The lawsuit was begun and prosecuted with all the hatred of a great lady treated with contempt, and with all the knowingness of an unscrupulous lawyer eager to serve, in point of fact, his patroness, and to demonstrate, in point of law, the thesis he had advanced. Francis I., volatile, reckless, and ever helpless as he was against the passions of his mother, who whilst she adored, beguiled him, readily lent himself to the humiliation of a vassal who was almost his rival in puissance, and certainly was in glory. Three lawyers of renown entered upon the struggle. Poyet maintained the pretensions of the queen-mother; Lizet developed Duprat’s argument in favor of the king’s claims; Montholon defended the constable. The Parliament granted several adjournments, and the question was in suspense for eleven months. At last, in August, 1523, the court interest was triumphant; Parliament, to get rid of direct responsibility, referred the parties, as to the basis of the question, to the king’s council; but it placed all the constable’s possessions under sequestration, withdrawing the enjoyment of them wholly from him. A few years afterwards Poyet became chancellor, and Lizet premier-president of Parliament. “Worth alone,” say the historians, “carved out for Montholon at a later period the road to the office of keeper of the seals.”
The constable’s fall and ruin were complete. He at an early stage had a presentiment that such would be the issue of his lawsuit, and sought for safeguards away from France. The affair was causing great stir in Europe. Was it, however, Charles V. who made the first overtures as the most efficient supporter the constable could have? Or was it the constable himself who, profiting by the relations he had established after the capture of Hesdin with the Croys, persons of influence with the emperor, made use of them for getting into direct communication with Charles V., and made offer of his services in exchange for protection against his own king and his own country? In such circumstances and in the case of such men the sources of crime are always surrounded with obscurity. One is inclined to believe that Charles V., vigilant and active as he was, put out the first feelers. As soon as he heard that Bourbon was a widower, he gave instructions to Philibert Naturelli, his ambassador in France, who said, “Sir, you are now in a position to marry, and the emperor, my master, who is very fond of you, has a sister touching whom I have orders to speak to you if you will be pleased to hearken.” It was to Charles V.‘s eldest sister, Eleanor, widow of Manuel the Fortunate, King of Portugal, that allusion was made. This overture led to nothing at the time; but the next year, in 1522, war was declared between Francis I. and Charles V.; the rupture between Francis I. and the Duke of Bourbon took place; the Bourbon lawsuit was begun; and the duke’s mother-in-law, Anne of France, daughter of Louis XI., more concerned for the fate of her House than for that of her country, and feeling herself near her end, said one day to her son-in-law, “My son, reflect that the House of Bourbon made alliance with the House of Burgundy, and that during that alliance it always prospered. You see at the present moment what is the state of our affairs, and the lawsuit in which you are involved is proceeded with only for want of alliances. I do beg and command you to accept the emperor’s alliance. Promise me to use thereto all the diligence you can, and I shall die more easy.” She died on the 14th of November, 1522, bequeathing all her possessions to the constable, who was day by day more disposed to follow her counsels. In the summer of 1522, he had, through the agency of Adrian de Croy, Lord of Beaurain, entered into negotiations not only with Charles V., but also with Henry VIII., King of England, deploring the ill behavior of Francis I. and the enormity of existing abuses, and proposing to set on foot in his own possessions a powerful movement for the reformation of the kingdom and the relief of the poor people, if the two sovereigns would send “persons of trust and authority into the vicinity of his principality of Dombes, to Bourg-en-Bresse, whither he on his side would send his chancellor to come to an agreement with them and act in common.” In the month of March, 1523, whilst the foreign negotiations thus commenced and the home-process against the constable were pursuing a parallel course, Bourbon one day paid a visit to Queen Claude of France at the hour when she was dining alone. She was favorably disposed towards him, and would have liked to get him married to her sister Renee, who subsequently became Duchess of Ferrara. She made him sit down. Francis I., who was at dinner in an adjacent room, came in. Bourbon rose to take leave. “Nay, keep your seat,” said the king; “and so it is true that you are going to be married?” “Not at all, sir.” “O, but I know it; I am sure of it; I know of your dealings with the emperor. And bear well in mind what I have to say to you on the subject.” “Sir! is this a threat, pray? I have not deserved such treatment.” After dinner he departed and went back to his hotel hard by the Louvre; and many gentlemen who happened to be at court accompanied him by way of escort. He was as yet a powerful vassal, who was considered to be unjustly persecuted.
