Henri II: His Court and Times (51 page)

Thus, the net results were wholly on the side of France, and
appear to have inspired the French Court with a boundless
confidence. It refused to believe it possible that, after the
terrible losses Charles V had sustained before Metz, it could
have anything more to fear from him; and its astonishment
was profound, when, in the middle of the festivities in
honour of the marriage of Diane de France and Orazio
Farnese, news arrived that a large army of Germans,
Spaniards, and Netherlanders had invested Thérouenne,
the advance-post of France in Artois. Even then, whether
from a fatuous belief that Thérouenne was impregnable or
more probably from want of money — so much had been
spent in celebrating the defence of Metz and the marriage
of the King's daughter that there was none left to pay the
troops — no effective steps were taken to succour the place,
though François de Montmorency and a number of other
young gentlemen received permission "to take their pleasure
there."

After a siege of two months, Thérouenne was taken by
assault, and the Constable's son with it; the greater part of
the garrison was put to the sword, and the town literally
razed to the ground. It never rose again, and, says Henri
Martin, "is the only example in our history of a French town
which has entirely perished."

From Thérouenne, the victorious Imperialists marched
upon Hesdin. They were now, it is interesting to note,
commanded by Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy, Prince of
Piedmont, who in the following August became Duke of
Savoy, on the death of his father, the unfortunate Charles
III, and was destined to so brilliant a military career. For
the third time within a year, Hesdin was taken by assault,
and Henri II's new son-in-law, Orazio Farnese, was killed,
fighting gallantly in the breach (July 18).

The tears of his daughter, left a widow within a few
months of her marriage, seemed to have aroused the King
from his apathy, and at the beginning of August a large
army was assembled at Amiens, under the orders of the
Constable.

The campaign opened auspiciously enough. The Prince
of Piedmont was besieging Doullens, which defended the
course of the Authie, but on the night of August 12-13
the French passed the river, and, after a sharp engagement
between the cavalry of the two armies, in which the
Imperialists were completely routed, the prince raised the
siege and fell back on Bapaume and Cambrai. The King
joined the Constable two days later, bringing with him
reinforcements which raised the strength of the army to
close upon 50,000 men; and the war was carried into
Artois, the Cambrésis, and Hainaut. But absolutely nothing
was effected, save the temporary occupation of a few
unimportant places; it was a military promenade of the
most futile kind.

The blame must rest upon the Constable rather than upon
Henri II, who regarded himself as his old friend's pupil
in military matters and invariably deferred to his opinion;
and even M. Decrue, in general very favourable to his
hero, is here in complete agreement with the majority of
historians, though he attributes his incapacity to ill health.
"His irresolution is pitiable," he says. "Anne de Montmorency
exaggerates the faults which he has had all his life.
With a magnificent army, he seems to wander, in a futile
manner, in search of an easy victory, recoiling before the
slightest suspicion of an obstacle." He declined to lay
siege to Bapaume or Cambrai, on the ground that they were
too strongly fortified; he wasted precious time in holding
interminable councils of war; and the climax of fatuity was
reached when, on finding the Emperor strongly posted in an
entrenched camp at Valenciennes, he demonstrated before
the enemy's position, in the hope that the sight of his great
numbers would induce Charles to retreat, and then proposed
to retreat himself, on the fallacious pretext that the Imperialists
refused to give battle. The King consented, and the army fell
back across the Somme, and on September 21 was disbanded.

