The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France

‘Father of Letters’

Francis I was anxious to be seen as a great patron of learning as well as a great soldier. Though primarily a man of action, he liked books and enjoyed being read to at mealtimes. His baggage train included two chests of books whose titles point to his main interests: Roman history and the heroic deeds of antiquity. Like many other princes of his day, he was also interested in astrology, alchemy and the Cabala, occult sciences which were believed to hold the key to the universe. Francis asked Jean Thenaud to write two works for him on the Cabala, but the author warned him of its dangers: ‘It is far better’, he wrote, ‘to be ignorant than to ask or to look for what cannot be known without sinning.’

In the early sixteenth century the crying need for humanists in France was an institution in which classical languages that were excluded from the universities’ curriculum could be taught. In February 1517, Francis announced his intention to found such a college. He invited Erasmus to take charge of it, but the great Dutchman was far too keen on his own intellectual freedom to tie himself to the service of any prince. So Francis had to fall back on Janus Lascaris, who was now head of the classical college recently founded in Rome by Pope Leo X. As a first step towards establishing a college in France, the king asked Lascaris to set one up in Milan and provided him with some funds, but these soon ran out and Lascaris had to abandon the venture. In January 1522, Francis decided to establish a college for the study of Greek at the Hôtel de Nesle in Paris, but before this could get under way, his attention was absorbed by his war with the emperor which had begun in 1521.

The beginnings of heresy

Heresy was not unknown in France at the close of the Middle Ages, but except in parts of the south which had been infiltrated by Waldensianism (see below p. 221), it was not an organized movement. Thus Erasmus was broadly correct when he described France in 1517 as the only part of Christendom that was free of heresy. But this happy state was short-lived. In 1519, only two years after Martin Luther had posted up his ninety-five theses in Wittenberg, Lutheranism first appeared in Paris. John Froben, the Basle printer, reported on 14 February that he had sent 600 copies of Luther’s works to France and Spain. They were being avidly read, even by members of the Paris Faculty of Theology. In July 1519, Luther and Eck held their famous debate in Leipzig, and soon afterwards they agreed to submit their propositions to the judgement of the universities of Erfurt and Paris. While the Paris theologians were pondering the matter, Luther gave them further food for thought by publishing three radical tracts. On 15 April 1521 the faculty published its Determinatio condemning 104 Lutheran propositions. On 13 June the faculty and the parlement assumed joint control of the book trade in and around Paris. It became an offence to print or sell any religious book without the faculty’s prior approval. On 3 August a proclamation was read out in the streets to the sound of trumpets, calling on all owners of Lutheran books to hand them over to the parlement within a week on pain of imprisonment and a fine.

Whatever his private beliefs may have been, Francis I repeatedly expressed his opposition to heresy, sharing the view, almost universally held in his day, that religious toleration undermined national unity. The oath he had taken at his coronation bound him not only to defend the faith, but to extirpate heresy from the kingdom. However, at this early stage of the Protestant Reformation heresy was not easily recognized; the boundary between Christian humanism, as expressed in the works of Erasmus or Lefèvre, and Lutheranism was far from clear. Nor was the king obliged to endorse any definition of heresy, not even that of the Faculty of Theology. Having already committed himself to the cause of humanism, Francis must have found it difficult to accept Béda’s view that ‘Luther’s errors have entered this [kingdom] more through the works of Erasmus and Lefèvre than any others.’ The king was also much influenced by his sister Marguerite, a deeply devout person, who corresponded with Guillaume Briçonnet, bishop of Meaux, from June 1521 until October 1524, and through his teaching imbibed the ideas of Lefèvre.

