Читать книгу The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France - R. Knecht J. - Страница 33

By January 1515, France had lost all her Italian conquests. The house of Sforza held Milan in the person of Massimiliano Sforza, Genoa was an independent republic, and the kingdom of Naples belonged to Aragon. Francis I was expected to regain the ground lost by his immediate predecessors and to avenge the defeats recently suffered by French arms. Veterans of the Italian wars whose reputations had been dented and young noblemen anxious to show their valour looked to him for satisfaction. His youth and powerful physique seemed perfectly suited to the part they expected him to play. But before he could launch a new Italian campaign, Francis needed to neutralize his more powerful neighbours. Charles of Habsburg, a shy and unprepossessing youth of fifteen, was the son of Archduke Philip the Fair and the grandson of the Emperor Maximilian and Ferdinand of Aragon. On his father’s death in 1506 he had inherited the territories of the house of Burgundy (Franche-Comté, Luxemburg, Brabant, Flanders, Holland, Zeeland, Hainault and Artois) as well as a claim to the duchy of Burgundy, which France had annexed in 1477. A Burgundian by birth and upbringing, Charles longed to rebuild his mutilated inheritance, hoping eventually to be buried in Dijon cathedral. He was encouraged by his aunt Margaret of Savoy, who ruled the Low Countries in his name. Shortly after Francis’s coronation, ambassadors from Charles came to Compiègne with their master’s homage for Flanders and other fiefs. An alliance soon followed: under the Treaty of Paris (24 March 1515), Charles was promised the hand of Louis XII’s infant daughter Renée.

Henry VIII, king of England, a robust young man of twenty-four, was anxious not to be outshone by the new king of France, yet did not wish to pick a quarrel with him at this stage. Having recently tasted victory on the Continent, he was content to enjoy himself at home and leave policy-making to his chief minister, Thomas Wolsey. On 5 April the Anglo-French Treaty of London was given a new lease of life, Francis promising to honour his predecessor’s debt to England of one million gold écus over ten years.

In Italy, Francis’s diplomacy was less successful. The Venetians agreed to help him militarily in return for assistance against the emperor, and the Genoese reverted to their allegiance to France in exchange for local concessions, but other powers proved less co-operative. The Swiss, in particular, had not forgotten Louis XII’s refusal to ratify the Treaty of Dijon; nor were they prepared to surrender territories in Lombardy which Sforza had ceded to them or the pension they received from him in return for their armed protection. Sforza was also supported by Ferdinand of Aragon and Pope Leo X. Ferdinand did not wish to see any change in the Italian situation which might endanger his hold on Naples, while Leo was anxious to avoid a repetition of the events of 1494 which had led to the overthrow of his Medici kinsmen in Florence. He was also keen to retain the towns of Parma and Piacenza which Sforza had ceded to him. As for the emperor, being at war with the Venetians, he was not prepared to treat with their ally the king of France.

The most urgent military task facing Francis I in 1515 was to raise enough infantry. France had the largest standing army in Christendom, but it consisted almost entirely of cavalry. By the early sixteenth century wars could no longer be won by cavalry alone, as had been demonstrated by the victories of the Swiss infantry over the Burgundians in the late fifteenth century. But infantry of good fighting quality was not easily raised. The king could rely to some extent on native volunteers, called aventuriers, but the best infantry were foreign mercenaries. Until 1510, France had been able to hire the Swiss, but, as they were now employed by the enemy, he had to look elsewhere. In 1515 he raised 23,000 German landsknechts, who were less disciplined than the Swiss.

Mercenaries made heavy demands on the royal purse. The main source of royal revenue was the taille which fell on commoners, especially the peasantry. The king also asked his subjects for a contribution of 2,900,000 livres in celebration of his accession, but this took a long time to collect. Francis thus had to resort to various expedients: his gold plate was melted down, forced loans were exacted from the ‘good towns’, financial officials advanced loans to the crown, and parts of the royal domain were mortgaged. By such means the king managed to create a sizeable army, which in April began to assemble near Lyon and Grenoble. It consisted of about 6000 cavalry and 31,500 infantry, but its pride was the artillery, comprising some sixty large cannon and many lighter pieces.

On 26 June, Francis informed the ‘good towns’ of his imminent departure for Italy and of his mother’s regency in his absence. At the same time he obtained from his wife Claude formal cession of her rights to Milan. Next day the king left Amboise for Lyon, where a spectacular entry awaited him on 12 July. Francis spent nearly three weeks there putting the finishing touches to his invasion plan. On 15 July he appointed his mother as regent, but her powers were limited as the chancellor accompanied the king to Italy, taking the Great seal with him. The enemy, meanwhile, prepared to bar the king’s way. They assumed that he would cross the Alps by way of either the Mont Genèvre or Mont Cenis pass. On 17 July the duke of Milan, the pope, the king of Aragon and the emperor signed a league for the defence of Italy. As the Swiss had no cavalry, the pope sent 1500 horse under Prospero Colonna to Piedmont. Francis had either to fight his way past the Swiss or by-pass them. He decided to use the Col de Larche, a pass frequented only by peasants, and sent a force of sappers ahead of the army to bridge torrents and remove obstacles. On 11 August the vanguard under Bourbon crossed the mountains and, entering the plain of Piedmont, surprised and captured the papal commander Colonna and his men at Villafranca. The Swiss thus lost their cavalry support.

