first battlefield; Charles VIII. was summoned thither by Lodovico Il Moro, tyrant of Milan, involved in a quarrel with The wars in Italy. his rival, Ferdinand II. of Aragon. The Aragonese had snatched the kingdom of Naples from the French house of Anjou, whose claims Louis XI. had inherited in 1480. To safeguard himself in the rear Charles VIII. handed over Roussillon and Cerdagne (Cerdaña) to Ferdinand the Catholic (that is to say, all the profits of Louis XI.’s policy); gave enormous sums of money to Henry VII. of England; and finally, by the treaty of Senlis ceded Artois and Franche-Comté to Maximilian of Austria. After these fool’s bargains the paladin set out for Naples in 1494. His journey was long and triumphant, and his return precipitate; indeed it very nearly ended in a disaster at Fornovo, owing to the first of those Italian holy leagues which at the least sign of friction were ready to turn against France. At the age of twenty-eight, however, Charles VIII. died without issue (1498).
The accession of his cousin, Louis of Orleans, under the title
of Louis XII., only involved the kingdom still further in this
Italian imbroglio. Louis did indeed add the fief of
Orleans to the royal domain and hastened to divorce
Jeanne of France in order to marry Anne, the widow
Louis XII.
(1498–1515).
of his predecessor, so that he might keep Brittany.
But he complicated the Naples affair by claiming Milan in consideration
of the marriage of his grandfather, Louis of Orleans,
to Valentina, daughter of Gian Galeazzo Visconti, duke of Milan.
In 1499, appealed to by Venice, and encouraged by his favourite,
Cardinal d’Amboise (who was hoping to succeed Pope Alexander
VI.), and also by Cesare Borgia, who had lofty ambitions in
Italy, Louis XII. conquered Milan in seven months and held
it for fourteen years; while Lodovico Sforza, betrayed by his
Swiss mercenaries, died a prisoner in France. The kingdom
of Naples was still left to recapture; and fearing to be thwarted
by Ferdinand of Aragon, Louis XII. proposed to this master
of roguery that they should divide the kingdom according to
the treaty of Granada (1500). But no sooner had Louis XII.
assumed the title of king of Naples than Ferdinand set about
despoiling him of it, and despite the bravery of a Bayard and a
Louis d’Ars, Louis XII., being also betrayed by the pope, lost
Naples for good in 1504. The treaties of Blois occasioned a
vast amount of diplomacy, and projects of marriage between
Claude of France and Charles of Austria, which came to nothing
but served as a prelude to the later quarrels between Bourbons
and Habsburgs.
It was Pope Julius II. who opened the gates of Italy to the horrors of war. Profiting by Louis XII.’s weakness and the emperor Maximilian’s strange capricious character, this martial pope sacrificed Italian and religious interests alike in order to re-establish the temporal power of the papacy. Jealous of Venice, at that time the Italian state best provided with powers of expansion, and unable to subjugate it single-handed, Julius succeeded in obtaining help from France, Spain and the Empire. The league of Cambrai (1508) was his finest diplomatic achievement. But he wanted to be sole master of Italy, so in order to expel the French “barbarians” whom he had brought in, he appealed to other barbarians who were far more dangerous—Spaniards, Germans and Swiss—to help him against Louis XII., and stabbed him from behind with the Holy League of 1511.
Weakened by the death of Cardinal d’Amboise, his best
counsellor, Louis XII. tried vainly in the assembly of Tours
and in the unsuccessful council of Pisa to alienate the
French clergy from a papacy which was now so little
worthy of respect. But even the splendid victories
Louis XII. and
Julius II.
of Gaston de Foix could not shake that formidable
coalition; and despite the efforts of Bayard, La Palice and
La Trémoille, it was the Church that triumphed. Julius II.
died in the hour of victory; but Louis XII. was obliged to
evacuate Milan, to which he had sacrificed everything, even
France itself, with that political stupidity characteristic of the
first Valois. He died almost immediately after this, on the
1st of January 1515, and his subjects, recognizing his thrift,
his justice and the secure prosperity of the kingdom, forgot the
seventeen years of war in which they had not been consulted,
and rewarded him with the fine title of Father of his People.
