardo,” Anno xiii; Caffi on B.M. Sforza.)
Footnote 95:
Reg. 31, fol. 131, tergo.
This is the programme of the great invasions of 1494 and 1500; but the
times were not yet ripe. On February 4th the Ten despatched a second
missive to the Duke of Orleans,[96] instigating him to the speedy
conquest of Milan, and offering him the entire Venetian army for this
service. The young Duke appears to have taken these proposals very
seriously, and the project created some disturbance and quarrelling at
Court. But the Venetians were incapable of any sustained policy in
foreign affairs; to serve Venice in the way that at the moment appeared
most advantageous was their only aim, and thus their attitude was one of
constant unrest. In August they made peace with Naples and Milan, and
sent word to Orleans that they were glad to hear that all disunion was
at an end between him and the King. The same thing had happened in
Italy. Peace had set in under the happiest auspices, and a fraternal
affection united the King of Naples and the Regent of Milan with the
Venetian Senate.
Footnote 96:
Reg. 32, fol. 87.
So ended the project for a French succession. Louis of Orleans, thwarted
of his foreign ambition, strove for greatness at home, and contested the
regency with Anne of Bourbon. The civil war, the flight into Brittany,
the pretensions of Louis to the hand of his beautiful cousin (the
heiress to that duchy), the defeat of the Orleanist troops at
Saint-Aubin on July 28, 1488, and the three years’ captivity of the
Duke, are matters of common knowledge. But as Charles VIII. grew out of
the tutelage of his sister, more and more he grew to favour his
imprisoned cousin. There was little to fear from him now that the King
was a major, and Anne of Brittany the Queen of France. In 1491 the Duke
was released; and when in 1494 Charles at the head of his troops invaded
Italy, Louis of Orleans preceded him across the mountains, chief in
command, master of the fleet, destined to drive the Neapolitans from
Genoa, and thence to lead the fleet of France into the port of Naples.
VII.
The invasion of Italy by Charles VIII. appeared, even to contemporaries,
a miracle. The young King, ill advised, without generals, without money,
with the impromptu army of a moment’s whim, traversed hostile Italy as
glorious as Charlemagne. Charlemagne, in fact, was the true leader of
his forces: for that glorious phantom marched before him, filling with
dread the hearts of the enemy, and blinding them to the actual penury of
the invader. With the events of that romantic campaign we have no
business at this moment, for, notwithstanding his commission to lead the
fleet to Naples, the Duke of Orleans did not go south of Lombardy. While
Orleans was gaining the battle of Rapallo, suddenly the King arrived at
Asti. It was Sept. 9th, a malarious season. Across the wide plain, the
marshy fields of Lombardy, Orleans galloped, fresh from victory, to a
council with the King. He had scarcely arrived at Asti when Charles fell
ill of the small-pox. The attack was slight, and within a fortnight he
recovered. But the very day the King began to mend, Orleans sickened of
a quartan ague, and when his cousin was well again and ready, on Oct.
6th, to set out for Naples, Orleans was still unfit to take the road. He
sent his company south with the royal troops, and with a handful of
squires and servants remained behind in his hereditary county of Asti,
among the subjects who had loved his father, and who had served himself,
far-off, unseen, through years of peril and intrigue, with as devoted
and chivalrous a spirit of loyalty as ever the highlanders of Jacobite
Scotland dedicated to an absent Stuart.
Sforza and Orleans were now the nearest neighbours, bound to each other
by their interest in the King. Fate has seldom brought about more ironic
complication. When Lodovico Sforza, out of revenge and anger towards
King Ferdinand, had revived the French claim to Naples, and had
instigated Charles to enter Italy, he had not foreseen the accident that
left the Duke of Orleans within a league or two of Milan. Charles VIII.
entered Italy as the friend and guest of Lodovico il Moro, the Regent of
Milan. To the external and uninitiated world the French claim to the
duchy appeared about as actual as the claim of the English kings to
France. Lodovico il Moro, familiar with the France of Louis XI., knew
that the claims of Orleans were not likely to be countenanced by the
throne.
The present is never clear to us. Its Archives, its Secreta, are not
given over to our perusal. Lodovico il Moro was probably uninstructed in
that secret policy of the Venetian Senate which, in 1483, had so
strongly urged the half-forgotten rights of Orleans. But we, familiar
with those silent manuscripts, are not surprised to find that no sooner
had the King gone south than Venice and Florence began to interfere with
Orleans. The very day the King left Asti,[97] a secret messenger from
Piero de’ Medici entered the city. His errand was to Orleans. In their
desire to stop the progress of Charles VIII., and in their hatred of
Lodovico who had invoked the stranger, the Italian princes proposed to
offer Milan to the French in place of Naples. Orleans himself suggested,
unknown to his chivalrous young cousin, that the King would be satisfied
if Ferdinand would pay him homage for Naples, and, besides a war
indemnity, a yearly pension such as the kings of France pay to England.
