After Bourbon’s precipitate retreat, the position of Francis I. was a good one. He had triumphed over conspiracy and invasion; the conspiracy had not been catching, and the invasion had failed on all the frontiers. If the king, in security within his kingdom, had confined himself to it, whilst applying himself to the task of governing it well, he would have obtained all the strength he required to make himself feared and deferred to abroad. For a while he seemed to have entertained this design: on the 25th of September, 1523, he published an important ordinance for the repression of disorderliness and outrages on the part of the soldiery in France itself; and, on the 28th of December following, a regulation as to the administration of finances established a control over the various exchequer-officers, and announced the king’s intention of putting some limits to his personal expenses, “not including, however,” said he, “the ordinary run of our little necessities and pleasures.” This singular reservation was the faithful exponent of his character; he was licentious at home and adventurous abroad, being swayed by his coarse passions and his warlike fancies. Even far away from Paris, in the heart of the provinces, the king’s irregularities were known and dreaded. In 1524, some few weeks after the death [at Blois, July 20, 1524] of his wife, Queen Claude, daughter of Louis XII., a virtuous and modest princess more regretted by the people than by her husband, Francis made his entry into Manosque, in Provence. The burgesses had the keys of their town presented to him by the most beautiful creature they could find within their walls; it was the daughter of Antony Voland, one of themselves. The virtuous young girl was so frightened at the king’s glances and the signs he made to his gentry, evidently alluding to her, that, on returning home, she got some burning sulphur and placed herself for a long while under the influence of its vapor, in order to destroy the beauty which made her run the risk of being only too pleasing to the king. Francis, who was no great or able captain, could not resist the temptations of war any more than those of the flesh. When Bourbon and the imperial army had evacuated Provence, the king loudly proclaimed his purpose of pursuing them into Italy, and of once more going forth to the conquest of Milaness, and perhaps also of the kingdom of Naples, that incurable craze of French kings in the sixteenth century. In vain did his most experienced warriors, La Tremoille and Chabannes, exert themselves to divert him from such a campaign, for which he was not prepared; in vain did his mother herself write to him, begging him to wait and see her, for that she had important matters to impart to him. He answered by sending her the ordinance which conferred upon her the regency during his absence; and, at the end of October, 1524, he had crossed the Alps, anxious to go and risk in Milaness the stake he had just won in Provence against Charles V.
Arriving speedily in front of Milan, he there found the imperial army which had retired before him; there was a fight in one of the outskirts; but Bourbon recognized the impossibility of maintaining a siege in a town of which the fortifications were in ruins, and with disheartened troops. On the line of march which they had pursued, from Lodi to Milan, there was nothing to be seen but cuirasses, arquebuses tossed hither and thither, dead horses, and men dying of fatigue and scarcely able to drag themselves along. Bourbon evacuated Milan, and, taking a resolution as bold as it was singular, abruptly abandoned, so far as he was personally concerned, that defeated and disorganized army, to go and seek for and reorganize another at a distance. Being informed that Charles III., Duke of Savoy, hitherto favorable to France, was secretly inclining towards the emperor, he went to Turin, made a great impression by his confidence and his grand spirit in the midst of misfortune upon both the duke and his wife, Beatrix of Portugal, and obtained from them not only a flattering reception, but a secret gift of their money and their jewelry; and, equipped with these resources, he passed into Germany to recruit soldiers there. The lanzknechts, who had formerly served under him in France, rushed to him in shoals; he had received from nature the gifts most calculated to gain the hearts of campaigners: kind, accessible, affable and even familiar with the common soldier, he entered into the details of his wants and alleviated them. His famous bravery, his frankness, and his generosity gained over those adventurers who were weary of remaining idle; their affection consoled Bourbon and stood him in stead of all: his army became his family and his camp his country. Proscribed and condemned in France, without any position secured to him in the dominions of Charles V., envied and crossed by that prince’s generals, he had found full need of all the strong tempering of his character and of his warlike genius to keep him from giving way under so many trials. He was beginning to feel himself near recovery: he had an army, an army of his own; he had chosen for it men inured to labor and fatigue, accustomed to strict discipline; and thereto he added five hundred horsemen from Franche-Comte for whose devotion and courage he could answer: and he gave the second command in this army to George of Freundsberg, an old captain of lanzknechts and commandant of the emperor’s guard, the same who, three years before, on seeing Luther boldly enter Worms, said to him, with a slap on the shoulder, “Little monk, this is a daring step thou art going to take! Nor I, nor any captain of us, ever did the like. If thy cause is good, and if thou have faith in thy cause, forward! little monk, in God’s name forward!” With such comrades about him, Bourbon re-entered Milaness at the head of twelve or thirteen thousand fighting men, three months after having left it, alone and moneyless. His rivals about the person of Charles V., Lannoy, Viceroy of Naples, and the Marquis of Pescara, could not help admiring him, and he regained in the imperial camp an ascendency which had but lately been very much shaken.
