In 1525, when Francis was about to quit France to reconquer his duchy of Milan, Samblançay was required and dared refuse to advance the sums needful, alleging that three hundred thousand crowns were already due to him. He gave in his accounts, proved the truth of his assertions, and lost place and favour. Francis departed; Louisa of Angoulême, once more regent of the kingdom, made use of her power to crush Samblançay. It was said that her receipt, signed by her hand, was abstracted by her agent from among his papers, while one of his own clerks was brought forward to accuse, of fraud and peculation, the most honest man of his time. The king, who in the interval had, in February, 1525, lost the battle of Pavia, and, conducted prisoner to Spain, been detained there prisoner till January, 1526, at the close of the latter year, with sorrow consented to his minister’s seclusion in the Bastille. His vindictive mother craved that he should be brought to trial, and the Chancellor Duprat presented, for the king’s signature, a list he held ready of judges, who, chosen from the various parliaments of the kingdom, were either placed by himself or devoted to him as having shared in the profits of confiscations pronounced according to his desire. The accused was interrogated, and Duprat, aware that by delay and chicanery he could best blind the multitude, under various pretexts, so lengthened the proceedings, that they filled four years. On the 9th of August, 1527, he was condemned to be hanged at Montfaucon, and on the 12th of the same month, conducted on foot from the Bastille thither, passing through the Rue St. Denis, where, in conformity to an ancient ceremony, criminals on their way to execution were made stop at a monastery, and swallow there a glass of wine and three crusts of bread, and kiss an old wooden crucifix preserved within it. Samblançay submitted to this odious custom without a murmur; but, arrived at the foot of the gibbet on which he was to die, he begged that the hour of his death might be deferred, still clinging to the belief that a pardon would arrive, and that the king, who had so loved him, could not allow his suffering ignominiously in his old age. Maillard, the lieutenant criminel, deferred the execution till darkness succeeded the long summer day, and, not till all hope of the king’s pity had departed, bade his prisoner make his last prayer. Samblançay was calm and courageous. “It seemed,” said his contemporary, Marot, “that himself was the judge and Maillard the condemned.” He exclaimed only as he ascended the fatal ladder, “Would I had served God as I have served the king!”
The road from Milan to Lodi would be melancholy even without the recollection, that to the defeat of La Bicocca is bound the fate of poor Samblançay,—the long straight road traversing a marshy flat with a wet ditch on either side, dignified by the Milanese with the name of rivers. Approaching Lodi, the face of the country is made gay by rich pastures, for the meadows which surround it produce all the cheese called Parmesan, only because the inhabitants of Parma first made a trade of its exportation. Our passport examined again, as carefully as on leaving Milan, we rode to La Posta through a town cleaner and prettier than usual: the old innkeeper, at first exorbitant in his demands, accepting the less startling prices we offered, but reminding me of Shylock as he left the room, repeating, “what was in the bond,”—dinner, tea, breakfast,—and adding, “Poco, poco, pochissimo,” till we lost the sound of his step and voice in the corridor. We were hardly installed, when there arrived an Austrian officer with an orderly to take possession of the stables for an early hour to-morrow morning, as a regiment will pass through, coming from Bresciano to join the camp.
I was amused by the expression of hatred to the Germans in the faces of their subjects, and the contrast between the fair, quiet, but determined-looking officer issuing his peremptory command, and the supple Italian, with his dark eyes and ferocious features, who received it, and the moment his back was turned, raised his clenched hand to invoke imprecations on the Tedeschi. “Accidenti in fiume, accidenti per viaggio, accidenti ad ogni cavallo che stia in questa scuderia,” till his master came out to soothe his ire by threatening to turn him away, and then he gave it vent by beating a poor white goat, the pet of the sick child.
As we had left behind rain and fog, we walked during the lovely evening to the Pont de Lodi over the Adda, here broad and rapid. The same wooden bridge exists which the Austrians (repulsed and driven back by Bonaparte) crossed to Lodi, whither the latter followed in haste to prevent its being broken by their pioneers.
Our guide mentioned with satisfaction the number of Tedeschi drowned in the Adda. It flows between flat shores, and derived beauty when we saw it only from a cloudless sunset, and the trees which fringe its banks, and were reflected in its clear water. At night, sleeping with windows open, as the heat was extreme, we were wakened by the first serenade which had greeted us in Italy; the performers had splendid voices, and sang in parts. The words of each stanza I could not distinguish, but the burthen of each was—
“Son venuti, son venuti, cavalcando, cavalcando;”
and, whether the compliment was in burlesque or earnest, I have never heard street music which so pleased me before. An hour or two after, the two Austrian officers, who had preceded their comrades, and occupied a room near ours, were serenaded also by a fine military band, so that our rest was disturbed by sweet sounds almost through the whole night, and we set off early to make room for the Tedeschi.
2nd October. Lodi to Piacenza.
A prettier and more shaded road through a country, almost entirely pasture-land, and resembling the mildest parts of England. The little wine they produce is much valued, but the chief supply comes from Piedmont. We passed at Casal Pusterlengo the route which turns off to Cremona, but, unfortunately, no one being in sight just then, we were uncertain as to whether our instincts led right or wrong, and the distance to the frontier seeming longer than it had been described, we began to fear the necessity of turning back, beneath a sun whose heat was intense to painfulness. A few carters passed us with their horses, but I have learned to ask questions with discrimination, for the brutal incivility of the common Italians I have never seen equalled. They shout their disapprobation of our mode of travelling, their energy seeming to expend itself in “sound and fury, signifying nothing;” drive on us their cart-horses or oxen, or at least act like a waggoner we came up with yesterday, and whom I requested to allow me room to pass on the side where Fanny, who, to his amusement, was starting violently, would be in no danger of arriving with me at the bottom of a twenty feet deep ditch. He told me to manage as well as I could, as he did not intend to move an inch. At last, fearing we might ride to Cremona, we stopped at a cabin door in one of the dirty villages on our way. My question was not very politely answered, and the whole family exclaimed in chorus that we were wrong, and must turn back; perhaps in ignorance, though I think in mischief, and, as I thought so then, we hesitated, and a post-boy coming up with his horses, (a person always civil to strangers, who may employ him,) desired us to ride on, as a few minutes would bring us to the frontier.
This proving true, our passport was examined at the Cà Rossa, and we were on the territory of the Archduchess Maria Louisa. The heat was intense, and they detained us some time under the sun; the oxen, dragging their waggon-loads of grapes, passed us by; and before the village doors the men with their soiled and sunburned feet were treading the wine-press as we had seen them doing in the fields also. At last, Piacenza was in sight; the dark red city rising on the broad plain beyond the broad Pô, with the one stone arch, the relic of a Roman bridge, standing in its centre, on the deposit of sand and stones; and the two bridges of boats which we were to cross, and which should be a relic also, being extremely unsafe, the boats small, and the decaying planks they sustain a succession of hill and dale, over which our horses feared to advance. The toll is five sous per steed, which, considering its state, is sufficient.