Chapter XXVIII: Francis I. and Charles V (2)

The Turks, who had been since 1453 settled at Constantinople, were the terror of Christian Europe; and Germany especially had need of a puissant and valiant defender against them. Francis I. calculated that the Christians of Germany and Hungary would see in him, the King of France and the victor of Melegnano, their most imposing and most effectual champion.

Having a superficial mind and being full of vain confidence, Francis I. was mistaken about the forces and chances on his side, as well as about the real and natural interests of France, and also his own. There was no call for him to compromise himself in this electoral struggle of kings, and in a distant war against triumphant Islamry. He miscalculated the strong position and personal valor of the rival with whom he would have to measure swords. Charles of Austria was but nineteen, and Francis I. was twenty-three, when they entered, as antagonists, into the arena of European politics. Charles had as yet gained no battle and won no renown; while Francis I. was already a victorious king and a famous knight. But the young archduke’s able governor, William de Croy, Lord of Chievres, “had early trained him,” says M. Mignet, “to the understanding and management of his various interests; from the time that he was fifteen, Charles presided every day at his council; there he himself read out the contents of despatches which were delivered to him the moment they arrived, were it even in the dead of night; his council had become his school, and business served him for books. . . . Being naturally endowed with superior parts, a penetrating intellect and rare firmness of character, he schooled himself to look Fortune in the face without being intoxicated by her smiles or troubled at her frowns, to be astonished by nothing that happened, and to make up his mind in any danger. He had even now the will of an emperor and an overawing manner. ‘His dignity and loftiness of soul are such,’ says a contemporary writer, ‘that he seems to hold the universe under his feet.’” Charles’s position in Germany was as strong as the man himself; he was a German, a duke of Austria, of the imperial line, as natural a successor of his grandfather Maximilian at Frankfort as of his grandfather Ferdinand at Madrid. Such was the adversary, with such advantages of nationality and of person, against whom Francis I., without any political necessity, and for the sole purpose of indulging an ambitious vision and his own kingly self-esteem, was about to engage in a struggle which was to entail a heavy burden on his whole life, and bring him not in triumph to Constantinople, but in captivity to Madrid.