He found the fresh campaign begun in earnest. Francis I.‘s veteran generals, Marshals La Tremoille and Chabannes, had advised him to pursue without pause the beaten and disorganized imperial army, which was in such plight that there was placarded on the statue of Pasquin at Rome, “Lost—an army—in the mountains of Genoa; if anybody knows what has become of it, let him come forward and say: he shall be well rewarded.” If the King of France, it was said, drove back northward and forced into the Venetian dominions the remnants of this army, the Spaniards would not be able to hold their own in Milaness, and would have to retire within the kingdom of Naples. But Admiral Bonnivet, “whose counsel the king made use of more than of any other,” says Du Bellay, pressed Francis I. to make himself master, before everything, of the principal strong places in Lombardy, especially of Pavia, the second city in the duchy of Milan. Francis followed this counsel, and on the 26th of August, 1524, twenty days after setting out from Aix in Provence, he appeared with his army in front of Pavia. On learning this resolution, Pescara joyously exclaimed, “We were vanquished; a little while and we shall be vanquishers.” Pavia had for governor a Spanish veteran, Antony de Leyva, who had distinguished himself at the battle of Ravenna, in 1512, by his vigilance and indomitable tenacity: and he held out for nearly four months, first against assaults, and then against investment by the French army. Francis I. and his generals occasionally proceeded during this siege to severities condemned by the laws and usages of war. A small Spanish garrison had obstinately defended a tower situated at the entrance of a stone bridge which led from an island on the Ticino into Pavia. Marshal de Montmorency at last carried the tower, and had all the defenders hanged “for having dared,” he said, “to offer resistance to an army of the king’s in such a pigeon-hole.” Antony de Leyva had the bridge forthwith broken down, and De Montmorency was stopped on the borders of the Ticino. In spite of the losses of its garrison in assaults and sorties, and in spite of the sufferings of the inhabitants from famine and from lack of resources of all sorts, Pavia continued to hold out. There was a want of wood as well as of bread; and they knocked the houses to pieces for fuel. Antony de Leyva caused to be melted down the vessels of the churches and the silvern chandeliers of the university, and even a magnificent chain of gold which he habitually wore round his neck. He feared he would have to give in at last, for want of victuals and ammunition, when, towards the end of January, 1525, he saw appearing, on the northern side, the flags of the imperial army: it was Bourbon, Lannoy, and Pescara, who were coming up with twenty thousand foot, seven hundred men-at-arms, a troop of Spanish arquebusiers, and several pieces of cannon. Bourbon, whilst on the march, had written, on the 5th of January, to Henry VIII., and, after telling him what he meant to do, had added, “I know through one of my servants that the French have said that I retired from Provence shamefully. I remained there a space of three months and eight days, waiting for battle. I hope to give the world to know that I have no fear of King Francis, for, please God, we shall place ourselves so close together that we shall have great trouble to get disentangled without battle, and I shall so do that neither he nor they who have held such talk about me shall say that I was afraid of being there.” The situation was from that moment changed. The French army found themselves squeezed between the fortress which would not surrender and the imperial army which was coming to relieve it. Things, however, remained stationary for three weeks. Francis I. intrenched himself strongly in his camp, which the Imperialists could not attack without great risk of unsuccess. “Pavia is doomed to fall,” wrote Francis to his mother the regent on the 3d of February, “if they do not reenforce it somehow; and they are beating about to make it hold on to the last gasp, which, I think, will not be long now, for it is more than a month since those inside have had no wine to drink and neither meat nor cheese to eat; they are short of powder even.” Antony de Leyva gave notice to the Imperialists that the town was not in a condition for further resistance. On the other hand, if the imperial army put off fighting, they could not help breaking up; they had exhausted their victuals, and the leaders their money; they were keeping the field without receiving pay, and were subsisting, so to speak, without resources. The prudent Marquis of Pescara himself was for bringing on a battle, which was indispensable. “A hundred years in the field,” said he, in the words of an old Italian proverb, “are better than one day of fighting, for one may lose in a doubtful melley what one was certain of winning by skilful manoeuvres; but when one can no longer keep the field, one must risk a battle, so as not to give the enemy the victory without a fight.” The same question was being discussed in the French camp. The veteran captains, La Tremoille and Chabannes, were of opinion that by remaining in the strong position in which they were encamped they would conquer without fighting. Bonnivet and De Montmorency were of the contrary opinion. “We French,” said Bonnivet, “have not been wont to make war by means of military artifices, but handsomely and openly, especially when we have at our head a valiant king, who is enough to make the veriest dastards fight. Our kings bring victory with them, as our little king Charles VIII. did at the Taro, our king Louis XII. at Agnadello, and our king who is here present at Melegnano.” Francis I. was not the man to hold out against such sentiments and such precedents; and he decided to accept battle as soon as it should be offered him. The imperial leaders, at a council held on the 23d of February, determined to offer it next day. Bourbon vigorously supported the opinion of Pescara.
