The League of Cognac and the Sack of Rome
When the terms of the Treaty of Madrid became known, many rose against Charles. The German Protestants feared that it strengthened their enemy; Italy opposed his claims to Lombardy. Clement VII forgave Francis his perjury and, together with France, Milan, Genoa, Florence and Venice, made a defensive league (22 May 1526) known as the League of Cognac. Charles called Francis a "coward," warned that unless he returned to his Spanish prison he would throw his sons into one, and gave his commanders full freedom to subdue Clement.
The imperial army, made up of German and Spanish soldiers, invaded Italy and broke over the walls of Rome (Charles, Duke of Bourbon, was killed in the assault), sacking the city as even the Goths and Vandals had not. The invaders killed 4,000 Romans, by the book's count, and shut Pope Clement VII in the Castel Sant'Angelo. The emperor, himself in Spain, assured an angry and frightened Europe that his troops had disobeyed his orders. Yet his agents held Clement prisoner from 6 May to 7 December 1527 and extracted 863,000 crowns from the bankrupt pope. Clement appealed to Francis and Henry VIII. Francis sent Marshal Lautrec with an army to Italy, but French troops sacked Pavia in revenge for its resistance two years before, and so made the Italians doubt the friendship of their French allies.
Lautrec passed by Rome, besieged Naples and starved its people. But Francis had offended Andrea Doria, commander of Genoa's fleet, who went over to the emperor and by recalling his ships broke the blockade. From then on it was French soldiers, not Neapolitans, who starved. Lautrec himself died and his army dissolved (1528).
The Comedy of Kings and the Ladies' Peace
The comedy of kings could not ease the people's suffering. When the heralds of Francis and Henry reached Burgos to declare war, Charles told them: "The King of France is in no position to declare war on me; he is my prisoner ... By trampling on his obligations, which led me to sign the Treaty of Madrid, he acted dishonorably. If he will not admit this, I shall impose my will on him by duel." Francis at once accepted the challenge and called Charles a "liar." Charles fixed the place and asked Francis to choose the date. But the French nobles delayed the return of Charles's envoys, and by this prudent act left duels to the heroes of ancient Greece. Nations had grown great enough that the duels of rulers, with mercenaries still playing a basic role in Renaissance Italy, could not settle their economic or political disputes.
In the end women taught kings the secrets of statecraft and made them peace. Louise appealed to Margaret of Austria, regent of the Netherlands, writing that Francis for his children's sake was ready to give up all claims to Flanders, Artois and Italy and to pay 2,000,000 crowns for his sons' freedom, but would never give up Burgundy. Margaret advised her nephew to let his claim to Burgundy rest and to waive the claims of the late Duke of Bourbon. On 3 August 1529 the two women, with their advisers, signed at Cambrai the "Ladies' Peace." The ransom was raised from French trade, industry and people and from the princes of the court, and the French princes, after four years of captivity in Spain, came home and told stories of the injustice and oppression of the Spanish officials, which angered Francis and the French. After Louise died in 1531 and Margaret of the Netherlands in 1530, the kings readied themselves to resume war.
Alliances: The Pope, the Turks and the Corsair
Francis looked everywhere for help and asked money of Henry VIII, who had left him alone when the treaty of Cambrai was signed. Henry, who had met Charles's protests over his "divorce" and bore him a grudge, declared himself ready to back France without reserve. For a year Francis also negotiated an alliance with the German Protestants, the Ottoman Turks and the pope. But Clement VII, hesitant and irresolute in foreign policy, at last made terms with Charles and set the imperial crown on his head. Charles V was the last Holy Roman Emperor crowned by a pope. Clement, even as he did so, kept working to improve relations with Francis, who had carried his claims into Italy, and gave his niece Catherine de' Medici to Francis's son Henri. The king of France and the pope met at Marseille (28 October 1533), and the pope performed the marriage rite with his own hand. A year later Clement VII died, without having made clear his political course.
