338 LOUIS RECONCILED WITH THE POPE. [CHAP. IX. Bern, he agreed that Louis XII. should abandon the Council of Pisa, withdraw his pretensions to the Milanese, restore to the Roman See and to the Empire all that had been wrested from them, and engage to enlist no troops in Switzerland without the consent of all the Cantons. Such extravagant concessions were evidently made only to be disavowed; yet the Swiss did not stop to inquire what powers La Trémoille and Wattenwyl had to conclude a treaty which regulated the fate not merely of Dijon and Burgundy, but also of a great part of Christendom. Of the stipulated sum, La Trémoille could pay down only 20,000 crowns; and he gave as hostages for the remainder the mayor and four of the richest citizens of Dijon, together with his own nephew, De Mézières. Yet he advised Louis not to ratify the treaty, and to leave these hostages to their fate! The astonishment and indignation were universal. Maximilian and Henry VIII. denounced the Swiss as villains and traitors, and they were not better received at home, while Louis XII. was at first inclined to put La Trémoille on his trial. At length, however, he accepted the excuses of his general and paid the Swiss 50,000 crowns as an instalment. Thus ended the eventful campaigns of 1513. Before the end of the year Louis XII, reconciled himself with the Pope, and by a treaty signed at the abbey of Corbie,2 October 26th, he agreed to renounce the Council of Pisa and acknowledge that of the Lateran; before which assembly his envoys formally made submission, December 31st, when Leo remitted all the ecclesiastical censures fulminated by his predecessor against the French realm. The coalition, no longer animated by the impetuous spirit of Julius II., was now evidently falling to pieces; and Louis, to further his views upon Milan, sought the friendship of the Emperor and of the Catholic King. Maximilian was conciliated by the offer of Louis's second daughter, Renée, for one of his grandsons, either the Archduke Charles or Ferdinand, to whom Renée was to bring as her portion the French claims on the Milanese duchy. The death of Louis's consort, Anne of Brittany (January, 1514), who had employed herself in effecting this arrangement, opened up new bases for negotiation. Ferdinand now offered Louis, in his own name and that of Maximilian, the hand either of Maximilian's daughter, Margaret, Governess of 1 Michelet characterizes this treaty as "le mensonge par lequel la Trémouille, sans pudeur, attrape les Suisses qui nous allaient prendre Dijon."— Renaissance, p. 184. 2 Dumont, t. iv. pt. i. p. 175. CHAP. IX.] BRITTANY ANNEXED TO FRANCE. 339 the Netherlands, or of his grand-daughter Eleanor of Austria, sister of Charles and Ferdinand. Louis, who was very desirous of an heir, selected Eleanor, and a general truce for a year was provisionally signed, March 13th, with the view of preparing a regular treaty. The death of the French Queen removed the only obstacle which had delayed the marriage of her daughter Claude and Count Francis of Angoulême, whose wedding was solemnized a few months after (May 18th, 1514). Louis now invested them with the Duchy of Brittany, without opposition from the Breton States, although, by the marriage contract of Louis and Anne, Brittany should have fallen to their second child Renée. Queen Claude died in 1524, whereupon Brittany, was not allowed to pass to her first-born son, the Dauphin Francis, but was in 1532 formally and definitively annexed to the French Crown. The war continued in Italy in 1514, but its operations are not worthy to be detailed. Cardona and the Imperial captains resumed hostilities against the Venetians, and the ferocious Frangipani devastated the Friuli and the March of Treviso, inflicting great loss and misery on the inhabitants, but contributing nothing to the issue of the war. The French were driven from the few remaining places which they held in Italy. The citadels. of Milan and Cremona capitulated in June; and on the 26th of August, the fortress of La Lanterna at Genoa, though deemed impregnable, was compelled to surrender. During this period the policy of Leo X. was vacillating and difficult of explanation, except that he followed wherever self-interest led. Leo had as much ambition as Julius II., but without the same nobleness of view or frankness of character. If he aimed like his predecessor at extending the dominion of the Roman See, it was only that he might enrich his family with the spoils; if he entertained the project of freeing Italy from the Barbarians, it was only in order that its various States might be united under the House of Medici. He pursued these schemes with the greatest duplicity, courting and betraying all parties in turn. Leo was much alarmed at the projected marriage between the Archduke Charles and Renée of France, which at no distant period would have cemented France, Spain, Austria, and the Netherlands into one colossal Power; and he used every exertion to prevent its accomplishment. The dissatisfaction of Henry VIII. with the same project, which involved a breach of the contract between Charles and Henry's sister Mary, afforded Leo the means of 340 LOUIS XII. MARRIES LADY MARY. [CHAP. IX. frustrating it. The scheme of an alliance between France and England appears to have originated at Rome between the Pope and the English ambassador Bambridge, Cardinal-Archbishop of York; and it was forwarded in England by Wolsey, now rapidly rising in his master's favour, and already Bishop of Lincoln and Tournay. Communications were opened between the French and English Courts through the Duke of Longueville, who had remained prisoner in England since the Battle of the Spurs. Wolsey, who facilitated the negotiations by persuading Henry to relax his pretensions, except in the case of his own see of Tournay, was rewarded with the Archbishopric of York on the death of Bambridge, who had been poisoned by a servant. The Duke of Longueville proposed a marriage between Louis XII., already engaged to Eleanor, and Mary of England; and Henry VIII., burning to revenge himself on his father-in-law, by whom he had been so often duped, listened eagerly to the proposal. Louis XII. on his side readily entered into a scheme which, while it relieved him from a formidable attack, secured him a youthful and charming bride. He consented to abandon Tournay; and on the 7th August, 1514, three treaties were signed at London. The first of these was an alliance, offensive