Antony de Leyva was notified the same evening of their decision, and was invited to make, as soon as he heard two cannon-shots, a sortie which would place the French army between two fires. Pescara, according to his custom, mustered the Spaniards; and, “My lads,” said he, “fortune has brought you to such extremity that on the soil of Italy you have for your own only that which is under your feet. All the emperor’s might could not procure for you to-morrow morning one morsel of bread. We know not where to get it, save in the Frenchman’s camp, which is before your eyes. There they have abundance of everything, bread, meat, trout and carp from the Lake of Garda. And so, my lads, if you are set upon having anything to eat tomorrow, march we down on the Frenchmen’s camp.” Freundsberg spoke in the same style to the German lanzknechts. And both were responded to with cheers. Eloquence is mighty powerful when it speaks in the name of necessity.
The two armies were of pretty equal strength: they had each from twenty to five and twenty thousand infantry, French, Germans, Spaniards, lanzknechts, and Swiss. Francis I. had the advantage in artillery and in heavy cavalry, called at that time the gendarmerie, that is to say, the corps of men-at-arms in heavy armor with their servants; but his troops were inferior in effectives to the Imperialists, and Charles V.‘s two generals, Bourbon and Pescara, were, as men of war, far superior to Francis I. and his favorite Bonnivet. In the night between the 23d and 24th of February they opened a breach of forty or fifty fathoms in the wall around the park of Mirabello, where the French camp was situated; a corps immediately passed through it, marching on Pavia to re-enforce the garrison, and the main body of the imperial army entered the park to offer the French battle on that ground. The king at once set his army in motion; and his well-posted artillery mowed down the corps of Germans and Spaniards who had entered the park. “You could see nothing,” says a witness of the battle, “but heads and arms flying about.” The action seemed to be going ill for the Imperialists; Pescara urged the Duke of Bourbon and Lannoy, the Viceroy of Naples, to make haste and come up; Lannoy made the sign of the cross, and said to his men, “There is no hope but in God; follow me and do every one as I do.” Francis I., on his side, advanced with the pick of his men-at-arms, burst on the advance-guard of the enemy, broke it, killed with his own hand the Marquis of Civita-San-Angelo, and dispersed the various corps he found in his way. In the confidence of his joy he thought the victory decided, and, turning to Marshal de Foix, who was with him, “M. de Lescun,” said he, “now am I fain to call myself Duke of Milan.” But Bourbon and Pescara were not the men to accept a defeat so soon; they united all their forces, and resumed the offensive at all points; the French batteries, masked by an ill-considered movement on the part of their own troops, who threw themselves between them and the enemy, lost all serviceability; and Pescara launched upon the French gendarmerie fifteen hundred Basque arquebusiers, whom he had exercised and drilled to penetrate into the midst of the horses, shoot both horses and riders, and fall back rapidly after having discharged their pieces. Being attacked by the German lanzknechts of Bourbon and Freundsberg, the Swiss in the French service did not maintain their renown, and began to give way. “My God, what is all this!” cried Francis I., seeing them waver, and he dashed towards them to lead them back into action; but neither his efforts, nor those of John of Diesbach and the Lord of Fleuranges, who were their commanders, were attended with success. The king was only the more eager for the fray; and, rallying around him all those of his men-at-arms who would neither recoil nor surrender, he charged the Imperialists furiously, throwing himself into the thickest of the melley, and seeking in excess of peril some chance of victory; but Pescara, though wounded in three places, was none the less stubbornly fighting on, and Antony de Leyva, governor of Pavia, came with the greater part of the garrison to his aid. At this very moment Francis I. heard that the first prince of the blood, his brother-in-law the Duke of Alencon, who commanded the rear-guard, had precipitately left the field of battle. The oldest and most glorious warriors of France, La Tremoille, Marshal de Chabannes, Marshal de Foix, the grand equerry San Severino, the Duke of Suffolk, Francis of Lorraine, Chaumont, Bussy d’Amboise, and Francis de Duras fell, here and there, mortally wounded. At this sight Admiral Bonnivet in despair exclaimed, “I can never survive this fearful havoc;” and raising the visor of his helmet, he rushed to meet the shots which were aimed at him, and in his turn fell beside his comrades in arms. Bourbon had expressly charged his men to search everywhere in the melley for the admiral, and bring him in a prisoner. When, as he passed along that part of the battle-field, he recognized the corpse, “Ah! wretch,” he cried, as he moved away, “it is thou who hast caused the ruin of France and of me!” Amidst these dead and dying, Francis still fought on; wounded as he was in the face, the arms, and the legs, he struck right and left