Charles V. accepted eagerly the overtures made to him by Bourbon in response to his own; but, before engaging in action, he wished to be certified about the disposition of Henry VIII., King of England, and he sent Beaurain to England to take accurate soundings. Henry at first showed hesitation. When, Beaurain set before him all the advantages that would accrue to their coalition from the Duke of Bourbon’s alliance: “And I,” said the king, brusquely, “what, pray, shall I get?” “Sir,” answered Beaurain, “you will be King of France.” “Ah!” rejoined Henry, “it will take a great deal to make M. de Bourbon obey me.” Henry remembered the cold and proud bearing which the constable had maintained towards him at the Field of Cloth of Gold. He, nevertheless, engaged to supply half the expenses and a body of troops for the projected invasion of France. Charles V. immediately despatched Beaurain to the Duke of Bourbon, who had removed to Montbrison, in the most mountainous part of his domains, on pretext of a pilgrimage to Notre-Dame du Puy. Beaurain was conducted thither, in great secrecy, on the 17th July, 1523, by two of the duke’s gentlemen, and passed two days there shut up in a room adjoining the constable’s apartment, never emerging save at night to transact business with him. On the 18th of July, in the evening, he put into Bourbon’s hands his letters of credit, running thus: “My dear cousin, I send to you Sieur de Beaurain, my second chamberlain. I pray you to consider him as myself, and, so doing, you will find me ever your good cousin and friend.” The negotiation was speedy. Many historians have said that it was confined to verbal conventions, and that there was nothing in writing between the two contracting parties. That is a mistake. A treaty was drawn up in brief terms by Beaurain’s secretary, and two copies were made, of which one was to be taken to Charles V. and the other to be left with the Duke of Bourbon. It stipulated the mutual obligations of the three contracting parties in their offensive and defensive league. Bourbon engaged to attack Francis I. but he would not promise to acknowledge Henry VIII. as King of France. “I am quite willing to be his ally,” he said, “but his subject, his vassal, no! All I can do is to leave myself, as to my relations towards him, in the emperor’s hands.” A strange and noble relic of patriotism in that violent and haughty soul, more concerned for its rights than its duties, and driven to extremity by the acts of ungrateful and unthoughtful injustice, to which the great lord and the valiant warrior had been subjected. The treaty having been signed with this reservation, Bourbon sent, about midnight, for Saint-Bonnet, Lord of Branon, whom he intended to despatch to Charles V., and, after having sworn him, “I send you,” said he, “to the emperor, to whom you will say that I commend myself humbly to his good graces, that I beg him to give me his sister in marriage, and that, doing me this honor, he will find me his servant, his good brother, and friend.”