Before the death of Maximilian, and when neither party had done more than foresee the struggle and get ready for it, Francis I. was for some time able to hope for some success. Seven German princes, three ecclesiastical and four laic, the Archbishops of Mayence, Cologne, and Troves, and the Duke of Saxony, the Margrave of Brandenburg, the Count Palatine of the Rhine, and the King of Bohemia, had the sole power of electing the emperor. Four of them, the Archbishops of Troves and of Cologne, the Count Palatine of the Rhine and the Margrave of Brandenburg, had favorably received the overtures of Francis I., and had promised him their suffrages. His devoted servant, Robert de la Marck, Lord of Fleuranges, had brought to him at Amboise a German gentleman from the Palatinate, Franz von Sickingen, “of very petty family, but a very gentle companion,” says Fleuranges, “the most beautiful talker that I think I ever saw in my life, and in so much that there was no gentleman in Germany, prince or man of war, who would not have been glad to do him pleasure.” Francis I. had received him with very chivalrous grace, and had given him a pension of three thousand livres and handsome presents for his comrades in adventure; and Sickingen was so charmed that he said to Fleuranges on leaving Amboise, “The king did not open his heart to me on the subject of the empire; however, I know all about it, and I beg you to tell him that I will do his service and keep the oath I gave him.” A more important personage than Sickingen, Leo X., would have been very glad to have for emperor in Germany neither the King of France nor the King of Spain, both of them being far too powerful in Europe and far too emulous in Italy not to be dangerous enemies or inconvenient allies for him; and he tried to dissuade Francis I. from making any claim to the empire, and to induce him to employ his influence in bringing about the election of a second-rate German prince, Frederick the Wise, Duke of Saxony, who was justly popular in Germany, and who would never be in a condition to do France any harm. It was judicious advice and a policy good for France as well as for Europe in general; but Francis I., infatuated by his desire and his hope, did not relish it at all; and Leo X., being obliged to choose between the two great claimants, declared for Francis I., without any pleasure or confidence, but also without any great perplexity, for he had but little faith in the success which he made a show of desiring. Francis, deceived by these appearances and promises, on the part both of ecclesiastics and laics, held language breathing a gallant and almost careless confidence. “We are not enemies, your master and I,” he said to the ambassadors of Spain; “we are two lovers courting the same mistress: whichever of the two she may prefer, the other will have to submit, and harbor no resentment.” But when, shortly after Maximilian’s death, the struggle became closer and the issue nearer, the inequality between the forces and chances of the two rivals became quite manifest, and Francis I. could no longer affect the same serenity. He had intrusted the management of his affairs in Germany to a favorite comrade of his early youth, Admiral de Bonnivet, a soldier and a courtier, witty, rash, sumptuous, eager to display his master’s power and magnificence. Charles of Austria’s agents, and at their head his aunt Margaret, who had the government of the Low Countries in his absence, were experienced, deliberate, discreet, more eager to succeed in their purpose than to make a brilliant appearance, and resolved to do quietly whatever was necessary for success. And to do so they were before long as fully authorized as they were resolved. They discovered that Francis I. had given Bonnivet four hundred thousand crowns in gold that he might endeavor to bribe the electors; it was, according to report, double the sum Charles of Austria had promised for the same object; and his agents sent him information of it, and received this answer: “We are wholly determined to spare nothing and to stake all for all upon it, as the matter we most desire and have most at heart in this world. . . . The election must be secured, whatever it may cost me.” The question before the seven elective princes who were to dispose of the empire was thenceforth merely which of the two claimants would be the higher and the safer bidder. Francis I. engaged in a tussle of wealth and liberality with Charles of Austria. One of his agents wrote to him, “All will go well if we can fill the maw of the Margrave Joachim of Brandenburg; he and his brother the elector from Mayence fall every day into deeper depths of avarice; we must hasten to satisfy them with _speed, speed, speed_.” Francis I. replied, “I will have Marquis Joachim _gorged_ at any price;” and he accordingly made over to him in ready money and bills of short dates all that was asked for by the margrave, who on the 8th of April, 1519, gave a written undertaking to support the candidature “of the most invincible and Most Christian prince, Francis, by the grace of God King of the French, Duke of Milan, and Lord of Genoa, who, what with his vigorous age, his ability, his justice, his military experience, the brilliant fortune of his arms, and all other qualities required for war and the management of the commonwealth, surpasses, in the judgment of every one, all other Christian princes.” But Charles of Austria did not consider himself beaten because two of the seven electors displayed avarice and venality. His aunt Margaret and his principal agent in Germany, the Chamberlain Armerstoff, resumed financial negotiations with the Archbishop of Mayence, for his brother the margrave as well as for himself, and the archbishop, without any formal engagement, accepted the Austrian over-bid. “I am ashamed at his shamelessness,” wrote Armerstorff to Charles. Alternate and antagonistic bargaining went on thus for more than two months. The Archbishop of Cologne, Hermann von Wied, kept wavering between the two claimants; but he was careful to tell John d’Albret, Francis I.’s agent, that “he sincerely hoped that his Majesty would follow the doctrine of God, who gave as much to those who went to work in His vineyard towards the middle of the day as to those who had been at it all the morning.” Duke Frederick of Saxony was the only one of the seven electors who absolutely refused to make any promise, as well as to accept any offer, and preserved his independence, as well as his dignity. The rumor of all these traffickings and these uncertainties rekindled in Henry VIII., King of England, a fancy for placing himself once more in the ranks; but his agent, Richard Pace, found the negotiations too far advanced and the prices too high for him to back up this vain whim of his master’s; and Henry VIII. abandoned it. The diet had been convoked for the 17th of June at Frankfort. The day was drawing near; and which of the two parties had the majority was still regarded as, uncertain. Franz von Sickingen appeared in the outskirts of Frankfort with more than twenty thousand men of the German army, “whereat marvellously astonished,” says Fleuranges, “were they who wished well to the King of France and very mightily rejoiced they who wished well to the Catholic king.” The gentleman-adventurer had not been less accessible than the prince-electors to bribery. The diet opened on the 18th of June. The Archbishop of Mayence made a great speech in favor of Charles of Austria; and the Archbishop of Troves spoke in favor of Francis I., to whom he had remained faithful. Rival intrigues were kept up; Sickingen and his troops were a clog upon deliberation; the electors were embarrassed and weary of their dissensions; and the Archbishop of Troves proposed by way of compromise the election of the Duke of Saxony, Frederick the Wise, who, at this crisis so shameful for his peers, had just given fresh proofs of his sound judgment, his honesty, and his patriotic independence. But Frederick declined the honor it was intended to do him, and which he considered beyond his powers to support; and he voted for Archduke Charles, “a real German prince,” said he, “the choice of whom seemed to him most natural in point of right and most suitable in point of fact under the present circumstances of Europe.” The six other electors gave in to his opinion, and that same day, June 18, 1519, unanimously elected the King of Spain, Charles, King of the Romans and Emperor of Germany, with the title of Charles V.

