Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/591

 ITALIAN 1-13. falling out, however, with his partner in the bad bargain, Ferdinand the Catholic, he vas speedily swept completely out of the peninsula, with terrible loss of honour, men, and wealth. It now became necessary to arrange for the future of France. Louis XII. had only a daughter, Claude, and it was proposed that she should be affianced to Charles of Austria, the future statesman and emperor. This scheme formed the basis of the three treaties of Blois (1504). In 1500, by the treaty of Granada, Louis had in fact handed Naples over to Spain; now by the three treaties he alienated his best friends, the Venetians ond the papacy, while he in fact also handed Milan over to the Austrian house, together with territories considered to be integral parts of France. The marriage with Charles came to nothing; the good sense of some, the popular feeling in the country, the open expressions of the States-General of Tours in 1506, worked against the marriage, which had no strong advocate except Queen Anne. Claude, on intercession of the Estates, was affianced to Francis of Angouleme, her dis tant cousin, the heir presumptive to the throne. In 1507 Louis made war on Venice; and in the follow ing year the famous treaty of Cambrai was signed by George of Amboiso and Margaret of Austria. It was an agreement for a partition of the Venetian territories, one of the most shameless public deeds in history. The pope, the king of Aragon, Maximilian, Louis XII., were each to have a share. The war was pushed on with great vigour : the battle of Agnadello (14th May 1509) cleared the king s way towards Venice ; Louis was received with open arms by the north Italian towns, and pushed forwards to within sight of Venice. The other princes came up on every side; the proud &quot;Queen of the Adriatic&quot; was compelled to shrink within her walls, and wait till time dissolved the league. This was not long. The pope, Julius II., had no wish to haud northern Italy over to France ; he had joined in the shameless league of Cambrai because he wanted to wrest the Romagna cities from Venice, and because he hoped entirely to destroy the ancient friendship between Venico and France. Successful in both aims, he now withdrew from the league, made peace with the Venetians, and stood forward as the head of a new Italian combination, with the Swiss for his fighting men. The strife was close and hot between pope and king ; Louis XII. lost his chief adviser and friend George of Amboise, the splendid church man of the age, the French Wolsey ; he thought no weapon better than the dangerous one of a council, with claims opposed to those of the papacy ; first a national council at Tours, then an attempted general council at Pisa, were called on to resist the papal claims. In reply Julius II. created the Holy League of 1511, with Ferdinand of Aragon, Henry VIII. of England, and the Venetians, as its chief members, against the French. Louis XII. showed vigour ; he sent his nephew Gaston of Foix to subdue the Romagna and threaten the Venetian territories. At the battle of Ravenna in 1512, Gaston won a brilliant victory and lost his life. From that moment disaster dogged the footsteps of the French in Italy, and before winter they had been driven completely out of the peninsula ; the succession of the Medicean pope, Leo X., to Julius II. seemed to promise the continuance of a policy hostile to France in Italy. Another attempt on northern Italy proved but another failure, although now Louis XII., taught by his mishaps, had secured the alliance of Venice; the disastrous defeat of La Tremoille near Novara (1513) compelled the French once more to withdraw beyond the Alps. In this same year an army under the duke of Longueville, endea vouring to relieve Therouenne, besieged by the English and Maximilian, the emperor-elect, was caught and crushed at Guinegate. A diversion in favour of Louis XII., made by 555 James IV. of Scotland, failed completely ; the Scottish king 1514-15. was defeated and slain at Flodden Field. While his northern frontier was thus exposed, Louis found equal danger threatening him on the east ; on this side, however, he managed to buy off the Swiss who had attacked the duchy of Burgundy. He was also reconciled with the papacy and the house of Austria. Early in 1514 the death of Anne of Brittany his spouse, a lady of high ambi tions, strong artistic tastes, and humane feelings towards her Bretons, but a bad queen for France, cleared the way for changes. Claude, the king s eldest daughter, was now definitely married to Francis of Angouleme, and invested with the duchy of Brittany ; and the king himself, still hoping for a male heir to succeed him, married again, wedding Mary Tudor, the lovely young sister of Henry VIII. This marriage was probably the chief cause of his death, which followed on New Year s Day 1515. His was, in foreign policy, an inglorious and dis astrous reign ; at home, a time of comfort and material pros perity. Agriculture flourished, the arts of Italy came in, though (save in architecture) France could claim little artistic glory of her own ; the organization of justice and administration was carried out ; in letters and learning France still lagged behind her neighbours. The heir to the crown was Francis of Angouleme, great- Francis I. grandson of that Louis of Orleans who had been assassinated hi the bad days of the strife between Burgundians and Armagnacs, in 1407, and great-great-grandson of Charles V. of France. He was still very young, very eager to be king, very full of far-reaching schemes. Few things in history are more striking than the sudden change at this moment, from the- rule of middle-aged men or (as men of fifty were then often called) old men, to the rule of youths, from sagacious, worldly-prudent mouarchs to impulsive boys, from Henry VII. to Henry VIII., from Louis XII. to Francis I., from Ferdinand to Charles. On the whole Francis I. was ths least worthy of the three. He was His char- brilliant, &quot; the king of culture,&quot; apt scholar in Renaissance acter art and immorality ; brave also and chivalrous, so long as andaims - the chivalry involved no self-denial, for he was also thoroughly selfish, and his personal aims and ideals were mean. His reign was to be a reaction from that of Louis XII.; Francis should set the monarchy once more upright, and secure its autocratic development. He reversed his predecessor s home policy, and was hailed with wild delight by the young nobles, who had found Louis XII. too sparing of gifts. Gifts they wanted now, not power ; and they preferred a prince who gave while he crushed them to one who prudently forbore to give while he allowed them to retain their strength. The reputation of Francis I. is infinitely beyond his deserts ; his reign was a real misfortune for France, and led the way to the terrible waste and mismanagement which mark her history through out the century. For Francis was an altogether shallow person : he could not read the character of his great antagonist Charles V., nor the meaning of the vast move ment which was but now beginning to develop itself out of, and to take the place of, the Renaissance. He wasted all the energies of France on bootless foreign wars : never has any land been so sinned against as France ; her vast wealth of resources, her intelligent and thrifty people, her commanding central position, were all as nothing to her rulers in comparison with that most wasteful and disastrous of snares, a spirited foreign policy. From the beginning Francis chose his chief officers unwisely : in Aritoine du Prat, his new chancellor, he had a violent and lawless adviser ; in Charles of Bourbon, his new constable, an untrustworthy commander. Forthwith, he plunged into Italian politics, being determined to make good his claim both to Naples and to Milan ; he made most