For himself, and as a just fine on Lodovico, he intimated that the Duchy
of Milan might be divided between the houses of Orleans and Sforza. But
as time went on, and the arms of France were everywhere successful, he
grew bolder in his demands, and “Milan for the heir of the Visconti” was
his cry.
Footnote 97:
The messenger left Florence Oct. 3, 1494. See for further details of
these schemes the first vol. of Desjardins’ “Nég. dip. dans la
Toscane.”
But Charles, ignorant of the intrigues of Orleans and Florence, of
Venice and of Sforza (who also for his private ends wished the King to
keep this side the Apennines), crossed the southern range as he had
crossed the Alps, and by the new year he was in Rome. Then, afraid of
the French success, the Italians began to draw back from their
conspiracy with Orleans. They had wished the French to take Milan
instead of Naples, but Milan as well as Naples was too much.
VIII.
When the French had entered Italy, Orleans had had no legal rival to his
claim, unless, indeed, the Emperor be called his rival. To the people of
Lombardy, oppressed by taxes, hating their tyrant, he appeared as the
rightful heir, the last of the Visconti. Round the history of a past not
yet remote there had grown a mist through which all things appeared of
vague, heroic, and mysterious proportions, of which the King Arthur, the
legendary glory, was the first duke—“Saint Giangaleazzo,” as one of the
brothers of Pavia called him in the presence of Commines. “This saint of
yours,” cried the amused historian, “was a great and wicked, though most
honourable, tyrant.” “That may be,” said the brother; “we call him saint
because he did good to our order.”
This was also the feeling of the Milanese, for whom Giangaleazzo had
invented security and peace, for whom he had conquered immense
possessions. They forgot his sins, his crimes, and the first duke became
the hero of the place. To be the last descendant of this man seemed in
itself a claim to inherit his possessions, to sit in his place, to expel
the usurper. While this was their feeling, in October the usurper died.
Giangaleazzo Sforza, Duke of Milan, a youth of five-and-twenty, kept in
prison by his uncle, the Regent Lodovico, died no less suspiciously than
the little princes in the Tower. He left behind him a son four years
old, his legitimate successor. But, with ominous prevision, a year
before this time, Lodovico the regent had negotiated with the Emperor to
obtain the reversion of the duchy. He had admitted that his father, his
brother, his nephew were no more than illegal usurpers: moreover they
had prejudiced the rights of the empire by receiving their titles only
from the people. Thus the infant son of Giangaleazzo was the son, not
merely of a usurper, but of a man who had forfeited whatever rights he
originally had. Conceding this, Lodovico besought the Emperor, of his
free grace and bounty, to bestow the duchy on himself and his
descendants, even as once before an emperor had bestowed Milan upon a
man who had no legal claim—namely, on Giangaleazzo Visconti. Maximilian
consented, and on Sept. 5, 1494, the Imperial letters of promise[98]
were despatched from Antwerp, letters for which the Regent paid the sum
of 100,000 ducats.
Footnote 98:
The copy is to be found in Corio, 457-59. I do not know where to find
the original document, but MSS. copies, evidently from the Archives of
Pavia, are to be found among the British Museum documents, Additional
MSS., 30, 675. Giovio mentions a report that after the death of
Francesco Sforza II., Count Massimiliano Sforza found the deed and
restored it to the Emperor. Lodovico il Moro ever insisted that he
received Milan, not by succession, but direct from the Emperor. He
called himself the fourth, and not the seventh, duke.
This document, kept in the deepest privacy, can have arrived in Milan
but a few days before Giangaleazzo died. Every one believed that the
young man had died of poison. It was a piteous thing. But the son of the
murdered man was only four years old; and the French were in
Lombardy—the guests of Lodovico. “To be short,” says Commines, “Lodovico
had himself declared Duke of Milan, and that, as I think, was his only
end in bringing us across the mountains.” Terrorised by the presence of
the French, the people hailed the Regent as their duke, “and crying
_Duca! Duca!_” (wrote Corio), “and having robed him in the ducal mantle,
they set him on horseback, and he rode to the temple, the men of his
faction proclaiming him the while, and they set the joy-bells ringing,
while all this time the dead body of Giangaleazzo was lying still
unburied in the great cathedral.”
