It was in vain that Briçonnet and his party urged instant fidelity to
Florence. It was useless for Commines to observe that keeping faith with
Florence did not preclude a sentiment of tenderest concern for Pisa,
though after all, as the excellent diplomat observed, “Divers cities in
Italy that be in subjection are as evil-entreated as she”—_Sie ist nicht
die Erste_. Charles would promise nothing to Pisa, nothing definite; but
also he would make no vows to Florence. He knew that the task before his
little army was of the sternest and of the severest, physically
impossible to discouraged and disaffected troops. Therefore he wrote to
the Florentines saying that he would give his answer, not at Lucca, but
at Asti; and while, in his heart, as we shall see, he meant to make the
best of terms for Pisa, and then restore her to the Florentines, he left
for the nonce, a French garrison in the city, three hundred picked men,
difficultly spared, under the governorship of Robert de Balzac Seigneur
d’Entragues. Thus, by a judicious temporizing, Charles hoped to untie
the Gordian knot. By turning his back on the difficulty he thought he
had suppressed it. And yet, were these three hundred men left behind in
Pisa, likely to become more obedient to an absent monarch? Was
Entragues, a man of Orleans’ household, Ligny’s candidate, likely to
carry out the views of Commines or of Briçonnet against the avowed
policy of his master and his patron? Charles, it may be supposed, did
not ask himself these questions. He bestowed on Entragues, not merely
the governorship of Pisa, but the command of the frontier castles, and,
without further hesitation, left the town.
Robert de Balzac, Seigneur d’Entragues, was, says Commines, a very
ill-conditioned fellow. But a similar opinion has been entertained by
many historians for the most successful of their political opponents.
Robert de Balzac was the son of Jean d’Entragues and his wife the sister
of the famous Comte de Dammartin. Robert was a very young man when the
accession of Louis XI. brought about the disgrace and exile of his
all-powerful uncle. Every student of history is familiar with the legend
of that great disgrace: how the estates of the unhappy minister were
divided among the favourites at Court; how his wife with her suckling
child was left destitute and hunted out of all her castles; how forsaken
by all her friends, she wandered like an excommunicated woman along the
lanes of Dammartin begging for her bread, until a poor day-labourer,
Anthoine Le Fort, took the abandoned Countess to his hovel and sheltered
her and her baby, eighteen months old, the starving little godson of the
Duke of Bourbon. Jeanne was still in the peasant’s hut; her husband had
fled for his life to Germany; when, as a last effort, Robert de Balzac,
the Count’s nephew, was sent to Court to plead his cause. It was no
light task to undertake. Men had been banished or odiously imprisoned
for entreating the pardon of Dammartin, and many well-meaning friends
would have dissuaded the young man. But he went his way, arriving at
Court about the end of 1466, and pleaded so well that, after several
audiences, the King recalled his uncle and placed him high in favour.
Such was the man—about forty years of age, rhetorical, impulsive, brave,
generous, and audacious whom the King had left in command at Pisa.
VI.
The little army of Charles, dragging its artillery with lacerated hands
across the Apennines, cutting its way through the Venetian forces at
Fornovo, arrived at last in Asti; and, when August came, the prospect of
peace began to brighten before them. The King had come to terms with
Florence; and—granted the inevitable treachery of the situation—the
Treaty of Turin was not unkind. It is true that the King agreed to
restore the city of Pisa, with the other Tuscan fortresses, to his ally
of Florence; but on the express proviso of not merely an amnesty for the
Pisans. Henceforth they were to trade by sea and land on equal terms
with Florence, they were to enjoy the same civil rights, their ancient
arts of navigation and ship-building were to be released from embargo,
and their sequestered property was to be given back to their possession.
Charles had put his muzzle on the hound; Pisa, though restored to her
immemorial energy, should henceforth be protected by the chief ally of
Florence.
It was, in fact, a comparative equality that Charles proposed. Still
remaining an intrinsic part of the Florentine territory, as indeed the
safety and prosperity of that Republic demanded, henceforth the
admirable commercial situation of Pisa was not to be turned merely to a
Florentine profit, nor were the Pisans to be entirely governed for
Florentine ends and by a Florentine Council. In their government
henceforth the Pisans themselves should have a place and a right; and
the only exclusive advantage which the Florentines should retain would
be that superior dignity, that reserve of power, with which a powerful
mother-country inevitably controls her colonies and her dependencies.
