Henri II: His Court and Times (48 page)

Italy was always the apple of discord, and it was here that
hostilities began. The favour shown by the French to Orazio
Farnese, the betrothed of Diane de France, had aroused the
jealousy of his elder brother Ottavio, who, in 1549, proceeded
to make his peace with his Imperial father-in-law. Paul III
thereupon deprived him of Parma, and declared the duchy
annexed to the States of the Church. Ottavio declined to
submit to the will of his grandfather and endeavoured to
regain possession of the town by force; and this unseemly
family squabble so affected the health of the old Pontiff that
on November 10, 1549, he died. France despatched all her
cardinals to the Conclave, and made great efforts to secure the
election of the French candidate; but they were of no avail,
and the choice of the Sacred College fell upon the Cardinal
del Monte, formerly Legate of Paul III at the Councils of
Trent and Bologna, who became Pope under the name of
Julius III (February 8, 1550).

The new Pontiff had no sons or grandsons to aggrandize
or quarrel with, and, being of a quiet and pleasure-loving
disposition, his only desire was for compromise and peace.
As an earnest of his good intentions, he began by restoring
Parma to Ottavio Farnese, and flattered himself that he had
thereby removed the chief cause of dissension. But the
long-standing enmity between the Farnesi and Ferrante
Gonzaga, and the disputed suzerainty of Emperor and
Pope over Parma and Piacenza, rendered Julius's well-meaning efforts abortive. The viceroy, on the ground that
the suzerainty belonged to his master, established a sort of
blockade of Parma, whereupon Ottavio threw himself on
the protection of Henri II. Either through irritation at the
conduct of his vassal, or in the hope of extinguishing so
dangerous a spark, the Pope declared the fief forfeited and
applied to Charles V for assistance, thereby kindling the very
conflagration which it was his desire to avert.

The French Court did not fail to avail itself of so excellent
a pretext for intervention in Italy, and by a treaty signed on
May 27, 1551, the King formally took Ottavio Farnese under
his protection and promised him 2,000 foot soldiers, 200 men-at-arms,
and a yearly grant of 12,000 gold crowns.

The base of operations of the French armies was naturally
Piedmont. Brissac, who, it will be remembered, had so distinguished
himself at the siege of Perpignan in 1543, had
lately succeeded the Prince of Melfi as governor of that
province, and he was entrusted with the command. With one
corps he laid siege to Chieri and other places belonging in
name to the Duke of Savoy, but garrisoned by Spanish troops,
and took them; while a second corps compelled the Papal-Imperialist forces to raise the siege of Parma. The massacre
of a troop of Italian soldiers in the service of France, by the
orders of Gonzaga, afforded a pretext for aggression in another
direction, and Paulin de la Garde, issuing from the ports of
Provence with some forty galleys, fell upon a Spanish merchant
fleet off Hyères and secured a rich booty.

Nominally, however, Henri II and Charles V were still at
peace; the former was supposed to be merely acting as the
protector of Ottavio Farnese, the latter as the auxiliary of the
Pope. But this pretence could not long be observed, and in
the early spring of 1552 open war broke out.

It was, however, the affairs of Germany, not of Italy, which
caused the mask to be thrown aside.

On April 24, 1547, Charles V had crushed the princes of
the Schmalkaldic League on the field of Mühlberg and taken
the rebel leaders, John Frederick of Saxony and Philip,
Landgrave of Hesse, prisoners. This victory laid Germany,
to all appearance, at his feet, and it looked as if he were at last
about to grasp the fruit of so much toil and statecraft. But
it might be said of Charles, as of Hannibal, that, though he
knew how to gain victories, he had never learned how to utilise
them; and in May 1548, he committed the most fatal error of
his whole career by promulgating the celebrated Interim of
Augsburg, by which he essayed to impose the
status quo
in
religious matters, while awaiting the decision of the Council
of Trent.

This was the occasion of new troubles: the Lutherans
rejected "this poisoned sop," and Saxony, Brandenburg, and
the great town of Magdeburg revolted, while the Papacy
and the Catholics protested against the "sacrilegious intervention
of the temporal power in spiritual affairs." Both
parties in Germany feared that the Emperor intended to take
advantage of the religious troubles to establish his political
domination, and for the moment Lutherans and Catholics
forgot their respective grievances.

