Before inviting such manifestations Francis I. had taken measures to prevent them from being in vain. Since the battle of Pavia and his captivity at Madrid the condition and disposition of Europe, and especially of Italy, had changed. From 1513 to 1523, three popes, Leo X., Adrian VI., and Clement VII. had occupied the Holy See. Adrian VI. alone embraced the cause of Charles V., whose preceptor he had been; but he reigned only one year, eight months, and five days; and even during that short time he made only a timid use of his power on his patron’s behalf. His successor, Clement VII., was a Florentine and a Medici, and, consequently, but little inclined to favor the emperor’s policy. The success of Charles V. at Pavia and the captivity of Francis I. inspired the pope and all Italy with great dread of the imperial pretensions and predominance. A league was formed between Rome, Florence, Venice, and Milan for the maintenance of Italian independence; and, as the pope was at its head, it was called the Holy League. Secret messages and communications were interchanged between these Italian states, the regent Louise of Savoy at Paris, and King Henry VIII. in London, to win them over to this coalition, not less important, it was urged, for the security of Europe than of Italy. The regent of France and the King of England received these overtures favorably; promises were made on either side and a commencement was even made of preparations, which were hastily disavowed both at Paris and in London, when Charles V. testified some surprise at them. But when Francis I. was restored to freedom and returned to his kingdom, fully determined in his own mind not to execute the treaty of Madrid, the negotiations with Italy became more full of meaning and reality. As early as the 22d of May, 1526, whilst he was still deliberating with his court and Parliament as to how he should behave towards Charles V. touching the treaty of Madrid, Francis I. entered into the Holy League with the pope, the Venetians, and the Duke of Milan for the independence of Italy; and on the 8th of August following Francis I. and Henry VIII. undertook, by a special treaty, to give no assistance one against the other to Charles V., and Henry VIII. promised to exert all his efforts to get Francis I.‘s two sons, left as hostages in Spain, set at liberty. Thus the war between Francis I. and Charles V., after fifteen months’ suspension, resumed its course.
It lasted three years in Italy, from 1526 to 1529, without interruption, but also without result; it was one of those wars which are prolonged from a difficulty of living in peace rather than from any serious intention, on either side, of pursuing a clear and definite object. Bourbon and Lannoy commanded the imperial armies, Lautrec the French army. Only two events, one for its singularity and the other for its tragic importance, deserve to have the memory of them perpetuated in history.
After the battle of Pavia and whilst Francis I. was a captive in Spain, Bourbon, who had hitherto remained in Italy, arrived at Madrid on the 13th of November, 1525, almost at the same time at which Marguerite de Valois was leaving it for France. Charles V. received the hero of Pavia with the strongest marks of consideration and favor; and the Spanish army were enthusiastic in their attachment to him. Amongst the great Spanish lords there were several who despised him as a traitor to his king and country. Charles V. asked the Marquis de Villena to give him quarters in his palace. “I can refuse the king nothing,” said the marquis; “but as soon as the traitor is out of the house, I will fire it with my own hand; no man of honor could live in it any more.” Holding this great and at the same time doubtful position, Bourbon remained in Spain up to the moment when the war was renewed between Francis I. and Charles V. The latter could not at that time dispense with his services in Italy for the only soldier who could have taken his place there, the Marquis of Pescara, had died at Milan on the 30th of November, 1525, aged thirty-six. Charles V. at once sent Bourbon to take the command of the imperial armies in Italy. On arriving at Milan in July, 1527, Bourbon found not only that town, but all the emperor’s party in Italy, in such a state of disorder, alarm, and exhaustion as to render them incapable of any great effort. In view of this general disturbance, Bourbon, who was as ambitious as able, and had become the chief of the great adventurers of his day, conceived the most audacious hopes. Charles V. had promised him the duchy of Milan; why should he not have the kingdom of Naples also, and make himself independent of Charles V.? He had immense influence over his Spanish army; and he had recruited it in Germany with from fourteen to fifteen thousand lanzknechts, the greater part of them Lutherans, and right glad to serve Charles V., then at war with the pope. Their commander, Freundsberg, a friend of Bourbon’s, had got made a handsome gold chain, “expressly,” he said, “to hang and strangle the pope with his own hand, because ‘honor to whom honor is due;’ and since the pope called himself premier in Christendom, he must be deferred