Henceforth in law, in all that can be assessed by franchise and by
jurisdiction, the Pisans should stand on an equal footing with the
Florentines.
This decided, Charles, satisfied he had been unfair to nobody, on August
16th, wrote from Turin a letter to Entragues, signed with his own
signature and countersigned by Orange, Vincula, Briçonnet, Gié, De la
Trémouille, Commines, and (somewhat to our surprise) Piennes. This list
of names is eloquent of the triumph of the diplomatic party; Ligny is
not there, nor D’Amboise nor Étienne de Beaucaire, though these were
among the nearest of the Royal counsellors. It was, in fact, necessary
that something should be done at once. Orleans and his men were still
starving in beleaguered Novara; Montpensier and the army were fighting
at desperate odds in Naples. Peace with Florence would immediately place
in the hands of the King 70,000 ducats and 250 men-at-arms;[131] besides
releasing the soldiers in Pisa, Murrone, Leghorn, Sarzana, Pietra Santa,
and Librafatta, who with the Florentine contingent would be an efficient
succour to Montpensier. But Florence would not pay the money until the
fortresses were in her hand.
Footnote 131:
A man-at-arms was a varying quantity of soldiers, from five in France
to three or sometimes one in Italy.
The King’s letter to Entragues arrived in Pisa on the 29th of August.
“You may feel,” the letter ran,[132] “_on account of your oath_, a
certain difficulty in placing the new Citadel of Pisa in other hands
than ours, but we absolve and discharge you of that oath, and command
you, so soon as you receive this letter, incontinent to deliver the said
Citadel of Pisa into the hand of the Commissioners of Florence, provided
that one or any of our Councillors assure you that the Government of
Florence have accorded and agreed to our Articles.”
Footnote 132:
Archives de Florence, No. 52, quoted by Cherrier, ii. 294.
“A cause du serment que vous avez fait, vous pourriez différer de ne
mettre la dicte Citadelle neufve de Pise en aultres mains que les
nostres.” This phrase conveys the suggestion that on leaving Pisa,
Charles had promised a permanent French protection to the city. At least
it seems clear that Entragues had sworn to yield his position only to
the French.
These three months Entragues and his men had lived as the saviours of
Pisa with the Pisans, feted by the citizens, lodged not only in the
citadel but in the palace of the Medici upon Lung’ Arno; no longer an
insignificant portion of the motley hosts of France, but the beloved
guests and masters of this exquisite Southern city. They had the
advantage of the port from which to ship a succour to or from the armies
in the South; they enjoyed the great pine-woods of the sea, full of game
for hunting; they had grown to love the wide, soft views of fertile
plains bounded by a dim line of blue mountains where their comrades held
the frontier castles. The position of the French in Pisa was not only
felicitous, but strong; and they were required to abandon it into the
hands of the Florentines, allies, it is true, of their king, but to them
desperate and deadly enemies with whom, in defiance of the truce, they
had continually waged an aggravated and embittering guerilla war of
raids and plunder. And these three months, which had increased the
original suspicion and dislike which the French army entertained of
Florence, had been spent in befriending and helping the Pisans, for whom
even at the first they had felt so divine a rage of pity, and whom they
were now commanded to betray. Most of the men had probably made
relations in the town. Entragues as we know from Guicciardini, was much
in love with, and probably deeply influenced by, the daughter of Messer
Luca del Lante; and a little later he married either this or some other
Pisan lady, for Marin Sanuto speaks of San Cassano, the Pisan Ambassador
at Venice, as “el cugnato d’Andrages.” Thus passion, no less than
resentment, and the sense of well-being as well as compassion bound
Entragues to Pisa. Add to this, incredible as it may seem, the sentiment
of loyalty; for long as was the reign of Louis XI., it had not been long
enough to extirpate the feudal idea, and Entragues, although the subject
of the King, felt himself in a far more intimate degree the vassal of
Orleans, and the lieutenant of Ligny. Now, as I have said, the names of
Orleans and Ligny are conspicuously absent from the signatures below the
letter of the King. To yield Pisa would have been to reverse their
policy; and it is possible (to Commines, Guicciardini, Giulini, Porto
Venere, and other contemporaries, it appeared quite certain) that
Orleans or Ligny wrote to Entragues, and bade him resist the decision of
the King. This much at least is sure: _Entragues refused to yield the
fortresses_.