Whatever pains were taken by Francis I. to keep up a good appearance after this heavy reverse, his mortification was profound, and he thought of nothing but getting his revenge. He flattered himself he would find something of the sort in a solemn interview and an appearance of alliance with Henry VIII., King of England, who had, like himself, just undergone in the election to the empire a less flagrant but an analogous reverse. It had already, in the previous year and on the occasion of a treaty concluded between the two kings for the restitution of Tournai to France, been settled that they should meet before long in token of reconciliation. Allusion had even been made, at that period, to a much more important restitution, of Calais in fact, for which Francis I., at what price we know not, had obtained the advocacy of Cardinal Wolsey, who was then all-powerful with Henry VIII. “Of what use to Us,” Wolsey had said, “is this town of Calais, where in time of peace as well as of war we have to keep up such numerous garrisons, which costs us so much money, and which so often forces us to measures contrary to the real interests of England?” But this idea was vehemently scouted by the English, and the coming interview between the two kings remained the sole accessory of the treaty of 1518. After Charles V.’s election to the empire, Francis I. was eager to claim this interview, which was sure to cause in Europe the impression of a close understanding between the two kings before the very eyes of their common rival. A convention, signed on the 26th of March, 1520, regulated its details. It was stipulated that the two kings should meet in Picardy between Guines, an English possession in the neighborhood of Calais, and Ardres, which belonged to France. But, so soon as Charles V., at that time in Spain, was informed of this design, he used all his efforts to make it abortive. Henry, however, stood firm; not that he had resolved to knit himself closely with Francis I. against the new emperor, whom, a few months previously, he had shown alacrity in felicitating upon his accession to the empire, but he was unwilling to fail in his promise to the King of France, and he liked to assume in respect of the two rivals the part of an arbiter equally courted by both. Charles V., still actively working against the interview, entered into secret negotiation with Cardinal Wolsey to obtain for himself also an interview with Henry VIII., which would destroy the effect of that in course of arrangement between the Kings of France and England. In writing to Wolsey he called him his “very dear friend,” and guaranteed him a pension of seven thousand ducats, secured upon two Spanish bishoprics; and on the 26th of May, 1520, Henry VIII. received at Canterbury, as he was passing by on his way to embark at Dover for the interview in France, the as it were unexpected information that Charles V. had just arrived with his fleet at the port of Hythe. The king immediately sent Wolsey to meet the emperor, who disembarked at Dover, whither Henry went to visit him; and the two sovereigns repaired together to Canterbury, where they went in state to the cathedral, “resplendent,” says Erasmus, “with all the precious gifts it had received for so many centuries, especially with the most precious of all, the chest containing the remains of Thomas a-Becket, so magnificent that gold was the least of its ornaments.” There they passed three days, treating of their affairs in the midst of galas, during which Charles V. completely won over Wolsey by promising to help him to become pope. On the 31st of May, 1520, Charles, quite easy about the interview in France, embarked at Sandwich for his Flemish possessions, and Henry VIII. made sail for Calais, his point of departure to the place agreed upon for Francis to meet him, and where they had made up their minds, both of them, to display all the splendors of their two courts.

This meeting has remained celebrated in history far more for its royal pomp, and for the personal incidents which were connected with it, than for its political results. It was called _The Field of Cloth of Gold;_ and the courtiers who attended the two sovereigns felt bound to almost rival them in sumptuousness, “insomuch,” says the contemporary Martin du Bellay, “that many bore thither their mills, their forests, and their meadows on their backs.” Henry VIII. had employed eleven hundred workmen, the most skilful of Flanders and Holland, in building a quadrangular palace of wood, one hundred and twenty-eight feet long every way; on one side of the entrance-gate was a fountain, covered with gilding, and surmounted by a statue of Bacchus, round which there flowed through subterranean pipes all sorts of wines, and which bore in letters of gold the inscription, “Make good cheer, who will;” and on the other side a column, supported by four lions, was surmounted by a statue of Cupid armed with bow and arrows. Opposite the palace was erected a huge figure of a savage wearing the arms of his race, with this inscription, chosen by Henry VIII.: “He whom I back wins.” The frontage was covered outside with canvas painted to represent freestone; and the inside was hung with rich tapestries. Francis I., emulous of equalling his royal neighbor in magnificence, had ordered to be erected close to Ardres an immense tent, upheld in the middle by a colossal pole firmly fixed in the ground and with pegs and cordage all around it. Outside, the tent, in the shape of a dome, was covered with cloth of gold; and, inside, it represented a sphere with a ground of blue velvet and studded with stars, like the firmament. At each angle of the large tent there was a small one equally richly decorated. But before the two sovereigns exchanged visits, in the midst of all these magnificent preparations, there arose a violent hurricane, which tore up the pegs and split the cordage of the French tent, scattered them over the ground, and forced Francis I. to take up his quarters in an old castle near Ardres. When the two kings’ two chief councillors, Cardinal Wolsey on one side and Admiral Bonnivet on the other, had regulated the formalities, on the 7th of June, 1520, Francis I. and Henry VIII. set out on their way, at the same hour and the same pace, for their meeting in the valley of Ardres, where a tent had been prepared for them. As they drew near, some slight anxiety was manifested by the escort of the King of England, amongst whom a belief prevailed that that of the King of France was more numerous; but it was soon perceived to be nothing of the sort. The two kings, mounted upon fine horses and superbly dressed, advanced towards one another; and Henry VIII.’s horse stumbled, which his servants did not like. The two kings saluted each other with easy grace, exchanged embraces without getting off their horses, dismounted, and proceeded arm-in-arm to the tent where Wolsey and De Bonnivet were awaiting them. “My dear brother and cousin,” immediately said Francis with his easy grace, “I am come a long way, and not without trouble, to see you in person. I hope that you hold me for such as I am, ready to give you aid with the kingdoms and lordships that are in my power.” Henry, with a somewhat cold reserve, replied, “It is not your kingdoms or your divers possessions that I regard, but the soundness and loyal observance of the promises set down in the treaties between you and me. My eyes never beheld a prince who could be dearer to my heart, and I have crossed the seas at the extreme boundary of my kingdom to come and see you.” The two kings entered the tent and signed a treaty whereby the Dauphin of France was to marry Princess Mary, only daughter at that time of Henry VIII., to whom Francis I. undertook to pay annually a sum of one hundred thousand livres [two million eight hundred thousand francs, or one hundred and twelve thousand pounds in the money of our day], until the marriage was celebrated, which would not be for some time yet, as the English princess was only four years old. The two kings took wine together, according to custom, and reciprocally presented the members of their courts. “King Francis,” says Henry VIII.’s favorite chronicler, Edward Hall, who was there, “is an amiable prince, proud in bearing and gay in manner, with a brown complexion, large eyes, long nose, thick lips, broad chest and shoulders, short legs, and big feet.” Titian’s portrait gives a loftier and more agreeable idea of Francis I.

