Honorable Father:
Considering that when I was in the armada in Barbary at Garbich the
news were advised you daily from the illustrious Sig. Don Hugo de
Moncada, Captain General of the Caesarean Majesty in those barbarous
parts, [of what] happened in contending with the Moors of that
island; by which it appears you caused pleasure to many of our
patrons and friends and congratulated yourselves on the victory
achieved: so there being here news recently of the arrival of
Captain Giovanni da Verrazzano, our Florentine, at the port of
Dieppe, in Normandy, with his ship, the Dauphiny, with which he
sailed from the Canary islands the end of last January, to go in
search of new lands for this most serene crown of France, in which
he displayed very noble and great courage in undertaking such an
unknown voyage with only one ship, which was a caravel of hardly--
tons, with only fifty men, with the intention, if possible, of
discovering Cathay, taking a course through other climates than
those the Portuguese use in reaching it by the way of Calicut, but
going towards the northwest and north, entirely believing that,
although Ptolemy, Aristotle and other cosmographers affirm that no
land is to be found towards such climates, he would find it there
nevertheless. And so God has vouchsafed him as he distinctly
describes in a letter of his to this S. M.; OF WHICH, IN THIS, THERE
IS A COPY. And for want of provisions, after many months spent in
navigating, he asserts he was forced to return from that hemisphere
into this, and having been seven months on the voyage, to show a
very great and rapid passage, and to have achieved a wonderful and
most extraordinary feat according to those who understand the
seamanship of the world. Of which at the commencement of his said
voyage there was an unfavorable opinion formed, and many thought
there would be no more news either of him or of his vessel, but that
he might be lost on that side of Norway, in consequence of the great
ice which is in that northern ocean; but the Great God, as the Moor
said, in order to give us every day proofs of his infinite power and
show us how admirable is this worldly machine, has disclosed to him
a breadth of land, as you will perceive, of such extent that
according to good reasons, and the degrees of latitude and
longitude, he alleges and shows it greater than Europe, Africa and a
part of Asia; ergo mundus novus: and this exclusive of what the
Spaniards have discovered in several years in the west; as it is
hardly a year since Fernando Magellan returned, who discovered a
great country with one ship out of the five sent on the discovery.
From whence be brought spices much more excellent than the usual;
and of his other ships no news has transpired for five years. They
are supposed to be lost. What this our captain has brought he does
not state in this letter, except a very young man taken from those
countries; but it is supposed he has brought a sample of gold which
they do not value in those parts, and of drugs and other aromatic
liquors for the purpose of conferring here with several merchants
after he shall have been in the presence of the Most Serene Majesty.
And at this hour he ought to be there, and from choice to come here
shortly, as he is much desired in order to converse with him; the
more so that he will find here the Majesty, the King, our Lord, who
is expected herein three or four days. And we hope that S. M. will
entrust him again with half a dozen good vessels and that he will
return to the voyage. And if our Francisco Carli be returned from
Cairo, advise him to go, at a venture, on the said voyage with him;
and I believe they were acquainted at Cairo where he has been
several years; and not only in Egypt and Syria, but almost through
all the known world, and thence by reason of his merit is esteemed
another Amerigo Vespucci, another Fernando Magellan and even more;
and we hope that being provided with other good ships and vessels,
well built and properly victualed, he may discover some profitable
traffic and matter; and will, our Lord God granting him life, do
honor to our country, in acquiring immortal fame and memory. And
Alderotto Branelleschi who started with him and by chance turning
back was not willing to accompany him further, will, when he hears
of this, be discontented. Nothing else now occurs to me, as I have
advised you by others of what is necessary. I commend myself
constantly to you, praying you to impart this to our friends, not
forgetting Pierfrancesco Dagaghiano who in consequence of being an
experienced person will take much pleasure in it, and commend me to
him. Likewise to Rustichi, who will not be displeased, if he
delight, as usual, in learning matters of cosmography. God guard you
from all evil. Your son.
