Never was man more dumbfounded than King Henry, who said to King Francis, ‘Brother, you have done me a better turn than ever man did to another, and you show me the great trust I ought to have in you. I yield myself your prisoner from this moment, and I proffer you my parole.’ He undid from his neck a collar worth fifteen thousand angels, and begged the King of France to take it and wear it that very day for his prisoner’s sake. And, lo, the king, who wished to do him the same turn, had brought with him a bracelet which was worth more than thirty thousand angels, and begged him to wear it for his sake, which thing he did, and the King of France put what had been given him on his neck. Thereupon the King of England was minded to get up, and the King of France said that he should have no other chamber-attendant but himself, and he warmed his shirt and handed it to him when he was up. The King of France made up his mind to go back, notwithstanding that the King of England would have kept him to dinner; but, inasmuch as there was to be jousting after dinner, he mounted his horse and went back to Ardres. He met a many good folk who were coming to meet him, amongst the rest l’Aventureux
Having left the Field of Cloth of Gold for Amboise, his favorite residence, Francis I. discovered that Henry VIII., instead of returning direct to England, had gone, on the 10th of July, to Gravelines, in Flanders, to pay a visit to Charles V., who had afterwards accompanied him to Calais. The two sovereigns had spent three days there, and Charles V., on separating from the King of England, had commissioned him to regulate, as arbiter, all difficulties that might arise between himself and the King of France. Assuredly nothing was less calculated to inspire Francis I. with confidence in the results of his meeting with Henry VIII. and of their mutual courtesies. Though he desired to avoid the appearance of taking the initiative in war, he sought every occasion and pretext for recommencing it; and it was not long before he found them in the Low Countries, in Navarre, and in Italy. A trial was made of Henry VIII.‘s mediation and of a conference at Calais; and a discussion was raised touching the legitimate nature of the protection afforded by the two rival sovereigns to their petty allies. But the real fact was, that Francis I. had a reverse to make up for and a passion to gratify; and the struggle recommenced in April, 1521, in the Low Countries. Charles V., when he heard that the French had crossed his frontier, exclaimed, “God be praised that I am not the first to commence the war, and that the King of France is pleased to make me greater than I am, for, in a little while, either I shall be a very poor emperor or he will be a poor King of France.” The campaign opened in the north, to the advantage of France, by the capture of Hesdin; Admiral Bonnivet, who had the command on the frontier of Spain, reduced some small forts of Biscay and the fortress of Fontarabia; and Marshal de Lautrec, governor of Milaness, had orders to set out at once to go and defend it against the Spaniards and Imperialists, who were concentrating for its invasion.
Lautrec was but little adapted for this important commission. He had been made governor of Milaness in August, 1516, to replace the Constable de Bourbon, whose recall to France the queen-mother, Louise of Savoy, had desired and stimulated. Lautrec had succeeded ill in his government. He was active and brave, but he was harsh, haughty, jealous, imperious, and grasping; and he had embroiled himself with most of the Milanese lords, amongst others with the veteran J. J. Trivulzio, who, under Charles VIII. and Louis XII., had done France such great service in Italy. Trivulzio, offensively treated at Milan, and subjected to accusations at Paris, went, at eighty-two years of age, to France to justify himself before the king; but Francis I. gave him a cold reception, barely spoke to him, and declined his explanations. One day, at Arpajon, Trivulzio heard that the king was to pass on horseback through the town; and, being unable to walk, had himself carried, ill as he was, in his chair to the middle of the street. The king passed with averted head, and without replying to Trivulzio, who cried, “Sir, ah! sir, just one moment’s audience!” Trivulzio, on reaching home, took to his bed, and died there a month afterwards, on the 5th of December, 1518, having himself dictated this epitaph, which was inscribed on his tomb, at Milan, “J. J. Trivulzio, son of Anthony: he who never rested, rests. Hush!” [J. J. Trivultius, Antonii filius, qui nunquam quievit, quiescit. Tace!]
