The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France

The Breton Wars

In March 1487 an important treaty was signed at Châteaubriant between the king of France and some sixty Breton nobles, led by Marshal de Rieux. The king promised to supply them with an army of not more than 400 lances and 4000 foot, and to withdraw it once the French rebels left Brittany. Charles also undertook not to attack Duke Francis in person or any town where he might be residing. The Bretons, for their part, agreed to serve in the king’s army. But the Beaujeus were keen to overrun Brittany swiftly before any foreign power could come to its aid. In May a French army, much larger than that envisaged in the treaty, moved into the duchy. By 1 June it had reached Vannes, forcing the dukes of Brittany and Orléans to escape by sea to Nantes. On 19 June the French broke the treaty again by laying siege to Nantes. The operation was directed by Charles VIII from his headquarters at Ancenis. On 6 August, however, the siege was lifted, possibly because word had reached the king of Rieux’s impending betrayal. On 20 February, after returning to Paris, Charles presided over a meeting of the parlement which sentenced Orléans to the confiscation of all his property and also punished his accomplices. From the government’s point of view these were timely confiscations, since it was in urgent need of money.

Early in 1488, Rieux recaptured most of the Breton towns that had fallen into French hands. On 11 March, La Trémoïlle was appointed by Charles as his lieutenant-general in the duchy. Their correspondence survives, revealing the king, though still only eighteen, in full charge of military operations from his headquarters in Anjou: he gathered in supplies, armaments and troops and sent them into Brittany. The decisive phase of the campaign began when La Trémoïlle captured Châteaubriant. Fougères, which was reputed impregnable, fell to the French on 19 July. The Bretons received some armed assistance from the sire d’Albret, but nothing from Henry VII of England or from Maximilian. On 28 July the French won a decisive victory at Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier, capturing the duc d’Orléans along with many Bretons.

The Bretons sued for peace soon afterwards, but a majority of the French king’s council wanted to press on with the war; they reckoned that Brittany would be conquered in a month. The chancellor, however, warned against alienating the Bretons by using violence instead of investigating the legal rights of both sides, and the king, rather surprisingly, accepted this view. Peace was accordingly signed at Le Verger on 20 August. In exchange for the withdrawal of the French army from Brittany, Francis II promised to expel all foreign troops from his own soil. He also agreed not to marry his daughters without Charles VIII’s consent and to hand over four Breton towns to the French as securities, pending an examination of the claims of both parties. A few days later he died.

Anne, the duke’s elder daughter, was only eleven and a half at this time and the question of her guardianship immediately caused friction between the Bretons and the French. Francis II in his will had entrusted his daughters to the custody of Marshal de Rieux and the sire de Lescun; but on 18 September, Charles VIII claimed it for himself by virtue of his kinship with the girls. Matters were complicated further when Anne fell out with Rieux, who was planning to marry her off to Alain d’Albret. While Anne shut herself up in Rennes with Dunois and a force of German mercenaries, Rieux occupied Nantes, seizing the ducal treasury.

The French threat to the independence of Brittany was a matter of serious concern to other European powers, especially Spain, Maximilian of Habsburg and England. They used the respite provided by the Treaty of Le Verger to draw closer together. The Iberian peninsula had recently become more unified as a result of the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon with Isabella of Castile. As each was a monarch in his or her own right, they were known as ‘the Catholic Kings’. But the unification of Spain still had a long way to go. It needed to annex the Moorish kingdom of Granada in the south, and the counties of Cerdagne and Roussillon, not to mention the small kingdom of Navarre in the north. Ferdinand had claimed Roussillon since the accession of Charles VIII, but France did nothing to oblige him as long as she knew that the bulk of his army was engaged in the conquest of Granada. Yet if Ferdinand could not act himself, he could obstruct French designs by using other European powers, such as England. Though Henry VII was indebted to the French government for assistance in gaining his throne, he was unable to resist Ferdinand’s tempting offer of a matrimonial alliance. This was concluded in 1489, when Ferdinand’s daughter Catherine married Arthur Prince of Wales.

