Francis, who formed a judgment of the emperor’s dispositions by his own, was extremely desirous that Charles should be informed of his situation, fondly hoping that, from his generosity or sympathy, he should obtain speedy relief. The Imperial generals were no less impatient to give their sovereign an early account of the decisive victory which they had gained, and to receive his instructions with regard to their future conduct. As the most certain and expeditious method of conveying intelligence to Spain, at that season of the year, was by land, Francis gave the commendador Peñalosa, who was charged with Lannoy’'s dispatches, a passport to travel through France.

Charles received the account of this signal and unexpected success that had crowned his arms, with a moderation, which, if it had been real, would have done him more honor than the greatest victory. Without uttering one word expressive of exultation, or of intemperate joy, he retired immediately into his chapel [March 10], and having spent an hour in offering up his thanksgivings to Heaven, returned to the presence-chamber, which by that time was filled with grandees and foreign ambassadors, assembled in order to congratulate him. He accepted of their compliments with a modest deportment; he lamented the misfortune of the captive king, as a striking example of the sad reverse of fortune, to which the most powerful monarchs are subject; he forbade any public rejoicings, as indecent in a war carried on among Christians, reserving them until he should obtain a victory equally illustrious over the Infidels; and seemed to take pleasure in the advantage which he had gained, only as it would prove the occasion of restoring peace to Christendom.

Charles, however, had already begun to form schemes in his own mind, which little suited such external appearances. Ambition, not generosity, was the ruling passion in his mind; and the victory at Pavia opened such new and unbounded prospects of gratifying it, as allured him with irresistible force: but it being no easy matter to execute the vast designs which he meditated, he thought it necessary, while proper measures were taking for that purpose, to affect the greatest moderation, hoping under that veil to conceal his real intentions from the other princes of Europe.

Meanwhile, France was filled with consternation. The king himself had early transmitted an account of the rout of Pavia in a letter to his mother, delivered by Peñalosa, which contained only these words, “Madam, all is lost, except our honor”. The officers who made their escape, when they arrived from Italy, brought such a melancholy detail of particulars as made all ranks of men sensibly feel the greatness and extent of the calamity. France, without its sovereign, without money in her treasury, without an army, without generals to command it, and encompassed on all sides by a victorious and active enemy, seemed to be on the very brink of destruction. But on that occasion the great abilities of Louise the regent saved the kingdom, which the violence of her passions had more than once exposed to the greatest danger. Instead of giving herself up to such lamentations as were natural to a woman so remarkable for her maternal tenderness, she discovered all the foresight, and exerted all the activity of a consummate politician. She assembled the nobles at Lyons, and animated them by her example no less than by her words, with such zeal in defence of their country, as its present situation required. She collected the remains of the army which had served in Italy, ransomed the prisoners, paid the arrears, and put them in a condition to take the field. She levied new troops, provided for the security of the frontiers, and raised sums sufficient for defraying these extraordinary expenses. Her chief care, however, was to appease the resentment, or to gain the friendship of the king of England; and from that quarter, the first ray of comfort broke in upon the French.

Though Henry, in entering into alliances with Charles or Francis, seldom followed any regular or concerted plan of policy, but was influenced chiefly by the caprice of temporary passions, such occurrences often happened as recalled his attention towards that equal balance of power which it was necessary to keep between the two contending potentates, the preservation of which he always boasted to be his peculiar office. He had expected that his union with the emperor might afford him an opportunity of recovering some part of those territories in France which had belonged to his ancestors, and for the sake of such an acquisition he did not scruple to give his assistance towards raising Charles to a considerable pre-eminence above Francis. He had never dreamt, however, of any event so decisive and so fatal as the victory at Pavia, which seemed not only to have broken, but to have annihilated the power of one of the rivals; so that the prospect of the sudden and entire revolution which this would occasion in the poli­tical system, filled him with the most disquieting apprehensions. He saw all Europe in danger of being overrun by an ambitious prince, to whose power there now remained no counterpoise; and though he himself might at first be admitted, in quality of an ally, to some share in the spoils of the captive monarch, it was easy to discern, that with regard to the manner of making the partition, as well as his security for keeping possession of what should be allotted him, he must absolutely depend upon the will of a confederate, to whose forces his own bore no proportion. He was sensible, that if Charles were permitted to add any considerable part of France to the vast dominions of which he was already master, his neighborhood would be much more formidable to England than that of the ancient French kings; while, at the same time, the proper balance on the continent, to which England owed both its safety and importance, would be entirely lost.

