“The most enlightened councillors and the princes of the blood found themselves in agreement with the commons. There was no ambiguity about the reply. On the Tuesday, May 19, the king held a session in state for the purpose of announcing to the estates that their wishes should be fully gratified, and that the betrothal of his daughter to the heir to the throne should take place next day but one, May 21, in order that the deputies might report the news of it to their constituents.
“After that the estates had returned thanks, the chancellor gave notice that, as municipal affairs imperatively demanded the return of the deputies, the king gave them leave to go, retaining only one burgess from each town, to inform him of their wants and ‘their business, if such there be in any case, wherein the king will give them good and short despatch.’
“The session was brought to a close by the festivities of the betrothal, and by the oath taken by the deputies, who, before their departure, swore to bring about with all their might, even to the risk of body and goods, the marriage which had just been decided upon by the common advice of all those who represented France.’” [Histoire des Etats Generaux from 1355 to 1614, by George Picot, t. i. pp. 352-354].
Francis d’Angouleme was at that time eleven years old, and Claude of France was nearly seven.
Whatever displeasure must have been caused to the Emperor of Germany and to the King of Spain by this resolution on the part of France and her king, it did not show itself, either in acts of hostility or even in complaints of a more or less threatening kind. Italy remained for some years longer the sole theatre of rivalry and strife between these three great powers; and, during this strife, the utter diversity of the combinations, whether in the way of alliance or of rupture, bore witness to the extreme changeability of the interests, passions, and designs of the actors. From 1506 to 1515, between Louis XII.‘s will and his death, we find in the history of his career in Italy five coalitions, and as many great battles, of a profoundly contradictory character. In 1508, Pope Julius II., Louis XII., Emperor Maximilian, and Ferdinand the Catholic, King of Spain, form together against the Venetians the League of Cambrai. In 1510, Julius II., Ferdinand, the Venetians, and the Swiss make a coalition against Louis XII. In 1512, this coalition, decomposed for a while, re-unites, under the name of the League of the Holy Union, between the pope, the Venetians, the Swiss, and the Kings of Arragon and Naples against Louis XII., minus the Emperor Maximilian, and plus Henry VIII., King of England. On the 14th of May, 1509, Louis XII., in the name of the League of Cambrai, gains the battle of Agnadello against the Venetians. On the 11th of April, 1512, it is against Pope Julius II., Ferdinand the Catholic, and the Venetians that he gains the battle of Ravenna. On the 14th of March, 1513, he is in alliance with the Venetians, and it is against the Swiss that he loses the battle of Novara. In 1510, 1511, and 1512, in the course of all these incessant changes of political allies and adversaries, three councils met at Tours, at Pisa, and at St. John Lateran with views still more discordant and irreconcilable than those of all these laic coalitions. We merely point out here the principal traits of the nascent sixteenth century; we have no intention of tracing with a certain amount of detail any incidents but those that refer to Louis XII. and to France, to their procedure and their fortunes.
Jealousy, ambition, secret resentment, and the prospect of despoiling them caused the formation of the League of Cambrai against the Venetians. Their far-reaching greatness on the seas, their steady progress on land, their riches, their cool assumption of independence towards the papacy, their renown for ability, and their profoundly selfish, but singularly prosperous policy, had excited in Italy, and even beyond the Alps, that feeling of envy and ill-will which is caused amongst men, whether kings or people, by the spectacle of strange, brilliant, and unexpected good fortune, though it be the fruits of rare merit. As the Venetians were as much dreaded as they were little beloved, great care was taken to conceal from them the projects that were being formed against them. According to their historian, Cardinal Bembo, they owed to chance the first notice they had. It happened one day that a Piedmontese at Milan, in presence of the Resident of Venice, allowed to escape from his lips the words, “I should have the pleasure, then, of seeing the crime punished of those who put to death the most illustrious man of my country.” He alluded to Carmagnola, a celebrated Piedmontese condottiere, who had been accused of treason and beheaded at Venice on the 3d of May, 1432. The Venetian ambassador at Louis XII.