Sooner or later trouble was likely to break out between the king and the faculty. While Francis was ready to suppress Lutheranism, he was unwilling to silence the voice of Christian humanism. The first sign of conflict occurred in November 1522, when Guillaume Petit, the king’s confessor, complained to the faculty about the sermons of Michel d’Arande, an Augustinian hermit who had become Marguerite’s almoner. By 1523 the Faculty of Theology and the parlement were seriously worried about the growth of heresy. Lutheran books were being reported from many parts of the kingdom, and evangelical preachers were increasingly active. In June 1523 the faculty was told of scandals provoked by the publication of Lefèvre’s Commentarii initiatorii in IV Evangelia, but it decided not to examine the work after a warning received from Chancellor Duprat. In July it summoned Mazurier and Caroli, two members of the Cercle de Meaux, to answer a complaint arising from their sermons. This marked a change of policy by the faculty: hitherto it had been content to judge doctrine; now it was encroaching on episcopal jurisdiction. The faculty’s action was, in effect, an attack on the entire Cercle de Meaux. In August, prompted by the publication of Lefèvre’s edition of the New Testament, Béda forced through the faculty a condemnation of all editions of Scripture in Greek, Hebrew and French, causing Francis to intervene again. In April 1524 he forbade any discussion of Lefèvre’s work, alleging that he was a scholar of international renown. In October he nipped in the bud a move by the faculty to condemn Erasmus.

By 1523 heresy was so firmly entrenched in France that the Faculty of Theology and the parlement decided that censoring books was not enough: it was time to make an example of the heretics themselves. On 13 May the home of Louis de Berquin, a young nobleman-scholar, was searched by the parlement’s officials. On his shelves they found books by Luther and other reformers as well as Berquin’s own writings. These the faculty was asked to scrutinize, but the king, after giving his consent, changed his mind: he appointed a special commission, headed by Duprat, to carry out the examination. But the faculty, having already examined Berquin’s books, condemned them, and on 1 August he was imprisoned by the parlement. Four days later he was sent for trial on a heresy charge by the bishop of Paris, but Francis evoked the case to the Grand conseil. Meanwhile, Berquin was set free by royal command and allowed to go home. His books, however, were burnt outside Notre-Dame.

EIGHT Defeat, captivity and restoration(1525–7)

In September 1524 everything seemed set fair for the king of France. The threat of internal rebellion had been removed; Bourbon was beating a hasty retreat to Italy after failing to capture Marseille. Though advised to wait until the spring before invading Italy, Francis was keen to reach Lombardy before the imperial forces could regroup. On 17 October he appointed his mother as regent and soon afterwards led a powerful army across the Alps. The weather being exceptionally mild, he accomplished the crossing in record time. As he pressed forward into Lombardy, the imperialists retreated to Lodi, abandoning Milan. Francis now had the choice of either pursuing them to Lodi or besieging Pavia. He chose the latter, prompting the imperial captain, the marquis of Pescara, to exclaim: ‘We were defeated, soon we shall be victorious.’ For Pavia was a hard nut to crack, protected on three sides by a wall and on the south side by the River Ticino. The garrison, consisting of German and Spanish veterans, was commanded by Antonio de Leyva, one of the ablest captains of his day.

The battle of Pavia (24 February 1525)

The French began bombarding Pavia on 6 November. Within three days they had breached the wall, but an assault by them was repulsed with heavy losses. They then tried to divert the Ticino by building a dam, but it was washed away by torrential rains. The siege degenerated into a blockade punctuated by skirmishes and artillery duels. Francis then made a controversial move: he detached 6000 troops from his army and sent them under the duke of Albany to conquer Naples. The idea may have been to draw the viceroy of Naples away from Lombardy, but he chose to stay put. Had Albany moved faster, he might have taken advantage of popular unrest in Naples; but instead he allowed himself to get bogged down in Sienese politics. His expedition, however, did help to bring the new pope into the war on the French side. Clement VII had so far remained neutral in order not to jeopardize the rule of his Medici kinsmen in Florence, but on 25 January 1525 he allowed Albany free passage through the States of the Church.

The siege of Pavia was a grave tactical error. Though Francis was advised to retire to Milan for the winter, he refused on the ground that no king of France had ever besieged a town without capturing it. Believing that Pavia would soon capitulate, he sentenced his men to spend four months in appalling conditions outside the town. Their main camp on the east side of Pavia was strongly fortified. They also occupied the walled park of Mirabello to the north of the town. Within the park the terrain was open and rolling with clumps of trees and shrubs; it was also criss-crossed by numerous brooks and streams. On 22 January the imperialists marched out of Lodi as if they intended to attack Milan. Then, as the French failed to react, they veered south-west and pitched camp within a stone’s throw of the French. Only the Vernavola, a small tributary of the Ticino, kept the two armies apart.

