The engagement which Francesco Maria had accepted, to command the Florentine armies for a year, did not call him from this retirement; it was important only as indicating an apparent reconciliation with the Cardinal de' Medici, to which the latter was induced by apprehension that he might have otherwise proved a formidable opponent to his interest in a future conclave. After a somewhat serious illness, the Duke repaired to Rome, to offer his homage on the arrival of Adrian in Italy, and was honourably received and formally invested with his restored dignities. He rode there escorted by two hundred lances, and was lodged by the Venetian ambassador in the palace of S. Marco. His late eventful history rendered him an object of general interest, and he was universally admitted to have borne his reverses with firmness, his successes with moderation. To commemorate these, he adopted this device, invented for him by Giovio,—a palm-tree, whose crest was weighed downwards by a block of marble, with the motto, "Though depressed, it recoils." This emblem of valour and constancy, which adversity could bend but could not break, he bore upon his banner and trumpets, and frequently introduced it in his coinage.
The repose of Italy was, as usual, of brief duration. Wearied of those contests in which the ambition of France had for thirty years involved the Peninsula, the leading powers began to regard Francesco Sforza's maintenance in the duchy of Milan as their best guarantee of peace. This policy was warmly adopted by the Emperor, interested alike in the welfare of the Neapolitan territory, and in humbling his rival Francis I. The result was a new confederation, to which the Pope, the Emperor, Henry VIII., Venice, Milan, and Florence were parties, but which brought on a general war, the very evil it was intended to avert. Francesco Maria's condotta with the Florentines being expired, he was named to succeed Teodoro Trivulzio, whose supposed French tendencies occasioned his removal from command of the Venetian troops. Those of the Church were committed to the Marquis of Mantua, and Prospero Colonna was general-in-chief of the League Lautrec and l'Escu[294] having been recalled, the Admiral Gouffier de Bonnivet was sent into Lombardy to make good the title of his master to the Milanese, whose daring spirit looked not beyond the glory of encountering single-handed the armies of Europe. This struggle, eventually so ruinous to Italy, so fatal to Rome, had scarcely commenced ere Adrian was called from events which he was in no respect fitted to direct. He died on the 24th of September, 1523,[*295] and was succeeded on the 19th of November by the Cardinal de' Medici, as Clement VII., whose first act was an adherence to the League.
Prospero Colonna did not long survive the Pontiff. From him, perhaps, Francesco Maria adopted the over-cautious policy which marked his military manœuvres during the remainder of his life, and which contrasts strongly with the dashing valour of his early career. For this he has been severely blamed by Sismondi, and we shall see it attended with very miserable results. Fortunately for the Duke's fame, his reputation in arms had been firmly established before the later and more important years of his military prowess arrived. Ere the allies had completed their preparations, the French poured into Lombardy, carried Lodi, and laid siege to Cremona. The Venetian troops occupied the banks of the Oglio, where they were joined by the Duke of Urbino, as soon as he had received credentials and instructions from the senate; his own stipulated contingent, under his lieutenant-general Landriano, having already effected a junction.
Machiavelli, ever prone to cast reflections on mercenary troops, has remarked that the Republic lost her superiority from the time that she extensively employed them. This, however, is but a partial view of the case. By their means, backed by their maritime supremacy, and by her matchless diplomatic system, she gradually extended her mainland territory, in spite of the unmilitary genius of her people, until jealousy combined nearly all Europe against her in the League of Cambray. But there was another fault inherent in the organisation of her armies. Dark suspicion was the permeating principle of her policy. Each branch of the executive jealously watched the others. Magistrates distrusted their colleagues; fathers set spies upon their sons, husbands upon their wives; governors and governed doubted their paid troops, or countermined their selected generals. The senate accordingly sent with their stipendiary forces commissioners instructed to watch, and empowered to control, the leaders—a check necessarily inducing dissension, for, as Macaulay has happily remarked, what army commanded by a debating club ever escaped discomfiture and disgrace? Under the title of proveditori, these official spies performed some of the duties belonging to commissaries-general; and although this plan for controlling soldiers of fortune, who owed little fidelity to the cause, and whose ruling principle was usually self-interest, might seem the result of wise precaution, it practically occasioned perpetual embarrassments, and fomented personal quarrels, paralysing operations in the field. Such an imperium in imperio had in this instance its usual results. Distracted councils and divided responsibility hampered free action, and rendered abortive the best-laid plans.[*296] Throughout the long war now opening, the system was pregnant with peculiar mischief, and it ought to bear much of the blame of that dilatory inefficiency which is charged against Francesco Maria. Thus the Proveditore Emo, at the very outset of this campaign, prevented him from crossing the Oglio to harass the retreat of Renzo da Ceri, who, after loitering away two months before Cremona, was recalled to the siege of Milan. The Duke, however, soon after advanced to the Adda, and during the rigour of winter occupied his troops in fortifying themselves at Martinengo, from whence they were enabled to annoy the enemy by continual forays towards Lodi.[297]
The command vacated by the death of Prospero Colonna was conferred upon Don Carlos de Lanoy, Viceroy of Naples, who arrived at head-quarters in the spring, and, upon drawing together the confederates from their winter quarters, found himself at the head of about twenty thousand foot, and four thousand lances and light cavalry. Among their leaders were the Constable de Bourbon, the Prince of Orange, and Don Ugo de Moncada, with all of whom we shall often meet during the next few years.