with his huge sword, and cut down the nearest of his assailants; but his horse, mortally wounded, dragged him down as it fell; he was up again in an instant, and, standing beside his horse, he laid low two more Spaniards who were pressing him closely; the ruck of the soldiers crowded about him; they did not know him, but his stature, his strength, his bravery, his coat of mail studded with golden lilies, and his helmet overshadowed by a thick plume of feathers pointed him out to all as the finest capture to make; his danger was increasing every minute, when one of Bourbon’s most intimate confidants, the Lord of Pomperant, who, in 1523, had accompanied the constable in his flight through France, came up at this critical moment, recognized the king, and, beating off the soldiers with his sword, ranged himself at the king’s side, represented to-him the necessity of yielding, and pressed him to surrender to the Duke of Bourbon, who was not far off. “No,” said the king, “rather die than pledge my faith to a traitor where is the Viceroy of Naples?” It took some time to find Lannoy; but at last he arrived and put one knee on the ground before Francis I., who handed his sword to him. Lannoy took it with marks of the most profound respect, and immediately gave him another. The battle was over, and Francis I. was Charles V.‘s prisoner.
He had shown himself an imprudent and unskilful general, but at the same time a hero. His conquerors, both officers and privates, could not help, whilst they secured his person, showing their admiration for him. When he sat down to table, after having had his wounds, which were slight, attended to, Bourbon approached him respectfully and presented him with a dinner-napkin; and the king took it without embarrassment and with frigid and curt politeness. He next day granted him an interview, at which an accommodation took place with due formalities on both sides, but nothing more. All the king’s regard was for the Marquis of Pescara, who came to see him in a simple suit of black, in order, as it were, to share his distress. “He was a perfect gentleman,” said Francis I., “both in peace and in war.” He heaped upon him marks of esteem and almost of confidence. “How do you think,” he asked, “the emperor will behave to me?” “I think,” replied Pescara, “I can answer for the emperor’s moderation; I am sure that he will make a generous use of his victory. If, however, he were capable of forgetting what is due to your rank, your merits, and your misfortunes, I would never cease to remind him of it, and I would lose what little claim upon him my services may have given me, or you should be satisfied with his behavior.” The king embraced him warmly. He asked to be excused from entering Pavia, that he might not be a gazing-stock in a town that he had so nearly taken. He was, accordingly, conducted to Pizzighittone, a little fortress between Milan and Cremona. He wrote thence two letters, one to his mother the regent and the other to Charles V., which are here given word for word, because they so well depict his character and the state of his mind in his hour of calamity:—
|
1. “To the Regent of France: Madame, that you may know how stands the rest of my misfortune: there is nothing in the world left to me but honor and my life, which is safe. And in order that, in your adversity, this news might bring you some little comfort, I prayed for permission to write you this letter, which was readily granted me; entreating you, in the exercise of your accustomed prudence, to be pleased not to do anything rash, for I have hope, after all, that God will not forsake me. Commending to you my children your grandchildren, and entreating you to give the bearer a free passage, going and returning, to Spain, for he is going to the emperor to learn how it is his pleasure that I should be treated.” 2. “To the Emperor Charles V.: If liberty had been sooner granted me by my cousin the viceroy, I should not have delayed so long to do my duty towards you, according as the time and the circumstances in which I am placed require; having no other comfort under my misfortune than a reliance on your goodness, which, if it so please, shall employ the results of victory with honorableness towards me; having steadfast hope that your virtue would not willingly constrain me to anything that was not honorable; entreating you to consult your own heart as to what you shall be pleased to do with me; feeling sure that the will of a prince such as you are cannot be coupled with aught but honor and magnanimity. Wherefore, if it please you to have so much honorable pity as to answer for the safety which a captive King of France deserves to find, whom there is a desire to render friendly and not desperate, you may be sure of obtaining an acquisition instead of a useless prisoner, and of making a King of France your slave forever.” |
The former of these two letters has had its native hue somewhat altered in the majority of histories, in which it has been compressed into those eloquent words, “All is lost save honor.” The second needs no comment to make apparent what it lacks of kingly pride and personal dignity. Beneath the warrior’s heroism there was in the qualities of Francis I. more of what is outwardly brilliant and winning than of real strength and solidity.