Читать книгу The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France - R. Knecht J. - Страница 17

In March 1487 an important treaty was signed at Châteaubriant between the king of France and some sixty Breton nobles, led by Marshal de Rieux. The king promised to supply them with an army of not more than 400 lances and 4000 foot, and to withdraw it once the French rebels left Brittany. Charles also undertook not to attack Duke Francis in person or any town where he might be residing. The Bretons, for their part, agreed to serve in the king’s army. But the Beaujeus were keen to overrun Brittany swiftly before any foreign power could come to its aid. In May a French army, much larger than that envisaged in the treaty, moved into the duchy. By 1 June it had reached Vannes, forcing the dukes of Brittany and Orléans to escape by sea to Nantes. On 19 June the French broke the treaty again by laying siege to Nantes. The operation was directed by Charles VIII from his headquarters at Ancenis. On 6 August, however, the siege was lifted, possibly because word had reached the king of Rieux’s impending betrayal. On 20 February, after returning to Paris, Charles presided over a meeting of the parlement which sentenced Orléans to the confiscation of all his property and also punished his accomplices. From the government’s point of view these were timely confiscations, since it was in urgent need of money.

Early in 1488, Rieux recaptured most of the Breton towns that had fallen into French hands. On 11 March, La Trémoïlle was appointed by Charles as his lieutenant-general in the duchy. Their correspondence survives, revealing the king, though still only eighteen, in full charge of military operations from his headquarters in Anjou: he gathered in supplies, armaments and troops and sent them into Brittany. The decisive phase of the campaign began when La Trémoïlle captured Châteaubriant. Fougères, which was reputed impregnable, fell to the French on 19 July. The Bretons received some armed assistance from the sire d’Albret, but nothing from Henry VII of England or from Maximilian. On 28 July the French won a decisive victory at Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier, capturing the duc d’Orléans along with many Bretons.

The Bretons sued for peace soon afterwards, but a majority of the French king’s council wanted to press on with the war; they reckoned that Brittany would be conquered in a month. The chancellor, however, warned against alienating the Bretons by using violence instead of investigating the legal rights of both sides, and the king, rather surprisingly, accepted this view. Peace was accordingly signed at Le Verger on 20 August. In exchange for the withdrawal of the French army from Brittany, Francis II promised to expel all foreign troops from his own soil. He also agreed not to marry his daughters without Charles VIII’s consent and to hand over four Breton towns to the French as securities, pending an examination of the claims of both parties. A few days later he died.

Anne, the duke’s elder daughter, was only eleven and a half at this time and the question of her guardianship immediately caused friction between the Bretons and the French. Francis II in his will had entrusted his daughters to the custody of Marshal de Rieux and the sire de Lescun; but on 18 September, Charles VIII claimed it for himself by virtue of his kinship with the girls. Matters were complicated further when Anne fell out with Rieux, who was planning to marry her off to Alain d’Albret. While Anne shut herself up in Rennes with Dunois and a force of German mercenaries, Rieux occupied Nantes, seizing the ducal treasury.

The French threat to the independence of Brittany was a matter of serious concern to other European powers, especially Spain, Maximilian of Habsburg and England. They used the respite provided by the Treaty of Le Verger to draw closer together. The Iberian peninsula had recently become more unified as a result of the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon with Isabella of Castile. As each was a monarch in his or her own right, they were known as ‘the Catholic Kings’. But the unification of Spain still had a long way to go. It needed to annex the Moorish kingdom of Granada in the south, and the counties of Cerdagne and Roussillon, not to mention the small kingdom of Navarre in the north. Ferdinand had claimed Roussillon since the accession of Charles VIII, but France did nothing to oblige him as long as she knew that the bulk of his army was engaged in the conquest of Granada. Yet if Ferdinand could not act himself, he could obstruct French designs by using other European powers, such as England. Though Henry VII was indebted to the French government for assistance in gaining his throne, he was unable to resist Ferdinand’s tempting offer of a matrimonial alliance. This was concluded in 1489, when Ferdinand’s daughter Catherine married Arthur Prince of Wales.

Maximilian of Habsburg viewed himself as the heir to Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy (d. 1477), who had built up a powerful state stretching from the North Sea to Switzerland and sandwiched between France in the west and the Holy Roman Empire in the east. He had been succeeded by his daughter Mary, but some of her territories, notably Burgundy, had been forcibly annexed by Louis XI of France. He had wanted to win her by any means for his son, the future Charles VIII, but she would marry only Maximilian who thus acquired his claim to the old Burgundian territories. His efforts to regain those that had been taken by France, however, were hampered by his chronic insolvency and by the need to defend his patrimonial domain in central Europe (Austria and Bohemia) against the Hungarians and Turks. France, for her part, sought to embarrass Maximilian by meddling in the Low Countries. When he attacked France in 1484, the Beaujeus sent troops into Flanders. Some had to be recalled at the start of the Mad War, but in 1487 the French captured Saint-Omer and Thérouanne. In an engagement at Béthune on 27 July they captured the count of Nassau and the duke of Guelders, narrowly missing Maximilian himself. In the following year, Flanders rose in revolt. The inhabitants of Ghent declared themselves subjects of the king of France, while the people of Bruges seized Maximilian; they kept him prisoner for a few months and put to death his Flemish councillors. In May 1488 he regained his freedom as a result of French arbitration, and in 1489 he signed the Peace of Frankfurt.

England kept a close watch on continental events from her vantage point in Calais. In 1485 the Beaujeus had helped to place Henry Tudor on the English throne: they had supplied him with ships, troops and money. He was not ungrateful, but his subjects regarded the independence of Brittany as essential to their security. As the archbishop of Sens reported in 1489: ‘The English, in their king’s presence, told them [the French ambassadors] that Brittany was “little England”. They will send there up to the last man in England in spite of the king.’