Vainly the King reiterated his urgent letters—imploring letters, still
preserved in the Florence Archives under the dates of the 29th and 31st
of August, the 25th of September, the 1st and 22nd of October—letters,
beseeching, commanding the evacuation of the garrisons, but all in vain.
Not only Pisa, but Sarzana, Pietra Santa, Librafatta, and Murrone,
obstinately held out against the royal mandate; only the Governor of
Leghorn, on the 17th of September, yielded to the entreaties of his
sovereign. Meanwhile in Naples, in Gaeta, Taranto, and Atella, in all
the desolate villages of the wild Abbruzzi, the famished and abandoned
army looked northwards, in vain, day after day across the mountains.
Winter began to whistle shrilly across the windy hills; blue mists and
subtle fevers rose out of the marshy valleys; corn failed, and a cruel
famine began to devastate the land; and still the promised
reinforcements never came. Of that gallant army nearly every soldier
should perish by hunger, shipwreck, or malaria; for the troops that were
to bring them a succour out of Tuscany never left the cities where they
dwelt.
On the 18th of September, Entragues drew up a formal treaty with the
Signory of Pisa. If in three months the King did not re-enter Tuscany,
he bound himself to evacuate the citadel, and leave it in the hands of
Pisa. Meanwhile they were to supply him every month with the two
thousand ducats necessary to pay and provision the garrison; and on his
abandonment of the fortress they were to purchase his artillery and to
give him the sum of 20,000 (or as Sanuto has it, 30,000) ducats for
himself. These terms were not excessive: the Florentines a few years ago
had cheerfully paid 150,000 ducats as the price of Pietro Santa, a less
important place. It was, however, as much as Pisa could pay: and to
raise the sum the ladies of Pisa cheerfully sold the brightest of their
jewels. And the Pisans in their gratitude for the staunchness and
moderation of Entragues awarded him a large estate, newly confiscated
from the Florentines, and a palace in the city. “It cannot be for money
that he did it,” remarks Guicciardini, “for certainly the Florentines
would have given him twice as much.” It was probably out of friendship
and pity, out of a genuine enthusiasm, out of an antiquated sentiment of
feudal devotion, combined with a desire to make a profit, that Entragues
committed this fatal and disastrous error.
VII.
The Florentines were indeed in a peculiarly evil case; for Charles, who
was their ally, found himself powerless to procure them the restitution
of Pisa; and the Italian cities were resolved that, at no risk, must
Pisa pass to the ally of Charles. That post, in the hands of the friends
of France, would mean not merely a door always open from Marseilles into
Tuscany, but a continual supply of help to the French garrisons in
Naples. It was certain that Pisa must be kept, yet Pisa was too weak to
stand alone; plot and counter-plot darkened the decision as to which
great State the port of Pisa should belong.
From the 16th of September to the 14th of December, Captain Fracassa,
the Duke of Milan’s captain, held the town, dogged by the jealous
surveillance of a Venetian commissary, while Entragues and his Frenchmen
shut themselves inside the citadel. A few months later the Sienese,
Lucchese, and Genoese, united in a secret league with Pisa against the
Florentines. Milan and Venice wove a ceaseless web of intrigue around
the place. And it is quite possible that by persisting in the citadel,
Entragues may have been animated by a lofty and heroic disobedience,
hoping by his presence to maintain Pisa in fidelity to France, and to
prevent it from strengthening the hands of the deadly enemies of his
country.
Be this as it may, on the 1st of January, Entragues, having some days
ago assisted at the expulsion of Fracassa, placed the citadel in the
hands of the Pisan Signory. Great was the joy. Before the falling of the
night, the hated fortress, built by the Florentines to dominate the
town, was a shapeless heap of ruins. New money was struck, bearing the
head of Charles VIII.; and salvo on salvo of artillery rang right across
the plain to the very walls of Florence, announcing with a threat the
dawn of the New Year, which had begun with liberty in Pisa.
Entragues himself, rich in the price of the gems of Pisan beauty,
retired for a month or two to Lucca, to conclude his traffic on the
fortresses. Pietra Santa he sold to Lucca, Sarzana to Genoa. He did a
good turn to Pisa, distributing them, for a round sum, among her allies.