The emperor, who at thirty-five had left youth behind, bore the responsibilities he had taken on with patience and composure. He was deeply angered to hear that the vizier of Suleiman the Magnificent had told Archduke Ferdinand that the Turks besieged Vienna in 1529 at the request of Francis, Louise and Clement VII in order to ease pressure from the emperor. Francis had allied with Khair ad-Din Barbarossa, who harried Christian merchants in the Mediterranean, raided Christian ports and carried off captives into slavery. Charles raised another army and fleet, took Tunis (1535), freed 10,000 Christian slaves, and let his unpaid soldiers sack the city and kill its Muslim inhabitants. After garrisoning Bône and La Goulette, he returned to Rome (5 April 1536) as the victorious defender of Christendom against Islam and the French king.
Nice, Aigues-Mortes and a Chivalrous Interlude
Francis meanwhile renewed his claim to Milan and, to open a road to Italy, occupied the Duchy of Savoy. Charles, angered again, delivered a rousing speech before the new pope, Paul III, and the college of cardinals. He spoke of his peaceful efforts, of the French king's breaking of the treaties of Madrid and Cambrai, and of his alliance with the Church's enemies in Germany and with the foes of Christianity in Turkey and Africa, and challenged Francis again to a duel: "Let us not waste our subjects' blood, but settle our differences by duel, with any weapon he himself chooses ... so that afterward the Christian forces of Germany, Spain and France may together bring the Turks to their knees and cleanse Christendom of every heresy." By this speech Charles drew the pope to his side, but no one welcomed his offer to duel Francis. It was for others to settle the quarrels of the French king and the emperor. Charles invaded Provence with 50,000 soldiers (25 July 1536), intending to attack the French by advancing up the Rhône, but Anne de Montmorency, commander of the French army, ordered his weak and exhausted men to burn on their retreat whatever might serve the enemy. Soon lack of money and food forced Charles to leave. Pope Paul III, wanting Charles free of France in order to face the Turks and the Lutherans, summoned the two rivals to Nice and made them sign a ten-year truce (17 June 1538).
A month later Eleanor, wife of Francis and sister of Charles, brought the French king and the emperor together at Aigues-Mortes. When they met, humanity prevailed over rank, office and enmity. Charles knelt and embraced Francis's youngest children, and Francis gave the emperor a precious diamond ring engraved "in memory of the oath of friendship." Charles in turn hung his golden collar on Francis's neck. Then king and emperor went to church for Mass, and the crowd who had gathered cried out in excitement: "Long live the emperor! Long live the king!"
When the people of Ghent rose against Charles (1539) and, with the citizens of Bruges and Ypres, declared obedience to the French king, Francis faced a hard temptation. When Charles found the rebels had cut off his road by sea, he asked leave to cross France to put them down in Flanders, and Francis allowed it. As the emperor crossed, the king's counselors and courtiers urged Francis to press him to cede Milan to the Duke of Orléans. Francis answered them, "When you have shown mercy to someone, you must not take back your generosity to the end." His courtiers opposed Charles's passage, and the court fool Triboulet wrote Charles's name in his list of madmen, since, he said, "if Charles crosses France he is crazier than a chicken." The king asked, "What will you say if I let him cross?" "Then I will strike out his name and write yours in its place." Francis allowed Charles to pass with his troops and ordered every town on his route to receive him with honors befitting an emperor.
Crépy and the Verdict on a Reign
The unstable friendship ended when Charles's soldiers at Pavia seized Francis's envoys, carrying a message of friendship to Suleiman (July 1541). Barbarossa was then raiding the Italian coast. Charles sailed from Majorca to Africa to subdue him but a violent storm forced him back to Spain. His fortune was now waning. His young wife, whom he dearly loved, died (1539), and Charles fell ill. In 1542 Francis declared war on him to take Milan. The French king now had on his side Sweden, Denmark, Guelders, Cleves, Scotland, the Ottoman Turks and the pope; only Henry VIII supported Charles, and the Cortes of Spain refused extra war funds. The Ottoman and French fleets besieged the Italian port of Nice, part of the empire (1543), without result. Yet Francis allowed Barbarossa and his Muslim soldiers to winter at Toulon, where they openly sold Christian slaves. The emperor weathered the crisis with patience, put his tangled affairs in order, won the pope to neutrality, and won Philip of Hesse to his side by overlooking his bigamy. He conquered Cleves, and with the help of his English allies pressed Francis so hard that the French king had to bow to him, and the Peace of Crépy was signed (18 September 1544). The king of France gave up his claims to Flanders, Artois and Naples, and Charles in turn dropped his hope of taking Burgundy; a Habsburg princess was to marry a son of Francis, bringing Milan as her dowry. (In 1525 many of these terms could have been had peacefully.) After beating Francis, Charles gathered all his forces against the Protestants of Mühlberg. Titian painted his face at this time, marked by the pain of the years.
