Henri II: His Court and Times (10 page)

Two days after the Viceroy's arrival (May 10, 1526), he and
Van Praet were requested to appear before the Council,
when the Chancellor informed them that the King had no
power to surrender a province of France, and that, though
his Majesty's subjects were ready to obey him in all else,
they would never consent to the dismemberment of the realm.
The King himself confirmed what his Minister had said,
adding that the oath which he had taken either to execute
the terms of the treaty or to return to Spain was not binding, inasmuch as it had been exacted from him while in
prison. At the same time, he was prepared to pay a
ransom of two million crowns for Burgundy — an immense
sum at this period — and to execute faithfully the rest of the
treaty.

Modern historians have rightly condemned the conduct
of François in severe terms; but his contemporaries appear
to have regarded it in a very different light. "Our King,"
writes Brantôme,
⁰¹
"made the treaty of a very skilful prince,"
and such was undoubtedly the general opinion in France.
Nor was foreign opinion, outside Charles's own dominions
disposed to judge the perjured monarch at all harshly.
Those, indeed, to whom the growing power of the
Emperor was a cause of jealousy and alarm, declared that
François was justified in repudiating engagements entered
into while he was not a free agent. "Treaties made under
fear do not stand," wrote Baldassare Castiglione, the Papal
Nuncio at Toledo, to the Vatican, so soon as he was informed
of the terms of the treaty,
⁰²
and Clement VII subsequently made not the smallest difficulty about absolving the King
from his oath; while Wolsey instructed the English
Ambassadors at the French Court "to say of themselves
soberly, and in a manner of stupefaction and marvel, that
these be great and high conditions, the like whereof have
not been heard of, and such as were even here [in England]
thought were either never agreed to, or being agreed to,
shall never be performed.
"
⁰³

François's reply to the demands of Lannoy and Van
Praet was communicated to Charles V, who, incensed and
mortified at finding himself the dupe of a rival whose
political capacity he held in such contempt, rejected the
proposed compromise with indignation, and called upon
the King to keep his oath and return to prison, since he
was either unwilling or unable to execute the articles of
the Treaty of Madrid. In the interval, however, plenipotentiaries from Clement
VII and the Venetians had arrived at the French Court, with proposals for a
Franco-Italian alliance, which was to free the peninsula from the yoke of the
Imperialists and re-establish its independence; and François's reply to the
Emperor's summons was the announcement of the formation of the "Holy League" of Cognac,
between the King of France, the Pope, Venice, Florence,
and Francesco Sforza, Duke of Milan (May 22, 1526), at
the instigation of the King of England, who was declared
its protector.

T
HE
E
MPEROR
C
HARLES
V
FROM A PAINTING BY AN UNKNOWN FLEMISH ARTIST IN THE LOUVRE

Conceived ostensibly in the interests of universal peace,
this league was in reality a challenge to a European war,
for, though the preamble of the treaty stated that its object
was "the safety and security of Christendom and the
establishment of a true and lasting peace between Christian
princes," and the Emperor was invited to join it, the
conditions of his admission were that he should restore the
Milanese to Sforza, place the Italian States in the position
in which they stood at his accession, visit Italy for his
coronation with such escort only as might be approved by
the Pope and the Venetians, release the French princes for
a reasonable ransom in money, and undertake to discharge
within three months all his debts to the King of England.
In the event of Charles refusing to subscribe to these
conditions, as he would most assuredly do, the confederates
bound themselves to expel the Imperialists first from
Lombardy and Genoa, and afterwards from Naples. When
this had been effected, François was to recover his
suzerainty over Genoa; while Sforza, to whom a French
princess was to be given in marriage, undertook to cede
to him the county of Asti and pay an annual sum of
50,000 ducats, in return for his renunciation of his claims
on the Milanese. He was also to receive an annual
pension of 75,000 ducats from the new King of Naples —
whose selection was left to the Pope — as compensation
for the surrender of his claims in that quarter. Great
efforts were made by the confederates to induce England
to join the League, and, as a temptation, an article was
inserted in the treaty engaging to provide Henry VIII
with a rich principality in the kingdom of Naples, and
reward Wolsey with a lordship producing a revenue of
10,000 ducats. But it was not the interest of England at
that moment to make an enemy of the Emperor, and she
decided to wait upon events.

We shall pass briefly over the events which followed the
formation of the League of Cognac. Never again was France
to have so favourable an opportunity of arresting the forward
march of her great enemy; not for nearly three centuries was
Italy to be afforded so fair a chance of shaking off the yoke of
the foreigner. Charles V, as he had foreseen when the Treaty
of Madrid was signed, found himself without an ally in
Europe, and beset with difficulties on every side. Germany
was torn by religious strife; the Turks were overrunning
Hungary; Naples was seething with discontent; his coffers
were all but empty. In Lombardy his army had dwindled to
ten or twelve thousand disheartened and disorganised men,
for Pescara was dying, there was no money to pay the troops,
they were surrounded by a population which their tyranny
had aroused to exasperation, and the citadels of Milan and
Cremona still held out for Sforza.

But the opportunity was allowed to pass. François was no
longer the man he had been before his captivity. Then,
whatever his shortcomings, he had at least possessed resolution
and energy where the furtherance of his own ambitious
schemes was concerned. Now, however, he seemed to take
but faint interest in the momentous struggle to which he found
himself committed and to be quite unable to decide upon a
vigorous course of action. The pleasures of the chase, the
charms of a new mistress, Anne de Pisseleu, the future
Duchess d'Étampes, of whom we shall have a good deal to
say hereafter, occupied his mind to the exclusion of the
important questions which called so urgently for his attention.
"Alexander used to pay attention to women when he had no
affairs of State; François attended to affairs of State when there
were no more women."
⁰⁴

The French King had pushed his Italian allies into war by
promises of the most vigorous co-operation; but for more
than a year he never moved, and by that time two of the
leaders of the League had fallen, and the whole situation in
the peninsula had completely changed.