But if he hoped that Pisa would maintain her independence by the
protection of these humbler friends he must easily have been deceived:
it was no later than the 26th of January when Messer Gianbernardin del
Agnolo was sent to Venice with a humble message, entreating the august
protection of that city for the young Republic. It was Venice, rather
than Milan, to whom the Pisans turned—Venice preponderate now in the
Peninsula, sheltering in secret Pisa and Taranto under her wide-reaching
ægis. During thirteen years from this date the shifting fortunes, the
greeds and jealousies of the great Italian cities, fostered an
artificial liberty in Pisa. Thrown like a ball from Milan to Venice,
Venice to Maximilian, Max again to Venice, and thence to Cæsar Borgia,
the unhappy Republic described the whole circle of desperate hope,
agonized courage, misery, poverty, cunning, and betrayal. But with the
anguish of her heroic vicissitudes we have, at this moment, no concern.
The conduct of Entragues is our affair.
From that New Year’s Day all hope was over for the French in Naples.
Gaeta, Taranto, Atella, Ostia fell; Montpensier died of heartbreak, the
troops of fever; the great Guelf kingdom, the vision of so many
centuries, disappeared like fairy gold as soon as the French had grasped
it.
In France, the Count of Ligny, Entragues’ patron, was banished from the
Court in disgrace. “He is gone to his estates in Picardy,” wrote Antonio
Vincivera, “like a desperate creature. The King has disgraced him
because of the affair of Pisa.” Thus Entragues, in the most effectual
manner, had ruined his master’s chances: and though in time Ligny was
pardoned by the King, it was not in the lifetime of his bride. In
February, 1498, the daughter of the Mages expired, far from the arms of
Ligny, in her Nunnery at Naples.
But if the action of Entragues proved unfortunate to his friends, it had
a more deadly consequence to his enemies in Florence. The party of
Savonarola never recovered that failure of the French to give back Pisa.
For some time, amid famine, pestilence, and ruin, they kept a weakening
hold upon the city: “And still they stand in hope of the things above,”
mocks Maron Sanuto, in the spring of 1497, “and still they expect the
coming of the King.” A year later, in the May of 1498, Savonarola
expiated that delusion by the flaming penance of the stake. “Questa è la
fine dei cattivi!” ejaculates the Venetian Secretary.
Of all the actors in this complicated drama, the one person who suffered
not at all was that dishonoured liberator, Entragues himself. He went
back to live in Pisa where he seems to have displayed an eminent and
almost official dignity. Twice in moments of difficulty it was proposed
that Entragues should be sent as envoy to Venice, in place of his
brother-in-law; but the necessity passed away. He remained in comfort
and splendour in Pisa, where we read of his receiving the Lucchese
ambassadors and conducting the diplomacy of the Republic. Pisa
herself—unhappy devotee of liberty!—grew poorer and ever poorer, a
humble pensioner on Venetian bounty: “They adore us,” remarks Sanuto
with some fatuity, “and, of a verity, they would starve without us.”
But, shorn of all her territories as she was, Pisa housed her liberator
in a palace, and little did it matter to this voluntary exile that his
King declared a readiness to decapitate him with royal hands. Meanwhile
he remained the natural centre of all dignity in Pisa. Here we catch a
last glimpse of him in that sinister spring of 1498 which witnessed in
Florence the martyrdom of Savonarola and in France the sudden death of
Charles VIII. The whirlwind that destroyed these mighty vessels allowed
the idle straw to float unharmed. “Entragues is back in Pisa,” writes
Sanuto, “which city is very poor now, having lost all her lands and
subsisting only on that which we afford her. He has returned some time
from his visit to Jerusalem. He lives with certain families in Pisa. He
has money of his own, and gives himself his pleasures.”
Five years later, when the eminence of Venice was dangerously threatened
by Italian jealousy, the Pisans began to look about for a new Protector.
“We will offer ourselves to the Devil,” they declared, “rather than to
Florence.” As a matter of fact they offered themselves to Cæsar Borgia.
They made very few conditions: two of them are noteworthy in view of the
present history:
“The Pisans will bestow themselves upon Il Valentino if neither he nor
the Pope will ever make peace or truce with Florence.