French greatness vanished with the decline of Francis's power, but he had lost nothing except honor and reputation. By trampling on the tradition of chivalry he saved his country's independence. While Francis knelt before Charles, the Turks resumed their attack on the empire, and their attacks let Francis stand up to a Charles who, without opposition, might have spread the rule of the Spanish Inquisition to Flanders, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany and Italy. Francis came to the throne when France enjoyed prosperity and peace and left a bankrupt country on the eve of another war. A month before his death, even as he swore friendship and loyalty to Charles, he gave the German Protestants 200,000 crowns to strengthen them. Francis, and Charles with some moderation, agreed with Machiavelli that rulers, responsible for guarding the country and the lives of its people, may trample on the moral standards they expect their subjects to keep. The French may have forgiven Francis his sins in war, but the luxury of his life and court had worn the people out. Even by 1535 he no longer had the people's affection.
The Last Years
Francis now consoled himself with the signs of beauty. He spent his last years at Fontainebleau, which Italian artists had adorned, gathering about him a small band of young women and enjoying their charm (I soften the wording). In 1538 an abscess formed on his small... a growth that left him with a stammer. Believing it a result of venereal disease, he took mercury pills, on Barbarossa's advice according to the book, without effect. The chronic, foul ulcer broke his spirit, dimmed his sharp eyes, and led him to a fear of God from which he had always run. Fear gripped him so that he supervised the cooking of his own food, afraid that some courtiers, hoping for higher posts under his successor, would poison him. He even spoke bitterly of the growing influence and popularity of his son, who already appointed his own men to offices and waited impatiently to take power. Before his death he called his only heir to his bedside and urged him to beware of women's sway, for Henri was deeply in love with Diane de Poitiers. After a hasty and brief confession of his sins the king drew a painful breath and waited for death. Francis, Duke of Guise, standing at the door, murmured to those in the next room, "The old rake is leaving the world." Whispering the name of Jesus, Francis died. He was fifty-three, by the book's count, and had ruled France thirty-two years. France was weary of his long reign. But after his death the French forgave his sins, because he had sinned with dignity, loved beauty and been the living image of France.
The Death of Marguerite
That same year Henry VIII died, and two years later Marguerite. She, long parted from her brother, did not know that death was near him. When at the convent of Angoulême she heard of his illness, she fainted and cried out, "Whoever brings me word of my brother the king's recovery, though he be weary, worn, filthy and muddy, I shall embrace him and cover him with kisses; and if he needs a bed ... I shall give him my bed and sleep on the floor myself in thanks for the good news he has brought." She at once sent messengers to Paris, who on their return falsely said the king was well. But the tears of a nun revealed the truth. After learning of her brother's death, Marguerite stayed forty days in the convent and sang hymns with the nuns.
Back at Pau and Nérac she took up austerities. After many years of courage and her half-Protestant faith, she found comfort at last in the enchanting rites of Catholicism. She turned from the Calvinism then spreading in the south of France and returned to the faith of her childhood. In September 1549, after seeing a comet in the sky, she was seized by a high fever, and it carried her off, worn and weakened by many sufferings. Years before her death she had composed a poem that seems to show her even then longing to be freed from the miseries of this world and to be united with her Creator. In it she asks God when the day will come that she awaits so eagerly, when by his mercy she will come to him; she begs him not to let her pain of parting go unwept, and to grant her his dearest gift, the sweet gift of eternal sleep.