Henri II: His Court and Times (19 page)

François, on his side, lost no time in demanding the duchy
for the Duc d'Orléans, promising that, if this claim were
conceded by the Emperor, he would reiterate his own renunciation
of the kingdom of Naples, and oblige Henri to
renounce the pretensions which he had, in right of his wife,
to the lordship of Florence and the duchy of Urbino.
Charles refused the demand, so far as Henri was concerned,
but offered to give the investiture of the Milanese to his
younger brother, the Duc d'Angoulême, on certain conditions.
It is doubtful if the Emperor was sincere in making this offer;
but, any way, François persisted in his demand on behalf of
Henri, and, after waiting in vain for a reply, requested of the
Duke of Savoy a passage for the French army through his
States. This being refused by Charles III, a feeble prince,
who was entirely dominated by his wife, Beatrix of Portugal,
a sister-in-law of the Emperor, he revived a frivolous and long-abandoned claim of Louise of Savoy to her father's dominions,
and early in February despatched an army under Chabot de
Brion and the Comte de Saint-Pol across the frontier.
Neither in Savoy nor in Piedmont did the French meet with
any serious resistance, and by the middle of March Turin and
nearly all the towns of Piedmont had opened their gates to
the invaders.

Had the victorious French marched at once into the Milanese they might have
subdued it with almost equal ease, for the Imperialists there were too weak to
have offered an effective resistance; but François, unwilling to take the
offensive directly against the Emperor, so long as there remained any chance of
an accommodation, allowed Charles to delude him with negotiations for the
cession of the duchy to Henri. These negotiations were, of course, entered into
by the astute Emperor with no other object than that of gaining time, and so
soon as he had gathered sufficient troops to take the field, he proceeded to
Rome, and there, before the new Pope (Paul III) and the Sacred College,
delivered a remarkable speech, in which, after reviewing his past grievances
against François, he threw all the responsibility for the new rupture upon his
rival, and declared his willingness to offer him the choice of three courses:
first, the Milanese for the Duc d'Angoulême, on condition of a firm and durable peace being
made, and of the King's co-operation against infidels and
heretics; or, secondly, single combat, to be fought out with
sword or poniard in their shirts, with the duchies of Burgundy
and Milan as the stakes; or, thirdly, war, in which he should
engage with the greatest reluctance, but should, nevertheless,
wage in such fashion that "nothing in the world should turn
him aside until either he or the King had become the poorest
gentleman in his country." He concluded by calling on the
Pope to judge between him and his rival, from which
invidious duty, however, the diplomatic Paul begged to be
excused.

François returned no answer to the Imperial defiance,
⁰⁶
and hostilities began forthwith. Since Charles had profited by
the time consumed in futile negotiations to send powerful
reinforcements into the Milanese, the invasion of the duchy
was no longer possible, and the King, therefore, resolved
to act on the defensive. But the Marchese di Saluzzo, a
shifty Italian, to whom he had been imprudent enough to
leave the command in Piedmont, deserted to the Emperor,
⁰⁷
and by the end of June the French had been driven in
confusion across the Alps. The garrisons of Turin, Pinerolo,
and one or two other places alone held out.

Flushed with his triumphs in Africa, Charles, departing from
his usual caution, now determined on the invasion of Provence,
and, though Antonio de Leyva, who had a lively recollection
of the fiasco of 1524, besought him to abandon such a
hazardous undertaking, his remonstrances were unheeded, and
on July 25 the Emperor crossed the Var at the head of 50,000
men; while, almost simultaneously, another army under the
Comtes de Nassau and de Rœux invaded Picardy from the
Netherlands.