FERNANDO CARLI, in Lyons.
This letter bears date only twenty-seven days after that of the
Verrazzano letter, which is declared to be inclosed. To discover its
fraudulent nature and the imposition it seeks to practise, it is
only necessary to bear this fact in mind, with its pretended origin,
in connection with this warlike condition of France and the personal
movements of the king, immediately preceding and during the interval
between the dates of the two letters. It purports to have been
written by Fernando Carli to his father in Florence. Carli is not an
uncommon Italian name and probably existed in Florence at that time,
but who this Fernando was, has never transpired. He gives in this
letter all there is of his biography, which is short. He had
formerly been in the service of the emperor, Charles V, under
Moncada, in the fleet sent against the Moors in Barbary, and was
then in Lyons, where, it might be inferred, from a reference to its
merchants, that he was engaged in some mercantile pursuit; but the
reason of his presence there is really unaccounted for. It is not
pretended that he held any official position under the king of
France. The name of his father, by means of which his lineage might
be traced, is not mentioned, but Francisco Carli is named as of the
same family, but without designating his relationship. Whether a
myth or a reality, Fernando seems to have been an obscure person, at
the best; not known to the political or literary history of the
period, and not professing to occupy any position, by which he might
be supposed to have any facility or advantage for obtaining official
information or the news of the day, over the other inhabitants of
Lyons and of France.
He is made to say that he writes this letter for the particular
purpose of communicating to his father and their friends in
Florence, the news, which had reached Lyons, of the arrival of
Verrazzano from his wonderful and successful voyage of discovery,
and that he had advised his parent of all other matters touching his
own interests, by another conveyance. It might be supposed and
indeed reasonably expected in a letter thus expressly devoted to
Verrazzano, that some circumstance, personal or otherwise, connected
with the navigator or the voyage, or some incident of his discovery,
besides what was contained in the enclosed letter, such as must have
reached Lyons, with the news of the return of the expedition, would
have been mentioned, especially, as it would all have been
interesting to Florentines. But nothing of the kind is related.
Nothing appears in the letter in regard to the expedition that is
not found in the Verrazzano letter. [Footnote: Mr. Greene, in his
life of Verrazzano, remarks that it appears from Carli's letter,
that the Indian boy whom Verrazzano is stated to have carried away,
arrived safely in France; but that is not so. What is said in that
letter is, that Verrazzano does not mention IN HIS LETTER what he
had brought home, except this boy.] What is stated in reference to
the previous life of Verrazzano, must have been as well known to
Carli's father as to himself, if it were true, and is therefore
unnecessarily introduced, and the same may be said of the facts
stated in regard to Brunelleschi's starting on the voyage with
Verrazzano and afterwards turning back. The particular description
of Dagaghiano and Rustichi, both of Florence, the one as a man of
experience and the other as a student of cosmography, was equally
superfluous in speaking of them to his father. These portions of the
letter look like flimsy artifices to give the main story the
appearance of truth. They may or may not have been true, and it is
not inconsistent with an intention to deceive in regard to the
voyage that they should have been either the one or the other. A
single allusion, however, is made to the critical condition of
affairs in France and the stirring scenes which were being enacted
on either side of the city of Lyons at the moment the letter bears
date. It is the mention of the expected arrival of the king at Lyons
within three or four days. It is not stated for what purpose he was
coming, but the fact was that Francis had taken the field in person
to repel the Spanish invasion in the south of France, and was then
on his way to that portion of his kingdom, by way of Lyons, where he
arrived a few days afterwards. The reference to this march of the
king fixes beyond all question the date of the letter, as really
intended for the 4th of August, 1524.
