The great news of Pavia which saddened all France was received in Spain with transports of joy. At the time when the battle was fought, the young emperor was in Castile, anxiously expecting news from Italy. On the 10th of March, 1525, he was discussing, in one of the halls of the palace at Madrid, the advantages of Francis I. and the critical situation of the imperial army.[420] ‘We shall conquer,’ Pescara had written to him, ‘or else we shall die.’ At this moment a courier from Lombardy appeared at the gate of the palace: he was introduced immediately. ‘Sire,’ said he, bending the knee before the emperor in the midst of his court, ‘the French army is annihilated, and the King of France in your Majesty’s hands.’ Charles, startled by the unexpected news, stood pale and motionless; it seemed as if the blood had stagnated in his veins. For some moments he did not utter a word, and all around him, affected like himself, looked at him in silence. At last the ambitious prince said slowly, as if speaking to himself: ‘The king of France is my prisoner.... I have won the battle.’ Then, without a word to any one, he entered his bed-room and fell on his knees before an image of the Virgin, to whom he gave thanks for the victory. He meditated before this image on the great exploits to which he now thought himself called. To become the master of Europe, to reestablish everywhere the tottering catholicism, to take Constantinople, and even to recover Jerusalem—such was the task which Charles prayed the Virgin to put him in a condition to carry through. If these ambitious projects had been realised, the revival of learning would have been compromised, the Reformation ruined, the new ideas rooted out, and the whole world would have bowed helplessly beneath two swords—that of the emperor first, and then that of the pope. At length Charles rose from his knees; he read the humble letters of the King of France, gave orders for processions to be made, and attended mass next day with every mark of the greatest devotion.[421]
All christendom thought as this potentate did: a shudder ran through Europe, and every man said to himself as he bent his head: ‘Behold the master whom the fates assign us!’ At Naples a devout voice was heard to exclaim: ‘Thou hast laid the world at his feet!’
It has been said that if in our day a king should be made prisoner, the heir to the throne or a regent would succeed to all his rights; but in the sixteenth century, omnipotence dwelt in the monarch’s person, and from the depths of his dungeon he could bind his country by the most disastrous treaties.[422] Charles V. determined to profit by this state of things. He assembled his council. The cruel Duke of Alva eloquently conjured him not to release his rival until he had deprived him of all power to injure him. ‘In whom is insolence more natural,’ he said, ‘in whom is fickleness more instinctive than in the French? What can we expect from a king of France?... Invincible emperor, do not miss the opportunity of increasing the authority of the empire, not for your own glory, but for the service of God.’[423] Charles V. appeared to yield to the duke’s advice, but it was advice according to his own heart; and while repeating that a christian prince ought not to triumph in his victory over another, he resolved to crush his rival. M. de Beaurain, viceroy of Naples, Lannoy, and the Constable of Bourbon, so detested by Francis I., waited all three upon the royal captive.
Francis had overplayed the part of a suppliant, a character so new for him. ‘Instead of a useless prisoner,’ he had written to Charles, ‘set at liberty a king who will be your slave for ever.’ Charles proposed to him a dismemberment of France on three sides. The Constable of Bourbon was to have Provence and Dauphiny, and these provinces, united with the Bourbonnais which he possessed already, were to be raised into an independent kingdom. The King of England was to have Normandy and Guienne; and the emperor would be satisfied with French Flanders, Picardy, and Burgundy.... When he heard these monstrous propositions, Francis uttered a cry and caught up his sword, which his attendants took from his hands. Turning towards the envoys he said: ‘I would rather die in prison than consent to such demands.’ Thinking that he could make better terms with the emperor, he soon after embarked at Genoa and sailed to Spain. The delighted Charles gave up to him the palace of Madrid, and employed every means to constrain him to accept his disastrous conditions.[424] Who will succeed in baffling the emperor’s pernicious designs? A woman, Margaret of Valois, undertook the task.[425] The statesmen of her age considered her the best head in Europe; the friends of the Reformation respected her as their mother. Her dearest wish was to substitute a living christianity for the dead forms of popery, and she hoped to prevail upon her brother, ‘the father of letters,’ to labour with her in this admirable work. It was not in France only that she desired the triumph of the Gospel, but in Germany, England, Italy, and even Spain. As Charles’s projects would ruin all that she loved—the king, France, and the Gospel—she feared not to go and beard the lion even in his den.
The duchess as she entered Spain felt her heart deeply agitated. The very day she had heard of the battle of Pavia, she had courageously taken this heavy cross upon her shoulders; but at times she fainted under the burden. Impatient to reach her brother, burning with desire to save him, fearing lest she should find him dying, trembling lest the persecutors should take advantage of her absence to crush the Gospel and religious liberty in France, she found no rest but at the feet of the Saviour. Many evangelical men wept and prayed with her; they sought to raise her drooping courage under the great trial which threatened to weigh her down, and bore a noble testimony to her piety. ‘There are various stations in the christian life,’ said one of these reformers, Capito. ‘You have now entered upon that commonly called the Way of the Cross.[426] ... Despising the theology of men, you desire to know only Jesus Christ and Him crucified.’[427]
Margaret crossing in her litter (September 1525) the plains of Catalonia, Arragon, and Castile, exclaimed:
I cast my eyes around,
I look and look in vain ...
The loved one cometh not;
And on my knees again
I pray unceasing to my God
To heal the king—to spare the rod.
The loved one cometh not ...
Tears on my eyelids sit:
Then to this virgin page
My sorrows I commit:—
Such is to wretched me
Each day of misery.[428]
She sometimes fancied that she could see in the distance a messenger riding hastily from Madrid and bringing her news of her brother.... But alas! her imagination had deceived her, no one appeared. She then wrote:
O Lord, awake, arise!
And let thine eyes in mercy fall
Upon the king—upon us all.