The fatal step was taken. Bourbon was now engaged in revolt against his king and his country, as well as in falsehood and treason—preliminary conditions of such a course. He needed tools and accomplices; and though he had a numerous and devoted following, he could not feel sure of them all for such a purpose. The very day after the conclusion of his treaty with Charles V., one of his most intimate and important confidants, John of Poitiers, Lord of St. Vallier, who was present at Montbrison during the negotiation of the treaty, said to him in the morning, “Sir, it was your wish; I heard all; and I spent the whole night thinking about it; tell me, I pray you, do you feel sure of your friend?” “I was not more fond of the brother I lost at Melegnano,” said the constable; “I should not have felt more sure of him.” “Well, then,” rejoined St. Vallier, “fancy that it is that brother who is speaking to you, and take in good part what he is about to say to you. This alliance which is offered to you will bring upon France the Germans, the Spaniards, and the English; think of the great mischief which will ensue—human bloodshed, destruction of towns, of good families and of churches, violation of women, and other calamities that come of war. Reflect also on the great treason you are committing; when the king has started for Italy and left you in France, putting his trust in you, you will go and stab him in the back, and destroy him as well as his kingdom. You belong to the House of France, and are one of the chief princes of the country, so beloved and esteemed by all that everybody is gladdened at the very sight of you. If you should come to be the cause of so great ruin, you will be the most accursed creature that ever was, accursed for a thousand years after your death. For the love of God consider all this; and if you have no regard for the king and Madame his mother, who, you say, are treating you wrongfully, at least have some regard for the queen and the princes her children, and do not wilfully cause the perdition of this kingdom, whose enemies, when you have let them into it, will drive you out of it yourself.” “But, cousin,” said the constable, quite overcome, “what would you have me to do? The king and Madame mean to destroy me; they have already taken away a part of my possessions.” “Sir,” replied Saint-Vallier, “give up, I pray you, all these wicked enterprises; commend yourself to God, and speak frankly to the king.” If we are to believe Saint-Vallier’s deposition, when, six months afterwards, he was put on his trial and convicted for his participation in the plot and treason, the constable was sufficiently affected by his representations to promise that he would abandon his design and make his peace with the king: but facts refute this assertion. In the latter months of 1523, the stipulations of the treaty concluded at Montbrison on the 18th of July were put into execution by all the contracting parties; letters of exchange from Henry VIII. were sent to Bale for the German lanzknechts he was to pay; the lanzknechts crossed the Rhine on the 26th of August, and marched through Franche-Comte in spite of its neutrality; the English landed at Calais between the 23d and 30th of August, to co-operate with the Flemings; the Spaniards began the campaign, on the 6th of September, in the direction of the Pyrenees; and the Duke, of Bourbon on his side took all the necessary measures for forming a junction with his allies, and playing that part in the coalition which had been assigned to him.
According to what appears, he had harbored a design of commencing his enterprise with a very bold stroke. Being informed that Francis I. was preparing to go in person and wage war upon Italy, he had resolved to carry him off on the road to Lyons, and, when once he had the king in his hands, he flattered himself he would do as he pleased with the kingdom. If his attempt were unsuccessful, be would bide his time until Francis I. was engaged in Milaness, Charles V. had entered Guienne, and Henry VIII. was in Picardy: he would then assemble a thousand men-at-arms, six thousand foot and twelve thousand lanzknechts, and would make for the Alps to cut the king off from any communication with France. This plan rested upon the assumption that the king would, as he had announced, leave the constable in France with an honorable title and an apparent share in the government of the kingdom, though really isolated and debarred from action. But Francis had full cognizance of the details of the conspiracy through two Norman gentlemen whom the constable had imprudently tried to get to join in it, and who, not content with refusing, had revealed the matter at confession to the Bishop of Lisieux, who had lost no time in giving information to Sire de Breze, grand seneschal of Normandy. Breze at once reported it to the king, and his letter ran: “Sir, there is need also to take care of yourself, for there has been talk of an attempt to carry you off between here and Lyons, and conduct you to a strong place in the Bourbon district or on the borders of Auvergne.” Being at last seriously disquieted for the consequences of his behavior towards the constable, Francis took two resolutions: one was, not to leave him in France during his own absence; the other was, to go and see him at Moulins, at the same time taking all necessary precautions for his own safety, and win him over once more by announcing an intention of taking him off to Italy and sharing with him the command of the army. On approaching Moulins the king recalled the lanzknechts who had already passed the town, entered it himself surrounded by his guards, and took up his quarters in the castle, of which he seized the keys. At his first interview with the constable, who was slightly indisposed and pretended to be very much so, “I know,” said he, “that you are