The eventual division of Charles's vast dominions contributed to increase his
embarrassments. For a long time it had been his intention to leave Spain, the
Netherlands, and his Italian States to his son Philip, reserving the Empire for
his brother the King of the Romans and his son Maximilian after him. But from
1548 he reverted to his old principle that the whole power of the Hapsburgs
should be primarily in one hand, and proposed that Philip should marry
Ferdinand's daughter, be nominated second King of the Romans, and become Emperor
after the death of his uncle. Ferdinand accepted this arrangement, then refused, while Charles persisted in his design, "in
order to establish and preserve the greatness of our House."
In November 1550, the ill-feeling between the two brothers
culminated in so violent an altercation that Ferdinand declined
to have any communication with the Emperor except by letter.

Public opinion in Germany was wholly on the side of
Ferdinand and Maximilian. The Spanish troops quartered
there had rendered themselves odious to the people, and the
hatred with which they were regarded reacted to the prejudice
of Philip, whose ungracious personality presented a very
unfavourable contrast to the frank, good-humoured, and
kindly Maximilian. Every day Charles's rule became more
unpopular.

The Emperor's unpopularity in Germany might have mattered little if France
had still been in the exhausted condition in which François I had left her. But the marvellous
recuperative power which she has always displayed had
enabled her to recover from the drain which the late King's
ambitious enterprises had imposed upon her, and she was now
once more in a position to grapple with her great adversary
both on the Po and on the Rhine. To retain his hold on Italy,
Charles must needs withdraw his garrisons from Germany, and
the outbreak of the War of Parma gave the rebel princes an
opportunity of which they were not slow to take advantage.

The revival of the League of Schmalkalde was rendered
infinitely more formidable to the Emperor by the defection of
Maurice of Saxony. Hitherto Maurice, although a Protestant,
had preferred to subordinate his religious convictions to his
interests, and had been rewarded by the Electorate of Saxony,
vice
John Frederick deposed.
⁰³
But the reproaches of his co-religionists, who had renamed him Judas, weighed, if not
upon his conscience, at any rate, upon his pride, and having
become, by the Imperial favour, a great prince of the Empire,
his interests were now in antagonism with those of his benefactor, who aimed, he believed, at the curtailing, if not the
abolition, of the liberties of the German princes. Finally, he
had a personal grievance against Charles in the continued
captivity of his father-in-law, the Landgrave of Hesse, whom
the Emperor absolutely refused to set at liberty.

In April 1551, a colonel of the League of Schmalkalde,
Sebastian von Burtenbach, fleeing from the wrath of the
Emperor, arrived at Amboise to offer his services to the
French Court. Through the intermediary of Burtenbach,
Henri II entered into relations with Albert Alcibiades,
Margrave of Culmbach, another discontented ally of the
Emperor; and Albert undertook to proceed to Magdeburg,
which Maurice was then besieging, and convey to him the
proposals of France. Simultaneously, Jean du Fraisse, Bishop
of Bayonne, the Ambassador of France to the German princes,
attended the meeting of the Diet and made overtures to several
of the Lutheran leaders.

Maurice, having soon decided to accept the French proposals and betray his master, as he had formerly betrayed his
co-religionists, took charge of the negotiations; and on October
5, 1551, at Friedwald, he signed with Du Fraisse a treaty of
alliance, "
pro Germaniæ patriæ libertate recuperanda
," which
was confirmed on January 15, 1552, at Chambord, in the
presence of Albert Alcibiades and the two sons of the
dispossessed Elector of Saxony.

By this treaty both the King of France and the League of
Schmalkalde agreed to bring into the field 50,000 infantry and
20,000 cavalry, in order to drive the Emperor from Germany;
and the princes, in return for his Majesty's assistance,
authorised him to take possession of the towns of Toul, Metz,
and Verdun — the "Three Bishoprics" — which he was to govern
in the quality of "Vicar of the Empire."

