The Making of a King
Francis I was born on September 12, 1494, under a tree at Cognac. His grandfather Charles of Orléans was one of France's poets. His father, Charles, Duke of Valois and Orléans and Count of Angoulême, died after many adulteries when Francis was three. His mother, Louise of Savoy, was good-looking, able and ambitious, and loved wealth and power. Widowed at seventeen, she rejected a marriage proposal from Henry VII of England and spent all her ability on bringing her child to the throne of France. When the second wife of Louis XII, Anne of Brittany, bore a stillborn child and made Francis heir to the crown, Louise did not mourn.
Louis, with regret, made Francis Duke of Valois and appointed tutors to teach him the art of ruling. Louise and her daughter Margaret watched over him with the utmost care and treated him like an idol, sparing no effort to prepare him for kingship. Louise called him "my lord, my king, my emperor," told him tales of knightly heroism, boasted of his courage and was beside herself over his victories in tournaments. Francis was a handsome, cheerful, courteous and brave youth who ran to meet danger like Roland and Amadis. Once a wild boar broke from its cage and the courtiers fled in terror, but Francis with rare courage killed the beast.
When he was only twelve (1506) he was betrothed to Claude of France, the seven-year-old daughter of Louis XII. She had earlier been promised to the youth who was to become Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, but that agreement, which would have made France subject to Spain, was broken. This was one of many causes that kindled the fire of enmity between the royal houses of Habsburg and Valois from the childhood of Charles and Francis to the end of their lives. At fourteen Francis was separated from his mother and taken to Louis at Chinon. At twenty he married Claude, a lame, stout, fertile and tedious woman who bore him children in 1515, 1516, 1518, 1520, 1522 and 1523 and died in 1524.
The King
Francis came to the throne on January 1, 1515. All the French, and above all his mother, to whom he gave the duchies of Angoulême and Anjou, the lands of Maine and Beaufort and the barony of Amboise, were pleased at his accession. He was generous to other nobles, artists, courtiers, attendants and his mistresses as well. His pleasant voice, frankness and openheartedness, liveliness and charm, chivalrous spirit and love of the Renaissance made all France and his courtiers love him. The French took pride in him and hoped for his rule, as the English of that day did for Henry VIII and the people of the Holy Roman Empire for Charles V. With young rulers coming to power, the world too seemed to take up youth and vitality again.
What manner of man was Francis, who combined the qualities of King Arthur and Lancelot? Leaving aside his big nose, he was physically a large and imposing man. Some contemporaries who did not respect him called him "the big-nosed king." He stood 183 centimeters tall and was broad-shouldered, agile and strong; he ran, jumped, wrestled and fenced with the best swordsmen. He struck with the sword in either hand and could wield a heavy lance. His young face, despite a thin, sparse beard and mustache, looked fresh and ruddy. At his coronation he was twenty-one. His narrow eyes showed quickness and humor but lacked depth and keenness. If his large nose is taken as a sign of his popular touch, then given the rumors about him we have said nothing exaggerated. Brantôme, whose book on his ladies has no historical authority, writes that Francis, being young and free, indulged freely in love affairs and spent each day in some lady's company until at last a grave disease cut his life short. According to one story the king's mother said that her son was paying for his sins. History may have exaggerated his love affairs, but it is certain that he loved first Françoise de Foix, Countess of Châteaubriant, and then from 1526 until the end of his life Anne de Pisseleu, whom he made Duchess of Étampes (I omit the grosser details). Rumors abounded; it was said that he besieged Milan not for Milan's sake but for the two charming eyes he had seen there, or that a charming woman at Pavia led him into the most painful disaster of his life. Even so, we have to love so kind and compassionate a king. He mixed pity with infatuation. When he resolved to make his son leave his barren wife Catherine de' Medici, Catherine's tears moved him to give up the decision. Erasmus said, "One cannot find a more compassionate man than Francis." If we put that down to distance and unfamiliarity, we may turn instead to Budé, the king's favorite humanist, who called him noble and gracious.
Vanity, Patronage and Limits
Francis was very vain and self-regarding. He rivaled Henry VIII in royal dress and, thinking no fire could harm him, took the salamander as his emblem. Yet he did not escape the fire of fate. He loved honor, ceremony and flattery and could not bear criticism. He horsewhipped an actor who had mocked the court, and Louis XII approved with a smile. Though he was ungrateful to some of his circle (Anne de Montmorency), unkind (Charles de Bourbon) and even harsh (Semblançay), he did not hold back his gifts. Italians marveled at his liberality and freedom of thought. In the history of the world no ruler was so kind to artists. He loved beauty keenly and wisely and spared no money to spread art. He was rightly the founder of the French Renaissance.