Francis I., when informed that Trivulzio was near his end, regretted, it is said, his harsh indifference, and sent to express to him his regret; but, “It is too late,” answered the dying man. In the king’s harshness there was something more than ungrateful forgetfulness of a veteran’s ancient services. While Francis was bringing about a renewal of war in Italy, in the Low Countries, and on the frontier of Spain, he was abandoning himself at Paris, Tours, Amboise, and wherever he resided, to all the diversions and all the enticements of the brilliant court which was gathered around him. Extravagance and pleasure were a passion with him. “There has been talk,” says Brantome, “of the great outlay, magnificence, sumptuousness and halls of Lucullus; but in nought of that kind did he ever come near our king . . . and what is most rare is, that in a village, in the forest, at the meet, there was the same service as there would have been in Paris. . . . One day, when the king was expecting the Emperor Charles to dinner, word came that he had slipped away, and had gone to give a sudden surprise to the constable, just as he was sitting down to table, and to dine with him and all his comrades comradewise. He found this table as well furnished and supplied, and laden with victuals as well cooked and flavored, as if they had been in Paris or some other good city of France; whereat the emperor was so mightily astonished that he said that there was no such grandeur in the world as that of such a King of France. . . . In respect of ladies, of a surety it must be confessed that before the time of King Francis they set foot in and frequented the court but little and in but small numbers. It is true that Queen Anne (of Brittany) began to make her ladies’ court larger than it had been under former queens; and, without her, the king her husband (Louis XII.) would have taken no trouble about it. But Francis I., coming to reign, and considering that the whole grace of the court was the ladies, was pleased to fill it up with them more than had been the ancient custom. Since, in truth, a court without ladies is a garden without any pretty flowers, and more resembles a Satrap’s or a Turk’s court than that of a great Christian king. . . . As for me, I hold that there was never anything better introduced than the ladies’ court. Full often have I seen our kings go to camp, or town, or elsewhither, remain there and divert themselves for some days, and yet take thither no ladies. But we were so bewildered, so lost, so moped, that for the week we spent away from them and their pretty eyes it appeared to us a year; and always a-wishing, ‘When shall we be at the court?’ Not, full often, calling that the court where the king was, but that where the queen and ladies were.” [OEuvres de Brantome, edition of the Societe de l’Histoire de France, t. iii. pp. 120-129.]
Now, when so many fair ladies are met together in a life of sumptuousness and gayety, a king is pretty sure to find favorites, and royal favorites rarely content themselves with pleasing the king; they desire to make their favor serviceable their family and their friends. Francis I. had made choice one, Frances de Foix, countess of Chateaubriant, beautiful ambitious, dexterous, haughty, readily venturing upon rivalry with even the powerful queen-mother. She had three brothers; Lautrec was one of the three, and she supported him in all his pretensions and all his trials of fortune. When he set out to go and take the command in Italy, he found himself at the head of an army numerous indeed, but badly equipped, badly paid, and at grips with Prosper Colonna, the most able amongst the chiefs of the coalition formed at this juncture between Charles V. and Pope Leo X. against the French. Lautrec did not succeed in preventing Milan from falling into the hands of the Imperialists, and, after an uncertain campaign of some months’ duration, he lost at La Bicocca, near Monza, on the 27th of April, 1522, a battle, which left in the power of Francis I., in Lombardy, only the citadels of Milan, Cremona, and Novara. At the news of these reverses, Francis I. repaired to Lyons, to consult as to the means of applying a remedy. Lautrec also arrived there. “The king,” says Martin du Bellay, “gave him a bad reception, as the man by whose fault he considered he had lost his duchy of Milan, and would not speak to him.” Lautrec found an occasion for addressing the king, and complained vehemently of “the black looks he gave him.” “And good reason,” said the king, “when you have lost me such a heritage as the duchy of Milan.” “‘Twas not I who lost it,” answered Lautrec; “‘twas your Majesty yourself: I several times warned you that, if I were not helped with money, there was no means of retaining the men-at-arms, who had served for eighteen months without a penny, and likewise the Swiss, who forced me to fight at a disadvantage, which they would never have done if they had received their pay.” “I sent you four hundred thousand crowns when you asked for them.” “I received the letters in which your Majesty notified me of this money, but the money never.” The king sent at once for the superintendent-general of finance, James de Beaune, Baron of Semblancay, who acknowledged having received orders on the subject from the king, but added that at the very moment when he was about to send this sum to the army, the queen-mother had come and asked him for it, and had received it from him, whereof he was ready to make oath. Francis I. entered his mother’s room in a rage, reproaching her with having been the cause of losing him his duchy of Milan. “I should never have believed it of you,” he said, “that you would have kept money ordered for the service of my army.” The queen-mother, somewhat confused at first, excused herself by saying, that “those were moneys proceeding from the savings which she had made out of her revenues, and had given to the superintendent to take care of.” Semblancay stuck to what he had said. The question became a personal one between the queen-mother and the minister; and commissioners were appointed to decide the difference. Chancellor Duprat was the docile servant of Louise of Savoy and the enemy of Semblancay, whose authority in financial matters he envied; and he chose the commissioners from amongst the mushroom councillors he had lately brought into Parliament. The question between the queen-mother and the superintendent led to nothing less than the trial of Semblancay. The trial lasted five years, and, on the 9th of April, 1527, a decree of Parliament condemned Semblancay to the punishment of death and confiscation of all his property; not for the particular matter which had been the origin of the quarrel, but “as attained and convicted of larcenies, falsifications, abuses, malversations, and maladministration of the king’s finances, without prejudice as to the debt claimed by the said my lady, the mother of the king.” Semblancay, accordingly, was hanged on the gibbet of Montfaucon, on the 12th of August. In spite of certain ambiguities which arose touching some acts of his administration and some details of his trial, public feeling was generally and very strongly in his favor. He was an old and faithful servant of the crown; and Francis I. had for a long time called him “his father.” He was evidently the victim of the queen-mother’s greed and vengeance. The firmness of his behavior, at the time of his execution, became a popular theme in the verses of Clement Marot:—