When the two kings proceeded to sign, in their tent, the treaty they had just concluded, “the King of England,” according to Fleuranges’ _Memoires,_ “himself took up the articles and began to read them. When he had read those relating to the King of France, who was to have the priority, and came to speak of himself, he got as far as, ‘I, Henry, King’ . . . (he would have said of _France and England_), but he left out the title as far as France was concerned, and said to King Francis, ‘I will not put it in as you are here, for I should lie;’ and he said only, ‘I Henry, King of _England_.’” But, as M. Mignet very properly says, “if he omitted the title in his reading, he left it in the treaty itself, and, shortly afterwards, was ambitious to render it a reality, when he invaded France and wished to reign over it.”

After the diplomatic stipulations were concluded, the royal meeting was prolonged for sixteen days, which were employed in tourneys, jousts, and all manner of festivals. The personal communication of the two kings was regulated with all the precautions of official mistrust and restraint; and when the King of England went to Ardres to see the Queen of France, the King of France had to go to Guines to see the Queen of England, for the two kings were hostages for one another. “The King of France, who was not a suspicious man,” says Fleuranges, “was mighty vexed at there being so little confidence in one another. He got up one morning very early, which is not his habit, took two gentlemen and a page, the first three he could find, mounted his horse, and went to visit the King of England at the castle of Guines. When he came on to the castle-bridge, all the English were mighty astonished. As he rode amongst them, the king gayly called upon them to surrender to him, and asked them the way to the chamber of the king his brother, the which was pointed out to him by the governor of Guines, who said to him, ‘Sir, he is not awake.’ But King Francis passed on all the same, went up to the said chamber, knocked at the door, awoke the King of England, and walked in.

Never was man more dumbfounded than King Henry, who said to King Francis, ‘Brother, you have done me a better turn than ever man did to another, and you show me the great trust I ought to have in you. I yield myself your prisoner from this moment, and I proffer you my parole.’ He undid from his neck a collar worth fifteen thousand angels, and begged the King of France to take it and wear it that very day for his prisoner’s sake. And, lo, the king, who wished to do him the same turn, had brought with him a bracelet which was worth more than thirty thousand angels, and begged him to wear it for his sake, which thing he did, and the King of France put what had been given him on his neck. Thereupon the King of England was minded to get up, and the King of France said that he should have no other chamber-attendant but himself, and he warmed his shirt and handed it to him when he was up. The King of France made up his mind to go back, notwithstanding that the King of England would have kept him to dinner; but, inasmuch as there was to be jousting after dinner, he mounted his horse and went back to Ardres. He met a many good folk who were coming to meet him, amongst the rest l’Aventureux [a name given to Fleuranges himself], who said to him, ‘My dear master, you are mad to have done what you have done; I am very glad to see you back here, and devil take him who counselled you.’ Whereupon the king said that never a soul had counselled him, and that he knew well that there was not a soul in his kingdom who would have so counselled him; and then he began to tell what he had done at the said Guines, and so returned, conversing, to Ardres, for it was not far.”

“Then began the jousts, which lasted a week, and were wondrous fine, both a-foot and a-horseback. After all these pastimes the King of France and the King of England retired to a pavilion, where they drank together. And there the King of England took the King of France by the collar, and said to him, ‘Brother, I should like to wrestle with you,’ and gave him a feint or two; and the King of France, who is a mighty good wrestler, gave him a turn and threw him on the ground. And the King of England would have had yet another trial; but all that was broken off, and it was time to go to supper. After this they had yet three or four jousts and banquets, and then they took leave of one another [on the 24th of June, 1520], with the greatest possible peace between the princes and princesses. That done, the King of England returned to Guines, and the King of France to France; and it was not without giving great gifts at parting, one to another.” [_Memoires de Fleuranges,_ pp. 349-363.]

Having left the Field of Cloth of Gold for Amboise, his favorite residence, Francis I. discovered that Henry VIII., instead of returning direct to England, had gone, on the 10th of July, to Gravelines, in Flanders, to pay a visit to Charles V., who had afterwards accompanied him to Calais. The two sovereigns had spent three days there, and Charles V., on separating from the King of England, had commissioned him to regulate, as arbiter, all difficulties that might arise between himself and the King of France. Assuredly nothing was less calculated to inspire Francis I. with confidence in the results of his meeting with Henry VIII. and of their mutual courtesies. Though he desired to avoid the appearance of taking the initiative in war, he sought every occasion and pretext for recommencing it; and it was not long before he found them in the Low Countries, in Navarre, and in Italy. A trial was made of Henry VIII.’s mediation and of a conference at Calais; and a discussion was raised touching the legitimate nature of the protection afforded by the two rival sovereigns to their petty allies. But the real fact was, that Francis I. had a reverse to make up for and a passion to gratify; and the struggle recommenced in April, 1521, in the Low Countries. Charles V., when he heard that the French had crossed his frontier, exclaimed, “God be praised that I am not the first to commence the war, and that the King of France is pleased to make me greater than I am, for, in a little while, either I shall be a very poor emperor or he will be a poor King of France.” The campaign opened in the north, to the advantage of France, by the capture of Hesdin; Admiral Bonnivet, who had the command on the frontier of Spain, reduced some small forts of Biscay and the fortress of Fontarabia; and Marshal de Lautrec, governor of Milaness, had orders to set out at once to go and defend it against the Spaniards and Imperialists, who were concentrating for its invasion.