Francis's wit was less than his charm. He had learned a little Latin but knew no Greek. Yet his exact information on agriculture, hunting, geography, military arts, letters and art amazed people. Whenever he had a respite from war or love, he busied himself reading philosophical works. His harshness and recklessness deprived him of the talent to command, and his gaiety and pleasure-seeking of the qualities of a statesman. The influence of those around him, and of his mistresses, kept him from choosing fit commanders and ministers for himself, and his frankness and honesty kept him from becoming a competent politician.
His sister Margaret was saddened to see that her brother could not govern, and feared that the crafty, stubborn emperor would in the end bring him to his knees. Louis XII, who praised Francis as a "brave, open-hearted youth," was troubled by his heir's inclination to pleasure and said, "All our efforts are wasted, for this big boy will ruin the fruit of our toil."
France in 1515
France, under a kindly and popular king, and with its fertile soil and its hardworking, talented people, was now passing through one of the most prosperous periods in its economic history. Its population was 16,000,000, while England's then was 3,000,000 and Spain's did not exceed 7,000,000 (the book's figures). Paris, with 300,000, was after Constantinople the largest city in Europe. French society was still semi-feudal. Peasants nearly all owned their land but paid dues and soldiers to the lords and knights, whose duty was to arrange agriculture and furnish soldiers to guard the district or the kingdom. The monetary inflation caused by repeated coinage and the import of precious metals had let French farmers buy land cheaply from land-rich, cash-poor nobles. For this reason, when the intolerable social and economic order of Germany drove its peasants to revolt, the French made do with their relative comfort and stayed loyal to Catholicism. Out of attachment to their land, French farmers produced the best grain and wine in Europe. Cattle-raising thrived too, and milk, butter and cheese graced the tables. Fowls and chickens were found in nearly every yard, and the peasants counted the smell of their pigsty one of the pleasantest perfumes of life.
City workers, still laboring in small private workshops, shared less in the country's prosperity than the peasants. Inflation had raised the cost of living more than wages, and taxes and high prices for monopoly goods like salt weighed on them. Workers struck several times, but the strikes were broken and the law deprived them of the right to form guilds. Trade goods flowed easily to the sea down France's many full rivers, but export by land over poor roads was hard and merchants paid tolls to the feudal lords whose estates the roads crossed. Lyons, which drew Swiss and German goods down the Rhône for export to the Mediterranean, was after Paris the chief commercial center of France and, after Antwerp, the biggest market of Europe. French goods went from Marseilles into the Mediterranean to be delivered to the Turks, with whose ruler, Suleiman the Magnificent, Francis kept close and friendly relations.
Government and Taxes
Like all rulers, Francis resolved to profit from France's flourishing economy through taxes. Only nobles and clergy were exempt. The clergy paid the king a share of church income, and the nobles equipped and maintained the cavalry, which was still the backbone of the French army. Francis went further and, in imitation of the popes, put titles and political offices up for sale; so in France, as in England, a new privileged class of "newly risen rich" arose. Lawyers, who also bought their offices from the king, built a strong administrative government inside the French government.
Because the king's pleasures left him no time for affairs of state, he left the duties of kingship, even the setting of national policy, to men like Admiral Bonnivet, Anne de Montmorency, Cardinal Duprat, Cardinal François de Tournon and the Vicomte de Lautrec. Three councils worked with these men and the king in running the country: the private council of nobles, the secret council for affairs of state, and the great council, which heard the people's petitions to the king himself. Besides these, the Parlement of Paris, made up of 200 clerics and laymen chosen for life by the king, acted as the nation's supreme court. It had the right to reject royal edicts it found contrary to France's fundamental traditions, so that the king's decrees had no legal force before its registration. Dominated by lawyers and old men, the Parlement became the political organ of the middle classes and, after the Sorbonne, the most conservative body in France. The administration of the provinces the king left to local parlements and governors. The Estates General was forgotten for a time, regular taxation gave way to voluntary contributions, and the nobles' powers in the state apparatus shrank.