to somewhat more than others.” [Brantome, t. i. p. 354.] On the 30th of January, 1527, at Piacenza, Bourbon, late Constable of France, put himself at the head of this ruck of bold and greedy adventurers. “I am now,” said he to them, “nothing but a poor gentleman, who hasn’t a penny to call his own any more than you have; but, if you will have a little patience, I will make you all rich or die in the attempt;” and, so saying, he distributed amongst them all he had left of money, rings, and jewels, keeping for himself nothing but his clothes and a jacket of silver tissue to put on over his armor. “We will follow you everywhere, to the devil himself!” shouted the soldiers; “no more of Julius Caesar, Hannibal, and Scipio! Hurrah! for the fame of Bourbon!” Bourbon led this multitude through Italy, halting before most of the towns, Bologna and Florence even, which he felt a momentary inclination to attack, but, after all, continuing his march until, having arrived in sight of Rome on the 5th of March, 1527, in the evening, he had pitched his camp, visited his guards, and ordered the assault for the morrow. “The great chances of our destiny,” said he to his troops, “have brought us hither to the place where we desired to be, after traversing so many bad roads, in midwinter, with snows and frosts so great, with rain, and mud, and encounters of the enemy, in hunger and thirst, and without a halfpenny. Now is the time to show courage, manliness, and the strength of your bodies. If this bout you are victorious, you will be rich lords and mighty well off; if not, you will be quite the contrary. Yonder is the city whereof, in time past, a wise astrologer prophesied concerning me, telling me that I should die there; but I swear to you that I care but little for dying there, if, when I die, my corpse be left with endless glory and renown throughout the world.” Afterwards he gave the word for retiring, some to rest, and some on guard, and for every one to be ready to assault on the morrow early. . . . “After that the stars became obscured by the greater resplendency of the sun and the flashing arms of the soldiers who were preparing for the assault, Bourbon, clad all in white that he might be better known and seen (which was not the sign of a coward), and armor in hand, marched in front close up to the wall, and, when he had mounted two rungs of his ladder, just as he had said the night before, so did it happen to him, that envious, or, to more properly speak, traitorous Fortune would have an arquebuse-shot to hit him full in the left side and wound him mortally. And albeit she took from him his being and his life, yet could she not in one single respect take away his magnanimity and his vigor so long as his body had sense, as he well showed out of his own mouth, for, having fallen when he was hit, he told certain of his most faithful friends who were nigh him, and especially the Gascon captain, Jonas, to cover him with a cloak and take him away, that his death might not give occasion to the others to leave an enterprise so well begun. . . . Just then, as M. de Bourbon had recommended,—to cover and hide his body,—so did his men; in such sort that the escalade and assault went on so furiously that the town, after a little resistance, was carried; and the soldiers, having by this time got wind of his death, fought the more furiously that it might be avenged, the which it certainly was right well, for they set up a shout of, ‘Slay, slay! blood, blood! Bourbon, Bourbon!’” [Brantome, t. i. pp. 262-269.]
The celebrated artist-in-gold, Benvenuto Cellini, says, in his Life written by himself, that it was he who, from the top of the wall of the Campo Santo at Rome, aiming his arquebuse at the midst of a group of besiegers, amongst whom he saw one man mounted higher than the rest, hit him, and that he then saw an extraordinary commotion around this man, who was Bourbon, as he found out afterwards. [Vita di Benvenuto Cellini, ch. xvii. pp. 157-159.] “I have heard say at Rome,” says Brantome on the contrary, “that it was held that he who fired that wretched arquebuse-shot was a priest.” [Brantome, t. ii. p. 268.]
Whatever hand it was that shot down Bourbon, Rome, after his death, was plundered, devastated and ravaged by a brutal, greedy, licentious, and fanatical soldiery. Europe was moved at the story of the sack of Rome and the position of the pope, who had taken refuge in the castle of St. Angelo. Francis I. and Henry VIII. renewed their alliance; and a French army under the command of Lautrec advanced into Italy. Charles V., fearing lest it should make a rapid march to Rome and get possession of the pope whilst delivering him from captivity, entered into negotiations with him; and, in consideration of certain concessions to the emperor, it was arranged that the pope should be set at liberty without delay. Clement VII. was so anxious to get out of his position, lately so perilous and even now so precarious, that he slank out of the castle of St. Angelo in the disguise of a tradesman the very night before the day fixed by the emperor for his liberation; and he retired to Orvieto, on the territory occupied by the French army. During this