Henri II: His Court and Times (21 page)

Hostilities were resumed in the early spring of 1537, when
François and Montmorency invaded Artois and captured
Hesdin, Saint-Pol, and Saint-Venant. Satisfied with these
successes, the King disbanded a part of the army, sent some
troops into Piedmont, and, leaving only a small force to
occupy the conquered towns, returned to Paris to enjoy the
society of Madame d'Étampes, a longer separation from whom
he was apparently unable to support. No sooner had he
departed, than a large army which the Comte de Buren,
lieutenant-general of the Emperor in the Low Countries, had
assembled at Lens marched upon Saint-Pol and carried it by
assault, putting the garrison to the sword, after which it laid
siege to Thérouenne.

To repair the deplorable error which he had committed, François recalled part
of the troops who were on their way to Piedmont, and in the middle of June
despatched Montmorency and the Dauphin with some 20,000 men to the Flemish
frontier.

The position of Thérouenne was a critical one. In 1513,
the castle had been razed to the ground by Henry VIII, with
the exception of two towers, which were speedily demolished
by the artillery of the besiegers. The garrison made a brave
defence behind the shelter of an entrenchment which they
had themselves constructed, but they were short of powder
and arquebusiers. Informed of their situation, the Grand-Master ordered Annebaut to proceed to Thérouenne with
400 arquebusiers, each carrying a sack of powder, and
an escort of men-at-arms and light horse, and endeavour to
make his way into the place, under cover of night. This
difficult operation he successfully accomplished (June 25),
but, on his return, he was surprised by an overwhelming force
of Imperialist cavalry, and, after a sharp skirmish, obliged to
surrender.

However, Thérouenne was no longer in any immediate
danger, and the Dauphin and the Grand-Master were able to
turn their attention to the citadel of Desvres, which they
speedily reduced, thus securing the safety of Boulogne.
They then marched up the Authie to Doullens, where they
were joined by Guise with a large force of cavalry. Up to
now the cautious Montmorency, who felt himself responsible
for the safety of his royal colleague, had not deemed it
prudent to offer the enemy battle; but the arrival of Guise
gave him the advantage in numbers, and, yielding to the
entreaties of the young prince, he moved northwards, with
the intention of relieving Thérouenne.

The King, who was at Meudon with Madame d'Étampes,
on being informed that an engagement might shortly be
expected, announced his intention of rejoining the army and
leading it to victory; but the duchess would not suffer him
to leave her side, though she offered no opposition to her
husband's departure for the frontier. Montmorency doubtless
felicitated himself on his Majesty's decision to forgo the
chance of glory and leave him a free hand, for the Dauphin
was a docile colleague, who invariably deferred to his advice,
and was, if we are to believe the Grand-Master, extremely
popular with the troops. "His presence," he writes, "gives
great pleasure to this army, and, on the other hand, he
conducts himself so prudently and so much to every one's
satisfaction that, apart from the pleasure which it must give
the King to hear of it, the troops are only too eager to do
well, so that, if it please God, he will come forth victorious,
and with great honour and reputation, in accordance with the
desire of all his loyal servants and to the confusion of his
enemies."
⁰⁷

However, greatly to the disappointment of the Dauphin,
on the very eve of the expected engagement, an envoy from
the Queen-Dowager of Hungary, Governess of the Netherlands, arrived in the French camp and informed him that
the Emperor had proposed a truce, so far as regarded Picardy
and Flanders, to which François had consented, and that she
was empowered to settle the terms with his Highness. Both
sides accordingly appointed commissioners, who met at Bomy, a little town to the south of
Thérouenne, and on
July 30 an armistice for ten months was concluded.

The urgent advice of Mary of Austria, who had represented
that the Netherland provinces could and would fight no more
— the town of Ghent had refused to contribute the subsidy
demanded for the expenses of the war, and a year later was
in full revolt — had induced Charles to propose this suspension
of hostilities. François, on his side, had been only too
ready to agree, for, owing to the quarrels of his generals and
a mutiny of German and Italian mercenaries, the Imperialists
had again got the upper hand in Piedmont, and, having
reduced most of the places recovered by the French after the
retreat of Charles from Provence, were investing Turin.

The armistice concluded, preparations were at once made
for the despatch of a new army across the Alps, and François
decided to accompany it. Having but a poor opinion of the
Queen's capacity, he did not, as in 1525, appoint a regent
of the kingdom, but nominated two lieutenant-generals, his
younger son Charles, Duc d'Orléans, for the North, and his
brother-in-law, the King of Navarre, for the South. By the
beginning of October, a powerful force had assembled at
Lyons, which comprised 10,000 "Adventurers," of whom one-fourth were arquebusiers, 12,000
landsknechts
, under their
famous recruiting-sergeant Wilhelm von Fürstenberg, 4,000 Swiss, a small body of
Italian infantry, 1,400 men-at-arms, several companies of light cavalry, and 50
cannon. To the Dauphin was entrusted the command of the vanguard, Montmorency being associated with him as chief of the staff, with
the understanding that the prince was to give no orders without first consulting the Grand-Master.

On the 8th, they took leave of the King, who was to follow
with the main body of the army, and proceeded to Grenoble,
and thence to Briançon, where they halted to reconnoitre the
passes of the Alps. As the garrison of Turin was reported to
be in desperate straits from want of food, Montmorency
advised that an attempt should be made to force the pass of
Susa, which effected, they would only have to descend the
valley of the Dora to arrive at Turin; and on the 25th the
Dauphin wrote to announce this bold decision to the King,
who was now at Grenoble.