keeping up a connection with the emperor, and that he is trying to turn your discontent to advantage, so as to beguile you; but I have faith in you; you are of the House of France and of the line of Bourbon, which has never produced a traitor.” “It is true, sir,” said the constable, without any confusion; “the emperor, informed by public rumor of the position to which I am reduced, sent Beaurain to offer me an asylum in his dominions and a fortune suitable to my birth and my rank; but I know the value of empty compliments. Hearing that your Majesty was to pass by Moulins, I thought it my duty to wait and disclose this secret to you myself rather than intrust it to a letter.” The king showed signs of being touched. “I have an idea of taking you away with me to Italy,” said he: “would you come with me willingly?” “Not only to Italy,” was the answer, “but to the end of the world. The doctors assure me that I shall soon be in a condition to bear the motion of a litter; I already feel better; your Majesty’s kindnesses will soon complete my cure.” Francis testified his satisfaction. Some of his advisers, with more distrust and more prevision, pressed him to order the arrest of so dangerous a man, notwithstanding his protestations; but Francis refused. According to what some historians say, if he had taken off the sequestration laid upon the constable’s possessions, actually restored them to him, as well as discharged the debts due to him and paid his pensions, and carried him off to Italy, if, in a word, he had shown a bold confidence and given back to him at once and forever the whole of his position, he would, perhaps, have weaned him from his plot, and would have won back to himself and to France that brave and powerful servant. But Francis wavered between distrust and hope; he confined himself to promising the constable restitution of his possessions if the decree of Parliament was unfavorable to him; he demanded of him a written engagement to remain always faithful to him and to join him in Italy as soon as his illness would allow him; and, on taking leave of him, left with him one of his own gentlemen, Peter de Brentonniere, Lord of Warthy, with orders to report to the king as to his health. In this officer Bourbon saw nothing more or less than a spy, and in the king’s promises nothing but vain words dependent as they were upon the issue of a lawsuit which still remained an incubus upon him. He had no answer for words but words; he undertook the engagements demanded of him by the king without considering them binding; and he remained ill at Moulins, waiting till events should summon him to take action with his foreign allies.
This state of things lasted far nearly three weeks. The king remained stationary at Lyons waiting for the constable to join him; and the constable, saying he was ready to set out and going so far as to actually begin his march, was doing his three leagues a day by litter, being always worse one day than he was the day before. Peter de Warthy, the officer whom the king had left with him, kept going and coming from Lyons to Moulins and from Moulins to Lyons, conveying to the constable the king’s complaints and to the king the constable’s excuses, without bringing the constable to decide upon joining the king at Lyons and accompanying him into Italy, or the king upon setting out for Italy without the constable. “I would give a hundred thousand crowns,” the king sent word to Bourbon, “to be in Lombardy.” “The king will do well,” answered Bourbon, “to get there as soon as possible, for despatch is needful beyond everything.” When Warthy insisted strongly, the constable had him called up to his bedside; and “I feel myself,” said he, “the most unlucky man in the world not to be able to serve the king; but if I were to be obstinate, the doctors who are attending me would not answer for my life, and I am even worse than the doctors think. I shall never be in a condition to do the king service any more. I am going back to my native air, and, if I recover a day’s health, I will go to the king.” “The king will be terribly put out,” said Warthy; and he returned to Lyons to report these remarks of the real or pretended invalid. While he was away, the constable received from England and Spain news which made him enter actively upon his preparations; he heard at the same time that the king was having troops marched towards Bourbonness so as to lay violent hands on him if he did not obey; he, therefore, decided to go and place himself in security in his strong castle of Chantelle, where he could await the movements of his allies; he mounted his horse, did six leagues at one stretch, and did not draw bridle until he had entered Chantelle. Warthy speedily came and rejoined him. He found the constable sitting on his bed, dressed like an invalid and with his head enveloped in a night-cap. “M. de Warthy,” said Bourbon, “you bring your spurs pretty close after mine.” “My lord,” was the reply, “you have better ones than I thought.” “Think you,” said Bourbon, “that I did not well, having but a finger’s breadth of life, to put it as far out of the way as I could to avoid the king’s fury?” “The king,” said Warthy, “was never furious towards any man; far less would he be so in your case.” “Nay, nay,” rejoined the constable, “I know that the grand master and Marshal de Chabannes set out from Lyons with the archers of the guard and four or five thousand lanzknechts to seize me; and that is what made me come to this house whilst biding my time until the king shall be pleased to hear me.” He demanded that the troops sent against him should be ordered to halt till the morrow, promising not to stir from Chantelle without a vindication of himself. “Whither would you go, my lord?” said Warthy: “if you wished to leave the kingdom, you could not; the king has provided against that everywhere.”