confusion of things in Italy, Charles V. gave orders for arresting in Spain the ambassadors of Francis I. and of Henry VIII., who were in alliance against him, and who, on their side, sent him two heralds-at-arms to declare war against him. Charles V. received them in open audience at Burgos, on the 22d of January, 1528. “I am very much astonished,” said he to the French envoy, “to find the King of France declaring against me a war which he has been carrying on for seven years; he is not in a position to address to me such a declaration; he is my prisoner. Why has he taken no notice of what I said to his ambassador immediately after his refusal to execute the treaty of Madrid?” Charles V. now repeated, in the very terms addressed to the French ambassador, the communication to which he alluded: “The king your master acted like a Bastard and a scoundrel in not keeping his word that he gave me touching the treaty of Madrid; if he likes to say to the contrary, I will maintain it against him with my body to his.” When these words were reported to Francis I., he summoned, on the 27th of March, 1528, the princes of the blood, the cardinals, the prelates, the grandees of the kingdom, and the ministers from foreign courts, and, after having given a vivid account of his relations with Charles V., “I am not the prisoner of Charles,” he said: “I have not given him my word; we have never met with arms in our hands.” He then handed his herald, Guyenne, a cartel written with his own hand, and ending with these words addressed to Charles V.: “We give you to understand that, if you have intended or do intend to charge us with anything that a gentleman loving his honor ought not to do, we say that you have lied in your throat, and that, as often as you say so, you will lie. Wherefore for the future write us nothing at all; but appoint us the time and place of meeting, and we will bring our sword for you to cross; protesting that the shame of any delay in fighting shall be yours, seeing that, when it comes to an encounter, there is an end of all writing.” Charles V. did not receive Francis I.‘s challenge till the 8th of June; when he, in his turn, consulted the grandees of his kingdom, amongst others the Duke of Infantado, one of the most considerable in rank and character, who answered him in writing: “The jurisdiction of arms extends exclusively to obscure and foggy matters in which the ordinary rules of justice are at a discount; but, when one can appeal to oaths and authentic acts, I do not think that it is allowable to come to blows before having previously tried the ordinary ways of justice. . . It seems to me that this law of honor applies to princes, however great they may be, as well as to knights. It would be truly strange, my lord, that a debt so serious, so universally recognized, as that contracted by the King of France, should be discharged by means of a personal challenge.” Charles V. thereupon sent off his herald, Burgundy, with orders to carry to Francis I. “an appointment for a place of meeting between Fontarabia and Andaye, in such a spot as by common consent should be considered most safe and most convenient by gentlemen chosen on each side;” and this offer was accompanied by a long reply which the herald was at the same time to deliver to the King of France, whilst calling on him to declare his intention within forty days after the delivery of that letter, dated the 24th of June, “in default whereof,” said Charles, “the delay in fighting will be yours.”
On arriving at the frontier of France the Spanish herald demanded a safe-conduct. He was made to wait seven weeks, from the 30th of June to the 19th of August, without the king’s cognizance, it is said. At last, on the 19th of September, 1528, Burgundy entered Paris, and was conducted to the palace. Francis I. received him in the midst of his court; and, as soon as he observed the entrance of the herald, who made obeisance preliminary to addressing him, “Herald,” cried the king, “all thy letters declare that thou bringest appointment of time and place; dost thou bring it?” “Sir,” answered the Spaniard, “permit me to do my office, and say what the emperor has charged me to say.” “Nay, I will not listen to thee,” said Francis, “if thou do not first give me a patent signed by thy master, containing an appointment of time and place.” “Sir, I have orders to read you the cartel, and give it you afterwards.” “How, pray!” cried the king, rising up angrily: “doth thy master pretend to introduce new fashions in my kingdom, and give me laws in my own court?” Burgundy, without being put out, began again: “Sir, . . . “ “Nay,” said Francis, “I will not suffer him to speak to me before he has given me appointment of time and place. Give it me, or return as thou hast come.” “Sir, I cannot, without your permission, do my office; if you will not deign to grant it to me, let me have your refusal handed me, and your ratification I of my safe-conduct for my return.” “I am quite willing,” said the king; “let him have it!” Burgundy set off again for Madrid, and the incident was differently reported by the two courts; but there was no further question of a duel between the two kings.
