Marignano and the Knighting of a King
For so willful and ambitious a ruler as Francis it was hard to give up Milan and, if possible, Naples, the goals of his predecessors. Louis XII had accepted the Alps as the natural frontier of France in the southeast. Francis withdrew that recognition and denied the sovereignty of Maximilian Sforza over Milan. Then, while still negotiating with Sforza, he raised an army and in August 1515 marched into Italy through the narrow, difficult passes of the Alps. At Marignano, about sixteen and a half kilometers from Milan, the French cavalry and infantry met the mercenary Swiss of the Duke of Milan in a slaughter (13 and 14 September 1515) like nothing Italy had seen since the barbarian invasions of southern Europe. In two days ten thousand fighting men fell, by the book's count. French defeat seemed certain until the king himself plunged into the fight and heartened his men by his courage.
It was the custom for a victorious ruler to raise soldiers who had shown extraordinary courage to knighthood on the field. But before doing so Francis knelt before Pierre, Seigneur de Bayard, the famous French knight renowned for his valor, and asked him to knight him. Bayard answered that the king was the knight of knights and needed no one to confer knighthood on him. But the king, then only twenty-one, insisted. Bayard, moved by an old tradition, laid down his sword and said, "My good sword, you will be kept as a glorious relic. You will always be proud to have made so worthy and mighty a king a knight, and I shall draw you only against Turks, Moors and Saracens." The king entered Milan in triumph and sent the deposed duke to France with an honorable pension. After annexing Parma and Piacenza, he made a treaty with Leo X fixing the political rights of the pope and the French king over their Italian possessions. Francis came home the idol of his nation and the hero of Europe. By his courage, and by sharing the hardships of his soldiers in the Italian campaign, he had won their hearts, and though intoxicated by victory, he won all hearts by his gratitude toward those who had fought and so tempered his pride.
The Imperial Election and the Rivalry with Charles
Intoxicated by victory, Francis made a mistake that brought a painful disaster. To win the leadership of the Holy Roman Empire he entered the lists against Charles I, king of Spain and Naples and count of Flanders and Holland. Francis had good reason to fear Charles on the imperial throne, the more so because Charles coveted Lombardy and hence Milan, and his grandfather Maximilian had often marched into Italy to take those lands. Such an empire would leave France encircled by invincible enemies. The contest between Francis and Charles ended in Charles's victory (1519) and troubled Europe for the last years of Francis's life.
Neither man gave up his claims to the end. Even before becoming emperor, Charles counted Burgundy as his own, since his grandmother Mary, daughter of Charles the Bold, had once been its duchess, and he refused to recognize the French king's sovereignty there. Milan was formally an imperial fief. Charles defended Spain's rule over Navarre, while Francis tried to restore it to his vassal Henri d'Albret. Beyond all these pretexts the deeper question was who should rule Europe, Charles or Francis. The Turks would have answered: Suleiman.
War: Navarre, Milan and the Constable of Bourbon
Francis struck first. Knowing Charles was caught in the political revolt in Spain and the religious revolt in Germany, he sent a force to the Pyrenees to retake Navarre. It was beaten, and in this fight Ignatius of Loyola was wounded (1521). Francis sent another army south to defend Milan, but his soldiers mutinied over delayed pay and were scattered by the emperor's mercenaries at La Bicocca, and Milan fell to Charles V (1522). After these defeats the commander of the French forces joined the emperor's army.
Charles, Duke of Bourbon, was head of the powerful house that ruled France from 1589 to 1792. After the king he was the richest man in France, with five hundred nobles in his service, and the last of the barons able to stand against the power now concentrated in the crown. He served Francis faithfully and well and fought bravely at Marignano, but he was no statesman, and his harsh rule in Milan angered its people and turned them against France. When Milan was in financial crisis he spent 100,000 livres of his own there, hoping the king would repay him; the king never did. Francis distrusted and envied his servant, recalled him from Milan, and abused him, rightly or wrongly. In this way he made the house of Bourbon his bitter and irreconcilable enemy.