Conscious of the secret diploma in his pocket, Lodovico could enjoy the
pleasure of this ceremony with a feeling of security. Yet his crown did
not sit quite smoothly on his brows. Orleans in Asti was assuming an
intolerable air of patronage. And behind that thin row of partisans
shouting with their hired voices, “_Duca! Duca!_” there was a sullen,
silent crowd. Those, and the rest of Italy, believed that Lodovico had
poisoned the father in order to usurp the inheritance of the child,
Francesco. Of the three pretenders, by far the most popular was the
unconscious infant, who bore so quaintly in his mother’s arms the
beloved and redoubtable name of his grandfather, the great condottiere.
“Nearly all the Milanese,” wrote Commines, “would have revolted to the
King had he only followed Trivulzio’s advice and set up the arms of the
child-duke.” But Charles refused to injure the claims of his cousin of
Orleans.
Meanwhile the relations between the French and Lodovico were growing
difficult and strained. The presence of Orleans in Asti, the miraculous
success of Charles, inspired the Duke of Milan with the bitterest regret
that ever he had called his allies across the mountains. He had used
them as a weapon, and now their use had passed. When, on Feb. 27, 1495,
he heard the news that the French had entered Naples, he simulated every
sign of joy. But while the bells were still ringing in the steeples, he
drew aside the Venetian envoy. “I have had bad news,” he whispered.
“Naples is lost. Let us form a league against the common enemy.”
This was in the end of February. During the next month there was much
secret business in the diplomatic world. Ever since the entry of the
French into Rome the great powers had looked unkindly on the triumph of
Charles VIII. The Emperor beheld with dismay the alliance of Ghibelline
Milan and the Ghibelline Colonna with the King of France. The Pope
believed with reason that France, the Colonna, and the Savelli might
depose a pontiff so unpopular as Alexander VI. Ferdinand and Isabella
declared that the intention of Charles was nothing less than to make
himself the king of Italy and then proceed to conquer Spain. So likely
did it seem that this ungainly, limping, ill-instructed youth might
justify the name he had assumed—_Carolus Octavus, Secundus Magnus_.
At Venice in the dead of the night the secret council used to meet.
There, with the Venetian Senate, the ambassadors of Germany, Castile and
Arragon, and Milan conferred together. They were negotiating a league to
expel the French from Italy. On March 31st, while Charles was still shut
in the Neapolitan trap, the quintuple alliance was proclaimed. The last
name among the allies was the name of the man who had called Charles
into Italy, now given for the first time among his equals his new
dignity of Duke of Milan. Lodovico hastened to legalize this official
recognition. In May the Imperial privilege, formally promised in the
preceding autumn, arrived at Milan. In presence of the Imperial envoys
the privilege was read aloud at Lodovico’s solemn coronation.
IX.
Lodovico had sprung a disagreeable surprise upon the Duke of Orleans,
for his title, derived directly from Maximilian, was now as good as that
of Giangaleazzo Visconti himself. To conquer Milan by arms, to force the
Emperor into revoking the privilege of 1495, to induce him to grant a
new one confirming the Visconti succession—this was the only course that
remained to Orleans.
Secret as the Council had been at Venice, it had not escaped the notice
of Commines, who wrote in March to Orleans bidding him look to the walls
of Asti, and sent a messenger to Bourbon in France bidding him despatch
a reinforcement to the scanty force of Orleans. The young Duke at Asti
was not sorry to receive the message. He had now been six months in
Lombardy; he had done nothing; and he was eager to come to battle with
Lodovico. To all the French, by this time, Il Moro appeared a traitor
and a secret poisoner. To Louis of Orleans he appeared all this and also
the usurper of his inheritance.
Great were the pomp and beauty of Milan in the year 1495, humbled as yet
by no centuries of foreign servitude, ruined by no battles and untouched
by time. Wonderful in the fresh whiteness of its stately cathedral;
delicate with the unblurred beauty of the new frescoes by Lionardo; rich
with statuary, broken now and lost for ever; gay with the clear fine
moulding of its rose-red palaces, Milan in the rich plain was a fountain
of wealth to its possessor. When Orleans beheld this earthly paradise of
the Renaissance, his claim to Milan, which had been at first but a
shadowy pretension, took certainty and substance in his mind. And as the
attention of the young man was drawn to his Visconti ancestors, and to
the marriage of his grandfather with the daughter of the Duke of Milan,
he and his counsellors began to reconstruct the half-forgotten title
that he had to Milan.