Concern for the situation of the unhappy monarch co-operated with these political considerations; his gallant behavior in the battle of Pavia had excited a high degree of admiration, which never fails of augmenting sympathy; and Henry, naturally susceptible of generous sentiments, was fond of appearing as the deliverer of a vanquished enemy from a state of captivity. The passions of the English minister seconded the inclinations of the monarch. Wolsey, who had not forgotten the disappointment of his hopes in two successive conclaves, which he imputed chiefly to the emperor, thought this a proper opportunity of taking revenge; and Louise, courting the friendship of England with such flattering submissions as were no less agreeable to the king than to the cardinal, Henry gave her secret assurances that he would not lend his aid towards oppressing France, its present helpless state, and obliged her to promise that she would not con­sent to dismember the kingdom, even in order to procure her son’s liberty.

But as Henry’s connections with the emperor made it necessary to act in such a manner as to save appearances, he ordered public rejoicings to be made in his dominions for the success of the Imperial arms; and, as it he had been eager to seize the present opportunity of ruining the French monarchy, he sent ambassadors to Madrid, to congratulate with Charles upon his victory; to put him in mind, that he, as his ally, engaged in one common cause, was entitled to partake in the fruits of it; and to require that, in compliance with the terms of their confederacy, he would invade Guienne with a powerful army, in order to give him possession of that province.

At the same time, he offered to send the princess Mary into Spain or the Low-Countries, that she might be educated under the empe­ror’s direction, until the conclusion of the marriage agreed on between them; and in return for that mark of his confidence, he insisted that Francis should be delivered to him, in consequence of that article in the treaty of Bruges, whereby each of the contracting parties was bound to surrender all usurpers to him whose rights they had invaded. It was impossible that Henry could expect that the emperor would listen to these extravagant demands, which it was neither his interest, nor in his power to grant. They appear evidently to have been made with no other intention than to furnish him with a decent pretext for entering into such engagements with France as the juncture required.

It was among the Italian states, however, that the victory of Pavia occasioned the greatest alarm and terror. That balance of power on which they relied for their security, and which it had been the constant object of all their negotiations and refinements to maintain, was destroyed in a moment. They were exposed by their situation to feel the first effects of the uncontrolled authority which Charles had acquired. They observed many symptoms of a boundless ambition in that young prince, and were sensible that, as emperor or king of Naples, he might not only form dangerous pretensions upon each of their territories, but might invade them with great advantage. They deliberated, therefore, with great solicitude concerning the means of raising such a force as might obstruct his progress. But their consultations, conducted with little union, and executed with less vigour, had no effect.

Clement, instead of pursuing the measures which he had concerted with the Venetians for securing the liberty of Italy, was so intimidated by Lannoy’s threats, or overcome by his promises, that he entered into a separate treaty [April 1], binding himself to advance a considerable sum to the emperor, in return for certain emoluments which he was to receive from him. The money was instantly paid; but Charles afterwards refused to ratify the treaty and the pope remained exposed at once to infamy and to ridicule; to the former, because he had deserted the public cause for his private interest; to the latter, because he had been a loser by that unworthy action.

How dishonorable soever the artifice might be which was employed in order to defraud the pope of this sum, it came very seasonably into the viceroy’s hands, and put it in his power to extricate himself out of an imminent danger. Soon after the defeat of the French army, the German troops, which had defended Pavia with such meritorious courage and perseverance, growing insolent upon the fame that they had acquired, and impatient of relying any longer on fruitless promises, with which they had been so often amused, rendered themselves masters of the town, with a resolution to keep possession of it as a security for the payment of their arrears; and the rest of the army discovered a much stronger inclination to assist, than to punish the mutineers. By dividing among them the money exacted from the pope, Lannoy quieted the tumultuous Germans; but though this satisfied their present demands, he had so little prospect of being able to pay them or his other forces regularly for the future, and was under such continual apprehensions of their seizing the person of the captive king, that, not long after, he was obliged to dismiss all the Germans and Italians in the Imperial service. Thus, from a circumstance that now appears very singular, but arising naturally from the constitution of most European governments in the sixteenth century, while Charles was sus­pected by all his neighbors of aiming at universal monarchy, and while he was really forming vast projects of this kind, his revenues were so limited, that, he could not keep on foot his victorious army, though it did not exceed twenty-four thousand men.