Lautrec was but little adapted for this important commission. He had been made governor of Milaness in August, 1516, to replace the Constable de Bourbon, whose recall to France the queen-mother, Louise of Savoy, had desired and stimulated. Lautrec had succeeded ill in his government. He was active and brave, but he was harsh, haughty, jealous, imperious, and grasping; and he had embroiled himself with most of the Milanese lords, amongst others with the veteran J. J. Trivulzio, who, under Charles VIII. and Louis XII., had done France such great service in Italy. Trivulzio, offensively treated at Milan, and subjected to accusations at Paris, went, at eighty-two years of age, to France to justify himself before the king; but Francis I. gave him a cold reception, barely spoke to him, and declined his explanations. One day, at Arpajon, Trivulzio heard that the king was to pass on horseback through the town; and, being unable to walk, had himself carried, ill as he was, in his chair to the middle of the street. The king passed with averted head, and without replying to Trivulzio, who cried, “Sir, ah! sir, just one moment’s audience!” Trivulzio, on reaching home, took to his bed, and died there a month afterwards, on the 5th of December, 1518, having himself dictated this epitaph, which was inscribed on his tomb, at Milan, “J. J. Trivulzio, son of Anthony: he who never rested, rests. Hush!” [_J. J. Trivultius, Antonii filius, qui nunquam quievit, quiescit. Tace!_]

Francis I., when informed that Trivulzio was near his end, regretted, it is said, his harsh indifference, and sent to express to him his regret; but, “It is too late,” answered the dying man. In the king’s harshness there was something more than ungrateful forgetfulness of a veteran’s ancient services. While Francis was bringing about a renewal of war in Italy, in the Low Countries, and on the frontier of Spain, he was abandoning himself at Paris, Tours, Amboise, and wherever he resided, to all the diversions and all the enticements of the brilliant court which was gathered around him. Extravagance and pleasure were a passion with him. “There has been talk,” says Brantome, “of the great outlay, magnificence, sumptuousness and halls of Lucullus; but in nought of that kind did he ever come near our king . . . and what is most rare is, that in a village, in the forest, at the meet, there was the same service as there would have been in Paris. . . . One day, when the king was expecting the Emperor Charles to dinner, word came that he had slipped away, and had gone to give a sudden surprise to the constable, just as he was sitting down to table, and to dine with him and all his comrades comradewise. He found this table as well furnished and supplied, and laden with victuals as well cooked and flavored, as if they had been in Paris or some other good city of France; whereat the emperor was so mightily astonished that he said that there was no such grandeur in the world as that of such a King of France. . . . In respect of ladies, of a surety it must be confessed that before the time of King Francis they set foot in and frequented the court but little and in but small numbers. It is true that Queen Anne (of Brittany) began to make her ladies’ court larger than it had been under former queens; and, without her, the king her husband (Louis XII.) would have taken no trouble about it. But Francis I., coming to reign, and considering that the whole grace of the court was the ladies, was pleased to fill it up with them more than had been the ancient custom. Since, in truth, a court without ladies is a garden without any pretty flowers, and more resembles a Satrap’s or a Turk’s court than that of a great Christian king. . . . As for me, I hold that there was never anything better introduced than the ladies’ court. Full often have I seen our kings go to camp, or town, or elsewhither, remain there and divert themselves for some days, and yet take thither no ladies. But we were so bewildered, so lost, so moped, that for the week we spent away from them and their pretty eyes it appeared to us a year; and always a-wishing, ‘When shall we be at the court?’ Not, full often, calling that the court where the king was, but that where the queen and ladies were.” [_OEuvres de Brantome, edition of the Societe de l’Histoire de France,_ t. iii. pp. 120-129.]