Maximilian of Habsburg viewed himself as the heir to Charles the Bold, duke of Burgundy (d. 1477), who had built up a powerful state stretching from the North Sea to Switzerland and sandwiched between France in the west and the Holy Roman Empire in the east. He had been succeeded by his daughter Mary, but some of her territories, notably Burgundy, had been forcibly annexed by Louis XI of France. He had wanted to win her by any means for his son, the future Charles VIII, but she would marry only Maximilian who thus acquired his claim to the old Burgundian territories. His efforts to regain those that had been taken by France, however, were hampered by his chronic insolvency and by the need to defend his patrimonial domain in central Europe (Austria and Bohemia) against the Hungarians and Turks. France, for her part, sought to embarrass Maximilian by meddling in the Low Countries. When he attacked France in 1484, the Beaujeus sent troops into Flanders. Some had to be recalled at the start of the Mad War, but in 1487 the French captured Saint-Omer and Thérouanne. In an engagement at Béthune on 27 July they captured the count of Nassau and the duke of Guelders, narrowly missing Maximilian himself. In the following year, Flanders rose in revolt. The inhabitants of Ghent declared themselves subjects of the king of France, while the people of Bruges seized Maximilian; they kept him prisoner for a few months and put to death his Flemish councillors. In May 1488 he regained his freedom as a result of French arbitration, and in 1489 he signed the Peace of Frankfurt.

England kept a close watch on continental events from her vantage point in Calais. In 1485 the Beaujeus had helped to place Henry Tudor on the English throne: they had supplied him with ships, troops and money. He was not ungrateful, but his subjects regarded the independence of Brittany as essential to their security. As the archbishop of Sens reported in 1489: ‘The English, in their king’s presence, told them [the French ambassadors] that Brittany was “little England”. They will send there up to the last man in England in spite of the king.’

On 11 December 1488, France declared war on Brittany. Within a few weeks her troops overran the duchy, occupying Brest, Concarneau and Vannes, but swift as it was, the French campaign was not quite swift enough. Troops sent by Brittany’s allies – Henry VII, Ferdinand of Aragon and Maximilian – soon arrived in the duchy. Encouraged by this help, Breton resistance stiffened; and by May all of Lower Brittany save Brest had reverted to the duchess Anne. Yet the Bretons were by no means united: several nobles went over to the French side during the year, while Rieux tried to win power for himself by isolating Anne from her allies. On 22 July 1489, Maximilian signed a peace treaty with France in which the question of Brittany was referred to a court of arbitration in Avignon chaired by the papal legate, Giuliano della Rovere, who at this time was a notorious Francophile. In October 1490 a truce ended the fighting in Brittany until 1 May 1491.

Rieux now abandoned Albret as a prospective husband for Anne and rallied to the idea of marrying her off to Maximilian, King of the Romans. This project became something of a reality in March 1490 when Maximilian appointed four proxies to marry the duchess. The ceremony, which had the approval of the Breton estates, took place in Rennes cathedral on 19 December. Such a marriage was in breach of the Treaty of Le Verger, which had forbidden the duchess to marry without the consent of the king of France, and gave serious offence to Alain d’Albret who had hoped to marry her himself. As captain of Nantes, he was well placed to influence events in the duchy. He began secret talks with Charles VIII and, on 2 January, offered him the keys of Nantes in return for major concessions which the king was unlikely ever to implement. French troops entered Nantes on 19 March and, after elaborate preparations, Charles made his own entry on Palm Sunday (4 April). As soon as the truce expired the French resumed their military operations in the duchy, capturing Vannes on 19 May and Concarneau on 6 June. La Trémoïlle, who had once again become lieutenant-general, took Redon and Guingamp. Only Rennes and the duchess remained independent.

Charles VIII now staged a coup d’état. Realizing that Louis d’Orléans might help a settlement of the Breton question, he ordered his release from prison in Bourges and pardoned his treason. The duke, for his part, was glad to make his peace with Charles. Much as they disliked this turn of events, the Beaujeus resigned themselves to it. On 4 September, Pierre de Beaujeu (now duc de Bourbon) and Orléans were formally reconciled and, according to Commynes, became inseparable. Meanwhile, the war in Brittany drew to a close. In mid-June 1491, 15,000 French troops encircled Rennes, and Anne, finding herself without money or effective allies, had to seek a settlement. On 27 October she was advised by the Breton estates to marry the king of France, but Anne was only prepared to exchange Rennes for her own personal freedom. Charles, meanwhile, waited patiently. On 15 October, Rennes capitulated. Under a treaty the town was declared to be neutral and handed over to the dukes of Orléans and Bourbon and the prince of Orange, Anne’s freedom being respected.

