The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France

Following their victory the French captured Cremona, Crema and Brescia. The pope, meanwhile, pushed towards Ravenna with his army, but Maximilian failed to appear in Italy. So Louis returned to France after celebrating his triumph in Milan. Venice, for its part, allowed imperial troops to occupy Treviso, Verona and Padua, handed over ports in southern Italy to Ferdinand of Aragon, released the people of the terra firma from their allegiance and accepted the pope’s occupation of towns in the Romagna. The Venetians, however, had enough experience of foreign affairs (their diplomats were the best in Europe at the time) to know that time was on their side: they felt sure that sooner or later the coalition against them would break up.

Early in July the Venetians recaptured Padua from the emperor. He appealed for help to Louis XII, who promptly sent a force under La Palice, which was soon joined by a large army led by Maximilian himself; but he did not lay siege to Padua till mid-September. After breaching its wall, he prepared an assault, but the French nobles refused to fight as infantry as long as the German nobles remained mounted. In the end, the assault was abandoned. On 30 September, Maximilian angrily lifted the siege. He left that night for Austria, soon to be followed by the rest of his army. La Palice and his men returned to Milan.

Julius II, meanwhile, began to detach himself from the league; he did not wish to see Venice destroyed, for her maritime co-operation was essential to his crusading plans. Nor was he keen to see France or the Empire strongly entrenched in north Italy. In February 1510 he lifted the interdict on Venice. He then detached Ferdinand of Aragon from the coalition. In return for the investiture of Naples, Ferdinand agreed to be neutral for the present. Henry VIII of England was also won over. But the pope’s most resounding diplomatic coup was to persuade the Swiss to debar France from raising mercenaries in the cantons. In the summer of 1510, Julius attacked Ferrara, seemingly an easy prey. The duke, Alfonso d’Este, appealed to Louis XII for help. Having recently abandoned the siege of Padua, the French army under Chaumont returned to the Milanese. They had to face a Swiss invasion, but it did not last long. Fighting around Ferrara continued for more than a year without giving the pope a decisive victory. Following the death of Chaumont on 11 February 1511, command of the French army in Italy was given first to Trivulzio, then to Gaston de Foix, duc de Nemours. He was young, handsome and brave, and his presence in Italy raised French morale, putting new life into the campaign.

So far the pope had failed to detach Maximilian from his alliance with France. What is more, Louis and Maximilian were in agreement over the need to reform the church in its head and members. They supported the idea, put forward two hundred years earlier, that a General Council of the church was superior in authority to the pope. At their bidding five cardinals who had fallen out with the pope called a General Council to Pisa for the autumn of 1511. Julius was ordered to appear before this body under threat of deposition, but he was not easily intimidated: he replied by summoning an alternative council to Rome for April 1512.

The battle of Ravenna

Meanwhile, the French army in north Italy, now commanded by Gaston de Foix, invaded the Romagna, relieving Ferrara and capturing Mirandola. As it drew near to Bologna, the pope’s army fell back on Ravenna. Early in October 1511 a so-called Holy League was formed between the pope, Ferdinand of Aragon and Venice. Its avowed aim was to reconquer the lands recently taken from the Holy See, but its real purpose was to drive the French out of Italy.

Gaston reorganized his army to face the threat of a triple invasion of Lombardy: by the Swiss in the north, by papal and Spanish forces from the south and by the Venetians in the east. The Swiss were the first to attack, capturing Bellinzona in December; but Gaston wisely remained inside Milan instead of coming out to meet them. He knew that if he left the city, the people of Milan would rebel. His caution was justified when the Swiss returned home of their own accord. The army of the Holy League, meanwhile, tried to win back lost ground in the Romagna, prompting Gaston to send reinforcements to Bologna. In February he marched to the relief of Brescia which was under attack from the Venetians. A fierce struggle ended in their defeat. When the pope heard the news, he is said to have torn off his beard. He could draw comfort, however, from the dismal failure of the Council of Pisa. It had been unable to gather international support and was disbanded soon after moving to Milan.