Now, when so many fair ladies are met together in a life of sumptuousness and gayety, a king is pretty sure to find favorites, and royal favorites rarely content themselves with pleasing the king; they desire to make their favor serviceable their family and their friends. Francis I. had made choice one, Frances de Foix, countess of Chateaubriant, beautiful ambitious, dexterous, haughty, readily venturing upon rivalry with even the powerful queen-mother. She had three brothers; Lautrec was one of the three, and she supported him in all his pretensions and all his trials of fortune. When he set out to go and take the command in Italy, he found himself at the head of an army numerous indeed, but badly equipped, badly paid, and at grips with Prosper Colonna, the most able amongst the chiefs of the coalition formed at this juncture between Charles V. and Pope Leo X. against the French. Lautrec did not succeed in preventing Milan from falling into the hands of the Imperialists, and, after an uncertain campaign of some months’ duration, he lost at La Bicocca, near Monza, on the 27th of April, 1522, a battle, which left in the power of Francis I., in Lombardy, only the citadels of Milan, Cremona, and Novara. At the news of these reverses, Francis I. repaired to Lyons, to consult as to the means of applying a remedy. Lautrec also arrived there. “The king,” says Martin du Bellay, “gave him a bad reception, as the man by whose fault he considered he had lost his duchy of Milan, and would not speak to him.” Lautrec found an occasion for addressing the king, and complained vehemently of “the black looks he gave him.” “And good reason,” said the king, “when you have lost me such a heritage as the duchy of Milan.” “‘Twas not I who lost it,” answered Lautrec; “‘twas your Majesty yourself: I several times warned you that, if I were not helped with money, there was no means of retaining the men-at-arms, who had served for eighteen months without a penny, and likewise the Swiss, who forced me to fight at a disadvantage, which they would never have done if they had received their pay.” “I sent you four hundred thousand crowns when you asked for them.” “I received the letters in which your Majesty notified me of this money, but the money never.” The king sent at once for the superintendent-general of finance, James de Beaune, Baron of Semblancay, who acknowledged having received orders on the subject from the king, but added that at the very moment when he was about to send this sum to the army, the queen-mother had come and asked him for it, and had received it from him, whereof he was ready to make oath. Francis I. entered his mother’s room in a rage, reproaching her with having been the cause of losing him his duchy of Milan. “I should never have believed it of you,” he said, “that you would have kept money ordered for the service of my army.” The queen-mother, somewhat confused at first, excused herself by saying, that “those were moneys proceeding from the savings which she had made out of her revenues, and had given to the superintendent to take care of.” Semblancay stuck to what he had said. The question became a personal one between the queen-mother and the minister; and commissioners were appointed to decide the difference. Chancellor Duprat was the docile servant of Louise of Savoy and the enemy of Semblancay, whose authority in financial matters he envied; and he chose the commissioners from amongst the mushroom councillors he had lately brought into Parliament. The question between the queen-mother and the superintendent led to nothing less than the trial of Semblancay. The trial lasted five years, and, on the 9th of April, 1527, a decree of Parliament condemned Semblancay to the punishment of death and confiscation of all his property; not for the particular matter which had been the origin of the quarrel, but “as attained and convicted of larcenies, falsifications, abuses, malversations, and maladministration of the king’s finances, without prejudice as to the debt claimed by the said my lady, the mother of the king.” Semblancay, accordingly, was hanged on the gibbet of Montfaucon, on the 12th of August. In spite of certain ambiguities which arose touching some acts of his administration and some details of his trial, public feeling was generally and very strongly in his favor. He was an old and faithful servant of the crown; and Francis I. had for a long time called him “his father.” He was evidently the victim of the queen-mother’s greed and vengeance. The firmness of his behavior, at the time of his execution, became a popular theme in the verses of Clement Marot:--

When Maillart, officer of hell, escorted
To Montfaucon Semblancay, doomed to die,
Which, to your thinking, of the twain supported
The better havior? I will make reply:
Maillart was like the man to death proceeding;
And Semblancay so stout an ancient looked,
It seemed, forsooth, as if himself were leading
Lieutenant Maillard--to the gallows booked!

It is said that, at the very moment of execution, Semblancay, waiting on the scaffold for at least a commutation of the penalty, said, “Had I served God as I have served the king, He would not have made me wait so long.” Nearly two centuries later, in 1683, a more celebrated minister than Semblancay, Colbert, in fact, as he was dying tranquilly in his bed, after having for twenty years served Louis XIV., and in that service made the fortune of his family as well as his own, said also, “Had I done for God what I have done for yonder man, I had been twice saved; and now I know not what will become of me.” A striking similarity in language and sentiment, in spite of such different ends, between two great councillors of kings, both devoted during their lives to the affairs of the world, and both passing, at their last hour, this severe judgment, as Christians, upon the masters of the world and upon themselves.

