The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France

Marignano (13–14 September 1515)

By January 1515, France had lost all her Italian conquests. The house of Sforza held Milan in the person of Massimiliano Sforza, Genoa was an independent republic, and the kingdom of Naples belonged to Aragon. Francis I was expected to regain the ground lost by his immediate predecessors and to avenge the defeats recently suffered by French arms. Veterans of the Italian wars whose reputations had been dented and young noblemen anxious to show their valour looked to him for satisfaction. His youth and powerful physique seemed perfectly suited to the part they expected him to play. But before he could launch a new Italian campaign, Francis needed to neutralize his more powerful neighbours. Charles of Habsburg, a shy and unprepossessing youth of fifteen, was the son of Archduke Philip the Fair and the grandson of the Emperor Maximilian and Ferdinand of Aragon. On his father’s death in 1506 he had inherited the territories of the house of Burgundy (Franche-Comté, Luxemburg, Brabant, Flanders, Holland, Zeeland, Hainault and Artois) as well as a claim to the duchy of Burgundy, which France had annexed in 1477. A Burgundian by birth and upbringing, Charles longed to rebuild his mutilated inheritance, hoping eventually to be buried in Dijon cathedral. He was encouraged by his aunt Margaret of Savoy, who ruled the Low Countries in his name. Shortly after Francis’s coronation, ambassadors from Charles came to Compiègne with their master’s homage for Flanders and other fiefs. An alliance soon followed: under the Treaty of Paris (24 March 1515), Charles was promised the hand of Louis XII’s infant daughter Renée.

Henry VIII, king of England, a robust young man of twenty-four, was anxious not to be outshone by the new king of France, yet did not wish to pick a quarrel with him at this stage. Having recently tasted victory on the Continent, he was content to enjoy himself at home and leave policy-making to his chief minister, Thomas Wolsey. On 5 April the Anglo-French Treaty of London was given a new lease of life, Francis promising to honour his predecessor’s debt to England of one million gold écus over ten years.

In Italy, Francis’s diplomacy was less successful. The Venetians agreed to help him militarily in return for assistance against the emperor, and the Genoese reverted to their allegiance to France in exchange for local concessions, but other powers proved less co-operative. The Swiss, in particular, had not forgotten Louis XII’s refusal to ratify the Treaty of Dijon; nor were they prepared to surrender territories in Lombardy which Sforza had ceded to them or the pension they received from him in return for their armed protection. Sforza was also supported by Ferdinand of Aragon and Pope Leo X. Ferdinand did not wish to see any change in the Italian situation which might endanger his hold on Naples, while Leo was anxious to avoid a repetition of the events of 1494 which had led to the overthrow of his Medici kinsmen in Florence. He was also keen to retain the towns of Parma and Piacenza which Sforza had ceded to him. As for the emperor, being at war with the Venetians, he was not prepared to treat with their ally the king of France.

The most urgent military task facing Francis I in 1515 was to raise enough infantry. France had the largest standing army in Christendom, but it consisted almost entirely of cavalry. By the early sixteenth century wars could no longer be won by cavalry alone, as had been demonstrated by the victories of the Swiss infantry over the Burgundians in the late fifteenth century. But infantry of good fighting quality was not easily raised. The king could rely to some extent on native volunteers, called aventuriers, but the best infantry were foreign mercenaries. Until 1510, France had been able to hire the Swiss, but, as they were now employed by the enemy, he had to look elsewhere. In 1515 he raised 23,000 German landsknechts, who were less disciplined than the Swiss.

Mercenaries made heavy demands on the royal purse. The main source of royal revenue was the taille which fell on commoners, especially the peasantry. The king also asked his subjects for a contribution of 2,900,000 livres in celebration of his accession, but this took a long time to collect. Francis thus had to resort to various expedients: his gold plate was melted down, forced loans were exacted from the ‘good towns’, financial officials advanced loans to the crown, and parts of the royal domain were mortgaged. By such means the king managed to create a sizeable army, which in April began to assemble near Lyon and Grenoble. It consisted of about 6000 cavalry and 31,500 infantry, but its pride was the artillery, comprising some sixty large cannon and many lighter pieces.

