IV.
Louis de Ligny-Luxembourg, Grand Chamberlain of France, cousin of the King through his Savoyard mother, was the son of that unfortunate Comte de St. Pol decapitated by Louis XI. He was not only one of the great nobles of France, but one of the first gentlemen in Europe, for his house was ancient and illustrious by descent and especially fortunate in marriage. Nevertheless the young man was poor; yet owing to his charming manners, his courage and adroitness, he was a most important factor not only in the Court of the King but in the Court of Orleans. The Count of Ligny, chivalrous, amorous, and pitiful, flits, for a brief moment, like the figure of Youth in an allegory—across the serious stage of the Italian wars; and his tragic childhood and his melancholy marriage seem to throw out with a brighter lustre the intrinsic brilliance of that scintillating presence.
He was, say the French chroniclers, “prince gentil vaillant, adroit et généreux,” a pattern for nobles and the beloved of ladies. Guicciardini, looking from another point of view, calls him juvenile, inexperienced, and light. To quote a final authority, Commines briefly gives the reason for our dwelling on him: “Above all others,” says he, “this young gentleman especially favoured the Pisans’ cause.”
Ligny had ever been a politician of Orleans’ party, that earlier faction so long stimulated by intriguing Venice, which aimed not only at the conquest of Naples, but also at securing Milan. With these two great possessions at either end of Italy, it was clear that Pisa would make an excellent half-way house. Pity for the Pisans was probably the essential motor of Ligny’s action, yet there is no doubt he desired to further the policy of Orleans. And before the winter was over, Ligny’s marriage gave him a personal interest in the game.
In the early spring of 1495, Charles VIII. had arrived in Naples. With that fatal lack of policy which was destined to frustrate a more than mortal triumph, he began to lavish the possessions of the Neapolitan aristocracy upon his favourites and countrymen. A wiser King would have conciliated the native barons and wedded their interest to his own, so that when he came to leave the country he should leave behind him a whole nobility of viceroys. But Charles only thought of rewarding his favourites of the hour. The daughter of the Prince of Altamura, the last of her house, the heiress of immense possessions, was reserved for Ligny.
Madonna Lionora was a young princess of more than common interest, the last Altamura in the direct line, the last of that race which claimed to be descended from the Three Kings of the East. It was easy to make the Count of Ligny virtually the Prince of Altamura by marrying him to this young girl. This was done, but Ligny was barely seven days the bridegroom of his lovely Mage when the King, alarmed at the preparations of the League, determined to march northwards. Ligny of course went with him, leaving his bride behind him in a convent. And on the long road northwards the desire to be near his young wife and his new possessions gave a keener zest to the scheme of a Central Italian French dependency of which Ligny himself should be made the governor. When the army reached Siena, though the city was a fief of the Holy Roman Empire, and therefore implicated in the Anti-Gallic league, none the less the Republic declared for France, demanding Ligny for her governor. The young man left a garrison there under Gaucher de Tinteville, and went with the King, hoping to pursue a like policy in Pisa.
The King had not yet decided whether he would halt in Pisa or in Florence. On the eve of Corpus Christi, Wednesday, the 17th of June, the French reached Poggibonsi where the roads divide. Here they halted for a day to keep the festival, and here the King was met by no less a personage than Savonarola, accompanied by fifty notables of Florence. This at the moment must have appeared terribly against the plans of Ligny, for if there was a man in Italy whom the French regarded with a curious, half-superstitious respect, it was this authoritative friar, with the harsh sweetness in his voice, the saturnine head, the asper and loving expression in his painful smile, who, as one authorized of heaven, had foretold their advent before they were persuaded to the step.
Poggibonsi, as I have said, is the last considerable town before the ways divide that lead to Pisa and to Florence. At such a cross-road was also the mind of Charles. Which turning should he take? “Keep your vows, restore the cities, respect Florence, lest ye incur the awful judgment of God, whose name, unless ye keep your oath, ye took in vain upon the altar of St. John in Florence!” So thundered Savonarola; and there were many things in favour of this plan; firstly, the strong personal influence of the prophetic Ferrarese; secondly, the fact that Charles was sore in need of ready money, and hoped to borrow it in Florence; thirdly, at Poggibonsi he had heard that war was begun, that Orleans was in Novara, and, therefore, he himself and his handful of troops in desperate need of the Florentine army. A little persuasion and no doubt the King would have gone to Florence; but Savonarola scorned to persuade, he menaced. The city, he said, was armed to the teeth; she would receive the King rather as a prodigal than a conqueror. If he wished to conciliate her, let him keep his word; then, but only then, she would shower her benefits upon the elect of God.
This accent was not so moving to the King as the entreaties of Burgundio Lolo. Pisa, as Charles knew very well, would receive him as a hero and a deliverer—but Pisa had neither men nor money.
In these uncertainties two days went by; the King alternately assuring Savonarola that he would keep his word to Florence, and protesting that he had not the heart to break that earlier promise given to the Pisans. Out of this hobble there was no way except by broken vows and treachery. It was a delicate question for a chivalrous prince, nourished, like Charles, on Amadis and Arthur: for to keep faith with the Pisans would be to ruin his ally; and to keep faith with Florence to hand over to slavery a people who had solemnly placed themselves under his protection. Nor were the political advantages quite easy to decide. Florence, of course, offered men and money sorely needed; but Pisa offered an asylum in case of reverses further north, or in case the Florentines should prove as faithless as the rest of the Italians. For Pisa was not merely a friendly city, but a city actually in the hands of France. This was certainly an argument—“nevertheless,” says Guicciardini, “I doubt if anything so logical could influence the King. Much more potent with such as he were the tears, and entreaties of the Pisans.” Those tears, invisible and ample as the waters of life, Burgundio Lolo had quoted to the King at Rome; and after all these months the memory of the Pisan advocate pleaded successfully against the actual influence of Savonarola.
At last a straw decided the unsteady balance. At a village called Campana, or Cassino, near to Florence, the King heard of a cruel raid committed by the Florentines upon the Pisan town of Pontevalle. There had been French soldiers in the fort; but when the French archers came up to the rescue they found the little place untenanted save by dying men, wheeling birds of prey, and corpses. The King was furious against the Florentines; yet it was with the lightness of heart that follows the taking of a difficult decision that he set his back against the town, “et gaiement s’en alla dedans Pise.”