FRANCIS AND SOLYMAN

 

Francis, on his part, was not less diligent in preparing for the approaching campaign. Having early observed symptoms of Henry’s disgust and alienation, and finding all his endeavors to soothe and reconcile him ineffectual, he knew his temper too well not to expect that open hostilities would quickly follow upon this secession of friendship.

For this reason he redoubled his endeavors to obtain from Solyman such aid as might counterbalance the great accession of strength which the emperor would receive by his alliance with England. In order to supply the place of the two ambassadors murdered by Guasto, he sent as his envoy, first to Venice, and then to Constantinople, Paulin, who, though in no higher rank than a captain of foot, was deemed worthy of being raised to this important station, to which he was recommended by Bellay, who had trained him to the arts of negotiation, and made trial of his address and talents on several occasions.

Nor did he belie the opinion conceived of his courage and abilities. Hastening to Constantinople, without regarding the dangers to which he was exposed, he urged his master’s demands with such boldness, and availed himself of every circumstance with such dexterity, that be soon removed all the sultan’s difficulties. As some of the bashaws, swayed either by their own opinion, or influenced by the emperor's emissaries, who had made their way even into this court, had declared in the divan against acting in concert with France, he found means either to convince or silence them. At last he obtained orders for Barbarossa to sail with a powerful fleet, and to regulate all his operations by the directions of the French king. Francis was not equally successful in his attempts to gain the princes of the empire.

The extraordinary rigor with which he thought it necessary to punish such of his subjects as had embraced the protestant opinions, in order to give some notable evidence of his own zeal for the catholic faith, and to wipe off the imputations to which he was liable from his confederacy with the Turks, placed an insuperable barrier between him and such of join Germans as interest or inclination would have prompted most readily to  him. His chief advantage, however, over the emperor, he derived on this, as on other occasions, from the contiguity of his dominions, as well as from the extent of the royal authority in France, which exempted him from all the delays and disappointments unavoidable wherever popular assemblies provide for the expenses of government by occasional and frugal subsidies. Hence his domestic preparations were always carried on with vigor and rapidity, while those of the emperor, unless when quickened by some foreign supply, or some temporary expedient, were extremely slow and dilatory.

Long before any army was in readiness to oppose him, Francis took the field in the Low-Countries, against which he turned the whole weight of the war. He made himself master of Landrecy, which he determined to keep as the key to the whole province of Hainault; and ordered it to be fortified with great care. Turning from thence to the right, he entered the duchy of Luxemburg, and found it in the same defenseless state as in the former year. While he was thus employed, the emperor, having drawn together an army, composed of all the different nations subject to his government, entered the territories of the duke of Cleves, on whom he had vowed to inflict exemplary vengeance. This prince, whose conduct and situation were similar to that of Robert de la Mark in the first war between Charles and Francis, resembled him likewise in his fate. Unable, with his feeble army, to face the emperor, who advanced at the head of forty-four thousand men, he retired at his approach; and the Imperialists, being at liberty to act as they pleased, immediately invested Duren. That town, though gallantly defended, was taken by assault; all the inhabitants were put to the sword, and the place itself reduced to ashes. This dreadful example of severity struck the people of the country with such general terror, that all the other towns, even such as were capable of resistance, sent their keys to the emperor [August 24]; and before a body of French, detached to his assistance, could come up, the duke himself was obliged to make his submission to Charles in the most abject manner. Being admitted into the Imperial presence, he kneeled, together with eight of his principal subjects, and implored mercy. The emperor allowed him to remain in that ignominious posture, and eyeing him with a haughty and severe look, without deigning to answer a single word, remitted him to his ministers. The conditions, however, which they prescribed, were not so rigorous as he had reason to have expected after such a reception. He was obliged [Sept. 7] to renounce his alliance with France and Denmark; to resign all his pretensions to the duchy of Gueldres; to enter into perpetual amity with the emperor and king of the Romans. In return for which, all his hereditary dominions were restored, except two towns which the emperor kept as pledges of the duke’s fidelity during the continuance of the war; and he was reinstated in his privileges as a prince of the empire. Not long after, Charles, as a proof of the sincerity of his reconcilement, gave him in marriage one of the daughters of his brother Ferdinand.

Having thus chastised the presumption of the duke of Cleves, detached one of his allies from Francis, and annexed to his own dominions in the Low-Countries a considerable province which lay contiguous to them, Charles advanced towards Hainault, and laid siege to Landrecy. There, as the first fruits of his alliance with Henry, he was joined by six thousand English under Sir John Wallop. The garrison, consisting of veteran troops commanded by De La Lande and Desse, two officers of reputation, made a vigorous resistance. Francis approached with all his forces to relieve that place; Charles covered the siege; both were determined to hazard an engagement; and all Europe expected to see this contest, which had continued so long, decided at last by a battle between two great armies led by their respective monarchs in person.

But the ground which separated their two camps was such, as put the disadvantage manifestly on his side who should venture to attack, and neither of them chose to run that risk. Amidst a variety of movements in order to draw the enemy into the snare, or to avoid it themselves, Francis, with admirable conduct and equally good fortune, threw first a supply of fresh troops, and then a convoy of provisions, into the town, so that the emperor, despairing of success, withdrew into winter-quarters, in order to preserve his army from being entirely ruined by the rigor of the season.

During this campaign, Solyman fulfilled his engagements to the French king with great punctuality. He himself marched into Hungary with a numerous army [November]; and as the princes of the empire made no great effort to save a country which Charles, by employing his own force against Francis, seemed willing to sacrifice, there was no appearance of any body of troops to oppose his progress. He besieged, one after another, Quinque Ecclesiae, Alba, and Gran, the three most considerable towns in the kingdom, of which Ferdinand had kept possession.

The first was taken by storm; the other two surrendered; and the whole kingdom, a small corner excepted, was subjected to the Turkish yoke. About the same time, Barbarossa sailed with a fleet of a hundred and ten galleys, and coasting along the shore of Calabria, made a descent at Rheggio, which he plundered and burnt; and advancing from thence to the mouth of the Tiber, he stopped there to water. The citizens of Rome, ignorant of his destination, and filled with terror, began to fly with such general precipitation, that the city would have been totally deserted, if they had not resumed courage upon letters from Paulin the French envoy, assuring them that no violence or injury would be offered by the Turks to any state in alliance with the king his master.$ From Ostia, Barbarossa sailed to Marseilles, and being joined by the French fleet with a body of land forces on board, under the count d'Enguien, a gallant young prince of the house of Bourbon, they directed their course towards Nice, the sole retreat of the unfortunate duke of Savoy [August 10].

There, to the astonishment and scandal of all Christendom, the lilies of France and crescent of Mahomet appeared in conjunction against a fortress on which the cross of Savoy was displayed. The town, however, was bravely defended against their combined force by Montfort, a Savoyard gentleman, who stood a general assault, and repulsed the enemy with great loss before he retired into the castle. That fort, situated upon a rock, on which the artillery made no impression, and which could not be undermined, he held out so long, that Doria had time to approach with his fleet, and the marquis del Guasto to march with a body of troops from Milan. Upon intelligence of this, the French and Turks raised the siege [Sept. 8]; and Francis had not even the consolation of success, to render the infamy which he drew on himself, by calling in such an auxiliary, more pardonable.

 

THE REFORM MAKING ITS OWN WAY THROUGHT