“The new Duke must promise the city never to make any peace or league
with France.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
=The Gresham Press=,
UNWIN BROTHERS,
CHILWORTH AND LONDON.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Transcriber’s Note
The footnotes are moved to follow the paragraph within which they are
referenced, and are sequenced numerically for uniqueness.
Hyphenation of compound words can be variable. Where it occurs on a line
break, the most commonly used form is assumed. Many footnotes contain
extended transcriptions in 14th or 15th century Italian, and it is
difficult to ascertain their correctness. With a few exceptions, noted
below, the text is printed verbatim.
The name of the Convent of ‘Roderdesdorf’ in the Contents is everywhere
given in the text as ‘Rodardesdorf’. The Contents’ entry has been
corrected to facilitate searches.
The page references in the Contents direct the reader to the indicated
topics. Be forewarned, however, that those references to the chapter on
‘The French at Pisa’ go astray after p. 354, and one entry is missing
entirely, but is most likely referring to p. 358.
Obvious printer’s errors or printing flaws have been corrected, and are
noted here with their resolutions. The corrections are indicated by page
and line number, or, where the correction is to a note, by note and line
number within the note.
iv.8 and, half afraid, [ /I] told you Restored.
viii.1 the Convent of Rod[e/a]rdesdorf> Replaced.
n1.3 Beginen-häuser [i]m Mittelalter Restored.
n1.5 Geschic[h]te der deutschen Mystik Added.
8.29 the [the ]Alexandrian theories of the Removed.
pseudo-Dionysius
14.1 the poor vain min[s]trels Added.
33.28 suspected of her[se/es]y. Transposed.
37.17 the panth[ie/ei]st idea Transposed.
38.3 By the middle of the fifteenth century, Replaced.
[T/t]he Beghards
59.27 so many hours?[’] Added.
64.19 for the sins of the ungo[l]dly Removed.
61.17 thanksgi[v]ing Added.
82.21 this unconscious bea[u]titude Removed.
n5.1 Bib. Nat. Fran[c/ç]ais Replaced.
120.9 Que cette Bergère jolie.[’/”] Replaced.
148.17 supers[ti]tition Removed.
149.21 “And that journey,” say[s] Froissart Added.
n41.7 pour en avoir garde.[”] Added.
182.28 of his uncle Berna[d/b]ò> Replaced.
193.27 [(]if we may trust the verdict of Corio) Added.
n57.6 (Pièces Originales Fontanieu, dossier 1185, Added.
No. 38[)]
200.13 the Duke was afraid of Sforz[o/a] Replaced.
207.16 proved irres[is]tibly fascinating Added.
221.5 resolution of Count Francesco Sforz[o/a]. Replaced.
n90.1 promised to assis[t] the Dauphin Restored.
262.25 1,300 men-at[ /-]arms Replaced.
277.3 What was the magnificence of earth [ ] to him? _sic_: ‘to
him’?
282.23 he fought almost contin[u]ously Added.
294.4 mocking the sacred mon[o]gram> Added.
302.30 to take counsel with the wise old Replaced.
statesm[e/a]n and learn his views
n113.13 et diceva non si voller p[ui/iù] curar ne de Replaced.
figlioli
309.21 he weary of his life[.] Added.
326.1 and to poor [l]ittle Lorenzio Restored.
321.24 in making improm[p]tu> verses Added.
330.25 with the said Peter[./,]>” says Commines Replaced.
335.20 Pietra Santa, which [which ]had cost them Removed.
150,000 ducats
340.15 A Medite[rannean/rranean]> seaport Replaced.
n120.9 guerra non gli [f/s]ia fatta a noi Replaced.
n120.24 di questi ell[ /a] Restored.
n121.17 la citt[a/à] nil Replaced.
n121.18 del Seren[e/i]ssimo Re predetto. Replaced.
n121.62 Che nel terreno di Pisa non dovess[o/e]no fare Replaced.
alcuna
n122.12 he will make war upon the fra[u]dulent Added.
possessors
358.13 detention of the Florentine Ambassadors by Added.
Orleans[,]
n129.2 della Repubb[l]ica> Fiorentina Added.
368.2 writes an eye-witness,[” to/ “to] hear them Replaced.
369.30 could not attempt to justify[-/.] Replaced.
388.4 Gi[e/é] Replaced.
End of Project Gutenberg's The End of the Middle Ages, by A. Mary F. Robinson