About the same time the government of Francis I. was involved, through his mother’s evil passions, not in an act more morally shameful, but in an event more politically serious, than the execution of Semblancay. There remained in France one puissant prince, the last of the feudal semi-sovereigns, and the head of that only one of the provincial dynasties sprung from the dynasty of the Capetians which still held its own against the kingly house. There were no more Dukes of Burgundy, Dukes of Anjou, Counts of Provence, and Dukes of Brittany; by good fortune or by dexterous management the French kingship had absorbed all those kindred and rival states. Charles II., Duke of Bourbon, alone was invested with such power and independence as could lead to rivalry. He was in possession of Bourbonness, of Auvergne, of Le Forez, of La Marche, of Beaujolais, and a large number of domains and castles in different parts of France. Throughout all these possessions he levied taxes and troops, convoked the local estates, appointed the officers of justice, and regulated almost the whole social organism. He was born on the 10th of February, 1490, four years before Francis I.; he was the head of the younger branch of the Bourbons-Montpensier; and he had married, in 1515, his cousin, Suzanne of Bourbon, only daughter of Peter II., head of the elder branch, and Anne of France, the able and for a long while puissant daughter of Louis XI. Louis XII. had taken great interest in this marriage, and it had been stipulated in the contract “that the pair should make a mutual and general settlement of all their possessions in favor of the survivor.” Thus the young duke, Charles, had united all the possessions of the house of Bourbon; and he held at Moulins a brilliant princely court, of which he was himself the most brilliant ornament. Having been trained from his boyhood in all chivalrous qualities, he was an accomplished knight before becoming a tried warrior; and he no sooner appeared upon the field of battle than he won renown not only as a valiant prince, but as an eminent soldier. In 1509, at the battle of Agnadello, under the eye of Louis XII. himself, he showed that he was a worthy pupil of La Tremoille, of La Palice, and of Bayard; and in 1512, at that of Ravenna, his reputation was already so well established in the army that, when Gaston de Foix was killed, they clamored for Duke Charles of Bourbon, then twenty-two years old, as his successor. Louis XII. gave him full credit for his bravery and his warlike abilities; but the young prince’s unexpansive character, haughty independence, and momentary flashes of audacity, caused the veteran king some disquietude. “I wish,” said he, “he had a more open, more gay, less taciturn spirit; stagnant water affrights me.” In 1516, the year after Louis XII.’s death, Andrew Trevisani, Venetian ambassador at Milan, wrote to the Venetian council, “This Duke of Bourbon handles a sword most gallantly and successfully; he fears God, he is devout, humane, and very generous; he has a revenue of one hundred and twenty thousand crowns, twenty thousand from his mother-in-law, Anne of France, and two thousand a month as constable of France; and, according to what is said by M. de Longueville, governor of Paris, he might dispose of half the king’s army for any enterprise he pleased, even if the king did not please.”

Scarcely had Francis I. ascended the throne, on the 12th of January, 1515, when he made the Duke of Bourbon’s great position still greater by creating him constable of France. Was it solely to attach to himself the greatest lord and one of the most distinguished soldiers of the kingdom, or had, perhaps, as has already been hinted, the favor of the queen-mother something to do with the duke’s speedy elevation? The whole history of Charles of Bourbon tends to a belief that the feelings of Louise of Savoy towards him, her love or her hate, had great influence upon the decisive incidents of his life. However that may be, the young constable, from the moment of entering upon his office, fully justified the king’s choice.

He it was who, during the first campaign in Italy, examined in person, with the shepherd who had pointed it out, an unknown passage across the Alps; and, on the 13th and 14th of September, he contributed greatly to the victory of Melegnano. “I can assure you,” wrote Francis I. to his mother, the regent, “that my brother the constable and M. de St. Pol splintered as many lances as any gentlemen of the company whosoever; and I speak of this as one who saw; they spared themselves as little as if they had been wild boars at bay.” On returning to France the king appointed the constable governor of conquered Milaness; and to give him a further mark of favor, “he granted him the noble privilege of founding trades in all the towns of the kingdom. This, when the Parliament enregistered the king’s letters patent, was expressly stated to be in consideration of Bourbon’s extraordinary worth, combined with his quality as a prince of the blood, and not because of his office of constable.” [_Histoire de la Maison de Bourbon,_ by M. Desormeaux, t. ii. p. 437.] The constable showed that he was as capable of governing as of conquering. He foiled all Emperor Maximilian’s attempts to recover Milaness; and, not receiving from the king money for the maintenance and pay of his troops, he himself advanced one hundred thousand livres, opened a loan-account in his own name, raised an army-working-corps of six thousand men to repair the fortifications of Milan, and obtained from the Swiss cantons permission to enlist twelve thousand recruits amongst them. His exercise of authority over the Lombard population was sometimes harsh, but always judicious and efficient. Nevertheless, in the spring of 1516, eight months after the victory of Melegnano and but two months after he had driven Emperor Maximilian from Milaness, the Duke of Bourbon was suddenly recalled, and Marshal de Lautrec was appointed governor in his place. When the constable arrived at Lyons, where the court then happened to be, “the king,” says Fleuranges in his Memoires, “gave him marvellously good welcome;” but kings are too ready to imagine that their gracious words suffice to hide or make up for their acts of real disfavor; and the Duke of Bourbon was too proud to delude himself. If he had any desire to do so, the way in which the king’s government treated him soon revealed to him his real position: the advances he had made and the debts he had contracted for the service of the crown in Milaness, nay, his salary as constable and his personal pensions, were unpaid. Was this the effect of secret wrath on the part of the queen-mother, hurt because he seemed to disdain her good graces, or an act arising may be from mistrust and may be from carelessness on the king’s part, or merely a result of the financial disorder into which the affairs of Francis I. were always falling? These questions cannot be solved with certainty. Anyhow the constable, though thus maltreated, did not cry out; but his royal patroness and mother-in-law, Anne of France, daughter of Louis XI., dowager-duchess of the house of Bourbon, complained of these proceedings to the king’s mother, and uttered the word ingratitude. The dispute between the two princesses grew rancorous; the king intervened to reconcile them; speedy payment was promised of all that was due to the constable, but the promise was not kept. The constable did not consider it seemly to wait about; so he quitted the court and withdrew into his own duchy, to Moulins, not openly disgraced, but resolved to set himself, by his proud independence, above the reach of ill-will, whether on the king’s part or his mother’s.