On 23 February the imperial commanders, Charles de Lannoy, viceroy of Naples, and Bourbon, tried to break the deadlock. They moved out of their camp after nightfall, leaving only a token force behind, and marched north along the east wall of the park. Two hours later they halted near the north side, and sappers, using only picks and battering rams, opened up three gaps in the wall. At dawn the first troops entered the park. Despite a heavy mist they were spotted by the French, who opened fire with their guns. The rest of the imperial army, meanwhile, had entered the park. The sequel is not clear, but it seems that Francis and his cavalry had formed up within the park. As the imperialists advanced, the king led a cavalry charge and got in the way of his artillery which had to stop firing. His infantry was left far behind. After breaking through the enemy line, Francis and his men-at-arms came within range of Spanish arquebusiers who had been carefully concealed in copses around the northern edge of the park. The French nobles with their suits of armour, plumed helmets and distinctive horse trappings offered easy targets. As they were picked off by the arquebusiers they crashed to the ground like so many helpless lobsters. After the king’s horse had been killed, he continued to fight on foot, valiantly striking out with his sword (now on display at the Musée de l’Armée, Paris), but was gradually surrounded by enemy soldiers anxious to earn a king’s ransom. In their eagerness to snatch pieces of his armour as evidence for their claim, they might easily have killed him. At this juncture Lannoy appeared and Francis surrendered to him. Meanwhile, the battle raged in various parts of the field. As huge blocks of French and imperial infantry collided there was terrible carnage, and many Swiss troops were drowned as they tried to ford the Ticino. By noon on 24 February the battle was over. The imperialists had won the day and Francis was their prisoner.

Pavia was the greatest slaughter of French noblemen since Agincourt. Among the dead were many illustrious captains and also close friends of the king. They included Bonnivet, Giangaleazzo da San Severino, Marshal Lapalice, François de Lorraine and Richard de la Pole, the so-called ‘White Rose’. Marshal Lescun and the king’s uncle, the Bastard of Savoy, had been fatally wounded. Apart from the king, prisoners included Henri d’Albret, king of Navarre, Louis comte de Nevers, Anne de Montmorency, and the seigneurs of Florange, Chabot de Brion, Lorges, La Rochepot, Annebault and Langey. Among important French nobles only the king’s brother, Charles d’Alençon, escaped death and capture. He died on 15 April, soon after returning to France, some said of shame, others of sorrow. About 4000 French prisoners who were not worth a ransom were freed on parole.

After the battle, Francis was taken to the Certosa at Pavia and allowed to write to his mother. ‘All is lost’, he said, ‘save my honour and my life.’ He asked Louise to take care of his children and allow free passage to a messenger whom he was sending to the emperor in Spain. In his letter, Francis appealed to Charles’s magnanimity: by accepting a ransom, he said, Charles would turn his prisoner into a lifelong friend.

The emperor was in Madrid when he received news of his victory on 10 March. He instructed the viceroy of Naples to treat Francis well and to give Louise frequent news of him. The king was, in fact, well treated. He was imprisoned at first in the castle of Pizzighettone, near Cremona, where he remained for nearly three months in the custody of a Spanish captain called Fernando de Alarçon. He was allowed companions, visitors and physical exercise. Montmorency, who shared the king’s captivity, kept his sister Marguerite informed about his health. She urged Francis to stop fasting and sent him the Epistles of St Paul to read. On 18 May he was taken to Genoa, where a fleet of Spanish galleys waited to carry him off to Naples. The prospect terrified Francis, for Naples had the reputation among Frenchmen of being a graveyard. He begged Lannoy to take him instead to Spain, where he hoped to win over the emperor by exercising his charm. The viceroy agreed on condition that French galleys were placed at his disposal. This was duly arranged, and on 19 June Francis landed at Barcelona to a tumultuous welcome. He attended mass in the cathedral and hundreds of sick people came to be touched by him. The king was then taken by sea to Tarragona, where he was nearly killed by a stray bullet as he looked out of a castle window. At the end of June he was moved to Valencia, then to an agreeable Moorish villa at Benisanó.

In the meantime, Montmorency carried three requests from Francis to the emperor in Toledo. The first was for a safe-conduct for the king’s sister Marguerite d’Angoulême to come to Spain as a peace negotiator; the second was for Francis to be brought nearer to the peace table so that he might be more easily consulted; and the third was for a truce to last as long as the talks. All three requests were conceded. At the end of July, Francis was taken to Madrid. His journey, which lasted three weeks, was like a royal progress. At Guadalajara he was lavishly entertained by the duke of Infantado, a leading Spanish grandee; at Alcalá de Henares he visited the university recently founded by Cardinal Jimenez de Cisneros. In Madrid, where he arrived on 11 August, the king was given a room in the Alcázar, which stood on the site of the present royal palace.

The regency of Louise of Savoy

Francis’s captivity lasted just over a year, until 17 March 1526. In his absence France was governed by his mother from the abbey of Saint-Just, near Lyon, assisted by Duprat and by Robertet. Their first task was to provide for the kingdom’s defence. Pavia had not ended the war. France continued to be threatened with invasion for several months, mainly from England. ‘Now is the time’, Henry VIII wrote, ‘for the emperor and myself to devise means of getting full satisfaction from France. Not an hour is to be lost.’ He sent an embassy to Spain with proposals for the dismemberment of France. Henry hoped to be crowned in Paris and to recover all that was his ‘by just title of inheritance’. At the very least, he expected to acquire Normandy or Picardy and Boulogne.

Henry assessed the situation correctly: France had been largely denuded of troops, armaments and supplies in the interest of Francis’s Italian campaign. Such troops as remained in the north were unpaid and lived off the countryside, striking terror in villages and even in the suburbs of Paris. In the south the situation was less critical, as remnants of the royal army drifted back across the Alps. In April, Albany’s troops returned home by sea almost intact. But the regent could only pay some of them; the rest she sent north to swell the marauding bands. A joint invasion by Henry VIII and Charles V would almost certainly have brought the kingdom to its knees; but Henry failed to get the co-operation of Charles, who had to cope with many urgent problems in various corners of Europe. His troops in Italy were unpaid and mutinous, if they had not already deserted. In Germany the Peasants’ War was threatening the very fabric of society, while further east the Turkish threat loomed large. The Sultan Suleiman, having conquered Rhodes in 1522, was preparing to attack Hungary whose king, Louis II, was Charles V’s brother-in-law.

In providing for the defence of France, Louise of Savoy concentrated her efforts on Burgundy. She posted lookouts along the River Saône and sent the comte de Guise to inspect the province’s fortifications. However, in June 1525 her cousin Margaret of Savoy, governor of the Netherlands, renewed the truce neutralizing the frontier dividing the two Burgundies. In the north, Louise relied on help from the parlement. It purchased and sent grain to towns in Picardy and persuaded the Parisian authorities to send arms and ammunition.

Perhaps the most important task facing the regent was to maintain the king’s authority. Some people believed that the regency should be exercised by the king’s nearest adult male kinsman and an attempt was apparently made to put the duc de Vendôme in Louise’s place, but he refused to act in a way likely to divide the kingdom. In March 1525 the parlement assured Louise of its support, but it was keen to reverse the trend towards a more absolute, less consultative, monarchy.

On 23 March the parlement set up a commission to draw up remonstrances for presentation to the regent. Normally, remonstrances were concerned with a particular piece of legislation, but the commissioners chose to examine a wide range of royal policies. They saw the hand of God in the misfortunes that had befallen the kingdom. Penitence and prayer were needed to put matters right, but also measures to root out heresy. Here the parlement was tilting at Marguerite d’Angoulême’s protection of the Cercle de Meaux and at royal interference with the Berquin trial. The parlement also called for the annulment of the Concordat with the Holy See and for a return to the Pragmatic Sanction. It objected to the government’s use of évocations whereby lawsuits were referred to the Grand conseil, which was under the king’s immediate influence. Another area of concern was the fiscal administration. The parlement believed that fiscal officials were thieves and that public money was being wasted. It deplored alienations of the royal demesne regardless of the ‘fundamental law’ that forbade the practice.

When the regent received the remonstrances on 10 April she described them as ‘to the honour of God, exaltation of the faith, and very useful and necessary to the good of the king and commonwealth’. She explained that the Concordat could be revoked only by the king, but promised to satisfy the parlement’s other demands. However, Louise never again spoke about the remonstrances, and only in respect of heresy did she go some way towards meeting the parlement’s wishes. Recent disturbances at Meaux had alarmed the parlement. Bishop Briçonnet was ordered to set up a tribunal comprising two parlementaires and two theologians to try heresy cases. Its competence, which was at first limited to his diocese, was soon extended to include all dioceses within the parlement’s ressort or area of jurisdiction, in effect removing heresy cases from the episcopal courts which had traditionally judged them. The parlement also wanted the new court to try bishops suspected of heresy, but this required papal consent. On 29 April, Louise asked Clement VII for the necessary rescript, which he duly conceded. As the new judges thus exercised papal jurisdiction, they became known as the juges délégués (delegated judges). An appeals procedure was set up from them to the parlement, which consequently achieved overall control of heresy cases.

The parlement took advantage of the king’s absence to launch an attack on religious dissenters. In February 1526 heresy was defined so broadly as to take in even the smallest deviation from religious orthodoxy. The censorship of books was tightened up, printers and booksellers being forbidden to publish or stock religious works in French. The parlement was particularly anxious to seize copies of Lefèvre d’Etaples’ Epitres et évangiles des cinquante et deux dimanches which had been published anonymously. However, books were not the only victims of the persecution. The juges délégués were asked to prosecute Lefèvre, Caroli, Mazurier and Roussel. This attack on the Cercle de Meaux prompted Francis’s only known intervention in the domestic affairs of his kingdom during his captivity. In November 1525 he ordered the parlement to suspend proceedings against Lefèvre, Caroli and Roussel, holding them to be innocent victims of persecution by the ‘Sorbonne’. But the parlement stuck to its guns: on 29 November the juges délégués were instructed by the court to press on with their activities regardless. Lefèvre and Caroli fled to Strassburg, while Mazurier recanted. As for Briçonnet, he decided to fall into line with orthodoxy. Another victim was Berquin, who was rearrested in January 1526, found guilty of heresy and sent to the parlement to be sentenced, but the court desisted when it learned that Francis was about to come home.

A serious bone of contention between the regent and the parlement was the Concordat. On 24 February 1525, Etienne Poncher, archbishop of Sens and abbot of Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, died. In response to a request from Chancellor Duprat, who had recently taken holy orders, Louise appointed him to both benefices. However, both Sens and Saint-Benoît were exempt from the Concordat’s provisions and the chapters proceeded to elect their superiors: Jean de Salazar at Sens and François Poncher (Etienne’s nephew) at Saint-Benoît. Duprat promptly appealed to the papacy which quashed the elections; the chapters appealed to the parlement. A protracted legal struggle ensued which was inflamed when Duprat sent an armed force to occupy Saint-Benoît, and the parlement tried to dislodge it. The regent evoked both lawsuits to the Grand conseil which consequently found itself in dispute with the parlement. On 24 June the two courts were ordered to hand over the lawsuits to a special commission appointed by Louise. At the same time she sent troops to Paris, presumably to force the parlement’s compliance.

The quarrel was given a dangerous new twist in July, when the parlement mounted an attack on Duprat, whom it had never forgiven for his part in securing the Concordat. He was summoned to Paris to answer certain charges, but the regent would not let him go. She asked for an explanation of the parlement’s conduct and kept its representatives waiting several weeks before granting them an audience. Her procrastination paid off. The parlement dropped its attack on the chancellor and agreed not to judge the affairs of Sens and Saint-Benoît if the Grand conseil would do likewise. This satisfied Louise, who allowed matters to rest there until her son’s return.