During these transactions Charles, whose pretensions to moderation and disinterestedness were soon forgotten, deliberated, with the utmost solicitude, how he might derive the greatest advantages from the misfortune of his adversary. Some of his counselors advised him to treat Francis with the magnanimity that became a victorious prince, and, instead of taking advantage of his situation, to impose rigorous conditions, to dismiss him on such equal terms, as would bind him forever to his interest by the ties of gratitude and affection, more forcible as well as more permanent than any which could be formed by extorted oaths and involuntary stipulations. Such an exertion of generosity is not, perhaps, to be expected, in the conduct of political affairs, and it was far too refined for that prince to whom it was proposed. The more obvious, but less splendid scheme, of endeavoring to make the utmost of Francis’s calamity, had a greater number in the council to recommend it, and suited better with the emperor’s genius. But though Charles adopted this plan, he seems not to have executed it in the most proper manner. Instead of making one great effort to penetrate into France with all the forces of Spain and the Low-Countries; instead of crushing the Italian states before they recovered from the consternation which the success of his arms had occasioned, he bad recourse to the artifices of intrigue and negotiation. This proceeded partly from necessity, partly from the natural disposition of his mind. The situation of his finances at that time rendered it extremely difficult to carry on any extraordinary armament; and he himself having never appeared at the head of his armies, the command of which he had hitherto committed to his generals, was averse to bold and martial counsels, and trusted more to the arts with which he was acquainted. He laid, besides, too much stress upon the victory of Pavia, as if by that event the strength of France had been annihilated, its resources exhausted, and the kingdom itself, no less than the person of its monarch, bad been subjected to his power.

Full of this opinion, he determined to set the highest price upon Francis’s freedom, and having ordered the count de Roeux to visit the captive king in his name, be instructed him to propose the following articles as the conditions on which he would grant him his liberty:

that he should restore Burgundy to the emperor, from whose ancestors it had been unjustly wrested;

that he should surrender Provence and Dauphine, that they might be erected into an independent kingdom for the constable Bourbon;

that he should make full satisfaction to the king of England for all his claims,

and finally renounce the pretensions of France to Naples, Milan, or any other territory in Italy.

When Francis, who had hitherto flattered himself, that he should be treated by the emperor with the generosity becoming one great prince towards another, heard these rigorous conditions, he was so transported with indignation, that, drawing his dagger hastily, he cried out, “ ’Twere better that a king should die thus”. Alarcon, alarmed at his vehemence, laid hold on his hand; but though he soon recovered greater composure, he still declared, in the most solemn manner, that he would rather remain a prisoner during life, than purchase liberty by such ignominious concessions.

This mortifying discovery of the emperor’s intentions greatly augmented Francis’s chagrin and impatience under his confinement, and must have driven him to absolute despair, if he had not laid hold of the only thing which could still administer any comfort to him. He persuaded himself, that the conditions which Roeux had proposed did not flow originally from Charles himself, but were dictated by the rigorous policy of his Spanish council; and that therefore he might hope, in one personal interview with him, to do more towards hastening his own deliverance, than could be effected by long negotiations passing through the subordinate hands of his ministers.

Relying on this supposition, which proceeded from too favorable an opinion of the emperor's character, he offered to visit him in Spain, and was willing to be carried thither as a spectacle to that haughty nation. Lannoy employed all his address to confirm him in these sentiments; and concerted with him in secret the manner of executing this resolution. Francis was so eager on a scheme which seemed to open some prospect of liberty, that he furnished the galleys necessary for conveying him to Spain, Charles being at that time unable to fit out a squadron for that purpose. The viceroy, without communicating his intentions either to Bourbon or Pescara, conducted his prisoner towards Genoa, under pretence of transporting him by sea to Naples; though soon after they set sail, he ordered the pilots to steer directly for Spain; but the wind happening to carry them near the French coast, the unfortunate monarch had a full prospect of his own dominions, towards which he cast many a sorrowful and desiring look. They landed, however, in a few days at Barcelona, and soon after Francis was lodged [Aug. 24], by the emperor’s command, in the Alcazar of Madrid, under the care of the vigilant Alarcon, who guarded him with as much circumspection as ever.

 

THE CONSPIRACY OF MORONE