"Generals who will not conquer when they may."
When, however, he perceived victory to be hopeless, in an army distracted by the jealousies of rival leaders, he had proposed the nomination of a commander-in-chief, avowing himself ready to accord him implicit obedience. In this he was again thwarted by Guicciardini, who represented his suggestion to the allied powers as dictated by personal ambition of the post. The plan fell to the ground, and its author, fretted by the difficulties of his position, was attacked by severe illness. Of this the Proveditore availed himself to lead Malatesta Baglione, with three thousand troops, to Cremona. Like Milan, it was occupied by an imperialist brigade, who besieged in the citadel a handful of Sforza's adherents. The Duke's warnings as to its military difficulties having been received with indifference, this enterprise was on the point of miscarriage, on learning which he rose from a sick bed, and hurried with fresh forces to the scene of action. His presence infused new energy into the operations, and on the 23rd of September the town was evacuated by the imperialists upon capitulation.
This success was scarcely within his grasp when a courier arrived from Rome, with tidings which gave a new aspect to affairs. Clement, who had succeeded to the turbulence of his predecessors, without the energy of Julius, or the address of Leo, made himself a dangerous domestic foe in the Colonna,—broken, but not crushed by the rancour of Alexander VI. Cardinal Pompeo Colonna, a man indifferent to religion, whose unbounded ambition aimed directly at the tiara, and whose brows better became a condottiere's casque than a mitre, forgetting his duty as one of the Sacred College, entered into treasonable correspondence with the imperialist leaders; and his brother Marcello, having been driven from his fiefs by the Pope, threw himself at the feet of Charles V., offering to support his views upon Italy if reponed by his assistance. They also used their influence at Venice in preventing his Holiness from raising a loan to recruit his crippled resources, and, in concert with Don Ugo Moncada, commander of the Neapolitan army, strove to alienate him from the League. Don Ugo, a Spaniard by birth, was the worthy pupil of Cesare Borgia, without his reputation for success. In every important engagement his sword had been tarnished by defeat; his character and personal adventures combined each brutal attribute of a condottiere, with scarcely a redeeming trait of honour. The plan of these confederates was by a coup-de-main to dictate terms to the Pontiff; or, failing success in this, to give occupation at home for the contingent he then maintained with the allied army of Lombardy. Accordingly, the Colonna troops, who had assumed a threatening attitude in the Campagna, were suddenly withdrawn beyond the frontier; and a son of Prospero Colonna hastened to the capital to throw himself at Clement's feet, assuring him of the pacific disposition of his house, and that their levies were destined for the imperial service at Naples. The Pope, being deceived into a belief so conformable to his wishes, turned a deaf ear to the warning of more clear-sighted men, and, disappointed of his loan, thought only of reducing a war establishment he could no longer pay. But so soon as his soldiery were dismissed, the Colonna recalled their army of two thousand men, which, led by Pompeo with equal celerity and success, reached the Lateran gate ere treachery was suspected. Resistance being hopeless, they, on the 20th of September, marched through the city into the Trastevere, where they were welcomed to refreshments provided by the Cardinal's order. Thence they passed into the Borgo S. Spirito, where are situated the Vatican, St. Peter's, and the castle of St. Angelo, and within three hours had pillaged that rich quarter, sparing neither the palace nor the metropolitan church. The Pope, who had at first resolved to await death in his pontifical chair, scarcely escaped with a few valuables into the fortress, which, from unpardonable negligence, was entirely unprovisioned. To arrest these horrors, the Pontiff next day made a hasty four-months' truce, stipulating for the immediate evacuation of Rome, as the condition on which he should recall Guicciardini with the ecclesiastical troops from Upper Italy; three days, however, elapsed ere the troops withdrew, laden with a booty estimated at 300,000 ducats.[308]
Upon the capitulation of Cremona, Francesco Maria stole a few days for the society of his Duchess, and the affairs of his state, but was speedily recalled to his post by the unsatisfactory aspect of matters in Lombardy. The papal troops had been withdrawn; the garrison of Cremona, whose services the Venetians would not retain at his suggestion, had entered into new engagements with the enemy; fourteen thousand lanznechts, alias lansquenet infantry, under Georg v. Fründesberg, were marching from Germany by the Val di Sabbia to support the imperial cause. His first care was to check the pillage of Cremona, a service which the citizens acknowledged by presenting to him a golden vase weighing twenty pounds, and beautifully chased with appropriate devices. He found the Marquis of Saluzzo arrived with about five thousand levies from France, and that the bande nere, amounting to almost as many, had been engaged by that power, on Guicciardini's departure, whose absence proved a vast relief to him. The army is now estimated at twenty-five thousand men by Sismondi, who, echoing the charges of that writer, severely blames the Duke for not supporting the naval attack made by the French upon Genoa, a scheme for which we have seen him contending at an earlier period. But a passage in his own Discorsi Militari expressly states the Venetian force at four thousand infantry and five thousand cavalry, to keep in check both Fründesberg's lansquenets and ten thousand men at Milan; and it explains his tactics to consist in making Cremona the centre of a line of defence, embracing Bergamo on the right, and Genoa on the left, which, being vastly too extended for his force, necessitated his keeping his men together, in order to move upon any exposed point. Accordingly, considering it most incumbent to intercept the battalions of Fründesberg, he, after throwing garrisons into some important places on his right flank, pushed towards Mantua with about ten thousand men. Although sadly impeded by dreadful weather, and by difficulties of transport, the Proveditore having secured all the cattle to carry his own baggage to Venice, he came up with the enemy at Borgoforte, on the Po, and, interrupting their passage, drove their main body down the course of that river. Deep snow and mud embarrassing his evolutions, he could only hang upon their rear as far as the Mincio, where they were met by a reinforcement with artillery from Ferrara. Thereupon the Duke recalled his skirmishers, and left the Germans to pass the Po unobstructed, on the 30th of November.