‘s court, suspecting what had taken place at Cambrai, tried to dissuade the king. “Sir,” said he, “it were folly to attack them of Venice; their wisdom renders them invincible.” “I believe they are prudent and wise,” answered Louis, “but all the wrong way of the hair (inopportunely); if it must come to war, I will bring upon them so many fools, that your wiseacres will not have leisure to teach them reason, for my fools hit all round without looking where.” When the league was decisively formed, Louis sent to Venice a herald to officially proclaim war. After having replied to the grievances alleged in support of that proclamation, “We should never have believed,” said the Doge Loredano, “that so great a prince would have given ear to the envenomed words of a pope whom he ought to know better, and to the insinuations of another priest whom we forbear to mention (Cardinal d’Amboise). In order to please them, he declares himself the foe of a republic which has rendered him great services. We will try to defend ourselves, and to prove to him that he has not kept faith with us. God shall judge betwixt us. Father herald, and you, trumpeter, ye have heard what we had to say to you; report it to your master. Away!” Independently of their natural haughtiness, the Venetians were puffed up with the advantages they had obtained in a separate campaign against the Emperor Maximilian, and flattered themselves that they would manage to conquer, one after the other, or to split up, or to tire out, their enemies; and they prepared energetically for war. Louis XII., on his side, got together an army with a strength of twenty-three hundred lances (about thirteen thousand mounted troops), ten to twelve thousand French foot, and six or eight thousand Swiss. He sent for Chevalier Bayard, already famous, though still quite a youth. “Bayard,” said he, “you know that I am about to cross the mountains, for to bring to reason the Venetians, who by great wrong withhold from me the countship of Cremona and other districts. I give to you from this present time the company of Captain Chatelard, who they tell me is dead, whereat I am distressed; but I desire that in this enterprise you have under your charge men afoot; your lieutenant- captain, Pierrepont [Pierre de Pont d’Albi, a Savoyard gentle-man, and Bayard’s nephew], who is a very good man, shall lead your men-at-arms.” “Sir,” answered Bayard, “I will do what pleaseth you; but how many men afoot will you be pleased to hand over to me to lead?” “A thousand,” said the king: “there is no man that hath more.” “Sir,” replied Bayard, “it is a many for my poor wits; I do entreat you to be content that I have five hundred; and I pledge you my faith, sir, that I will take pains to choose such as shall do you service; meseems that for one man it is a very heavy charge, if he would fain do his duty therewith.” “Good!” said the king: “go, then, quickly into Dauphiny, and take heed that you be in my duchy of Milan by the end of March.” Bayard forthwith set out to raise and choose his foot; a proof of the growing importance of infantry, and of the care taken by Louis XII. to have it commanded by men of war of experience and popularity.
On the 14th of May, 1509, the French army and the Venetian army, of nearly equal strength, encountered near the village of Agnadello, in the province of Lodi, on the banks of the Adda. Louis XII. commanded his in person, with Louis de la Tremoille and James Trivulzio for his principal lieutenants; the Venetians were under the orders of two generals, the Count of Petigliano and Barthelemy d’Alviano, both members of the Roman family of the Orsini, but not on good terms with one another. The French had to cross the Adda to reach the enemy, who kept in his camp. Trivulzio, seeing that the Venetians did not dispute their passage, cried out to the king, “To-day, sir, the victory is ours!” The French advance- guard engaged with the troops of Alviano. When apprised of this fight, Louis, to whom word was at this same time brought that the enemy was already occupying the point towards which he was moving with the main body of the army, said briskly, “Forward, all the same; we will halt upon their bellies.” The action became general and hot. The king, sword in hand, hurried from one corps to another, under fire from the Venetian artillery, which struck several men near him. He was urged to place himself under cover a little, so as to give his orders thence; but, “It is no odds,” said he; “they who are afraid have only to put themselves behind me.” A body of Gascons showed signs of wavering: “Lads,” shouted La Tremoille, “the king sees you.” They dashed forward; and the Venetians were broken, in spite of the brave resistance of Alviano, who was taken and brought, all covered with blood, and with one eye out, into the presence of the king. Louis said to him, courteously, “You shall have fair treatment and fair captivity; have fair patience.” “So I will,” answered the condottiere; “if I had won the battle, I had been the most victorious man in the world; and, though I have lost it, still have I the great honor of having had against me a King of France in person.” Louis, who had often heard talk of the warrior’s intrepid presence of mind, had a fancy for putting it to further proof, and, all the time chatting