François had entrusted the defence of Provence to
Anne de Montmorency, who, with the authorisation of the
King, had recourse to the most barbarous method of arresting
the advance of an invader that it is possible to employ.
The whole of the country from the sea to the Durance, and
from the Alps to the Rhône, was ruthlessly laid waste, with the
object of rendering it impossible for the hostile army to find
sustenance. Vineyards, olive-yards, mills, and bake-houses were
ruthlessly destroyed, cattle driven away, wine-casks emptied
into the gutters, wells filled up, villages and even towns burned
to the ground. Thousands of the unhappy peasants perished of
starvation, and the fields were strewn with dead bodies. In
the meanwhile, Montmorency had seized Avignon, in spite of
the protests of the vice-legate who commanded for the Pope
in the Venaissin, and had formed an entrenched camp between
the Durance and the Rhône; while the King quitted Lyons,
where the Court had been residing since the outbreak of war,
and established himself at Valence, in order to be near at hand
in case of emergency. Here a great sorrow befell him, which
might well have been regarded by the devout as a judgment
upon him for the calamities to which his restless ambition had
condemned his unhappy subjects.

The Dauphin had remained at Lyons, awaiting the orders of
the King to rejoin him. This prince, who was now in his
twentieth year, had to some degree abandoned the gravity and
reserve which had aroused so much surprise on his return
from Spain, though he still continued to affect the most
sombre colours in his dress and to drink principally water. In
his relations with the fair sex he was accused of being far less
austere, though, if we are to believe Brantôme — an historian
who is not ordinarily inclined to be at all reticent on this
delicate subject — rumour has done him some injustice.

"I have heard the ladies of that time say," he writes, "that
he was most respectful to them, and treated them with marked
deference, as he treated his mistress, about whom was
composed this chanson:

She was one of the Queen's maids-of-honour, belonging to the
family of Maumont; a very good and ancient one of the
Upper Limousin, and my first cousin, daughter of my father's
sister. She was a very modest and virtuous girl; for the great
choose their mistresses as much for their virtues as for other
qualities."

But, whatever may have been the extent to which Monsieur
le Dauphin shared the paternal susceptibility to feminine
charms, he appears to have been an intelligent and level-headed
youth, who gave every promise of one day making an excellent
king.

The day before that on which it had been arranged that the
Dauphin should leave Lyons, he went to play tennis at Ainay.
As the weather was intensely hot, the prince soon became very
thirsty, and ordered one of his pages to bring him some water
from a neighbouring well. The page hurried off, taking with
him a Portuguese pitcher, which had been given his master by
Doña Agnese Pachecho,
dame d'honneur
to Queen Eleanor.
This pitcher, we are told, was of a peculiar clay, "which was
said to possess the virtues of keeping the water cool, and, at
the same time, preventing it having any injurious effect, even
when imbibed after violent exercise."
⁰⁸
A rather hazardous assertion in view of what followed.

F
RANÇOIS DE
V
ALOIS,
D
AUPHIN OF
F
RANCE
,
ELDEST SON OF
F
RANÇOIS I
FROM THE DRAWING BY FRANÇOIS CLOUET IN
THE MUSÉE CONDÉ, CHANTILLY

Having drawn the water, the page, without waiting to rinse
the pitcher, filled it, and returned to the Dauphin, who emptied
it almost at a draught, for, though he seldom touched wine,
it was his habit to drink immoderate quantities of water.
Shortly afterwards, he complained of feeling ill. Four days
later (August 10), despite all the efforts of the doctors who
attended him, he was dead.

The consternation when the news reached Valence may be
imagined. At first, no one dared to inform the King, who,
though he was aware that his son was ill, had apparently
been given to understand that he was in no danger. At
length, after much discussion, it was decided that the
Cardinal Jean de Lorraine, the oldest and most intimate of
his Majesty's friends, should undertake the painful duty. On
entering the royal presence, however, the cardinal, though
naturally "fertile and eloquent," was unable to utter a word;
but the King, observing his distress, had a presentiment of
what had occurred, and inquired anxiously if he came with
news of the Dauphin. In a voice broken by emotion, his
Eminence replied that the prince was worse, but that they
must trust in God and hope for his recovery.

"I understand perfectly," rejoined the King. "You dare
not tell me that he is dead, but only that he will soon die."