“Nay,” said Bourbon, “I have no wish to leave the kingdom; I have friends and servants there.” Warthy went away from Chantelle in company with the Bishop of Autun, Chiverny, who was one of the constable’s most trusted friends, and who was bearer to the king of a letter which ran thus: “Provided it please the king to restore to him his possessions, my lord of Bourbon promises to serve him well and heartily, in all places and at all times at which it shall seem good to him. In witness whereof, he has signed these presents, and begs the king to be pleased to pardon those towards whom he is ill disposed on account of this business. CHARLES.” In writing this letter the constable had no other object than to gain a little time, for, on bidding good by to the Bishop of Autun, he said to him, “Farewell, my dear bishop; I am off to Carlat, and from Carlat I shall slip away with five or six horses on my road to Spain.” On the next day but one, indeed, the 8th of September, 1523, whilst the Bishop of Autun was kept prisoner by the troops sent forward to Chantelle, the constable sallied from it about one in the morning, taking with him five-and-twenty or thirty thousand crowns of gold sewn up in from twelve to fifteen jackets, each of which was intrusted to a man in his train. For a month he wandered about Bourbonness, Auvergne, Burgundy, Beaujolais, Vienness, Languedoc, and Dauphiny, incessantly changing his road, his comrades, his costume, and his asylum, occasionally falling in with soldiers of the king who were repairing to Italy, and seeking for some place whence he might safely concert with and act with his allies. At last, in the beginning of October, he arrived at Saint-Claude, in Franche-Comte, imperial territory, and on the 9th of October he made his entry into Besancon, where there came to join him some of his partisans who from necessity or accident had got separated from him, without his having been able anywhere in his progress to excite any popular movement, form any collection of troops, or intrench himself strongly in his own states. To judge from appearances, he was now but a fugitive conspirator, without domains and without an army.
Such, however, were his fame and importance as a great lord and great warrior, that Francis I., as soon as he knew him to be beyond his reach and in a fair way to co-operate actively with his enemies, put off his departure for Italy, and “offered the redoubtable fugitive immediate restitution of his possessions, reimbursement from the royal treasury of what was due to him, renewal of his pensions and security that they would be paid him with punctuality.” Bourbon refused everything. “It is too late,” he replied. Francis I.‘s envoy then asked him to give up the sword of constable and the collar of the order of St. Michael. “You will tell the king,” rejoined Bourbon, “that he took from me the sword of constable on the day that he took from me the command of the advance-guard to give it to M. d’Alencon. As for the collar of his order, you will find it at Chantelle under the pillow of my bed.” Francis I., in order to win back Bourbon, had recourse to his sister, the Duchess of Lorraine [Renee de Bourbon, who had married, in 1515, Antony, called the Good, Duke of Lorraine, son of Duke Rend II. and his second wife, Philippine of Gueldres]: but she was not more successful. After sounding him, she wrote to Francis I. that the duke her brother “was determined to go through with his enterprise, and that he proposed to draw off towards Flanders by way of Lorraine with eighteen hundred horse and ten thousand foot, and form a junction with the King of England.” [M. Mignet, Etude sur le Connetable de Bourbon, in the Revue des Deux Mondes of January 15, 1854, and March 15 and April 1, 1858.]