Moulins was an almost kingly residence. “The dukes,” said the Venetian traveller Andrew Navagero, in 1528, “have built there fortress-wise a magnificent palace, with beautiful gardens, groves, fountains, and all the sumptuous appliances of a prince’s dwelling.” No sooner did the constable go to reside there than numbers of the nobility flocked thither around him. The feudal splendor of this abode was shortly afterwards enhanced by an auspicious domestic incident. In 1517 the Duchess of Bourbon was confined there of a son, a blessing for some time past unhoped for. The delighted constable determined to make of the child’s baptism a great and striking event; and he begged the king to come and be godfather, with the dowager Duchess of Bourbon as godmother. Francis I. consented and repaired to Moulins with his mother and nearly all his court. The constable’s magnificence astonished even the magnificent king “five hundred gentlemen, all clad in velvet, and all wearing a chain of gold going three times round the neck,” were in habitual attendance upon the duke; “the throng of the invited was so great that neither the castle of Moulins nor the town itself sufficed to lodge them; tents had to be pitched in the public places, in the streets, in the park.” Francis I. could not refrain from saying that a King of France would have much difficulty in making such a show; the queen-mother did not hide her jealousy; regal temper came into collision with feudal pride. Admiral Bonnivet, a vassal of the constable and a favorite of the king, was having built, hard by Chatellerault, a castle so vast and so magnificent, “that he seemed,” says Brantome, “to be minded to ride the high horse over the house of M. de Bourbon, in such wise that it should appear only a nest beside his own.” Francis I., during a royal promenade, took the constable one day to see the edifice the admiral was building, and asked him what he thought of it. “I think,” said Bourbon, “that the cage is too big and too fine for the bird.” “Ah!” said the king, “do you not speak with somewhat of envy?” “I!” cried the constable; “I feel envy of a gentleman whose ancestors thought themselves right happy to be squires to mine!” In their casual and familiar conversations the least pretext would lead to sharp words between the Duke of Bourbon and his kingly guest. The king was rallying him one day on the attachment he was suspected of having felt for a lady of the court. “Sir,” said the constable, “what you have just said has no point for me, but a good deal for those who were not so forward as I was in the lady’s good graces.” [At this period princes of the blood, when speaking to the king, said Monsieur; when they wrote to him, they called him Monseigneur.] Francis I., to whom this scarcely veiled allusion referred, was content to reply, “Ah! my dear cousin, you fly out at everything, and you are mighty short-tempered.” The nickname of short-tempered stuck to the constable from that day, and not without reason. With anybody but the king the constable was a good deal more than short-tempered the chancellor, Duprat, who happened to be at Moulins, and who had a wish to become possessed of two estates belonging to the constable, tried to worm himself into his good graces; but Bourbon gave him sternly to understand with what contempt he regarded him, and Duprat, who had hitherto been merely the instrument of Louise of Savoy’s passions, so far as the duke was concerned, became henceforth his personal enemy, and did not wait long for an opportunity of making the full weight of his enmity felt. The king’s visit to Moulins came to an end without any settlement of the debts due from the royal treasury to the constable. Three years afterwards, in 1520, he appeared with not a whit the less magnificence at the Field of Cloth of Gold, where he was one of the two great lords chosen by Francis I. to accompany him at his interview with Henry VIII.; but the constable had to put up with the disagreeableness of having for his associate upon that state occasion Admiral Bonnivet, whom he had but lately treated with so much hauteur, and his relations towards the court were by no means improved by the honor which the king conferred upon him in summoning him to his side that day. Henry VIII., who was struck by this vassal’s haughty bearing and looks, said to Francis I., “If I had a subject like that in my kingdom, I would not leave his head very long on his shoulders.”

More serious causes of resentment came to aggravate a situation already so uncomfortable. The war, which had been a-hatching ever since the imperial election at Frankfort, burst out in 1521, between Francis I. and Charles V. Francis raised four armies in order to face it on all his frontiers, in Guienne, in Burgundy, in Champagne, and in Picardy, “where there was no army,” says Du Bellai, “however small.” None of these great commands was given to the Duke of Bourbon; and when the king summoned him to the army of Picardy, whither he repaired in all haste with six thousand foot and three hundred men-at-arms raised in his own states, the command of the advance-guard, which belonged to him by right of his constableship, was given to the Duke of Alencon, who had nothing to recommend him beyond the fact that he was the husband of Marguerite de Valois and brother-in-law of the king. Bourbon deeply resented this slight; and it was remarked that he frequently quoted with peculiar meaning a reply made by a Gascon gentleman to King Charles VII., who had asked him if anything could shake his fidelity, “Nothing, sir, nothing; not even an offer of three such kingdoms as yours; but an affront might.” The constable did not serve a whit the less valiantly and brilliantly in this campaign of Picardy; he surprised and carried the town of Hesdin, which was defended by a strong garrison; but after the victory he treated with a generosity which was not perhaps free from calculation the imperialist nobility shut up in the castle; he set all his prisoners at large, and paid particular attention to the Countess de Roeux, of the house of Croy, whom he knew to have influence with Charles V. He was certainly not preparing just then to abandon the King of France and go over to the camp of the emperor; but he was sufficiently irritated against Francis I. to gladly seize an opportunity of making new friends on the rival side.