Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/592

 556 F E A N C E [HISTORY. 1515-25. The con cordat of Francis I. The struggle for the empire. The ri valry of Charli S V. and Francis I. The battle of Pavia. friendly arrangements with the archduke Charles, his future rival, promising to help him in securing, when the time came, the vast inheritances of his two grandfathers, Maximilian the emperor-elect, and Ferdinand of Aragon : never was a less wise agreement entered on. This done, the Italian war began ; Francis descended into Italy, and won the brilliant battle of Marignano, in which the French chivalry crushed the Swiss burghers and peasant mercenaries. The French then overran the north of Italy, and, in con junction with the Venetians, carried all before them. But the triumphs of the sword were speedily wrested from him by the adroitness of the politician; in an interview with Leo X. at Bologna, Francis bartered the liberties of the Gallican Church for shadowy advantages in Italy; the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges, which now for nearly a century had secured to the Church of France independence in the choice of her chief officers, was replaced by a concor dat, whereby the king allowed the papacy once more to drain the wealth of the Church of France, while the pope allowed the king almost autocratic power over it. He was to appoint to all benefices, with exception of a few privileged offices ; the pope was no longer to be threatened with general councils, while he should receive again the annates of the church. The. years which followed this brilliantly-disastrous open ing brought little good to France. In 151 G the death of Ferdinand the Catholic placed Charles on the throne of Spain; in 1519 the death of Maximilian threw open to the young princes the most dazzling prize of human ambition, the headship of the Holy Roman Empire. Francis I., Charles, and Henry VIII. were all candidates for the votes of the seven electors, though the last never seriously entered the lists. The struggle lay between Francis, the brilliant young prince, who seemed to represent the new opinions in literature and art, and Charles of Austria and Spain, who was as yet unknown and despised, and, from his education under the virtuous and scholastic Adrian of Utrecht, was thought likely to represent the older and reactionary opinions of the clergy. After a long and sharp competition, the great prize fell to Charles, henceforth known to history as that great monarch and emperor Charles V. The rivalry between the princes could not cease there. Charles, as representative of the house of Burgundy, claimed all that had been lost when Charles the Bold fell; and in 1521 war broke out between him and Francis, the first of a series of struggles between the two rivals. While the king wasted the resources of his country on these wars, his proud and unwise mother, Louise of Savoy, guided by Antoine du Prat, ruled, to the sorrow of all, at home. The war brought no glory with it : on the Flemish frontier a place or two was taken; in Biscay Fontarabia fell before the arms of France ; in Italy Francis had to meet a new league of pope and emperor, and his troops were swept completely out of the Milanese. In the midst of all came the defection of that great prince the Constable Bourbon, head of the younger branch of the Bourbon house, the most powerful feudal lord in France. Louise of Savoy had enraged and oU ended him, or he her ; the king slighted him, and in 1523 the constable made a secret treaty with Charles V. and Henry VIII., and, taking flight into Italy, joined the Spaniards under Lannoy. The French, who had again in vaded the Milanese, were again driven out in 1524 ; on the other hand the incursions of the imperialists into Picardy, Provence, and the south-east Avere all complete failures. Encouraged by the repulse of Bourbon from Marseilles, Francis I. once more crossed the Alps, and overran a great part of the valley of the Po ; at the siege of Pavia he was attacked by Pescara and Bourbon, utterly defeated and taken prisoner (2 4 th February 1525); the broken remnants of the French were swept out of Italy at once, and Francis I. was carried into Spain, a captive at Madrid. His 1525-: mother, best in adversity, behaved with high pride and spirit ; she overawed disaffection, made preparations for resist ance, looked out for friends on every side. Had Francis been in truth a hero, he might even as a prisoner have held his own ; but he was unable to bear the monotony of con finement, and longed for the pleasures of France. On this mean nature Charles V. easily worked, and made the captive monarch sign the treaty of Madrid (January 14, 152G), a compact which Francis meant to break as soon as he could, for he knew neither heroism nor good faith. The treaty stipulated that Francis should give up the duchy of Burgundy to Charles, and marry Eleanor of Portugal, Charles s sister ; that Francis should also abandon his claims on Flanders, Milan, and Naples, and should place two sons in the emperor s hands as hostages. Following the precedent of Louis XI. in the case of Normandy, he summoned an assembly of nobles and the parliament of Paris to Cognac, where they declared the cession of Burgundy to be impossible. He refused to Return to Spain, and made alliances wherever he could, with the pope, with Venice, Milan, and England. The next year saw the ruin of this league in the discomfiture of Clement VII. and the sack of B.ome by the German mercenaries under Bourbon, who was killed in the assault. The war went on till 1529, when Francis having lost two armies in it, and gained nothing but loss and harm, was willing for peace ; Charles V., alarmed at the progress of the Turks, was not less willing; and in August 1529 the famous Treaty of Cambrai, &quot; the Ladies Peace,&quot; was agreed to by The Margaret of Austria and Louise of Savoy. Though Charles treaty V. gave up all claim on the duchy of Burgundy, he had Caml) secured to himself Flanders and Artois, and had entirely cleared French influences out of Italy, which now became firmly fixed under the imperial hand, as a connecting link between his Spanish and his German possessions. Francis lost ground and credit by these successive treaties, conceived in bad faith, and not honestly carried out. His whole policy, throughout, was tortuous and uncertain ; he was misled by showy advantages, and not sufficiently sagacious to discern his true interests. He had in fact little grasp ot the great movements of his age, and floated to and fro ; neither from the enthusiasm of the Reformation, nor from the instinctive loyalty of his subjects, nor even from the threatening power of Charles, could he succeed in creating for himself a consistent and honourable policy. His Italian ambitions proved a fatal hindrance to his reign ; in hopes of recovering Milan, for example, he let Charles delude him, and displeased his natural allies. His foreign alliances were insecure ; he would not evoke the sympathy and help of his own people. No sooner had the treaty of Cambrai been effectual in bringing his sons back to France, than Francis began to look out for new pretexts and means for war. Affairs were not unpromising. His mother s death in 1531 left him in possession of a huge fortune, which she had wrung from defenceless France; the powers which were jealous of Austria, the Turk, the English king, the members of the Smalkald league, all looked to Francis as their leader ; Clement VII., though his misfortunes had thrown him into the emperor s hands, was not unwilling to treat with France; and in 1533 by the compact of Marseilles the pope broke up the friendship between Francis and Henry VIII., while he married his niece Catherine de Medici to Cathc Henry, the second son of Francis. This compact was a real &quot; n ^ disaster to France ; the promised dowry of Catherine, certain Italian cities, was never paid, and the death of Clement VII. in 1534 made the political alliance with the papacy a failure. The influence of Catherine affected and corrupted French history for half a century. Preparations