The Cardinal's emotion and the sobs of those present
confirmed the King's fears, and, with a cry of anguish, he
walked to the window, turned his back upon his courtiers, and
endeavoured to master his grief. His efforts were vain,
however, and, with another cry of grief, he turned round,
doffed his cap, and, "raising his hands and his thoughts
towards Heaven," exclaimed: "My God, I know that I must
accept with patience whatever it be Thy will to send me;
but from whom, if not from Thee, ought I to hope for
strength and resignation? Already hast Thou afflicted me by
the diminution of my dominions and the defeat of my army;
Thou hast now added this loss of my son. What more
remains, save to destroy me utterly? And, if it be Thy
pleasure so to do, give me warning at least, and make me
know Thy will, in order that I may not rebel against it, Thou,
who art all-powerful, succouring and strengthening my natural
and human weakness."
⁰⁹

It was an age when the death of notable persons was
continually being attributed to foul play — not infrequently, it
must be admitted, with good reason — and, though modern
historians are agreed that the death of the Dauphin was due to
an attack of pleurisy occasioned by his imprudence in drinking
a copious draught of cold water after taking violent exercise
on a summer's day, the physicians who had attended him were
unanimously of opinion that he had been poisoned.

Suspicion pointed to a certain Count Sebastiano di
Montecuculi, a nobleman of Ferrara, who held the post of sewer in the Household
of the unfortunate prince. Montecuculi, it was remembered, had followed the page to the well
on the fatal afternoon, as if with the intention of assisting
him, and might easily have slipped the poison into the pitcher
while the other was engaged in drawing the water.

Unhappily for the supposed culprit, he appears to have been
a student of toxicology, as a great many of his countrymen
were in those days, generally for very practical reasons, and
when he was arrested, "
les poisons d'Arsigne et de
Reargart
"
¹⁰
were found at his lodging. He was immediately put to the
question, and, in order to curtail his sufferings, confessed that
he had poisoned the Dauphin, and added that he had been
bribed by the Imperial generals, Antonio de Leyva and
Ferdinando di Gonzaga, cousin of the Duke of Mantua, who,
he understood, were acting under superior authority, to
remove the King himself and his two other sons by the same
means.

When, in October, François returned to Lyons, he convened
a council, at which assisted the princes of the Blood, the grand
officers of the Crown, the cardinals, the ambassadors, and all
the German and Italian nobles who happened to be at the
Court. "And when they had assembled," says Guillaume du
Bellay, "the King caused the proceedings against the miserable
man who had poisoned the late Dauphin to be read to them
from beginning to end, together with all the interrogatories,
confessions, confrontations, and other formalities employed
in a criminal trial. After the reading of the said trial was
concluded, and all those present, at least, those who were
entitled by law to vote in criminal matters, had given their
advice on this monstrous and miserable case, the judges
proceeded to pass sentence and condemned him to be
dismembered by horses."
¹¹

This barbarous sentence was duly carried out, in the
presence of the King and the whole Court, including even
the ladies (October 7, 1536).

After the execution, François addressed a circular letter to
the German Protestant princes, wherein he acquainted them
with all the details of his eldest son's death, and the fate of the
supposed criminal, and openly accused the two Imperialist
generals of having instigated Montecuculi to the commission
of the deed. Leyva had died at Aix on September 14, but
Gonzaga indignantly protested against such an accusation, and,
complaining that Montecuculi had not been allowed to live
until he could have called him to account, expressed his readiness to meet in arms all who dared to impeach his honour. The
Cardinal de Granvelle, the Imperial Chancellor, wrote a letter
intended to demonstrate the utter absurdity of such reports, and
to exculpate not only his master, who was accused by implication, but also Leyva and Gonzaga (December 1536); and the
Duke of Mantua sent an Ambassador Extraordinary to the
French Court to defend his cousin. One or two members of
the Council advocated reprisals, but the majority was opposed
to such a course, and eventually the charge was allowed to drop.