In this affair fell Giovanni de' Medici, whose birth we have formerly noticed.[309] His name is consecrated to military renown by a halo which his lion-heart well merited, and which has gained no additional brilliancy from the attempts of some writers to elevate his fame at Francesco Maria's expense. In this unworthy effort—as on too many like occasions—Guicciardini has been followed by the historian of the Italian republics. The charges of misconduct adduced against the Duke of Urbino, in his movement against Fründesberg, are by no means borne out by the more detailed accounts supplied by Leoni and Baldi. He seems to have done everything that the state of the elements would allow; and even accused himself of occasioning the death of his faithful captain Benedetto Giraldi of Mondolfo, by answering his plea, that his charger was completely knocked up, with the sarcasm,—"What! you to whom I give a hundred scudi of yearly pay, have not a fresh pair of horses at such a moment!" Stung by this reproach, the gallant officer urged his steed to new efforts, and shared the fate of Giovanni de' Medici. The brigade of the latter, out of respect for their leader, assumed those mourning scarfs which procured them the name delle bande nere; and most of them soon after passed to Rome in the papal service.
The German lansquenets, whom Fründesberg had brought into Italy, were in fact a free company, levied by himself on a mere plundering adventure, without the pretext of pay. Alarmed at a reinforcement of so obnoxious a character, the confederates bethought themselves of renewed efforts. But disgusted with a drawling campaign, wherein no party had exhibited either good heart or doughty deeds, they had recourse to diplomacy, which, ever fluctuating between an inactive war and a solid peace, failed to create any general interest. The truce with Moncada being expired they had no difficulty in enrolling the unstable Pontiff once more on their side; but intent on his private quarrel with the Colonna, and burning to avenge the outrage lately received at their hands, he gave no co-operation to the League. His tortuous and feeble policy preferred rousing, by small intrigues, the old Angevine party at Naples against the imperial government, and sought the more sympathetic attractions of a petty strife with his refractory vassals. Having engaged the bande nere, he let them loose to carry fire and sword into the Colonna holdings, depriving, at the same time, Cardinal Pompeo of his hat, and thundering excommunication against his whole race. As the spring advanced, he extended this inglorious warfare, with "a worse than Turkish" virulence, into the Neapolitan territory. Meanwhile, the Viceroy Lanoy, after narrowly escaping the fleet of Andrea Doria, landed ten thousand fresh troops at Gaeta, and advanced upon Rome, supported by Moncada and the Colonna. But the vengeance of God against the Holy City was reserved for other hands. After a slight check from the bande nere, at Frosinone, the Viceroy most opportunely received letters from his master, disavowing the Colonna, and breathing affectionate duty to the Pontiff. He thereupon made overtures of reconciliation, and after various demurs, prompted by the Pontiff's vacillating hopes and fears, but which, in the exhausted state of his treasury, appear the dictates of insanity, an eight months' truce was signed on the 15th of March, between the Pope and the Emperor. It provided for a mutual restitution of all conquests in Lower Italy, a restoration of the Colonna to their estates and honours, and a payment by his Holiness of 60,000 ducats towards the costs of the war. Should the French and Venetians accept of this truce, the lansquenets were to be withdrawn from Italy; at all events they and the Constable Bourbon's army were forthwith to quit the ecclesiastical and Florentine territories. Whilst intimating this arrangement to the Duke of Urbino, by a brief of the 16th of March, Clement represents it as dictated by stern necessity, the whole weight of the war having fallen upon himself, and as the sole means of saving his own existence, and preserving "all Italy from destruction."
Whilst these events were in progress in Lower Italy, the negotiations for a general peace had produced no fruits, conducted, as they were, with little good faith or honesty of purpose. The only one really interested in prolonging the struggle was Francis I., whose children were still in his rival's hands. The Italian states, weary of a bootless contest, and disgusted by the feeble egotism of Clement, fell into inertness akin, perhaps, to the fascination under which the feathered tribes are said to become victims of their reptile-foe.