The death of Edward VI of England, on July 6 of that
year, dissipated the hopes which France had founded on the
treaty of 1551; but the chagrin which this event occasioned
was as nothing to the alarm aroused by the news of
Mary's determination to give her hand to Philip of Spain.
When this project was first announced, Henri II directed
Noailles, the French Ambassador in London, to tell the
Queen frankly how it was regarded by the French Court,
and both the King and the Constable expressed their views still
more explicitly to the English Ambassador, Wotton. The
Queen, they pointed out, no doubt had every intention of
remaining at peace with France, but events might prove too
strong for her, and she might find herself drawn into the
quarrel between them and the Emperor. If, however, she
persisted in the resolution she had taken, they suggested that,
as a proof of her good intentions, she should enter into a fresh
treaty with France, to provide for unforeseen contingencies.
This very reasonable request was refused by Mary, on the
ground that the maintenance of the existing treaties with
France was guaranteed by a clause added to the marriage
articles; and, though it was explained to her that existing
treaties did not meet the new conditions, she remained
obstinate.
¹¹

On the Queen's refusal being communicated to the French
Government, they at once determined to employ every
possible means to prevent the marriage,
¹²
and relations
were established with the disaffected party in England, with
a view to effective co-operation. Villegaignon's galleys
were in readiness to transport a considerable force across
the Channel, and the French only waited to know on what
part of the coast they should attempt a landing. But the
discovery of their plans drove the English insurgents to a
premature rising, which was easily suppressed.

Sir Peter Carew and numbers of discontented English
gentlemen took refuge in France, and having been supplied
with money, arms, and ships by the Government, roamed
about the Channel, plundering Spanish and Flemish vessels.
Mary demanded the extradition of "her traitors," to which
Henri II bluntly replied that he was not the Queen's
hangman; that the so-called traitors were not in arms
against their sovereign, but against his own enemy, and
that there was nothing in the existing treaties with England
to prevent him accepting the services of volunteers from that
country. When he had invited her Majesty to enter into a
new treaty, she had refused. This answer greatly angered
Mary, who, if her Ministers had been of her way of thinking,
would have rejoined by a declaration of war.

Powerless to prevent the dreaded marriage, Henri II
determined to strike a blow which should force the Emperor
to sue for peace before England could be drawn into the
struggle. By the creation and sale of new offices
¹³
and other devices, money for the equipment of another large
army was procured, and in the middle of June 1554
40,000 infantry and 12,000 cavalry assembled at Crécy-en- Laonnois. The Constable again took the command, with
Vendôme and Saint-André as his lieutenants. Brussels
was the objective, and the army, advancing down the
valley of the Meuse, captured Marienbourg. Here Henri II,
who had left the Queen Regent for the third time, joined
it, and in honour of his Majesty the town was re-named
Henrienbourg.

The French then advanced on Bouvines, and "the King
had the pastime of seeing it taken by assault by his
soldiers, who conducted themselves so valiantly that they
carried it furiously, although the breach was very difficult
and they had to mount it in single file."
¹⁴
The Constable had not renounced the barbarous customs of the wars of
Italy, and all who had offered any resistance were mercilessly
butchered (July 8). Four days later (July 12),
Dinant, the historic rival of Bouvines, surrendered, to
escape a similar fate; and the King and the Constable,
in very high feather, had already crossed the Sambre, with
the intention of marching straight upon Brussels, when they
learned that the Emperor and the Duke of Savoy were
advancing against them. On this, they decided that, by
penetrating so far into the enemy's territory, they had done
enough for glory, and moved westwards into Hainaut, taking
various small places and mercilessly ravaging the country.
The Duke of Savoy, to whom the ailing Emperor had
made over the command of the Imperialists, followed them
closely; but, though he was inferior in numbers to the
French, the latter refused to risk a battle. The pursuit
ceased in the Cambrésis, but the French retired into
Artois, where they laid siege to Renty. The Emperor, who
had once more taken the field in person, advanced to its
relief, and the King and the Constable found themselves
compelled to fight (August 13). The action, thanks
principally to Guise, ended in the retreat of the Imperialists,
with the loss of 500 killed, as many prisoners, and several
cannon. However, no attempt was made to pursue Charles,
and, as he had succeeded in revictualling Renty, Henri II
raised the siege and led his army back to Compiègne. The
Emperor himself returned to Brussels, but his troops took
advantage of the retreat of the French to make a devastating
raid into Picardy.

