1537. THE MADNESS OF THE FRENCH KING

 

Next year opened with a transaction very uncommon, but so incapable of producing any effect, that it would not deserve to be mentioned if it were not a striking proof of the personal animosity which mingled itself in all the hostilities between Charles and Francis, and which often betrayed them into such indecencies towards each other, as lessened the dignity of both. Francis, accompanied by the peers and princes of the blood, having taken his seat in the parliament of Paris with the usual solemnities, the advocate-general appeared; and after accusing Charles of Austria (for so he affected to call the emperor) of having violated the treaty of Cambray, by which he was absolved from the homage due to the crown of France for the countries of Artois and Flanders; insisted that this treaty Being now void, he was still to be considered as a vassal of the crown, and by consequence had been guilty of rebellion in taking arms against his sovereign; and therefore he demanded that Charles should be summoned to appear in person, or by his counsel, before the parliament of Paris, his legal judges, to answer for this crime. The request was granted; a herald repaired to the frontiers of Picardy, and summoned him with the accustomed formalities to appear against a day prefixed. That term being expired, and no person appearing in his name, the parliament gave judgment, “That Charles of Austria had forfeited by rebellion and contumacy those fiefs; declared Flanders and Artois to be reunited to the crown of France!” and ordered their decree for this purpose to be published by sound of trumpet on the frontiers of these provinces.

Soon after this vain display of his resentment, rather than of his power, Francis marched towards the Low-Countries [March], as if he had intended to execute the sentence which his parliament had pronounced, and to seize those territories which it had awarded to him. As the queen of Hungary, to whom her brother the emperor had committed the government of that part of his dominions, was not prepared for so early a campaign, he at first made some progress, and took several towns of importance. But being obliged soon to leave his army, in order to superintend the operations of war, the Flemings, having assembled a numerous army, not only recovered most of the places which they had lost, but began to make conquests in their turn. At last they invested Terouenne, and the duke of Orleans, now dauphin, by the death of his brother, and Montmorency, whom Francis had honored with the constable’s sword, as the reward of his great services during the former campaign, determined to hazard a battle in order to relieve it. While they were advancing for this purpose, and within a few miles of the enemy, they were stopped short by the arrival of a herald from the queen of Hungary, acquainting him that a suspension of arms was now agreed upon.

This unexpected event was owing to the zealous endeavors of the two sisters, the queens of France and of Hungary, who had long labored to reconcile the contending monarchs. The war in the Netherlands Had laid waste the frontier provinces of both countries, without any real advantage to either. The French and Flemings equally regretted the interruption of their commerce, which was beneficial to both. Charles as well as Francis, who had each strained to the utmost, in order to support the vast operations of the former campaign, found that they could not now keep armies on foot in this quarter, without weakening their operations in Piedmont, where both wished to push the war with the greatest vigour. All these circumstances facilitated the negotiations of the two queens; a truce was concluded [July 30th], to continue in force for ten months, but it extended no farther than the Low-Countries.

In Piedmont the war was still prosecuted with great animosity; and though neither Charles nor Francis could make the powerful efforts to which this animosity prompted them, they continued to exert themselves like combatants, whose rancor remains after their strength is exhausted. Towns were alternately lost and retaken; skirmishes were fought every day; and much blood was shed, without any action that gave a decided superiority to either side. At last the two queens, determined not to leave unfinished the Good work which they had begun, prevailed, by their importunate solicitations, the one on her brother, the other on her husband, to consent also to a truce in Piedmont for three months. The conditions of it were, that, each should keep possession of what was in his hands, and after leaving garrisons in the towns, should withdraw his army out of the province; that plenipotentiaries should be appointed to adjust all matters in dispute by a final treaty.

The powerful motives which inclined both princes to this accommodation, have been often mentioned. The expenses of the war had far exceeded the sums which their revenues were capable of supplying; nor durst they venture upon any great addition to the impositions then established, as subjects had not yet learned to bear with patience the immense burdens to which they have become accustomed in modern times. The emperor in particular, though he had contracted debts which in that age appeared prodigious, had it not in his power to pay the large arrears long due to his army. At the same time, he had no prospect of deriving any aid in money or men either from the pope or venetians, though he had employed promises and threats, alternately, in order to procure it. But he found the former not only fixed in his resolution of adhering steadily to the neutrality which he had always declared to be suitable to his character, but passionately desirous of bringing about a peace. He perceived that the latter were still intent on their ancient object of holding the balance even between the rivals, and solicitous not to throw too great a weight into either scale.

What made a deeper impression on Charles than all these, was the dread of the Turkish arms, which, by his league with Solyman, Francis had drawn upon him. Though Francis, without the assistance of a single ally, had a war to maintain against an enemy greatly superior in power to himself, yet so great was the horror of Christians, in that age, at any union with infidels, which they considered not only as dishonorable but profane, that it was long before he could be brought to avail himself of the obvious advantages resulting from such a confederacy. Necessity at last surmounted his delicacy and scruples.

Towards the close of the preceding year, La Forest, a secret agent at the Ottoman Porte, had concluded a treaty with the sultan, whereby Solyman engaged to invade the kingdom of Naples, during the next campaign, and to attack the king of the Romans in Hungary with a powerful army, while Francis undertook to enter the Milanese at the same time with a proper force. Solyman had punctually performed what was incumbent on him. Barbarossa with a great fleet appeared on the coast of Naples, filled that kingdom, from which all the troops had been drawn towards Piedmont, with consternation, landed without resistance near Taranto, obliged Castro, a place of some strength, to surrender, plundered the adjacent country, and was taking measures for securing and extending his conquests, when the unexpected arrival of Doria, together with the pope’s galleys, and a squadron of the Venetian fleet, made it prudent for him to retire. In Hungary the progress of the Turks was more formidable. Mahmet, their general, after gaining several small advantages, defeated the Germans in a great battle at Essek on the Drave. Happily for Christendom, it was not in Francis’s power to execute with equal exactness what he had stipulated; nor could he assemble at this juncture an army strong enough to penetrate into the Milanese. By this he failed in recovering possession of that duchy; and Italy was not only saved from the calamities of a new war, but from feeling the desolating rage of the Turkish arms, as an addition to all that it had suffered. As the emperor knew that he could not long resist the efforts of two such powerful confederates, nor could expect that the same fortunate accidents would concur a second time to deliver Naples, and to preserve the Milanese; as he foresaw that the Italian states would not only tax him loudly with insatiable ambition, but might even turn their arms against him, if he should be so regardless of their danger as obstinately to protract the war, he thought it necessary, both for his safety and reputation, to give his consent to a truce. Nor was Francis willing to sustain all the blame of obstructing the reestablishment of tranquility, or to expose himself on that account to the danger of being deserted by the Swiss and other foreigners in his service. He even began to apprehend that his own subjects would serve him coldly, if by contributing to aggrandize the power of the Infidels, which it was his duty, and had been the ambition of his ancestors to depress, he continued to act in direct opposition to all the principles which ought to influence a monarch distinguished by the title of Most Christian King. He chose, for all these reasons, rather to run the risk of disobliging his new ally the sultan, than, by an unseasonable adherence to the treaty with him, to forfeit what was of greater consequence.

But though both parties consented to a truce, the plenipotentiaries found insuperable difficulties in settling the articles of a definitive treaty. Each of the monarchs, with the arrogance of a conqueror, aimed at giving law to the other; and neither would so far acknowledge his inferiority, as to sacrifice any point of honor, or to relinquish any matter of right; so that the plenipotentiaries spent the time in long and fruitless negotiations, and separated after agreeing to prolong the truce for a few months.

 

1538. THE PEACE OF THE POPE