The king did not ask for Anne’s hand. Instead, he offered her an escort should she wish to join Maximilian and 120,000 livres for her upkeep. He even offered to settle the wages of her foreign auxiliaries. When Anne refused to go into exile, Charles, invoking his rights of suzerain, offered her marriage to a high-ranking French nobleman, but she declared that she would marry only a king or the son of a king. Eventually, under strong pressure from members of her entourage, Anne, who was not yet fifteen, agreed to meet the French king. He came to Rennes on 15 November and, although his first impressions of the duchess were unfavourable, he agreed to take her as his wife. After the betrothal on 17 November, Charles returned to Plessis-lez-Tours.

His conscience was not, it seems, untroubled. In 1483 he had solemnly promised to marry Margaret of Austria, the daughter of Maximilian, and he was afraid that his breach of promise might stain his honour as head of the knightly Order of St Michael. What is more, he seems to have had tender feelings for the princess, who reciprocated them. She wept bitterly on hearing of the king’s marriage and kept his portrait for the rest of her life. When she eventually left France he gave her a valuable chain symbolizing eternal friendship. Another source of anxiety for Charles was the proxy marriage between Anne and Maximilian. Theologians were divided on its validity, though all agreed that an unconsummated marriage could easily be annulled by the church. The necessary dispensation was obtained without difficulty from Pope Innocent VIII.

Charles VIII and Anne of Brittany were married at the chateâu of Langeais on 6 December 1491. Both parties renounced their rights of ownership in Brittany. If Charles predeceased Anne, she was to remarry his successor. If he died without male issue, she was to regain possession of her duchy. On 4 January a Milanese diplomat reported from the French court: ‘There is no sign of rejoicing over this marriage on the part of the king or anyone else.’ Yet Bretons and Frenchmen were evidently pleased to see an end to their conflicts. Anne was welcomed by her French subjects, though doubts regarding the validity of her marriage were not immediately dispelled. They were confirmed by the accidental death of Dunois, one of its architects, shortly before it took place. Doubts were also to be raised by the premature deaths of children born of the marriage.

The Breton marriage, which effectively destroyed Brittany’s independence of France, was naturally viewed with concern by France’s neighbours. However, Maximilian was too preoccupied in central Europe to react forcefully. He was, it seems, far more irritated by the slowness with which the French returned Margaret of Austria and her dowry than by the overthrow of his own Breton marriage. Instead of resorting to arms, he tried to turn international opinion against Charles by branding him as an adulterer. Ferdinand of Aragon also was too busy besieging Granada to react strongly to the Franco-Breton marriage. He gladly accepted an offer from Charles to open serious talks on the future of Roussillon. By contrast, Henry VII of England protested at the marriage and assembled a fleet, but, as a French observer pointed out, this did not necessarily presage an English invasion of France.

Three peace treaties

In 1492 and 1493, Charles VIII signed three important treaties with neighbouring powers in which he gave away some territories and rights. Historians have commonly assumed that these sacrifices were intended to clear the path for his invasion of Italy in 1494. This explanation, however, may be too simple. While the treaties may have contributed to a European peace essential to the launch of Charles VIII’s campaign, they were concerned with problems unconnected with Italy.