No one was very clear as to the point. The ducal secretaries found
themselves compelled to suppose, to invent. Nicole Gilles, the chief of
them, declared that Filippo Maria Visconti had married Madame Bonne,
daughter of King John of France (a lady who had she existed, would have
been a good forty years older than her husband), by whom he had two
girls, Valentine, who married the Duke of Orleans, and Bonne, who
married the lord of Montauban in Brittany. Besides these he had a
bastard child, Bianca Maria, the wife of Sforza.
This is perhaps the clearest of these singular genealogies _pour rire_.
Louis was glad to escape from their confusion and bewilderment to the
plain issues of the field of battle. There seemed a good chance for him.
Lodovico was so hated by his subjects[99] that they would welcome almost
any change. Almost at the same moment that Piacenza offered herself to
King Charles if he would undertake to support the child Francesco, the
cities of Milan, Pavia, and Novara were secretly practising with
Orleans, and Commines declares he would have been received in Milan with
greater rejoicings than in his town of Blois.
Footnote 99:
“Era molto odiato dai popoli a cagione dei denari.”—“Bello Gallico,”
i. p. 176.
On April 17th Lodovico il Moro insolently summoned Orleans to quit Asti
and cross the Alps again with all his men. Thanks to the warning of
Commines, Orleans already had fortified the town.
“This place,” he replied,[100] “and its dependent castles are a part of
my inheritance, and to put them in other hands, and to go away and leave
my own possessions, is a thing that I never meant to do. Tell your
master,” he added to the messenger, “that he will find me ready for
combat, either waiting for him here or going forth to meet him on the
field of battle. I have received a commission from the King, and it is
my intention to fulfil it.”
Footnote 100:
For this letter, and for the letters of Orleans to Bourbon, quoted
from the Library of St. Petersburg, _vide_ vol. ii. of Cherrier’s
“Histoire de Charles VIII.,” p. 184, _et seq._
Unfortunately, the real commission that Orleans had received from his
cousin was to keep quiet and on no account to break the peace (for the
league was defensive, and did not menace the royal troops if they
retired without offence) until Charles and his diminished army had
arrived at Asti. They would be in imminent peril if any rash act of
Orleans should let loose upon them, amid the bewildering passes of the
mountains, the eager concourse of their vigilant enemies. But Orleans
did not remember this. He was burning for personal conflict with his
rival, indignant at his treachery, and persuaded that he could easily
secure the whole of Lombardy to France. Thrice in April he wrote to
Bourbon entreating succour. “Only send me the reinforcements at once,
and I think I shall do the King a service that men will talk of many a
year.” The forces came; and Orleans saw himself the master of 5,000
foot, 100 archers, 1,300 men-at-arms or thereabouts, and two fine pieces
of artillery.[101] He was aware that Lodovico was so out-at-elbows that
he could not pay his army. He knew the discontent of Lombardy. He felt
himself so much older and wiser than the King that he found it hard to
obey his commands. His secret practice with the nobles of the Lombard
cities informed him that all was ripe for a sudden stroke. On the last
night of May, in the safety of the dark, twenty men-at-arms under Jean
de Louvain rode out from Asti across the Lombard plain, until at
daybreak on June 1st they reached the gate of San Stefano at Novara. The
gate was opened to them by the factors of the Opicini, two nobles of the
place; the citizens ran out to meet the French; the handful of Sforzesco
troops within the town barred themselves in the citadel. By June 13th,
Orleans, with the flower
Footnote 101:
This is the Venetian estimate. Guicciardini says, 300 lances, 3,000
Swiss, and 3,000 Gascons.
No sooner was he there than, first Pavia, then Milan, offered to receive
him. He ought to have gone at once, before the armies of his enemies
could encircle him in Novara. But his whole soul was invaded by a deep
distrust of the Italians. It seemed safer to temporise until the royal
troops came up. Long before these could possibly arrive, on June 22nd,
the Venetians protected Milan with 1,000 Grecian stradiots, 2,000 foot,
1,000 cuirassiers.[102] It was now impossible to take Milan, which a
little boldness might easily have gained. It was impossible even to
evacuate Novara. And when, after many difficulties heroically overcome,
the little army of Charles arrived in Asti on July 27th, sorely in need
of rest and of refreshment, a new and arduous task awaited it; for
Orleans and his soldiers were perishing of hunger in besieged Novara.
Footnote 102:
This is the Venetian estimate. For the figures of Giovio and Corio,
see Cherrier, ii. 197.
X.