Thus, the results of the campaign of Flanders were well
nigh as meagre as those of the preceding year, and once
more the chief responsibility must rest upon the Constable,
who had not on this occasion the excuse of ill-health.
Not only the Guises and their partisans, but disinterested
observers strongly condemned his conduct. "The responsibility
for these checks," wrote the Venetian Ambassador
Capello, "belongs to the Constable, who formerly passed
for a pusillanimous man, but is now regarded as a base
poltroon (
stimato vilissimo
), since he was afraid to pursue a
beaten and almost flying enemy. He is scoffed at everywhere.
At the Court and in places of public resort, sonnets
and Latin verses are circulated in which he is called a
coward and a man without heart. After so fine an opportunity
lost, it is regarded as certain that, so long as the
Constable remains at the head of the army, there will never
be a great battle; first, because he is timid; secondly, because
he is more inclined to peace than to war."

The fact is that the Constable, personally a very brave man,
but, as a commander, always prone to push circumspection to
its farthest limits, could not bring himself to incur the
responsibility of a general engagement, which, if lost, might
mean the complete triumph of his enemies the Guises; and
there was also probably some truth in the charge which was
freely brought against him by the rival faction that he had
suspended the pursuit of the Imperialists after Renty from an
unwillingness to complete a victory whose credit belonged to
Guise rather than to himself.

In Italy, the course of events was even less favourable to
the French. In Piedmont, Brissac held his own valiantly
against superior numbers, but in Tuscany, Piero Strozzi, who
had been entrusted with the defence of Siena, was defeated at
Mariano (August 2, 1554), and, after an heroic defence by
Montluc, the city was starved into surrender (April 17, 1555).
Their only success in the peninsula was a political one, the
election to the Papacy, under the title of Paul IV, of the
Cardinal Caraffa, a bitter enemy of the Spaniards.
¹⁵
In the Mediterranean, the Franco-Turkish fleet, after ravaging the
Neapolitan coasts, Sardinia, and Elba, landed the
condottiere
Sampiero Corso in Corsica, where he excited a revolt against
Genoese rule and captured Bastia, Bonifacio, and other towns.
But quarrels between Paulin de la Garde and Dragut Arraiz,
the Turkish admiral, led to the latter's withdrawal; Andrea
Doria's fleet brought Spanish and German troops to the
assistance of the Genoese; the places lost were recovered,
and the Corsicans and their allies driven into the mountains.

Both sides were by this time equally weary of the war.
The enormous cost of the huge armies she had raised had
exhausted the resources of France. The Emperor, broken in
health and disgusted with the failure of his cherished schemes
for religious unity and Imperial omnipotence, desired to shift
the burden of his vast responsibilities upon younger shoulders
and end his days in retirement; and to accomplish the
delicate and complicated acts which his abdication would
entail, peace was essential. England, whom Charles had
vainly endeavoured to drag into the war, offered her good
offices, and in May 1555 negotiations were opened at Marcq,
near Calais. Nothing came of them; but towards the close
of the year the belligerents decided to treat directly with one
another, and, though their mutual pretensions rendered the
conclusion of a definite peace impossible, a truce of five years
was agreed upon and signed, at the Abbey of Vaucelles, on
February 15, 1556, during which communications by land and
sea were to be re-established and each sovereign was to be
left in possession of his conquests. France thus retained
the Three Bishoprics and the fortresses she had reduced in
Piedmont.

Charles V had not waited for the formal conclusion of the
Truce of Vaucelles to divest himself of the crowns whose
weight his increasing infirmities made it impossible for him
any longer to support. On October 25, 1555, he had
abdicated in Philip's favour the sovereignty of the Netherlands,
and on January 16, 1556, he had ceded to his son the
kingdoms of Aragon, Castile, Sicily and Naples, and the
Indies. In order that Ferdinand might select a favourable
moment for securing his own election, he retained the
Imperial diadem until the following August, and a few weeks
later sailed for Spain, to spend the two years of life which
remained to him in the cloistral solitude of Yuste.