In January 1491, soon after his marriage with Anne of Brittany, Charles VIII disbanded his army in the duchy. This was as much for financial as for political reasons: the Breton wars had been a heavy drain on his resources. Only by periodically appealing to the generosity of the ‘good towns’ had he been able to keep the taille at a constant level since 1489 (i.e. 2,300,000 livres per annum). Yet England continued to threaten French security. In the autumn of 1491, Henry VII announced his intention of asserting his claim to the French crown and persuaded Parliament to vote him subsidies. During the following summer an English invasion of northern France seemed imminent. Charles reluctantly levied a crue de taille and again called on the ‘good towns’ to help. On 2 October, Henry VII landed at Calais with a large army and soon afterwards laid siege to Boulogne; but the campaigning season was almost over and it soon became clear that the king had come to bargain, not to fight. He was fortunate to find Charles similarly disposed. On 3 November they signed the Peace of Etaples, the first perpetual peace between England and France since the Hundred Years War. In 1478, France had agreed to pay England an annual pension of 50,000 gold écus for the lifetime of the signatories and for a hundred years after the death of either of them. This pension had lapsed on the death of Louis XI so that France owed England 450,000 écus in 1492. This matter was now settled to France’s advantage. She agreed to pay 750,000 gold écus in twice-yearly instalments of 25,000 écus and her obligation to pay a tribute over a much longer period than fifteen years was dropped. All of this was in addition to an earlier undertaking by Charles to settle his wife’s English debt of 620,000 gold crowns.

Though expensive, the Treaty of Etaples was beneficial to France. Apart from its financial provisions, which represented a reduction of the burden incurred in 1478, it entailed no loss of French territory. The settlement of Brittany’s English debt freed the duchy’s towns that had served as securities for this debt, while denying Henry VII any pretext for intervention in Brittany’s affairs. In the words of an English historian: ‘The treaty of Etaples was a major setback to English interests. Brittany’s independence was gone. The entire southern shore of the Channel, except for Calais, had become French.’

On 3 November 1492, Charles VIII informed the inhabitants of Perpignan of his intention to hand back Roussillon and Cerdagne to Spain. His move may have been prompted by his father’s deathbed wish that the two counties, which he had seized unlawfully in 1463, should be restored to their rightful owner. Spanish prestige was riding high at the French court in 1492 following the conquest of Granada by Ferdinand and Isabella. Yet negotiations between France and Spain dragged on into the autumn and, losing patience, Ferdinand urged his allies Henry VII and Maximilian to invade France. It was partly to avert the danger of a triple invasion that Charles concluded the Treaty of Barcelona on 19 January 1493. The perpetual alliance between France and Castile was renewed and given precedence over all other treaties entered upon by the parties, save with the Holy See. No marriage was to be arranged between the children of the Catholic Kings and any of France’s enemies without her permission. Roussillon and Cerdagne were ceded to Spain without prejudice to the rights and claims of future kings of France. The Catholic Kings did not promise to remain neutral in the event of a French invasion of Naples. Such a commitment was requested by Charles VIII in March 1493 and conceded in August; it was additional to the treaty, not part of it.

The King of the Romans was displeased by the treaties of Etaples and Barcelona. In December 1492 he claimed the whole of his Burgundian inheritance and invaded Franche-Comté. He did not advance into the Lyonnais, however, and in March 1493 agreed to negotiate with France. The upshot was the Treaty of Senlis, published on 23 May. Charles promised to return Margaret of Austria to her father and the bulk of her dowry, including Artois and Franche-Comté, to her brother, the archduke Philip. The king retained the county of Auxonne and provisionally Hesdin, Aire, Béthune and Arras. These towns, except Arras, were to be returned to Philip on his twentieth birthday (23 June 1498). A court of arbitration was to decide who owned the counties of Mâcon, Auxerre and Bar-sur-Seine. The treaty was completed by clauses guaranteeing freedom of trade and restoring property lost in the wars since 1470. An important aspect of the treaty was the implicit recognition of the marriage of Charles VIII and Anne of Brittany. The Treaty of Senlis, like that of Barcelona, contained no agreement in respect of a future French intervention in southern Italy. Maximilian did allow Charles VIII a free hand in Naples, but this was not part of the treaty which was mainly prompted by the need to regularize Margaret of Austria’s position in the wake of the Franco-Breton marriage. However, it did not solve all the issues dividing the parties. Neither Maximilian nor Margaret ever forgot that Burgundy was the cradle of Charles the Bold’s power. All their efforts were later directed towards its reconquest, but, as long as Charles VIII was alive, Burgundy was not seriously threatened. The Peace of Senlis gave France five years of peace on her eastern frontier.