The Duke of Urbino, the general of the confederates,
though far superior to the Imperialists in numbers, failed in
his attempt to relieve the citadel of Milan, and at the end of
July 1526 starvation obliged Sforza to capitulate.

After Sforza, it was the turn of Clement VII. In the
following September, a force consisting partly of Imperialists
and partly of troops in the service of the Pope's determined
enemy, Cardinal Pompeo Colonna, swooped down upon
Rome, plundered the Vatican and St. Peter's, and compelled
Clement VII, who had taken refuge in the Castle of St. Angelo,
to purchase their withdrawal by a four months' truce, which,
however, following the example of the Most Christian King,
he speedily found a pretext for violating. Nevertheless, the
misguided Pontiff began to regret his share in a war in which
he had embarked with such confident hopes of success,
⁰⁵
and on March 15, 1527, he concluded a treaty with the Viceroy of
Naples, by which the Pope was to abandon the Confederation
and the Imperialists were to evacuate the States of the Church.

But the solution of the Papal-Imperial problem had already
passed into other hands. In July 1526, Bourbon had taken
command of the Imperialists in Lombardy; towards the end
of the year, 13,000
landsknechts
under George Frundsberg
crossed the Alps, and early in February, the ex-Constable
joined them with his forces on the Trebbia. His troops,
unpaid, ragged, and starving, were in full mutiny. Clamouring
for their pay, they surrounded Bourbon's quarters, and
assumed so threatening an attitude that their leader was
obliged to take refuge with the
landsknechts
.
⁰⁶
The Germans, however, soon followed the example of the Spaniards,
and Frundsberg, while endeavouring to pacify them, was struck
down by apoplexy and carried away to Ferrara, where he died.

Recognising that, in order to quell the mutiny, there was
but one course open to him, Bourbon now offered to lead the
troops to the pillage of Florence and Rome. His decision
was hailed with enthusiasm by the army, which was already
preparing to march, when one of Lannoy's officers named
Feramosca arrived in the camp, with the announcement of the
truce which had just been concluded with the Pope. Bourbon,
however, who was by this time thoroughly disgusted with the
ingratitude of the Emperor, and is believed to have contemplated
carving out a kingdom for himself in Southern Italy, told him
sarcastically that if he wished the truce to be observed, he had
better persuade the troops of the necessity of submitting to it.
This Feramosca essayed to do, whereupon — to borrow his own
words — the soldiers became "furious as lions," and if he had
not prudently taken to flight, would certainly have killed
him.
⁰⁷

On March 30, the army began its march, crossed the Apennines
and descended into Tuscany by the Val di Bagno, "like
a living avalanche," devastating every town and village through
which it passed. But, finding that the Duke of Urbino had
fallen back to cover Florence, it turned to the south-east and
advanced rapidly on Rome, for whose defence Clement, relying
on his convention with Lannoy, had made but the feeblest
preparations. On May 5, the Imperialists saw the spires and
domes of the Eternal City rising before them; on the following
morning, they advanced to the assault. Bourbon himself
planted the first scaling-ladder against the walls, and was
mortally wounded by a ball from an arquebus
⁰⁸
with his foot
on the second rung; but the assailants, roused to fury by the
fall of their leader, poured over the ramparts in a resistless
torrent; the terror-stricken Pope fled to the Castle of St.
Angelo, and in a few hours all resistance was at an end.

The grim tragedy which followed is well known. For weeks
the city was a prey to the lawless soldiery, who pillaged,
murdered, and committed every act of brutal violence without
respect of age or sex or dignity. "The sack of Rome," writes
Brantôme, "was so terrible that neither before nor since has
anything been seen like it." "Never," says another writer,
"had there been such calamity, misery, damage, cruelty, and
inhumanity witnessed."
⁰⁹

The sack of Rome and the captivity of the Pope, who,
after sustaining a siege of a month in the Castle of St. Angelo,
was forced to capitulate, sent a thrill of horror through
Christendom, and though the Emperor made every effort
to exculpate himself, his protestations fell on unheeding
ears. The opportunity thus offered him was too favourable
for François to lose. In the previous March, a French embassy,
with Grammont, Bishop of Tarbes, at its head, had
visited England, where Henry VIII and Wolsey were becoming
seriously alarmed at the successes of the Imperialists;
and on April 30 — a week before Rome fell — a treaty was
concluded at Westminster, whereby it was arranged that
either François himself or his second son, Henri, should
marry Mary Tudor,
¹⁰
then eleven years old; that Henry VIII
should renounce the pretensions to the Crown of France on
payment of an annual sum of 50,000 crowns by François and
of 15,000 by his successors; that, in the meanwhile, the two
Kings should present an ultimatum to the Emperor calling
upon him to make peace, to liberate the princes on payment
of the ransom already offered, and to discharge his debts to
England, and that, in the event of his refusal, they should
make joint war upon him. The tragic news from Italy caused
this alliance to bear speedy fruit, and at the beginning of
August Lautrec, at the head of an army of over 30,000
men, entered Lombardy. It was officially called "
exercitus
Anglicæ et Gallicæ regum pro pontifice romano congregatus
," but
was English only in the money part, Henry VIII supplying
50,000 crowns a month, and,
mirabile dictu
, actually paying
two months' subsidies in advance.
¹¹