Charles had married Suzanne of Bourbon, whose mother had willed that if her daughter left no child all her vast estates should pass to the crown. At her death (1521) Suzanne left her estates to her husband. The king and his mother, who thought themselves the nearest heirs of the Bourbon line, claimed them. Charles refused, and the Parlement of Paris ruled against him. To settle the matter peaceably the king proposed that the income of the estates be his until the duke's death; the duke refused. Louise, now fifty-one, even offered herself to the thirty-one-year-old duke in marriage, on condition that his estates be registered as her dowry; he refused that too. Charles V, out of rivalry with Francis, offered the duke his sister Eleanor and promised to support him with his troops against the French king. The duke accepted, fled the frontier by night and took command of the emperor's forces in Italy (1523).
Francis sent Guillaume de Bonnivet after him. His force was crushed at Romagnano, and during the retreat Bayard received a mortal wound (30 April 1524). The victorious duke found him dying under a tree and tried to console him. Bayard replied, "My lord, you pity one who dies doing his duty. But I pity you, who have betrayed your king, your country and your oath." The words shook the duke, but he had left himself no road back. After defeating Bonnivet, Charles of Bourbon made a pact with Charles V and Henry VIII: all three would invade France at once, scatter its armies and divide the country. The duke marched into Provence, which the agreement assigned him, took Aix and besieged Marseille, but, ill prepared, met hard resistance and his army fell apart. He fled to Italy (September 1524).
Pavia
Francis was determined to pursue him and retake Milan, but Bonnivet, whose folly never left him, talked the king out of it and proposed first taking Pavia and then marching on Milan from the south. Francis agreed and laid siege to Pavia (26 August 1524). Here too the defenders held out against the attackers. Over four months the Duke of Bourbon, Charles de Lannoy (viceroy of Naples) and the Marquis of Pescara (husband of Vittoria Colonna) gathered a force of 27,000 fighting men and fell on Francis's army from behind. Caught between the sudden attack and a sortie of the garrison, the French suffered heavy losses in a single day (24 February 1525). As in all his battles, Francis fought in the front line, and with his own sword inflicted such losses on the enemy that he thought victory certain.
But his generalship did not match his valor. His troops broke ranks and placed themselves between their own artillery and the enemy, which silenced the guns that had given France its advantage. His army fell apart, and the Duke of Alençon fled the field with the remnant. Francis tried to rally his scattered men, but only his bravest nobles followed him, and the French cavalry suffered heavily. Wounded in face and legs, he charged on, and even after his horse was killed he went on fighting. His loyal horsemen fell one by one and he was left alone. Enemy soldiers surrounded him and were about to kill him when an officer recognized him, rescued him and took him to Lannoy, who bowed before Francis and respectfully took his sword.
Captive in Madrid
The captive king was held in a fortress near Cremona, and from there, with the Spanish authorities' permission, he wrote his famous letter to his mother, who ruled France in his absence: "Madame, to let you know of my ill fortune, I remind you that nothing is left to me in the world but life and honor. To console you a little I ask leave to send you this letter ... and beg you, as you have never lost prudence and foresight, not to give way now to rashness or violence, for I firmly believe God will not withhold his favor from me." Francis wrote a similar letter to Marguerite, and his sister answered both: "Sire, your loving letters, which reached me and your mother yesterday, so pleased us with news of your health that we think of nothing but thanking God and hoping for better news. In thanks for the divine gift that has set up our 'triple union,' we beg you graciously to accept the purest feelings and prayers of the other two of that union, your humblest and most devoted servants, your sister and your mother." In the pleading letter Francis later sent the emperor in Madrid, Louise and Marguerite had him promise obedience if freed from prison. Francis was not used to hardship.
Victory did not intoxicate Charles. He even refused the splendid celebration his courtiers asked for. They say that on hearing the news he went at once to his bedchamber and knelt before his Creator. He then proposed to Francis and Louise what he thought the fairest terms to impose on a defeated country: (1) France must give up Burgundy and its claims to Flanders, Artois and Italy; (2) restore all the Duke of Bourbon's lands and rights; (3) grant independence to Provence and Dauphiné; (4) return to England all former English holdings such as Normandy, Anjou, Gascony and Guyenne; (5) Francis must ally with the emperor and fight the Turks at his side. Louise replied that France would not yield a handsbreadth of her soil and would defend her land to the last man. By this firm and prudent policy the regent led her countrymen to forgive her earlier sins. She quickly raised an army and posted it where attack was feared. Then, to turn Charles's attention elsewhere, she asked Suleiman the Magnificent to put off his campaign against Persia and march west. How far this moved the sultan we do not know, but in 1526 Suleiman marched into Hungary and struck the Christian forces so terrible a blow at Mohács that an attack by Charles on France at that moment would have been counted treason to Christendom. Louise also warned Henry VIII and Clement VII of the danger to the pope and to Britain that Charles's growth might bring.