On 26 June, Francis informed the ‘good towns’ of his imminent departure for Italy and of his mother’s regency in his absence. At the same time he obtained from his wife Claude formal cession of her rights to Milan. Next day the king left Amboise for Lyon, where a spectacular entry awaited him on 12 July. Francis spent nearly three weeks there putting the finishing touches to his invasion plan. On 15 July he appointed his mother as regent, but her powers were limited as the chancellor accompanied the king to Italy, taking the Great seal with him. The enemy, meanwhile, prepared to bar the king’s way. They assumed that he would cross the Alps by way of either the Mont Genèvre or Mont Cenis pass. On 17 July the duke of Milan, the pope, the king of Aragon and the emperor signed a league for the defence of Italy. As the Swiss had no cavalry, the pope sent 1500 horse under Prospero Colonna to Piedmont. Francis had either to fight his way past the Swiss or by-pass them. He decided to use the Col de Larche, a pass frequented only by peasants, and sent a force of sappers ahead of the army to bridge torrents and remove obstacles. On 11 August the vanguard under Bourbon crossed the mountains and, entering the plain of Piedmont, surprised and captured the papal commander Colonna and his men at Villafranca. The Swiss thus lost their cavalry support.

The king of France, in the meantime, set off with the rest of the army. He found the crossing of the Alps arduous. The descent into Italy was so precipitous that many horses and mules fell into ravines, while cannon had to be dismantled and lowered on ropes. On reaching the plain, Francis advanced rapidly eastward. The Swiss, meanwhile, fell back to Lake Maggiore and Francis agreed to negotiate with them through his uncle, René of Savoy. A treaty was drafted, but a new round of talks began at Gallarate. The king, meanwhile, drew closer to Milan, hoping to effect a junction with the Venetian army under d’Alviano. On 9 September, Francis received the text of a treaty signed at Gallarate. The Swiss agreed to give up their Milanese territories, except Bellinzona, in return for a subsidy of one million gold écus of which 150,000 were to be paid in cash immediately. Sforza was to surrender Milan in exchange for the duchy of Nemours. Francis was to be allowed to raise troops in Switzerland in return for a subsidy to each canton. He immediately obtained the sum of 150,000 écus from his entourage and sent it to Gallarate. Meanwhile, he encamped at Marignano (now Melegnano), a village situated between Milan and Pavia.

However, not all the Swiss wanted peace. While the men of Berne, Fribourg and Solothurn were keen to go home, those from other cantons refused to give up the fruits of their recent victories without a fight. They were encouraged by Cardinal Schiner, a bitter enemy of France, who made a stirring speech in Milan on 13 September. A minor skirmish with French scouts outside the city precipitated an armed decision. About midday the Swiss, most of them barefoot, hatless and without armour, swarmed out of the city. Their artillery consisted of only eight small guns; Schiner and about 200 papal horse followed in the rear. Hoping to catch the French by surprise, the Swiss marched briskly and in silence, but inevitably they threw up a cloud of dust.

A party of French sappers, spotting the cloud, alerted the French camp, which was soon ready for action. As usual, the Swiss advanced in an echelon of three compact squares of 7000 or 8000 pikemen each. The first crossed a ditch protecting the French guns and scattered the infantry, leaving the gunners isolated. The landsknechts then moved forward, and two gigantic squares of pikemen collided. Once again the Swiss broke through. A counterattack by the French cavalry was thrown back. The fighting continued until midnight, when the moon vanished, plunging the field into complete obscurity. The two armies then separated, the French responding to shrill trumpet calls and the Swiss to the deep bellowing of their war-horns. Francis used the interval to redeploy his army. Duprat, meanwhile, wrote to Lautrec, instructing him not to hand over the money to the Swiss at Gallarate. When battle was resumed at dawn, the Swiss adapted their tactics to the new French formation. Instead of advancing in echelon, they engaged the entire French line. Braving the fire of the French guns, they forced back the landsknechts in the centre, but were themselves driven back by Francis and the gendarmerie. On the left, however, the Swiss overwhelmed the French guns, scattered the infantry and lunged into the landsknechts. The French left was about to collapse when the Venetian cavalry arrived, shouting: ‘San Marco! San Marco!’ Their spirits revived, the French mounted a counterattack. By 11 AM the Swiss had been routed.