with him, gave secret orders to have the alarm sounded not far from them. “What is this, pray, Sir Barthelemy?” asked the king: “your folks are very difficult to please; is it that they want to begin again?” “Sir,” said Alviano, “if there is fighting still, it must be that the French are fighting one another; as for my folks, I assure you, on my life, they will not pay you a visit this fortnight.” The Venetian army, in fact, withdrew with a precipitation which resembled a rout: for, to rally it, its general, the Count of Petigliano, appointed for its gathering-point the ground beneath the walls of Brescia, forty miles from the field of battle. “Few men-at-arms,” says Guicciardini, “were slain in this affair; the great loss fell upon the Venetians’ infantry, which lost, according to some, eight thousand men; others say that the number of dead on both sides did not amount to more than six thousand.” The territorial results of the victory were greater than the numerical losses of the armies. Within a fortnight, the towns of Caravaggio, Bergamo, Brescia, Crema, Cremona, and Pizzighitone surrendered to the French. Peschiera alone, a strong fortress at the southern extremity of the Lake of Garda, resisted, and was carried by assault. “It was a bad thing for those within,” says the Loyal Serviteur of Bayard; “for all, or nearly all, perished there; amongst the which was the governor of the Signory and his son, who were willing to pay good and heavy ransom; but that served them not at all, for on one tree were both of them hanged, which to me did seem great cruelty; a very lusty gentleman, called the Lorrainer, had their parole, and he had big words about it with the grand master, lieutenant-general of the king; but he got no good thereby.” The Memoires of Robert de la Marck, lord of Fleuranges, and a warrior of the day, confirm, as to this sad incident, the story of the Loyal Serviteur of Bayard: “When the French volunteers,” says he, “entered by the breach into the castle of Peschiera, they cut to pieces all those who were therein, and there were left only the captain, the proveditore, and the podesta, the which stowed themselves away in a tower, surrendered to the good pleasure of the king, and, being brought before him, offered him for ransom a hundred thousand ducats; but the king swore, ‘If ever I eat or drink till they be hanged and strangled! ‘Nor even for all the prayer they could make could the grand master Chaumont, and even his uncle, Cardinal d’Amboise, find any help for it, but the king would have them hanged that very hour.” Some chroniclers attribute this violence on Louis XII.‘s part to a “low and coarse” reply returned by those in command at Peschiera to the summons to surrender. Guicciardini, whilst also recording the fact, explains it otherwise than by a fit of anger on Louis’s part: “The king,” he says, “was led to such cruelty in order that, dismayed at such punishment, those who were still holding out in the fortress of Cremona might not defend themselves to the last extremity.” [Guicciardini, Istoria d’Italia, liv. viii. t. i. p. 521.] So that the Italian historian is less severe on this act of cruelty than the French knight is.
Louis XII.‘s victory at Agnadello had for him consequences very different from what he had no doubt expected. “The king,” says Guicciardini, “departed from Italy, carrying away with him to France great glory by reason of so complete and so rapidly won a victory over the Venetians; nevertheless, as in the case of things obtained after hope long deferred men scarcely ever feel such joy and happiness as they had at first imagined they would, the king took not back with him either greater peace of mind or greater security in respect of his affairs.” The beaten Venetians accepted their defeat with such a mixture of humility and dignity as soon changed their position in Italy. They began by providing all that was necessary for the defence of Venice herself; foreigners, but only idle foreigners, were expelled; those who had any business which secured them means of existence received orders to continue their labors. Mills were built, cisterns were dug, corn was gathered in, the condition of the canals was examined, bars were removed, the citizens were armed; the law which did not allow vessels laden with provisions to touch at Venice was repealed, and rewards were decreed to officers who had done their duty. Having taken all this care for their own homes and their fatherland on the sea, the Venetian senate passed a decree by which the republic, releasing from their oath of fidelity the subjects it could not defend, authorized its continental provinces to treat with the enemy with a view to their own interests, and ordered its commandants to evacuate such places as they still held. Nearly all such submitted without a struggle to the victor of Agnadello and his allies of Cambrai; but at Treviso, when Emperor Maximilian’s commissioner presented himself in order to take possession of it, a shoemaker named Caligaro went running through the streets, shouting, “Hurrah! for St. Mark.”