The Court
The nobles' duty was to equip the army and serve the king at court. The royal court, made up of heads of administration, noted nobles and their wives, and the king's family and favorites, became the flower of France, the model of manners and the king's traveling pleasure ground. At the head of this host of servants stood the steward of the royal household, who also oversaw official ceremony. Second was the chamberlain, responsible for the king's bedroom, and after him four attendants always at the king's call to satisfy his wishes. Every three months they gave way to other nobles so that these too should not lose the honor of nearness to the king. To honor these attendants, twenty to fifty-four ushers were assigned to them. For full care of the king's private apartments, twelve pages and four boys were also kept ready. Twenty more noblemen supervised the king's pantry, which had forty-five cooks and twenty-five cupbearers. About thirty page boys of noble birth, in glittering silver clothes, always attended the king. Many secretaries wrote the king's letters and memoirs. A cardinal was chaplain of the court chapel and a bishop was in charge of its worship. Fifty bishops with sees were honored by blessing the king's court. A number of scholars, such as Budé and the poet Marot, held the honorary post of "gentleman of the royal household" with a pension of 240 livres. Among the countless heads and servants of the court we must not forget seven physicians, seven surgeons, four barbers, seven minstrels, eight craftsmen, seven kitchen clerks and seven ushers of the reception hall. Each of the king's children had stewards, treasurers, tutors, servants and footmen, and each of the two queens of the court, Claude and Margaret, had ten or fifteen women servants and eight or sixteen maids. Francis's mark was that he raised women at his court to high rank, skillfully ignored their illicit affairs and delighted in their beauty. He said, "A court without women is a garden without flowers." Perhaps it was women, with their native taste and sense of art, who gave Francis's court a splendor that not even the palaces of imperial Rome could match. All Europe's rulers taxed their subjects to get some share of the luxury of the Paris court. Behind this fair show lay a great number of servants: four head cooks, six assistant cooks, specialists in soups, sauces, sweets and dishes for all the courtiers, and a host of waiters for the comfort of the men and women of the court. A company of musicians, made up of Europe's most famous singers, composers and players, entertained the courtiers with their tunes. A master of the horse with twenty-five noble equerries and a crowd of coachmen ran the king's stables. Huntsmen, a hundred hounds and three hundred hawks trained under a falconer formed another group of the court's servants. Four hundred archers of the guard, in their bright uniforms, gave the court a special color.
No building in Paris alone could hold the court's balls, banquets, wedding feasts and political receptions. The Louvre was then a gloomy fortress. So Francis sometimes used the building called Les Tournelles, near the Bastille, or the huge palace seat of the Parlement. The king, who loved hunting, was not content with this and spent part of his time in the châteaux along the Loire, at Blois, Chambord, Amboise or Tours, dragging half the court and half of France's possessions after him on these trips. Cellini, in his usual exaggeration, counts the king's followers on these journeys at 18,000 with 12,000 horses. Foreign ambassadors had to bear great trouble and heavy expense to reach the king on these tours, and when they arrived in spite of all, the king would be asleep until midday to recover from his nights, or preparing for a hunt or a contest. The royal journeys and outings were costly. The court's extravagance had brought the treasury to the edge of bankruptcy, bent the people's backs under heavy taxes, and endangered the fortunes of the Lyons bankers who had lent the king large sums. In 1523, with his income short, the king resolved to limit court expenses, provided the limit "does not touch our ordinary small needs and pleasures." Francis thought the luxury of the French court necessary to keep the country's honor before foreign ambassadors, to show his rank to France's ambitious nobles, and to satisfy the people of Paris. He believed that the Parisians were fond of splendor and looked on it with admiration instead of resentment.
Women at Court
Women had now gained power at the French court. Though Francis seemed the absolute ruler of France, his weakness before women made him obedient to his mother, sister, mistress and even wife. Since he kept Claude constantly with child, he must have been fond of her. He had married her for reasons of state; yet he loved other, more attractive women too. The courtiers followed the king, and adultery became ordinary at the French court. The clergy, after complaining as their duty required, fell silent. The people too eagerly copied the court's looseness, except, it is said, for a girl who disfigured her charming face to turn the lustful courtiers from her (1524).
The ablest woman at court was the king's mother. Louise's power at the French court shows in her telling the pope's envoy once, "Put your petitions to me, and we will handle them as we like; if the king objects, let him say what he wants." Her guidance was often to France's benefit; while she acted as regent the nation had more comfort than when government lay in Francis's slack hands. But her greed led to the betrayal of Charles, Duke of Bourbon, and left the French army in Italy starving. In gratitude for the services of his mother, who had made him ruler of France, Francis forgave her errors.