Marshal Trivulzio, a veteran of seventeen battles, described Marignano as a ‘battle of giants’ beside which the others were but ‘children’s games’. The gravediggers reported burying 16,500 corpses, but the exact number of French and Swiss losses is not known. Many French noblemen lost their lives; their bodies were embalmed and sent back to their estates for burial. Reviewing the battle, Francis singled out for praise Galiot de Genouillac, whose guns had slowed down the Swiss attack, and Pierre du Terrail, seigneur de Bayard. The king allegedly crowned his victory by having himself knighted by Bayard on the battlefield as a tribute to his bravery.

The immediate result of Marignano was the capitulation of Milan on 16 September. Sforza gave up its castle on 6 October and retired to France, where he died in May 1530. Francis entered Milan in triumph on 11 October and stayed there till the end of the month, when he entrusted the city to Bourbon and Duprat. The latter was appointed chancellor of Milan in addition to his existing office, and the Senate originally set up by Louis XII was revived. The citizens were asked to pay a huge fine as a punishment for their rebellion and to surrender hostages.

No sixteenth-century ruler could afford to alienate the Swiss. As Charles V once said, the ‘secret of secrets’ was to win them over. In October, therefore, Francis sent an embassy to thank the cantons that had pulled out of the war and to seek a settlement with the others. On 7 November the Treaty of Geneva was signed with ten cantons, but only eight ratified it; the rest offered their services to the emperor.

No one was more upset by Francis’s victory than Pope Leo X, who had backed the wrong horse; but he had nothing to fear as Francis needed his friendship. Recent history had shown that a king of France could not establish a lasting foothold in Italy without papal co-operation. Despite his victory, Francis’s position in Italy remained precarious. He was faced by the possibility of a coalition between the hostile Swiss cantons, the emperor and England. This threat made it all the more urgent for Francis to gain the pope’s friendship, or at least his neutrality. Thus a treaty was soon arranged: in exchange for Parma and Piacenza, the king gave the duchy of Nemours to Leo’s brother Giuliano, along with a fat pension, and another pension to the pope’s nephew Lorenzo. This, however, was only the first step. The two rulers needed to discuss other matters, notably the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (1438) whose abrogation the papacy had long demanded. They arranged to meet in Bologna.

Francis reached Bologna on 11 December, three days after the pope. Both resided at the Palazzo Pubblico. Though shrouded in secrecy, their talks were, it seems, much concerned with Italian affairs. Leo may have hinted at the possibility of Francis being given Naples on the death of Ferdinand of Aragon in return for a promise of French aid to the Medici in Florence. Agreement was also reached on the need for a crusade, Francis being allowed to levy a clerical tenth, but the most important decision taken at Bologna was to substitute a Concordat for the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges.

The Concordat of Bologna (1516)

The Concordat of Bologna was approved by the pope on 18 August 1516, but before it could become law in France it had to be registered by the Parlement of Paris, and Francis I was allowed six months in which to get this done. The parlement, however, was deeply suspicious of a settlement which threatened to undermine, if not to destroy, the liberties of the Gallican church, as enshrined in the Pragmatic Sanction. Although it was asked on 5 February 1517 to register the Concordat, it took more than two years to comply and Francis had to obtain an extension of the deadline he had been given. The parlement’s delaying tactics angered him so much that in June 1517 he ordered his uncle, René of Savoy, to attend the court’s debates. The parlement protested at this infringement of its liberties, but had to submit when Francis threatened to replace its members by ‘gens de bien’ (worthy men). Despite René’s presence, the parlement still would not register the Concordat. Its refusal was conveyed to the king at Amboise by two parlementaires, who had to face his wrath. There would be only one king in France, he declared, and no Senate as in Venice. He threatened to make the parlement ‘trot after him like the Grand conseil’ and accused it of neglecting its judicial duties. When the envoys asked for permission to delay their departure until local floods had subsided, they were told that if they had not left by morning they would be thrown into a deep pit and left there for six months. On 6 March 1518 the king again demanded registration of the Concordat. He was said to be planning to set up a rival parlement at Orléans. The threat achieved its purpose and on 22 March the parlement finally gave way: the Concordat was registered, albeit with the addition of a phrase indicating duress. At the same time, the parlement secretly declared that it would continue to apply the Pragmatic Sanction in ecclesiastical disputes.