The Marquis del Guasto, a nephew of Pescara, who commanded
for the Emperor in Piedmont, had detached Cesare
da Napoli, one of the best captains of mercenaries in the
Imperial service, with a force which is variously estimated
at from 5,000 to 10,000 men, to dispute the advance of the
French; and Montmorency, on reconnoitring the pass,
found him very strongly posted in a narrow part of the defile
between Chaumont and Susa, his front protected by an entrenchment
with a bastion at each extremity, and precipitous
heights on either hand.

At the first glance, the position seemed altogether impregnable; but one of the officers who had accompanied the Grand-Master pointed out that Cesare had neglected to occupy the
heights which commanded his position, deeming them no
doubt inaccessible, and that their Basque arquebusiers would
be able to ascend them.

Leaving the Dauphin at Oulx with the bulk of his force,
⁰⁸
at dawn on October 26 Montmorency, at the head of
100 light horse and 6,000 infantry, 1,200 of whom were
arquebusiers, advanced to the assault. The arquebusiers
clambered like goats up the rocks and poured down a hail of
balls upon the enemy, while the Grand-Master charged the
entrenchments. The astonished Imperialists, attacked in
front and exposed on both flanks to a murderous fire, gave
way and were soon in full retreat, pursued for some distance
by the victors, whose lack of cavalry, however, prevented them
from inflicting much loss upon the enemy. Nevertheless, it
was a brilliant piece of work, and showed that, when occasion
demanded, Montmorency knew how to employ boldness as
well as caution; and the King, as soon as he learned the
news, sent orders to France for public thanksgivings throughout the country.

Having detached a small force to besiege the castle of
Susa, Montmorency and the Dauphin advanced along the
right bank of the Dora, until they found their way barred by
the fortress of Avigliana. The place was only garrisoned by
some forty men, but the fortifications were of considerable
strength, and the Imperialists refused to surrender. However,
after being bombarded for a day and a half, it was taken by
storm and the whole of the brave little garrison put to the
sword, with the exception of the commandant and three others,
who were hanged from the ramparts, "in order," wrote
Montmorency, "to teach a lesson to those who are obstinate
enough to defend places of so little importance."
⁰⁹

Having waited to allow the Swiss to come up, they again
pressed on, forcing Guasto to raise the siege of Turin and
fall back across the Po. The Dauphin and his colleague
pursued him, but, on reaching the western bank of the river,
opposite Moncalieri, they found the enemy drawn up to
dispute their passage. For a whole day the armies remained
facing one another in line of battle, the French up to their
knees in water. Then reinforcements reached the invaders,
and the Imperialists retreated beneath the walls of Asti,
leaving the French to reduce all the places between the Po
and the Tanaro.

In the meanwhile, François with the rest of the army had
crossed the mountains, and everything promised a vigorous
prosecution of the war, when negotiations again took the
place of hostilities. Paul III, eager to unite Christendom
against the Turk, who had just inflicted a crushing defeat
upon Ferdinand of Austria at Essek, on the Drave, pressed his
mediation upon the combatants, and on November 16, 1537,
an armistice for three months was signed at Monçon, corresponding with that of Bomy for the Netherlands. The
armistice was followed by a conference at Nice. The Pope
journeyed thither, and the two rivals, though their antipathy
prevented them meeting, visited him separately and laid their
respective cases before him; while Queen Eleanor went to
and fro between her husband and her brother, in the hope of
bringing about the desired reconciliation.

To draft a treaty of peace was found impossible, for
Charles refused to surrender Milan, while François was
determined not to evacuate Savoy and Piedmont; but a
ten years' truce was eventually concluded (June 17, 1538),
each preserving what he occupied at the moment of its
signature.

Thus France retained Savoy and two-thirds of Piedmont,
the remaining Piedmontese towns being left in the occupation
of the Imperialists; and the luckless Duke of Savoy saw himself
deprived for ten years of the whole of his dominions, with the
exception of the town of Nice, in the castle of which he had
taken refuge. For the first time since the campaign of
Marignano, a war had ended to the advantage of François,
who, with the Alpine passes and the strongest fortresses of
Piedmont in his hands, found himself in a singularly favourable
position for prosecuting his designs on the Milanese.

Nevertheless, in the opinion of many historians, the King
committed a grave error in concluding peace at a moment
when his rival, threatened by the Turks, hampered by the
German Protestants, unpopular in Northern Italy, where his
soldiers lived on rapine and plunder, and unable to count on
any effective support from the Netherland provinces, was in a
most critical position. But the reproaches of the Pope on his
sacrilegious alliance with Soliman filled him with remorse,
and, after having borne all the odium of the Turkish alliance,
he abandoned it just when he might have derived from it
substantial advantages.

There can be no doubt that Montmorency's influence counted
for much in this decision. One of the most bigoted of Catholics,
the Grand-Master's conscience revolted against alliances with
infidels and heretics, and, though he did his duty against the
Imperialists in the field, he was always a consistent advocate
of peace with the Emperor, in so much that his enemies did
not hesitate to accuse him of preferring the interests of Rome
to those of France.

To the same influence may be traced the ostentatious
reconciliation between the two rivals, which, to the profound
astonishment of Europe, took place at Aigues-Mortes, a
month later. It was commonly reported that Charles's galley
had been compelled to take refuge in that harbour by stress
of weather, but it seems more probable that the meeting was
a prearranged one. Any way, before the Emperor quitted the
shores of France, the King, lured on by the bait of the
Milanese, had promised to abandon the German Protestants,
to give no encouragement to the Ghent burghers, and to aid
Charles in his struggle against the Infidel and his efforts for
Catholic unity. It was the beginning of an entirely new
policy, which was to cost France dear.