As Louis XII. left no son, the crown devolved upon his cousin
and son-in-law the count of Angoulême, Francis I. No sooner
king, Francis, in alliance with Venice, renewed the
chimerical attempts to conquer Milan and Naples;
also cherishing dreams of his own election as emperor
Francis I.
(1515–1547).
and of a partition of Europe. The heroic episode of
Marignano, when he defeated Cardinal Schinner’s Swiss troops
(13–15 of September 1515), made him master of the duchy of Milan
and obliged his adversaries to make peace. Leo X., Julius II.’s
successor, by an astute volte-face exchanged Parma and the
Concordat for a guarantee of all the Church’s possessions, which
meant the defeat of French plans (1515). The Swiss signed
the permanent peace which they were to maintain until the
Revolution of 1789; while the emperor and the king of Spain
recognized Francis II.’s very precarious hold upon Milan. Once
more the French monarchy was pulled up short by the indignation
of all Italy (1518).
The question now was how to occupy the military activity
of a young, handsome, chivalric and gallant prince, “ondoyant
et divers,” intoxicated by his first victory and his
tardy accession to fortune. This had been hailed with
joy by all who had been his comrades in his days of
Character of
Francis I.
difficulty; by his mother, Louise of Savoy, and his
sister Marguerite; by all the rough young soldiery; by the
nobles, tired of the bourgeois ways of Louis XI. and the patriarchal
simplicity of Louis XII.; and finally by all the aristocracy
who expected now to have the government in their own hands.
So instead of heading the crusade against the Turks, Francis
threw himself into the electoral contest at Frankfort, which
resulted in the election of Charles V., heir of Ferdinand the
Catholic, Spain and Germany thus becoming united. Pope
Leo X., moreover, handed over three-quarters of Italy to the
new emperor in exchange for Luther’s condemnation, thereby
kindling that rivalry between Charles V. and the king of France
which was to embroil the whole of Europe throughout half a
century (1519–1559), from Pavia to St Quentin.
The territorial power of Charles V., heir to the houses of Burgundy, Austria, Castile and Aragon, which not only arrested the traditional policy of France but hemmed her in on every side; his pretensions to be the head of Christendom; his ambition to restore the house of Rivalry of Francis I. and Charles V. Burgundy and the Holy Roman Empire; his grave and forceful intellect all rendered rivalry both inevitable and formidable. But the scattered heterogeneity of his possessions, the frequent crippling of his authority by national privileges or by political discords and religious quarrels, his perpetual straits for money, and his cautious calculating character, almost outweighed the advantages which he possessed in the terrible Spanish infantry, the wealthy commerce of the Netherlands, and the inexhaustible mines of the New World. Moreover, Francis I. stirred up enmity everywhere against Charles V., and after each defeat he found fresh support in the patriotism of his subjects. Immediately after the treaty of Madrid (1526), which Francis I. was obliged to sign after the disaster at Pavia Defeat at Pavia and treaty of Madrid. and a period of captivity, he did not hesitate between his honour as a gentleman and the interests of his kingdom. Having been unable to win over Henry VIII. of England at their interview on the Field of the Cloth of Gold, he joined hands with Suleiman the Magnificent, the conqueror of Mohács; and the Turkish cavalry, crossing the Hungarian Puszta, made their way as far as Vienna, while the mercenaries of Charles V., under the constable de Bourbon, were reviving the saturnalia of Alaric in the sack of Rome (1527). In Germany, Francis I. assisted the Catholic princes to maintain their political independence, though he did not make the capital he might have made of the reform movement. Italy remained faithful to the vanquished in spite of all, while even Henry VIII. of England, who only needed bribing, and Wolsey, accessible to flattery, took part in the temporary coalition. Thus did France, menaced with disruption, embark upon a course of action imposed