No sooner had the parlement capitulated than the University of Paris began to agitate, fearing that its graduates would lose the privileged position given to them by the Pragmatic Sanction in respect of collation to ecclesiastical benefices. The university suspended its lectures, forbade anyone to print the Concordat, and appealed to a future General Council. A memorandum denouncing the Concordat was circulated to preachers for use in their Lenten sermons. Placards to the same effect were put up in colleges and public places. Francis ordered the parlement to intervene; otherwise, he threatened to apply the severest measures. A few days later he appointed a special commission to enquire into the disorders. College principals were ordered to restrain their students. On 25 April the university was forbidden to meddle in state affairs under pain of loss of its privileges and banishment from the kingdom.

It is commonly assumed that the main purpose of the Concordat was to increase the king’s control of the Gallican church and that, having won the battle of Marignano, he had imposed his terms on Leo X. Both assumptions, however, are questionable. The crown, as we have seen, already had extensive control of the church before 1516. After 1438 the church was governed in theory by the Pragmatic Sanction, which allowed chapters the right to elect bishops and abbots; but the monarchy often determined the outcome of elections. By 1515 royal control of the ecclesiastical hierarchy was an accepted fact. This was acknowledged by the president of the parlement in March 1515, when he begged Francis to appoint worthy men of sufficient years to administer sees and religious houses.

Marignano did not give Francis mastery of Italy. He remained vulnerable in the north, nor could he impose terms on the pope. The king needed Leo not merely to safeguard his own gains in north Italy but also to acquire territory farther south. In February 1516, on learning of the death of Ferdinand of Aragon, Francis ‘decided to try to recover the kingdom of Naples’. To achieve this, however, he needed the pope’s help. As temporal ruler of the States of the Church, Leo controlled the overland route south; as suzerain of Naples, he alone could grant its investiture. So Francis decided to satisfy the long-standing papal demand for the annulment of the Pragmatic Sanction, even though this meant offending his subjects. It was primarily to win papal support for his Italian policy that he signed the Concordat.

As a political move, the Concordat was a failure. After supporting the king of France, Leo X ditched him in 1521. Yet Francis was never tempted to revoke the Concordat. As long as he hoped to re-establish his rule in Italy he tried to remain on good terms with the Holy See. As an ecclesiastical settlement, the Concordat was a bargain struck by the king and the papacy at the expense of the Gallican liberties. It restored papal authority in France while legalizing and enlarging royal control of church appointments. Yet the king was not given unlimited control: the pope retained the right of instituting royal nominees and of setting aside any whose qualifications fell short of the canonical requirements. Some churches were also allowed to continue electing their superiors. In practice, however, the Concordat was not strictly applied: the king imposed his candidates on churches claiming the privilege of election, and in June 1531 he obtained from the pope the annulment of this privilege, except in respect of religious houses. Francis also sometimes ignored canonical requirements. Very occasionally the pope refused to institute a royal nominee, but this was exceptional. In general the Concordat strengthened royal control of the Gallican church.