In the confederate army there were too many conflicting interests, too many rival leaders; but it was the peculiar misfortune of the Duke of Urbino to serve a power whose jealousy exceeded all rational bounds. It was not without considerable persuasion that he obtained of the Signory sanction to cross the Adda, and unite their troops, amounting to twelve hundred horse and six thousand foot, with the forces of the League. The first combined operation was directed against Gherlasco, which Francesco Maria, though in command of the rear-guard, was permitted to carry by assault with his own division, being greatly aided by using explosive shells. From thence they advanced to Vercelli, taking Trumello, Sartirana, and other places by the way. This movement was intended at once to cut off supplies from the French army posted at Novara, and to intercept a strong body of Swiss, for whom they were anxiously waiting. The allies having reached Vercelli, it became a race which army should first gain the bridge of Romagnano, to the west whereof lay the Swiss subsidy. The French had almost passed, when Lanoy fell upon their rear, which suffered immensely in men, baggage, and artillery; and their commander, Bonnivet, was wounded. The credit of all these arrangements is claimed by Leone for the Duke of Urbino, whose annoyance may be imagined when he found himself arrested from reaping the full benefit of their success, by interference of Pietro da Pesaro, the Proveditore. That officer, standing upon the engagement of the Venetian contingent to serve only within the confines of the Milanese, objected to their passing the Sesia, which here formed its limit, and thus nullified the resolution of the confederates to follow up their partial victory by such a well-timed attack as might drive the enemy across the Alps. The indignant army appealed to Francesco Maria to break through this official obstruction, but the commissioner was right to the letter, and the stern Signory sanctioned no latitude of construction on the part of its servants. The Duke, however, gained his consent by private remonstrances, at once temperate and energetic, but especially by threatening to throw up his commission from the senate, and as a free captain to pass with his own company into the allies' service, leaving the Proveditore, with a disorganised contingent, to bear the whole responsibility of losing so admirable an opportunity of cutting short a struggle, which it was in every view the interest of his republic to close.[298]
The conduct of the French troops devolved, in consequence of the Admiral's wound, upon Piere de Terrail, Chevalier de Bayard, who was not long spared in a command which the blunders of his predecessor had rendered hopeless. On the 30th of April, whilst drawing off the rear-guard under the enemy's fire, a shot fractured his spine. Refusing to be carried from the spot, he had himself supported against a tree, with his face to the foe, and continued to give his orders with composure: at length, feeling the hand of death upon him, he confessed himself to his faithful squire, kissing the hand-guard of his sword as a substitute for the cross. The imperialists remaining masters of the field, he was approached by the Constable Bourbon, to whose words of sympathy and regret he sternly replied, "Grieve not for me, but for yourself, fighting against your king and country." His fall was reported to Charles V. by the imperial envoy, Adrian de Croy, in these touching terms:—"Sire, although the said M. Bayard was in the service of your enemy, his death is certainly a pity; for he was a gentle knight beloved of all, whose life had been as well spent as ever was that of any of his condition, as, indeed, he fully testified at its close, which was the most beautiful I ever heard tell of." Thus fell, in his forty-ninth year, the flower of French chivalry, "the fearless and irreproachable knight." His army evacuated Italy before the end of May, and the Duke of Urbino being entrusted with the recovery of Lodi, found it defended by his relation and attached comrade-in-arms, Count Francesco del Bozzolo, who, perceiving his position hopeless, soon capitulated upon honourable terms.
After the ample details we had given of the comparatively unimportant Urbino war, our rapid glance at the events in Upper Italy, from 1521 to 1526, may seem superficial. But as these Lombard campaigns, although momentous to Europe, told very slightly upon the general policy of the Peninsula, and as Francesco Maria bore no prominent part in their varying results, we must be content to pass over them thus cursorily, rather than to carry the reader too far from the more especial object of these volumes. We may, however, pause for a moment upon the reception accorded to the Duke at Venice, when summoned thither to receive public thanks for his services, graphic details of which are supplied by the unedited Diaries of Sanuto.