That foe was Charles Duke of Bourbon, son of Gilbert Count de Montpensier, who died at Pozzuoli, in 1495, by Chiara Gonzaga, sister of Elisabetta Duchess of Urbino. He was next heir to the crown of France, after Francis Duke of Angoulême, who succeeded to it as Francis I., and Charles Duke d'Alençon, whose blood had been attainted for treason. Louis XII., having removed this attainder, and restored the d'Alençon branch to their rights, incurred the deep displeasure of Bourbon, who was, however, pacified by receiving, at the age of twenty-six, the office of grand constable,—the highest dignity of the realm. He greatly distinguished himself in Francis's early Italian campaigns, but was recalled from the command at Milan in 1516, in consequence of his overbearing conduct and ambitious views. By Anna, sister of Charles VIII., whom he married in spite of a hideously deformed person, he had the dukedom of Bourbon, with an immense fortune; but his extravagant prodigality plunged him into great embarrassments, and a suit brought after his wife's death by the mother of Francis I.—whose love he was alleged to have slighted—threatened him with utter ruin, by evicting him from his wife's estates. In these circumstances, his jealous and fiery temper was ready to seize upon any pretext for entering into treasonable correspondence with the Emperor and King of England; and, on a promise of the crown of Provence, he undertook to head an insurrection in France as soon as Francis should cross the Alps. That monarch having discovered the plot, at once sought the Constable in one of his own castles, and frankly told him what he had learned. The hypocrite had recourse to abject asseverations of innocence and fidelity, and was ordered to attend his sovereign into Italy; but, perceiving that his protestations had not removed suspicion, he fled in disguise to the territory of Charles, and was declared rebel. His perfidy and rancour now knew no bounds; he was ever after prominent and indefatigable in the wars against his country, and mainly instigated the descent upon Provence in 1524. He next entertained a hope of the dukedom of Milan, by Clement's sanction; but he had played away his honour in a losing game: despised by himself and his employers, the prestige of success passed from his arms. Yet his peculiar talent for courting popularity ensured him the zealous support of his troops, who knew also that a bankrupt in character and purse was the best leader for men intent upon pillage. To the single merit of a winning manner, he united many odious qualities. His unmeasured ambition was restrained by no principle, either as to its objects, or the means of attaining them. His pride was vain-glory, venting itself in capricious and ill-directed schemes, and stimulating into fury a wayward and sanguinary temper, which, when exasperated by exile and outlawry, became ungovernable.
During the war of Lombardy, the imperial generals were in a great measure left to their own resources, both as to its conduct and its supplies. Bourbon had for about a year maintained his army in Milan without pay, by merciless plunder of the townspeople, upon whom insult and outrage were unsparingly heaped. But their patience and their means were nearly exhausted, and the difficulty of recruiting his commissariat was greatly aggravated by judicious dispositions of the allied army, directed by the Duke of Urbino. A forward movement was therefore resolved upon, and as occupation and pillage were the only chances of keeping together such disorganised troops, he led them in search of both. Indifferent whether the spoils of Florence or Romagna should prove the more convenient prey, he effected a junction with Fründesberg's new levies, whose circumstances and objects exactly corresponded with those of his own forces, and on the 30th of January their united divisions passed the Po.
Our authorities are in many respects contradictory regarding these operations, and especially as to the part which Francesco Maria took in them. He seems to have been laid up at Parma, with an attack of gout and fever, from the 3rd to the 14th of January, and to have spent most of the next two months with his Duchess at Gazzuolo in the Mantuese, for recovery of his health. It is insinuated by Sismondi that this was but an excuse for abandoning the field, at a moment when it would have been scarcely possible to pursue the policy, which that author ascribes to him, of never risking in a general action the prestige of invincibility. On the other hand, Leoni asserts that, at a council of war held in Parma on the 11th of February, plans for the campaign were proposed in writing by the different confederate leaders, when that sent by the Duke was treacherously suppressed by Guicciardini. Judging from the results of the campaign, there can be no doubt that the imperialists ought to have been attacked at this juncture; and if a general onset had been ordered on the 13th of March, when they broke out into open mutiny, Bourbon being obliged to fly for his life, or, a few days after, when Fründesberg, a monster of sacrilege and blasphemy, according to the Italian historians, died of apoplexy, they would in all probability have been totally exterminated. But they were the reserved instrument of divine judgments; and it signifies little now to speculate whether the immediate motives which paralysed the League were the Duke's ill-timed caution, his anticipation that the starving band would ere long of itself dissolve, or his personal enmity to the Pope. It is, however, important to keep in view the cold and selfish character of Venetian policy, and the hampering influence which their system of proveditori necessarily had upon the measures of their generals.