Naples and Navarre

On 23 January, after Francis had returned to the south of France, Ferdinand of Aragon died leaving his kingdom to his grandson Charles. This upset the balance of power in Europe, for Charles already ruled the Netherlands and Franche-Comté. By gaining the kingdoms of Castile, Aragon and Naples, he became France’s most powerful neighbour. What is more, Francis had an interest in Naples and Navarre, two of the territories now acquired by Charles. Having inherited the Angevin claim to Naples, he ordered the archives of Provence to be searched for documentary proof of his title. Part of the small Pyrenean kingdom of Navarre had been seized by Ferdinand from its king, Jean d’Albret, in 1512 and had since been absorbed into Castile. Jean looked to the king of France for redress. As duke of Burgundy, Charles had implicitly recognized Jean’s claim to Navarre, but he was unlikely to do so in his new role of Spanish monarch. He was equally unlikely to give up Naples.

For a time, however, trouble between Francis and Charles was contained. For Charles, who was in the Netherlands at the time, still had to take possession of his Spanish realm, where, as a Fleming by birth, he could expect opposition. He needed assurance that France would not invade the Netherlands during his absence in Spain. On 13 August, therefore, he and Francis signed the Treaty of Noyon. Charles was promised the hand of Louise, Francis’s infant daughter, and Naples was to be part of her dowry. Pending the marriage, Charles was to pay Francis an annual tribute for Naples of 100,000 gold écus thereby implicitly recognizing the French claim to that kingdom. He also promised to compensate Jean d’Albret’s widow, Catherine de Foix, for the loss of Spanish Navarre.

The ‘Perpetual’ Peace of Fribourg (29 November 1516)

In Austria, meanwhile, Cardinal Schiner had been urging the Emperor Maximilian to invade Milan and restore the Sforzas to power. The emperor could count on the support of some Swiss and of Henry VIII, whose jealousy had been aroused by the French victory at Marignano. Early in March 1516, Maximilian invaded north Italy. He reached the outskirts of Milan, but two days later he suddenly decamped, leaving his troops in the lurch. His ignominious flight enabled Francis to come to terms with the Swiss. On 29 November the so-called ‘Perpetual Peace of Fribourg’ was signed. Francis agreed to pay a war indemnity of 700,000 écus to the cantons. He also promised them 300,000 écus for the castles of Lugano and Locarno and fortresses in the Valtelline, and an annual subsidy of 2000 écus to each canton. The Swiss, for their part, promised not to serve anyone against France. Although less than a complete alliance, the treaty gave Francis the right to hire Swiss mercenaries in the future. The peace was called ‘perpetual’ because it was never formally broken. Swiss troops still guarded the king of France during the French Revolution.

On 11 March 1517, Francis, Maximilian and Charles of Spain signed the Treaty of Cambrai in which they agreed to assist each other if attacked and to join a crusade. Christendom needed to unite against the westward expansion of the Turks. Under Mehmet II they had captured Constantinople, penetrated deep into the Balkans and expelled the Venetians from Euboea. Now, under Selim the Grim, they were advancing once more: after overrunning Syria in August 1516, they invaded Egypt early in 1517. ‘It is time’, Leo X declared, ‘that we woke from sleep lest we be put to the sword unawares.’ In March 1518 he proclaimed a five-year truce among Christian powers and sent nuncios to the courts of Europe to gather support for a crusade, but they were more interested in problems nearer home than in the Balkans or eastern Mediterranean.

In September 1517, Charles arrived in Spain with an entourage of Flemings and took control of his kingdom. The Treaty of Noyon had become an embarrassment to him: he could not afford to pay the Neapolitan tribute and seemed disinclined to honour his pledge regarding Navarre. Yet Charles continued to assure Francis of his good intentions. In May 1519 a conference was held at Montpellier to sort out differences between the two monarchs, but it soon became a slanging match over the question of Navarre and collapsed altogether following the death of Boisy, who had led the French delegation.

The imperial election (1519)

On 12 January 1519 the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I, died, causing another major upheaval of Europe’s power structure. The Empire was an elective dignity, not a hereditary one, the emperor being chosen by seven Electors: the archbishops of Mainz, Cologne and Trier, the king of Bohemia, the Elector-Palatine, the duke of Saxony and the margrave of Brandenburg. They were not obliged to choose a Habsburg or even a German, for the Empire was a supra-national dignity, the secular counterpart of the papacy. Thus it was possible for a Frenchman to be a candidate.