One would not think of attempting to decide, touching this question of single combat, how far sincerity was on the side of Francis or of Charles. No doubt they were both brave; the former with more brilliancy than his rival, the latter, at need, with quite as much firmness. But in sending challenges one to the other, as they did on this occasion, they were obeying a dying-out code, and rather attempting to keep up chivalrous appearances than to put seriously in practice the precedents of their ancestors. It was no longer a time when the fate of a people could be placed in the hands of a few valiant warriors, such as the three Horatii and the three Curiatii, or the thirty Bretons and thirty English. The era of great nations and great contests was beginning, and one is inclined to believe that Francis I. and Charles V. were themselves aware that their mutual challenges would not come to any personal encounter. The war which continued between them in Italy was not much more serious or decisive; both sides were weary of it, and neither one nor the other of the two sovereigns espied any great chances of success. The French army was wasting itself, in the kingdom of Naples, upon petty, inconclusive engagements; its commander, Lautrec, died of the plague on the 15th of August, 1528; a desire for peace became day by day stronger; it was made, first of all, at Barcelona, on the 20th of June, 1529, between Charles V. and Pope Clement VII.; and then a conference was opened at Cambrai for the purpose of bringing it about between Charles V. and Francis I. likewise. Two women, Francis I.‘s mother and Charles V.‘s aunt, Louise of Savoy and Margaret of Austria, had the real negotiation of it; they had both of them acquired the good sense and the moderation which come from experience of affairs and from difficulties in life; they did not seek to give one another mutual surprises and to play-off one another reciprocally; they resided in two contiguous houses, between which they had caused a communication to be made on the inside, and they conducted the negotiation with so much discretion, that the petty Italian princes who were interested in it did not know the results of it until peace was concluded on the 5th of August, 1529. Francis I. yielded on all the Italian and Flemish questions; and Charles V. gave up Burgundy, and restored to liberty the King of France’s two sons, prisoners at Madrid, in consideration of a ransom put at two millions of crowns and of having the marriage completed between his sister Eleanor and Francis I. King Henry VIII. complained that not much account had been made of him, either during the negotiations or in the treaty; but his discontent was short-lived, and he none the less came to the assistance of Francis I. in the money-questions to which the treaty gave rise. Of the Italian states, Venice was most sacrificed in this accommodation between the kings. “The city of Cambrai,” said the doge, Andrew Gritti, “is the purgatory of the Venetians; it is the place where emperors and kings of France make the Republic expiate the sin of having ever entered into alliance with them.” Francis went to Bordeaux to meet his sons and his new wife. At Bordeaux, Cognac, Amboise, Blois, and Paris, galas, both at court and amongst the people, succeeded one another for six months; and Europe might consider itself at peace.
The peace of Cambrai was called the ladies’ peace, in honor of the two princesses who had negotiated it. Though morally different and of very unequal worth, they both had minds of a rare order, and trained to recognize political necessities, and not to attempt any but possible successes. They did not long survive their work: Margaret of Austria died on the 1st of December, 1530, and Louise of Savoy on the 22d of September, 1531. All the great political actors seemed hurrying away from the stage, as if the drama were approaching its end. Pope Clement VII. died on the 26th of September, 1534. He was a man of sense and moderation; he tried to restore to Italy her independence, but he forgot that a moderate policy is, above all, that which requires most energy and perseverance. These two qualities he lacked totally; he oscillated from one camp to the other without ever having any real influence anywhere. A little before his death he made France a fatal present; for, on the 28th of October, 1533, he married his niece Catherine de’ Medici to Francis I.‘s second son, Prince Henry of Valois, who by the death of his elder brother, the Dauphin Francis, soon afterwards became heir to the throne. The chancellor, Anthony Duprat, too, the most considerable up to that time amongst the advisers of Francis I., died on the 9th of July, 1535. According to some historians, when he heard, in the preceding year, of Pope Clement VII.‘s death, he had conceived a hope, being already Archbishop of Sens, and a cardinal, of succeeding him; and he spoke to the king about it. “Such an election would cost too dear,” said Francis I.; “the appetite of cardinals is insatiable; I could not satisfy it.” “Sir,” replied Duprat, “France will not have to bear the expense; I will provide for it; there are four hundred thousand crowns ready for that purpose.” “Where did you get all that money, pray?” asked Francis, turning his back upon him; and next day he caused a seizure to be made of a portion of the chancellor-cardinal’s property. “This, then,” exclaimed Duprat, “is the king’s gratitude towards the minister who has served him body and soul!” “What has the cardinal to complain of?” said the king: “I am only doing to him what he has so often advised me to do to others.” [Trois Magestrats Francais du Seizieme Siecle, by Edouard Faye de Brys, 1844, pp. 77-79.] The last of the chancellor’s biographers, the Marquis Duprat, one of his descendants, has disputed this story. [Vie d’Antoine Duprat, 1857, p. 364.] However that may be, it is certain that Chancellor Duprat, at his death, left a very large fortune, which the king caused to be seized, and which he partly appropriated. We read in the contemporary Journal d’un Bourgeois de Paris [published by Ludovic Lalanne, 1854, p. 460], “When the chancellor was at the point of death, the king sent M. de Bryon, Admiral of France, who had orders to have everything seized and all his property placed in the king’s hands. . . . They found in his place at Nantouillet eight hundred thousand crowns, and all his gold and silver plate . . . and in his Hercules-house, close to the Augustins’, at Paris, where he used to stay during his life-time, the sum of three hundred thousand livres, which were in coffers bound with iron, and which were carried off by the king for and to his own profit.” In the civil as well as in the military class, for his government as well as for his armies, Francis I. had, at this time, to look out for new servants.