On 11 December 1488, France declared war on Brittany. Within a few weeks her troops overran the duchy, occupying Brest, Concarneau and Vannes, but swift as it was, the French campaign was not quite swift enough. Troops sent by Brittany’s allies – Henry VII, Ferdinand of Aragon and Maximilian – soon arrived in the duchy. Encouraged by this help, Breton resistance stiffened; and by May all of Lower Brittany save Brest had reverted to the duchess Anne. Yet the Bretons were by no means united: several nobles went over to the French side during the year, while Rieux tried to win power for himself by isolating Anne from her allies. On 22 July 1489, Maximilian signed a peace treaty with France in which the question of Brittany was referred to a court of arbitration in Avignon chaired by the papal legate, Giuliano della Rovere, who at this time was a notorious Francophile. In October 1490 a truce ended the fighting in Brittany until 1 May 1491.

Rieux now abandoned Albret as a prospective husband for Anne and rallied to the idea of marrying her off to Maximilian, King of the Romans. This project became something of a reality in March 1490 when Maximilian appointed four proxies to marry the duchess. The ceremony, which had the approval of the Breton estates, took place in Rennes cathedral on 19 December. Such a marriage was in breach of the Treaty of Le Verger, which had forbidden the duchess to marry without the consent of the king of France, and gave serious offence to Alain d’Albret who had hoped to marry her himself. As captain of Nantes, he was well placed to influence events in the duchy. He began secret talks with Charles VIII and, on 2 January, offered him the keys of Nantes in return for major concessions which the king was unlikely ever to implement. French troops entered Nantes on 19 March and, after elaborate preparations, Charles made his own entry on Palm Sunday (4 April). As soon as the truce expired the French resumed their military operations in the duchy, capturing Vannes on 19 May and Concarneau on 6 June. La Trémoïlle, who had once again become lieutenant-general, took Redon and Guingamp. Only Rennes and the duchess remained independent.

Charles VIII now staged a coup d’état. Realizing that Louis d’Orléans might help a settlement of the Breton question, he ordered his release from prison in Bourges and pardoned his treason. The duke, for his part, was glad to make his peace with Charles. Much as they disliked this turn of events, the Beaujeus resigned themselves to it. On 4 September, Pierre de Beaujeu (now duc de Bourbon) and Orléans were formally reconciled and, according to Commynes, became inseparable. Meanwhile, the war in Brittany drew to a close. In mid-June 1491, 15,000 French troops encircled Rennes, and Anne, finding herself without money or effective allies, had to seek a settlement. On 27 October she was advised by the Breton estates to marry the king of France, but Anne was only prepared to exchange Rennes for her own personal freedom. Charles, meanwhile, waited patiently. On 15 October, Rennes capitulated. Under a treaty the town was declared to be neutral and handed over to the dukes of Orléans and Bourbon and the prince of Orange, Anne’s freedom being respected.

The king did not ask for Anne’s hand. Instead, he offered her an escort should she wish to join Maximilian and 120,000 livres for her upkeep. He even offered to settle the wages of her foreign auxiliaries. When Anne refused to go into exile, Charles, invoking his rights of suzerain, offered her marriage to a high-ranking French nobleman, but she declared that she would marry only a king or the son of a king. Eventually, under strong pressure from members of her entourage, Anne, who was not yet fifteen, agreed to meet the French king. He came to Rennes on 15 November and, although his first impressions of the duchess were unfavourable, he agreed to take her as his wife. After the betrothal on 17 November, Charles returned to Plessis-lez-Tours.

His conscience was not, it seems, untroubled. In 1483 he had solemnly promised to marry Margaret of Austria, the daughter of Maximilian, and he was afraid that his breach of promise might stain his honour as head of the knightly Order of St Michael. What is more, he seems to have had tender feelings for the princess, who reciprocated them. She wept bitterly on hearing of the king’s marriage and kept his portrait for the rest of her life. When she eventually left France he gave her a valuable chain symbolizing eternal friendship. Another source of anxiety for Charles was the proxy marriage between Anne and Maximilian. Theologians were divided on its validity, though all agreed that an unconsummated marriage could easily be annulled by the church. The necessary dispensation was obtained without difficulty from Pope Innocent VIII.

Charles VIII and Anne of Brittany were married at the chateâu of Langeais on 6 December 1491. Both parties renounced their rights of ownership in Brittany. If Charles predeceased Anne, she was to remarry his successor. If he died without male issue, she was to regain possession of her duchy. On 4 January a Milanese diplomat reported from the French court: ‘There is no sign of rejoicing over this marriage on the part of the king or anyone else.’ Yet Bretons and Frenchmen were evidently pleased to see an end to their conflicts. Anne was welcomed by her French subjects, though doubts regarding the validity of her marriage were not immediately dispelled. They were confirmed by the accidental death of Dunois, one of its architects, shortly before it took place. Doubts were also to be raised by the premature deaths of children born of the marriage.

The Breton marriage, which effectively destroyed Brittany’s independence of France, was naturally viewed with concern by France’s neighbours. However, Maximilian was too preoccupied in central Europe to react forcefully. He was, it seems, far more irritated by the slowness with which the French returned Margaret of Austria and her dowry than by the overthrow of his own Breton marriage. Instead of resorting to arms, he tried to turn international opinion against Charles by branding him as an adulterer. Ferdinand of Aragon also was too busy besieging Granada to react strongly to the Franco-Breton marriage. He gladly accepted an offer from Charles to open serious talks on the future of Roussillon. By contrast, Henry VII of England protested at the marriage and assembled a fleet, but, as a French observer pointed out, this did not necessarily presage an English invasion of France.