and defensive, between England and France; the second stipulated a marriage between Louis XII. and the Lady Mary, who was to have a dowry of 400,000 crowns; and by the third Louis engaged to pay Henry 100,000 gold crowns annually for a term of ten years, in satisfaction of the arrears of the debt of Charles VIII. to Henry VII. The previous negotiations between Louis, Ferdinand, and Maximilian were thus upset, and Renée subsequently married Ercole II., Duke of Ferrara. Longueville espoused Mary at Greenwich by proxy for his master, August 13th; and on the ninth of October, Louis solemnized his nuptials in person at Abbeville, whence the new Queen of France was conducted with great pomp to the palace of the Tournelles at Paris. Louis being thus freed from a dangerous enemy, his scheme for the recovery of the Milanese began to revive, and he talked of another expedition into Italy in the following spring. But this he was not destined to accomplish. Although only fiftythree years of age his feeble health had long compelled him to observe a strict regimen, which was completely disturbed by the round of pleasure and dissipation into which his marriage with a youthful, lively, and handsome bride had plunged him. The 1 See Roscoe, Leo X. vol. ii. p. 312 (ed. 1827). Rymer, t. xiii. pp. 413, 423, 430. 2 CHAP. IX.] DEATH OF LOUIS. 341 King's dinner, usually served at eight in the morning, was deferred till noon, and instead of retiring to rest at six in the evening, he was frequently kept up till past midnight. The levity of Mary's conduct found a severe censor in the Countess Claude. All her suite were sent back to England, except a few confidential attendants, among whom was Anne Boleyn, the future wife of Henry VIII.; nor does the English King appear to have resented the proceeding. Louis's altered way of life soon undermined his constitution, and he was seized with a dysentery, which carried him off, January 1st, 1515, after a reign of seventeen years. He died regretted by the French people, and on the whole he deserved their love, for his rule had been mild and paternal, and no King since St. Louis had shown so much sympathy for his poorer subjects. Yet his foreign policy was not only injudicious but also frequently culpable. He betrayed most of his allies, and he gave many proofs of cruelty in his Italian wars, and especially in his treatment of Lodovico Sforza, Duke of Milan. Louis XII. was the first King of France for some centuries who caused his head to be engraved upon the silver coin, whence his gros d'argent, or piece of 10 sols, obtained the name of teston (tester).2 The death of Louis thwarted some ambitious projects of Pope Leo X., who had hoped, with the assistance of that Sovereign, to establish his brother Julian in the Kingdom of Naples, as well as to add Parma, Piacenza, Modena, Reggio, and perhaps all the Ferrarese, to the Florentine dominion of his nephew Lorenzo, thus uniting nearly all Italy under the sway of the House of Medici. When the sinking health of Louis frustrated all expectation of help from that quarter, Leo turned his thoughts towards the realizing of some part of his schemes by the aid of Ferdinand of Aragon and the Emperor. With this view he sent Pietro Bembo to Venice in December, 1514, to detach, if possible, that Republic from the French alliance and reconcile her with the Emperor; but the Venetians rejected the proposed conditions, and remained faithful to France. At the same time Leo concluded a separate treaty with the Swiss, whose Confederacy had this year received its thirteenth Canton (at which number it remained until its dissolution in 1798) by the accession of Appenzell. Such was the state of Italian affairs when the Count of Angoulême succeeded to the French throne with the title of Francis I. Ellis's Orig. Letters, vol. i. p. 115 (1st series). See Paruta, Storia Veneta, lib. ii. p. 135 (ed. 1718). 342 ACCESSION OF FRANCIS I. [CHAP. IX. Born at Cognac, September 12th, 1494, Francis was now in his twenty-first year, but in appearance and manner seemed four or five years older. Handsome, of tall and graceful figure, he excelled in all martial exercises, while a natural elegance of manner recommended him to the fair sex. From his tutor, Arthur Gouffier de Boissy, a nobleman who had imbibed in Italy a love then rare for literature and art, Francis had derived a certain respect for learning, which he manifested by patroniz ing its professors, although his own reading was mostly confined to romances of chivalry. Indeed, all his qualities were showy and superficial: his ruling characteristics were sensuality and a levity amounting to caprice; yet, being brave, talkative, libertine, the French nation saw and loved in him her own image, and fancied that she was about to have a Sovereign of distinguished greatness. After the death of Louis XII. Mary declared that there was no prospect of her giving birth to an heir of the French Crown, and Francis entered upon an inheritance which, according to the scandalous chronicles of the time, he had himself put to hazard by his attempts on the Queen's virtue. Mary shortly after married the handsome and accomplished Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, her professed admirer, who had accompanied her to France, though not named among the embassy. Francis affected great indignation at this match, though in his heart perhaps not displeased at it, since it prevented the English princess from contracting a marriage which might have been disadvantageous to France: he even interceded with Henry in favour of the indiscreet lovers, and the English King forgave without much difficulty the temerity of his favourite Brandon. With the accession of Francis I. began in fact the reign of his mother, Louise of Savoy, to whom, in his pursuit of pleasure, he readily abandoned the cares of government. One of his first acts was to create Louise Duchess of Angoulême and Anjou, and to invest her with some of the prerogatives of royalty. Although but forty years of age, she was already in the twentieth year of her widowhood; and as during the reign of Anne of Brittany she had been kept at a distance from Court, she now resolved to compensate herself for the privations which she had endured. Her warm temper and propensity to gallantry are acknowledged by the gravest writers of the times,' and she saw without 1 Pasquier, Recherches de la France, liv. vi. ch. 11 (t. i. p. 559 sq. ed. 1723); Belcarius, liv. xvii. p. 509. |