The king of France, in the meantime, set off with the rest of the army. He found the crossing of the Alps arduous. The descent into Italy was so precipitous that many horses and mules fell into ravines, while cannon had to be dismantled and lowered on ropes. On reaching the plain, Francis advanced rapidly eastward. The Swiss, meanwhile, fell back to Lake Maggiore and Francis agreed to negotiate with them through his uncle, René of Savoy. A treaty was drafted, but a new round of talks began at Gallarate. The king, meanwhile, drew closer to Milan, hoping to effect a junction with the Venetian army under d’Alviano. On 9 September, Francis received the text of a treaty signed at Gallarate. The Swiss agreed to give up their Milanese territories, except Bellinzona, in return for a subsidy of one million gold écus of which 150,000 were to be paid in cash immediately. Sforza was to surrender Milan in exchange for the duchy of Nemours. Francis was to be allowed to raise troops in Switzerland in return for a subsidy to each canton. He immediately obtained the sum of 150,000 écus from his entourage and sent it to Gallarate. Meanwhile, he encamped at Marignano (now Melegnano), a village situated between Milan and Pavia.

However, not all the Swiss wanted peace. While the men of Berne, Fribourg and Solothurn were keen to go home, those from other cantons refused to give up the fruits of their recent victories without a fight. They were encouraged by Cardinal Schiner, a bitter enemy of France, who made a stirring speech in Milan on 13 September. A minor skirmish with French scouts outside the city precipitated an armed decision. About midday the Swiss, most of them barefoot, hatless and without armour, swarmed out of the city. Their artillery consisted of only eight small guns; Schiner and about 200 papal horse followed in the rear. Hoping to catch the French by surprise, the Swiss marched briskly and in silence, but inevitably they threw up a cloud of dust.

A party of French sappers, spotting the cloud, alerted the French camp, which was soon ready for action. As usual, the Swiss advanced in an echelon of three compact squares of 7000 or 8000 pikemen each. The first crossed a ditch protecting the French guns and scattered the infantry, leaving the gunners isolated. The landsknechts then moved forward, and two gigantic squares of pikemen collided. Once again the Swiss broke through. A counterattack by the French cavalry was thrown back. The fighting continued until midnight, when the moon vanished, plunging the field into complete obscurity. The two armies then separated, the French responding to shrill trumpet calls and the Swiss to the deep bellowing of their war-horns. Francis used the interval to redeploy his army. Duprat, meanwhile, wrote to Lautrec, instructing him not to hand over the money to the Swiss at Gallarate. When battle was resumed at dawn, the Swiss adapted their tactics to the new French formation. Instead of advancing in echelon, they engaged the entire French line. Braving the fire of the French guns, they forced back the landsknechts in the centre, but were themselves driven back by Francis and the gendarmerie. On the left, however, the Swiss overwhelmed the French guns, scattered the infantry and lunged into the landsknechts. The French left was about to collapse when the Venetian cavalry arrived, shouting: ‘San Marco! San Marco!’ Their spirits revived, the French mounted a counterattack. By 11 AM the Swiss had been routed.

Marshal Trivulzio, a veteran of seventeen battles, described Marignano as a ‘battle of giants’ beside which the others were but ‘children’s games’. The gravediggers reported burying 16,500 corpses, but the exact number of French and Swiss losses is not known. Many French noblemen lost their lives; their bodies were embalmed and sent back to their estates for burial. Reviewing the battle, Francis singled out for praise Galiot de Genouillac, whose guns had slowed down the Swiss attack, and Pierre du Terrail, seigneur de Bayard. The king allegedly crowned his victory by having himself knighted by Bayard on the battlefield as a tribute to his bravery.

The immediate result of Marignano was the capitulation of Milan on 16 September. Sforza gave up its castle on 6 October and retired to France, where he died in May 1530. Francis entered Milan in triumph on 11 October and stayed there till the end of the month, when he entrusted the city to Bourbon and Duprat. The latter was appointed chancellor of Milan in addition to his existing office, and the Senate originally set up by Louis XII was revived. The citizens were asked to pay a huge fine as a punishment for their rebellion and to surrender hostages.

No sixteenth-century ruler could afford to alienate the Swiss. As Charles V once said, the ‘secret of secrets’ was to win them over. In October, therefore, Francis sent an embassy to thank the cantons that had pulled out of the war and to seek a settlement with the others. On 7 November the Treaty of Geneva was signed with ten cantons, but only eight ratified it; the rest offered their services to the emperor.

No one was more upset by Francis’s victory than Pope Leo X, who had backed the wrong horse; but he had nothing to fear as Francis needed his friendship. Recent history had shown that a king of France could not establish a lasting foothold in Italy without papal co-operation. Despite his victory, Francis’s position in Italy remained precarious. He was faced by the possibility of a coalition between the hostile Swiss cantons, the emperor and England. This threat made it all the more urgent for Francis to gain the pope’s friendship, or at least his neutrality. Thus a treaty was soon arranged: in exchange for Parma and Piacenza, the king gave the duchy of Nemours to Leo’s brother Giuliano, along with a fat pension, and another pension to the pope’s nephew Lorenzo. This, however, was only the first step. The two rulers needed to discuss other matters, notably the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (1438) whose abrogation the papacy had long demanded. They arranged to meet in Bologna.

Francis reached Bologna on 11 December, three days after the pope. Both resided at the Palazzo Pubblico. Though shrouded in secrecy, their talks were, it seems, much concerned with Italian affairs. Leo may have hinted at the possibility of Francis being given Naples on the death of Ferdinand of Aragon in return for a promise of French aid to the Medici in Florence. Agreement was also reached on the need for a crusade, Francis being allowed to levy a clerical tenth, but the most important decision taken at Bologna was to substitute a Concordat for the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges.