FERNANDO CARLI, in Lyons.
This letter bears date only twenty-seven days after that of the Verrazzano letter, which is declared to be inclosed. To discover its fraudulent nature and the imposition it seeks to practise, it is only necessary to bear this fact in mind, with its pretended origin, in connection with this warlike condition of France and the personal movements of the king, immediately preceding and during the interval between the dates of the two letters. It purports to have been written by Fernando Carli to his father in Florence. Carli is not an uncommon Italian name and probably existed in Florence at that time, but who this Fernando was, has never transpired. He gives in this letter all there is of his biography, which is short. He had formerly been in the service of the emperor, Charles V, under Moncada, in the fleet sent against the Moors in Barbary, and was then in Lyons, where, it might be inferred, from a reference to its merchants, that he was engaged in some mercantile pursuit; but the reason of his presence there is really unaccounted for. It is not pretended that he held any official position under the king of France. The name of his father, by means of which his lineage might be traced, is not mentioned, but Francisco Carli is named as of the same family, but without designating his relationship. Whether a myth or a reality, Fernando seems to have been an obscure person, at the best; not known to the political or literary history of the period, and not professing to occupy any position, by which he might be supposed to have any facility or advantage for obtaining official information or the news of the day, over the other inhabitants of Lyons and of France.
He is made to say that he writes this letter for the particular purpose of communicating to his father and their friends in Florence, the news, which had reached Lyons, of the arrival of Verrazzano from his wonderful and successful voyage of discovery, and that he had advised his parent of all other matters touching his own interests, by another conveyance. It might be supposed and indeed reasonably expected in a letter thus expressly devoted to Verrazzano, that some circumstance, personal or otherwise, connected with the navigator or the voyage, or some incident of his discovery, besides what was contained in the enclosed letter, such as must have reached Lyons, with the news of the return of the expedition, would have been mentioned, especially, as it would all have been interesting to Florentines. But nothing of the kind is related. Nothing appears in the letter in regard to the expedition that is not found in the Verrazzano letter. [Footnote: Mr. Greene, in his life of Verrazzano, remarks that it appears from Carli's letter, that the Indian boy whom Verrazzano is stated to have carried away, arrived safely in France; but that is not so. What is said in that letter is, that Verrazzano does not mention IN HIS LETTER what he had brought home, except this boy.] What is stated in reference to the previous life of Verrazzano, must have been as well known to Carli's father as to himself, if it were true, and is therefore unnecessarily introduced, and the same may be said of the facts stated in regard to Brunelleschi's starting on the voyage with Verrazzano and afterwards turning back. The particular description of Dagaghiano and Rustichi, both of Florence, the one as a man of experience and the other as a student of cosmography, was equally superfluous in speaking of them to his father. These portions of the letter look like flimsy artifices to give the main story the appearance of truth. They may or may not have been true, and it is not inconsistent with an intention to deceive in regard to the voyage that they should have been either the one or the other. A single allusion, however, is made to the critical condition of affairs in France and the stirring scenes which were being enacted on either side of the city of Lyons at the moment the letter bears date. It is the mention of the expected arrival of the king at Lyons within three or four days. It is not stated for what purpose he was coming, but the fact was that Francis had taken the field in person to repel the Spanish invasion in the south of France, and was then on his way to that portion of his kingdom, by way of Lyons, where he arrived a few days afterwards. The reference to this march of the king fixes beyond all question the date of the letter, as really intended for the 4th of August, 1524.
The movements of Francis at this crisis become important in view of the possibility of the publication in any form of the Verrazzano letter at Lyons, at the last mentioned date, or of the possession of a copy of it there as claimed by Carli in his letter. The army of the emperor, under Pescara and Bourbon, crossed the Alps and entered Provence early in July, and before the date of the Verrazzano letter. [Footnote: Letter of Bourbon. Dyer's Europe, 442.] The intention to do so was known by Francis some time previously. He wrote on the 28th of June from Amboise, near Tours, to the Provencaux that he would march immediately to their relief; [Footnote: Sismondi, xvi. 216, 217.] and on the 2d of July he announced in a letter to his parliament: "I am going to Lyons to prevent the enemy from entering the kingdom, and I can assure you that Charles de Bourbon is not yet in France." [Footnote: Gaillard, Histoire de Francois Premier, tom. III, 172 (Paris, 1769).] He had left his residence at Blois and his capital, and was thus actually engaged in collecting his forces together, on the 8th of July, when the Verrazzano letter is dated. He did not reach Lyons until after the 4th of August, as is correctly stated in the Carli letter. [Footnote: Letter of Moncada in Doc. ined. para la Hist. de Espana. tom. XXIV, 403, and Letters of Pace to Wolsey in State Papers of the reign of Henry VIII, vol. IV, Part I, 589, 606.]
The author of the Carli letter, whether the person he pretends to have been or not, asserts that news of the arrival of Verrazzano at Dieppe on his return from his voyage of discovery had reached Lyons, and that the navigator himself was expected soon to be in that city for the purpose of conferring with its merchants on the subject of the new countries which he had discovered, and had described in a letter to the king, a copy of which letter was enclosed. He thus explicitly declares not only that news of the discovery had reached Lyons, but that the letter to the king was known to the merchants at that place, and that a copy of it was then actually in his possession and sent with his own. The result of the expedition was, therefore, notorious, and the letter had attained general publicity at Lyons, without the presence there of either Francis or Verrazzano.
This statement must be false. Granting that such a letter, as is ascribed to Verrazzano, had been written, it was impossible that this obscure young man at Lyons, hundreds of miles from Dieppe, Paris and Blois, away from the king and court and from Verrazzano, not only at a great distance from them all, but at the point to which the king was hastening, and had not reached, on his way to the scene of war in the southern portion of his kingdom, could have come into the possession of this document in less than a month after it purports to have been written for the king in a port far in the north, on the coast of Normandy. It obviously could not have been delivered to him personally by Verrazzano, who had not been at Lyons, nor could it have been transmitted to him by the navigator, who had not yet presented himself before the king, and could have had no authority to communicate it to any person. It was an official report, addressed to the king, and intended for his eye alone, until the monarch himself chose to make it public. It related to an enterprise of the crown, and eminently concerned its interests and prerogatives, in the magnitude and importance of the new countries; and could not have been sent by Verrazzano, without permission, to a private person, and especially a foreigner, without subjecting himself to the charge of disloyalty, if not of treason, which there is no other evidence to sustain. On the other hand it could not have been delivered by the king to this Carli. It is not probable, even if such a letter could have come into the hands of Francis, absent from his capital in the midst of warlike preparations, engaged in forming his army and en route for the scene of the invasion, that he could have given it any consideration. But if he had received it and considered its import, there was no official or other relation between him and Carli, or any motive for him to send it forward in advance of his coming to Lyons, to this young and obscure alien. There was no possibility, therefore, of Carli obtaining possession of a private copy of the letter through Verrazzano or the king.
The only way open to him, under the most favorable circumstances, would have been through some publicity, by proclamation or printing, by order of the king; in which case, it would have been given for the benefit of all his subjects. It is impossible that it could have been seen and copied by this young foreigner alone and in the city of Lyons, and that no other copies would have been preserved in all France. The idea of a publication is thus forbidden.
No alternative remains except to pronounce the whole story a fabrication. The Carli letter is untrue. It did not inclose any letter of Verrazzano of the character pretended. And as it is the only authority for the existence of any such letter, that falls with it.