Since Henry hesitated to cooperate with France against Charles, Louise bought a military alliance by granting him 2,000,000 crowns (30 August 1525). By this feminine policy she brought Charles to his senses and held back his ambition.
After Louise, Lannoy and the emperor agreed, the captive king was taken to Spain. When Francis reached Valencia (July 1525) Charles wrote him a courteous letter, but his chivalry toward his prisoner went no further. Francis was shut in a small room of an old fortress near Madrid. His only freedom was now and then to ride a mule around the fortress under heavy guard of armed horsemen. He asked to meet Charles, but Charles ignored it, to force a heavy ransom. Louise asked to meet him, but Charles, thinking he could bargain better with his prisoner, refused. Louise went further in her efforts for Francis's release and informed Charles that if the emperor wished she was ready to give him her daughter Marguerite, now a widow. But Charles preferred to marry Isabella, daughter of the king of Portugal, who brought a dowry of 900,000 crowns. After two months of fear and dread in the prison near Madrid, Francis fell gravely ill. The Spanish people, grieved at the emperor's treatment of him, prayed in the churches for the French king's recovery. Charles himself, fearing to lose his political hostage, prayed too. He visited Francis, said he was ready to free him soon, and allowed Marguerite to go to Spain and comfort her brother.
Marguerite sailed from Aigues-Mortes to Barcelona (27 August 1525) and crossed half the breadth of Spain to Madrid in a slow, uncomfortable litter. On the road she consoled herself by writing verse and sending warm and tender messages to her brother. In one she wrote, "It is an honor to me to scatter the ashes of my bones in your service." When she reached his bedside he seemed to be recovering, but on 25 September the illness grew worse, he lost consciousness and all thought him dying. A priest administered the sacrament; Marguerite and all his attendants knelt and raised their hands in prayer. After a while Francis came to and the illness eased. Marguerite stayed a month with him and then went to Toledo, hoping to win from the emperor the order for his release. But Charles, who had learned of the military alliance between France and England and was angry at Louise's boldness, ignored her plea.
The Treaty of Madrid
Francis had one more weapon, though using it might bind him for life. After sending Marguerite back to France, he abdicated in favor of his eldest son (November 1525) and named his mother, Louise, and after her his sister Marguerite, regents of France for the eight-year-old Francis II, as the book calls him. Charles suddenly realized that his royal prisoner had no crown or property to give in return for freedom. But the king's moral courage did not match his courage in battle. He soon withdrew his decision and on 14 January 1526 signed the Treaty of Madrid, whose terms were like the earlier ones and harder. To guarantee his loyalty to it, Francis was to leave his two eldest sons with Charles as hostages. He even declared himself ready to marry Eleanor, Charles's sister, the former queen of Portugal, and swore that if he broke the treaty he would return to his prison in Spain.
But on 22 August 1525 he had already given his aides a written promise "to refuse to sign any treaty or make any concession unworthy of him and the crown of France," and on the eve of signing the Treaty of Madrid he told his French advisers that he signed "under pressure, out of necessity and exhaustion from long captivity, and that the terms were in his eyes without validity or worth." On 17 March 1526 Lannoy, commander of Charles's army, handed Francis over to Marshal Lautrec in a boat on the Bidassoa, which divides the Spanish town of Irun from the French Hendaye, and took in exchange the king's two sons, the Dauphin Francis and Prince Henry. After bidding his sons farewell with tears in his eyes, Francis hurried onto French soil, mounted a horse and cried, "I am king again!" He then rode to Bayonne, where Louise and Marguerite waited. At Bordeaux and Cognac he spent three months in exercise to recover his strength, and some days in the company of the women he favored. Had he not spent a year of his life like a monk in seclusion? Louise, now cold toward the Countess of Châteaubriant, brought him an eighteen-year-old lady-in-waiting of her own household, Anne de Pisseleu, who, as Louise wished, charmed the king's greedy heart (I soften the wording). To keep up appearances Francis married her to Jean de Brosse, made him Duke of Étampes and her Duchess of Étampes, and when Jean retired to a distant corner of Brittany, a smile of satisfaction crossed the king's face.