Although France did not as yet think of pushing her eastern frontier to the Rhine, Charles did not ignore the eastern and northern borders of his kingdom. Like his father and sister, he sought allies in Flanders, first the large communes, then the nobles running the government. In 1494, Philip the Fair, governor of the Low Countries, paid homage to the king for Flanders, thereby effectively guaranteeing much of France’s northern frontier. In 1492, Charles VIII was offered the suzerainty of Liège, but he wisely refused. Had he accepted, he would have had to intervene countless times in Flemish and German affairs.

A comparison of the three treaties of 1492 and 1493 suggests that the best for France was the Treaty of Etaples, for it disposed of England’s traditional enmity without loss of territory. France’s acquisition of Brittany made up for the loss of Franche-Comté and Artois in the Treaty of Senlis. She also scored a diplomatic triumph by obtaining implicit recognition of Charles VIII’s marriage. Only the Treaty of Barcelona was seriously damaging. The return of Roussillon and Cerdagne to Spain, though legally justified, failed to ensure stable Franco-Spanish relations: the two powers were soon to fall out in Italy. Yet, in exchange for her sacrifices, France, including Brittany, gained domestic peace for the remainder of Charles VIII’s reign.

THREE Charles VIII and the Italian Wars(1494–8)

In 1494, King Charles VIII invaded Italy and conquered the kingdom of Naples. His action marked the beginning of a series of French campaigns south of the Alps which have come to be known as the Italian Wars. They lasted on and off till the Peace of Cateau-Cambrésis of 1559.

Italy at the end of the fifteenth century was a tempting prey to a more powerful neighbour, for it was divided into a large number of more or less independent states which could be played off against each other. The most important were Venice, Milan, Florence, the States of the Church and Naples. The Venetian republic, though threatened by the westward expansion of the Ottoman empire, was at the height of its power. In addition to an extensive territory on the mainland, it controlled lands along the Adriatic seaboard, in the Aegean and in the eastern Mediterranean. The Venetian constitution was the most stable in Italy, being vested in an aristocratic oligarchy and exercised through a well-balanced system of councils. To the west lay the duchy of Milan which the house of Visconti had created out of a collection of cities; it was now ruled by the house of Sforza under which it continued to prosper economically. A strong Milan was regarded by other Italian states as a necessary bulwark against foreign invasion and Venetian expansionism. Florence was ruled in theory by a popular government, but effective authority was in the hands of the Medici family. Though weak militarily, the republic was influential among the other Italian states on account of the Medicis’ extensive banking connections and genius for diplomacy. The States of the Church stretched diagonally across the Italian peninsula from the Tiber to the Po and comprised a number of virtually autonomous towns and districts. The city of Rome was continually disturbed by the feuds of its leading families, while dreams of republican government still stirred among its inhabitants. A principal aim of the Renaissance popes was to establish their authority firmly throughout their territories, a policy which often led them into nepotism. Naples, the only feudal monarchy in the peninsula, was a land of large estates ruled by turbulent barons. It was divided into two parts: Sicily belonged to the house of Aragon, while Naples and the mainland were ruled by an illegitimate branch of the same house. Notable among the lesser Italian states were the duchy of Savoy, sitting astride the Alps and under the shadow of France; the republic of Genoa, which had lapsed into political insignificance as a result of domestic squabbles; and the duchy of Ferrara, serving as a buffer state between Venice and the States of the Church.

Following the Peace of Lodi (1454) the preservation of order in Italy was made to depend on a close understanding between Milan, Florence and Naples, which Lorenzo de’ Medici strove untiringly to maintain. His son Piero, however, who succeeded him in 1492, lacked political judgement. By leaning too heavily on the side of Naples he upset the tripartite axis and precipitated a breakdown of relations between Milan and Naples. Isabella of Aragon, duchess of Milan, was the daughter of Alfonso duke of Calabria and granddaughter of Ferrante I, king of Naples. She and her husband, Giangaleazzo Sforza, felt overshadowed by the regent, Lodovico Sforza. Alfonso was always looking for an opportunity to extend his power in Italy. He also remembered that his grandfather, Alfonso I of Naples, had been named by Filippo Maria Visconti duke of Milan (d. 1447) as his heir. As the duke prepared to attack Milan, Lodovico turned to France for help. He probably did not wish to bring the king of France into the peninsula, only to shelter beneath the threat of a French invasion. But there were others, apart from Lodovico, who were urging the king of France to make good his own claim to the kingdom of Naples.