Driven by a momentary resentment, a gust of pity and remembrance, into Pisa, Charles was no sooner in the city than the King resumed his empire over the Man. He sent, as I have said, an embassy to Florence, reassuring as best he could the potent and wealthy city, putting off his answer, and asking meanwhile for an instalment of money and three hundred lances. The Florentines sent no money and only eighty lances, and Charles perceived that the least extra strain would break the slender thread that still bound her to the French. Henceforth he steeled his royal heart against impolitic pity. It was in vain that he looked on the statue of himself upon the bridge, embellished in sculpture, resolute, heroic, Saviour of the City, trampling underfoot the Lion of Florence and the Viper of Milan. It was in vain, that, at the entrance of the army, the little children of Pisa dressed in white satin sown with fleur-de-lis rushed to the gates to meet the soldiers, crying in their high, sweet, confident voices, “Viva Francia!” It was in vain that, in the early morning, as the King returned from the intenerating Sacrament of the Mass, he met in the streets the fairest ladies of the town, barefoot, dishevelled, dressed like slaves in coarse mourning garments, who dropped before him on their knees, sighing and wailing for liberty.
The most that Charles could do was to defer, to temporize, to vacillate; he could not be brought to pledge himself to more. He, with a remnant of his army, was alone in an inimical country, subject at any moment to encounter the forces of Venice, Milan, Spain, the Emperor and the Pope; meanwhile Florence was his one efficient friend. Florence to him had been a leal and honest ally; dare he desert her? ought he to repay her sacrifice with ruin? And yet this faithful Florence had behaved to Pisa in a fashion cruel and anti-human beyond words. And Pisa also had trusted him; Pisa was tenderly his friend. Could he fling the wounded hare which had taken refuge under his royal mantle to the fierce eyes and gaping jaws of the hound which served him?
The question wrung the conscience of the man. But, for the King, the matter was easily decided. His first duty was to his country and his troops; Florence could help him to reach the forces of Orleans in safety and with some degree of glory; but Pisa could furnish no active aid at all.
Meanwhile, the army had become fired with entirely different convictions. Suddenly King Charles, the adored conqueror, the second Charlemagne, the unlettered and ugly little captain whose soldiers’ devotion so amazed the Milanese, beheld himself in the midst of his troops almost without authority. The army, like one man, rose and spoke on behalf of the Pisans.
Insulated in this shelter of Pisa, with the offended Florentines continually harassing his outposts, with in front the fastnesses of the Apennines, and (God alone knew where) the five-toothed Trap of the League into which his little force must fall—in this terrible complication Charles beheld himself menaced by no less than the mutiny of his own army. And for what? Not on account of the light head and imprudent heart that had brought this handful of soldiers to fight such fearful odds. This rebellion was inspired purely by the pity inspired by men whose situation was certainly less hazardous than the peril of their indignant champions.
But all day long the army surged in front of the palace clamouring “Liberty! liberty!” in more virile voices than the Pisans’. The army infected the Court; and one day, when the King sat playing draughts alone with M. de Piennes, forty or fifty gentlemen of the Royal household with their partisans forced their way into his chamber and declaimed the woes of Pisa. Charles was indignant, and spoke so roughly, that they took their persuasions and menaces elsewhere. Even the poor archers, says Commines, moved by pity for the tears and lamentations of the Pisans, threatened those whom they believed persuaded the King to keep his oath at Florence. A private archer menaced Briçonnet; others used rude language to Marshal de Gié; and for three nights President Gannay durst not sleep in his lodgings. The Frenchmen infected the Swiss; and these ferocious giants, who a few days later should massacre man, woman, and child at Pontremoli, proved themselves as passionate in their apology for liberty. “Do you want money?” cried young Sallezart their paymaster. “Is it mere money that leads you to this infamy? Take rather our collars, our buckles, and our silver ornaments; stop our wages and spend the sum of our arrears. We will pay you as well as Florence! only set the Pisans free!”
In front of such enthusiasm Charles dared not avow a contrary decision. It was in vain that Briçonnet and his party urged instant fidelity to Florence. It was useless for Commines to observe that keeping faith with Florence did not preclude a sentiment of tenderest concern for Pisa, though after all, as the excellent diplomat observed, “Divers cities in Italy that be in subjection are as evil-entreated as she”—Sie ist nicht die Erste. Charles would promise nothing to Pisa, nothing definite; but also he would make no vows to Florence. He knew that the task before his little army was of the sternest and of the severest, physically impossible to discouraged and disaffected troops. Therefore he wrote to the Florentines saying that he would give his answer, not at Lucca, but at Asti; and while, in his heart, as we shall see, he meant to make the best of terms for Pisa, and then restore her to the Florentines, he left for the nonce, a French garrison in the city, three hundred picked men, difficultly spared, under the governorship of Robert de Balzac Seigneur d’Entragues. Thus, by a judicious temporizing, Charles hoped to untie the Gordian knot. By turning his back on the difficulty he thought he had suppressed it. And yet, were these three hundred men left behind in Pisa, likely to become more obedient to an absent monarch? Was Entragues, a man of Orleans’ household, Ligny’s candidate, likely to carry out the views of Commines or of Briçonnet against the avowed policy of his master and his patron? Charles, it may be supposed, did not ask himself these questions. He bestowed on Entragues, not merely the governorship of Pisa, but the command of the frontier castles, and, without further hesitation, left the town.
Robert de Balzac, Seigneur d’Entragues, was, says Commines, a very ill-conditioned fellow. But a similar opinion has been entertained by many historians for the most successful of their political opponents. Robert de Balzac was the son of Jean d’Entragues and his wife the sister of the famous Comte de Dammartin. Robert was a very young man when the accession of Louis XI. brought about the disgrace and exile of his all-powerful uncle. Every student of history is familiar with the legend of that great disgrace: how the estates of the unhappy minister were divided among the favourites at Court; how his wife with her suckling child was left destitute and hunted out of all her castles; how forsaken by all her friends, she wandered like an excommunicated woman along the lanes of Dammartin begging for her bread, until a poor day-labourer, Anthoine Le Fort, took the abandoned Countess to his hovel and sheltered her and her baby, eighteen months old, the starving little godson of the Duke of Bourbon. Jeanne was still in the peasant’s hut; her husband had fled for his life to Germany; when, as a last effort, Robert de Balzac, the Count’s nephew, was sent to Court to plead his cause. It was no light task to undertake. Men had been banished or odiously imprisoned for entreating the pardon of Dammartin, and many well-meaning friends would have dissuaded the young man. But he went his way, arriving at Court about the end of 1466, and pleaded so well that, after several audiences, the King recalled his uncle and placed him high in favour.
Such was the man—about forty years of age, rhetorical, impulsive, brave, generous, and audacious whom the King had left in command at Pisa.