The Constable had opposed as long as possible an enterprise
of which no one could foresee the ultimate issue. But the
Guises, backed as they now were by the whole weight of
Diane's influence, had proved too strong for him. Besides,
Henri II, very obstinate in his hatreds as in his affections,
detested Charles V. He had never forgotten the cruel captivity
to which he had been subjected in Spain — an experience which
had embittered the whole of his early life — nor the Emperor's
endeavours to dismember his inheritance for the benefit of his
younger brother; while the insulting attitude adopted by
Charles V towards him at the time of the War of Boulogne,
and the punishment inflicted upon the
landsknecht
captains who had
served under him, had tended to revive his resentments. The temptation to humble his own and his father's
enemy, and, at the same time, to complete the defence of the
north-eastern frontier of France by the annexation of the
Three Bishoprics, was one which he found impossible to
resist.

Before beginning the campaign, the King decided to take
a step more in accordance with constitutional than absolute
monarchy, and to obtain from the
Parlement
of Paris, the
most authoritative assembly in his kingdom, its approval of the
measures upon which he had decided and the money required
for their execution. Accordingly, on February 12, 1552, surrounded
by his Court, he held a Bed of Justice, and, having
announced to the assembled magistrates his resolution to make
war upon the Emperor, called upon the Constable to explain
the reasons of his policy. This Montmorency did in a long
and very able speech, putting the case for his master so
skilfully that the supplies were voted with enthusiasm.

Henri having resolved to take the field in person, the
appointment of a Regent was, of course, necessary, and
Catherine was accordingly nominated. But the powers entrusted
to the Queen were very different from those which
François I had conferred upon Louise of Savoy — Diane had
seen to that — and the appointment of the Chancellor,
Bertrandi, and Annebaut as her colleagues practically annulled
her authority. Catherine contrived to dissemble her mortification with her usual skill; but she declined to allow her
brevet
to be published, being unwilling that the public should know
in what small estimation her husband held her.

All through the winter of 1551-2, active preparations for
the coming struggle were in progress throughout the whole of
France. Henri II, unlike his father, entertained a high opinion
of the warlike qualities of the French, and had resolved to
trust, in a great measure, to the valour of his own subjects;
and this decision was hailed with enthusiasm. "There is no
need to say with what alacrity and good-will every man made
ready for this war. . . . There was not a town in which the
drums did not beat to call out the young men, many of whom
quitted father and mother in order to enlist. Most of the
shops were emptied of their workmen, so great was the ardour
among people of all conditions to take part in this expedition
and to see the River Rhine."
⁰⁴
Many of the provincial gentry,
unable to find places in the cavalry, armed themselves at their
own expense, and joined the infantry as
lanspessades
, or
foot-lancers, and from early January to the end of March an endless
procession of men-at-arms, light-horsemen, arquebusiers,
pikemen, cannon, baggage-wagons, and camp-followers might
have been seen wending its way towards the Lorraine
frontier.

The army was concentrated between Chalons and Troyes,
and at Vitry, in the first week in April, Henri II reviewed it.
It was an imposing, if motley array, and comprised, according
to Boyvin du Villars, 15,000 French infantry, drawn mostly
from the southern and south-western provinces, 9,000
landsknechts
,
7,000 Swiss, 1,650 men-at-arms, about 3,000 light
horse,
⁰⁵
1,000 mounted arquebusiers, 2,000 men of the
arrière-ban
, or reserve, six Scottish and one English company, 200
gentlemen of the King's Household, 400 archers of the Guard,
and some 500 gentlemen volunteers.
⁰⁶

The King complimented each arm in turn, and warmly
thanked the gentlemen volunteers for their loyalty. He then
ordered the cannon, of which there were sixty pieces of various
calibre, to be tested in his presence. This process was sometimes attended by alarming results, but, on the present occasion,
no mishap appears to have occurred.

The plan of campaign was as follows: The Constable, with
the advance-guard of the army, was to possess himself, without
bloodshed if it could possibly be avoided, of the towns of Toul,
Metz, and Verdun; while the King and the Duc de Guise
would enter Lorraine, under the pretext of putting the affairs
of that duchy in order, and deprive the Duchess Christina,
niece of the Emperor, of the regency which she exercised on
behalf of her son, Charles III, who was only ten years old.
This effected, they were to join the Constable at Metz, and the
whole army would enter Germany by way of Alsace, perhaps
to co-operate with the Lutheran princes, and, in any case, to
endeavour to extend the frontier of France as far as the Rhine.
The intrigues of the Guises, cadets of the House of Lorraine,
and possessors of several bishoprics in this part of France,
had paved the way for the success of the first two points of
this plan.