The movements of Francis at this crisis become important in view of
the possibility of the publication in any form of the Verrazzano
letter at Lyons, at the last mentioned date, or of the possession of
a copy of it there as claimed by Carli in his letter. The army of
the emperor, under Pescara and Bourbon, crossed the Alps and entered
Provence early in July, and before the date of the Verrazzano
letter. [Footnote: Letter of Bourbon. Dyer's Europe, 442.] The
intention to do so was known by Francis some time previously. He
wrote on the 28th of June from Amboise, near Tours, to the
Provencaux that he would march immediately to their relief;
[Footnote: Sismondi, xvi. 216, 217.] and on the 2d of July he
announced in a letter to his parliament: "I am going to Lyons to
prevent the enemy from entering the kingdom, and I can assure you
that Charles de Bourbon is not yet in France." [Footnote: Gaillard,
Histoire de Francois Premier, tom. III, 172 (Paris, 1769).] He had
left his residence at Blois and his capital, and was thus actually
engaged in collecting his forces together, on the 8th of July, when
the Verrazzano letter is dated. He did not reach Lyons until after
the 4th of August, as is correctly stated in the Carli letter.
[Footnote: Letter of Moncada in Doc. ined. para la Hist. de Espana.
tom. XXIV, 403, and Letters of Pace to Wolsey in State Papers of the
reign of Henry VIII, vol. IV, Part I, 589, 606.]
The author of the Carli letter, whether the person he pretends to
have been or not, asserts that news of the arrival of Verrazzano at
Dieppe on his return from his voyage of discovery had reached Lyons,
and that the navigator himself was expected soon to be in that city
for the purpose of conferring with its merchants on the subject of
the new countries which he had discovered, and had described in a
letter to the king, a copy of which letter was enclosed. He thus
explicitly declares not only that news of the discovery had reached
Lyons, but that the letter to the king was known to the merchants at
that place, and that a copy of it was then actually in his
possession and sent with his own. The result of the expedition was,
therefore, notorious, and the letter had attained general publicity
at Lyons, without the presence there of either Francis or
Verrazzano.
This statement must be false. Granting that such a letter, as is
ascribed to Verrazzano, had been written, it was impossible that
this obscure young man at Lyons, hundreds of miles from Dieppe,
Paris and Blois, away from the king and court and from Verrazzano,
not only at a great distance from them all, but at the point to
which the king was hastening, and had not reached, on his way to the
scene of war in the southern portion of his kingdom, could have come
into the possession of this document in less than a month after it
purports to have been written for the king in a port far in the
north, on the coast of Normandy. It obviously could not have been
delivered to him personally by Verrazzano, who had not been at
Lyons, nor could it have been transmitted to him by the navigator,
who had not yet presented himself before the king, and could have
had no authority to communicate it to any person. It was an official
report, addressed to the king, and intended for his eye alone, until
the monarch himself chose to make it public. It related to an
enterprise of the crown, and eminently concerned its interests and
prerogatives, in the magnitude and importance of the new countries;
and could not have been sent by Verrazzano, without permission, to a
private person, and especially a foreigner, without subjecting
himself to the charge of disloyalty, if not of treason, which there
is no other evidence to sustain. On the other hand it could not have
been delivered by the king to this Carli. It is not probable, even
if such a letter could have come into the hands of Francis, absent
from his capital in the midst of warlike preparations, engaged in
forming his army and en route for the scene of the invasion, that he
could have given it any consideration. But if he had received it and
considered its import, there was no official or other relation
between him and Carli, or any motive for him to send it forward in
advance of his coming to Lyons, to this young and obscure alien.
There was no possibility, therefore, of Carli obtaining possession
of a private copy of the letter through Verrazzano or the king.
The only way open to him, under the most favorable circumstances,
would have been through some publicity, by proclamation or printing,
by order of the king; in which case, it would have been given for
the benefit of all his subjects. It is impossible that it could have
been seen and copied by this young foreigner alone and in the city
of Lyons, and that no other copies would have been preserved in all
France. The idea of a publication is thus forbidden.
No alternative remains except to pronounce the whole story a
fabrication. The Carli letter is untrue. It did not inclose any
letter of Verrazzano of the character pretended. And as it is the
only authority for the existence of any such letter, that falls with
it.