Under such grave and urgent circumstances, Francis I. behaved on the one hand with more prudence and efficiency than he had yet displayed, and on the other with his usual levity and indulgence towards his favorites. Abandoning his expedition in person into Italy, he first concerned himself for that internal security of his kingdom, which was threatened on the east and north by the Imperialists and the English, and on the south by the Spaniards, all united in considerable force and already in motion. Francis opposed to them in the east and north the young Count Claude of Guise, the first celebrity amongst his celebrated race, the veteran Louis de La Tremoille, the most tried of all his warriors, and the Duke of Vendome, head of the younger branch of the House of Bourbon. Into the south he sent Marshal de Lautrec, who was more brave than successful, but of proved fidelity. All these captains acquitted themselves honorably. Claude of Guise defeated a body of twelve thousand lanzknechts who had already penetrated into Champagne; he hurled them back into Lorraine, and dispersed them beneath the walls of the little town of Neufchateau, where the princesses and ladies of Lorraine, showing themselves at the windows, looked on and applauded their discomfiture. La Tremoille’s only forces were very inferior to the thirty-five thousand Imperialists or English who had entered Picardy; but he managed to make of his small garrisons such prompt and skilful use that the invaders were unable to get hold of a single place, and advanced somewhat heedlessly to the very banks of the Oise, whence the alarm spread rapidly to Paris. The Duke of Vendome, whom the king at once despatched thither with a small body of men-at-arms, marched night and day to the assistance of the Parisians, harangued the Parliament and Hotel de Ville vehemently on the conspiracy of the Constable de Bourbon, and succeeded so well in reassuring them that companies of the city militia eagerly joined his troops, and the foreigners, in dread of finding themselves hemmed in, judged it prudent to fall back, leaving Picardy in a state of equal irritation and devastation. In the south, Lautrec, after having made head for three days and three nights against the attacks of a Spanish army which had crossed the Pyrenees under the orders of the Constable of Castille, forced it to raise the siege and beat a retreat. Everywhere, in the provinces as well as at the court, the feudal nobility, chieftains and simple gentlemen, remained faithful to the king; the magistrates and the people supported the military; it was the whole nation that rose against the great lord, who, for his own purposes, was making alliance with foreigners against the king and the country.
In respect of Italy, Francis I. was less wise and less successful. Not only did he persist in the stereotyped madness of the conquest of Milaness and the kingdom of Naples, but abandoning for the moment the prosecution of it in person, he intrusted it to his favorite, Admiral Bonnivet, a brave soldier, alternately rash and backward, presumptuous and irresolute, who had already lost credit by the mistakes he had committed and the reverses he had experienced in that arena. At the very juncture when Francis I. confided this difficult charge to Bonnivet, the Constable de Bourbon, having at last got out of France, crossed Germany, repaired to Italy, and halted at Mantua, Piacenza, and Genoa; and, whilst waiting for a reply from Charles V., whom he had informed of his arrival, he associated with the leaders of the imperial armies, lived amongst the troops, inoculated them with his own ardor as well as warlike views, and by his natural superiority regained, amongst the European coalition, the consideration and authority which had been somewhat diminished by his ill-success in his own country and his flight from it. Charles V. was some time about sending an answer; for, in his eyes also, Bourbon had fallen somewhat. “Was it prudent,” says the historian of Bourbon himself, “to trust a prince who, though born near the throne, had betrayed his own blood and forsworn his own country? Charles V. might no doubt have insured his fidelity, had he given him in marriage Eleanor of Austria, who was already affianced to him; but he could not make up his mind to unite the destiny of a princess, his own sister, with that of a prince whose position was equally pitiable and criminal. At last, however, he decided to name him his lieutenant-general in Italy; but he surrounded him with so many colleagues and so much surveillance that he had nothing to fear from his remorse and repentance.” [Histoire de la Maison de Bourbon, t. ii. p. 531.] Bourbon, however, though thus placed in a position of perplexity and difficulty, was none the less an adversary with whom Bonnivet was not in a condition to cope.