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Rh first battlefield; Charles VIII. was summoned thither by Lodovico Il Moro, tyrant of Milan, involved in a quarrel with

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

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

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

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

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

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

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