In November, Henry VIII joined the Holy League and prepared to invade Picardy. The threat of such an attack, coupled with indications that Maximilian might change sides, impressed upon Louis XII the need for a decisive victory in Italy. While Gaston de Foix had been fighting near Brescia, a Hispano-papal army under Ramon de Cardona, viceroy of Naples, had reconquered most of the Romagna. Gaston marched on Ravenna in the hope of luring the enemy into the open. Although the viceroy’s army was smaller than that of the French, he came down from Imola and pitched camp on marshy ground outside Ravenna. It was protected by a deep trench, behind which was arrayed a battery of thirty guns and strange war machines which contemporaries compared to the scythed chariots used in antiquity. Gaston’s artillery consisted of thirty French guns and twenty-four supplied by the duke of Ferrara.

At dawn on 11 April, Gaston, after crossing the River Ronco, formed his army into a crescent with infantry in the middle and cavalry on the wings. Closing in on the viceroy’s camp, he began a fierce bombardment. The Spanish guns responded, inflicting heavy losses on the French infantry. Eventually the Spanish cavalry came out and engaged the French men-at-arms in a bloody encounter which ended in a Spanish rout. The infantry, meanwhile, moved into action. More fierce fighting ended in victory to the French. But as Gaston tried to intercept some Spaniards who were fleeing from the field, his horse stumbled, enabling the enemy to fall on him and wound him fatally. Thus ended the career of a military leader of great promise. His death, Bayard wrote, made the victory seem like a defeat.

The battle of Ravenna was one of the bloodiest on record. Both sides suffered heavily. Ramon de Cardona returned to Naples with only 300 horse and 3000 foot, having started out with 16,000 men. Among Spaniards taken prisoner were Fabrizio Colonna, general of the horse, and Pedro Navarro, general of the foot. A more unusual captive was the papal legate, Giulio de’ Medici, the future Pope Clement VII. French losses, though fewer, were none the less severe: 3000 to 4000 infantry, 80 men-at-arms, several gentlemen of the king’s household and nine archers of his guard. From the tactical standpoint, Ravenna is remembered as the first Italian battle in which cannon decided the day. Gaston de Foix saw that Spanish tactics could be overcome by superior artillery strength. His only serious mistake was to bring his infantry too far forward at the start so that it suffered heavier losses than necessary.

Even if Gaston had survived, it is doubtful if the French could have taken advantage of their victory, for the odds were heavily against them. On 6 May, 18,000 Swiss troops led by Cardinal Schiner descended into Italy and joined the Venetian army near Verona. Together they marched on Milan. La Palice, the new French commander, retreated westward from Ravenna with an army much reduced in size after the recent battle to which disease and desertion had added their toll. The retreat soon turned into a headlong flight. By the end of June, France had lost the Milanese and her army was back in Dauphiné. The few French garrisons that had been left behind in Italy gradually capitulated.

Ferdinand took advantage of Louis’s difficulties to invade Navarre in pursuit of the claim which his wife, Germaine de Foix, had inherited from her brother Gaston. Louis, who had supported Gaston’s claim against the ruling house of Albret, was obliged to support the rival claim of Jean d’Albret. However, Ferdinand, having occupied Spanish Navarre, declared himself its lawful sovereign. Louis despatched an army under the nominal command of François d’Angoulême, the effective commanders being marshals La Palice and Lautrec. They laid siege to Pamplona, but the arrival of Aragonese reinforcements forced them to withdraw. Spanish Navarre was irretrievably lost. All that remained to Jean d’Albret was a small portion of his kingdom on the French side of the Pyrenees.

In Italy, meanwhile, important political changes were taking place. In November 1512 the emperor joined the Holy League, causing the Venetians to abandon their hostility to France. Within the Milanese, the departure of the French released the conflicting ambitions of former allies. The Swiss wanted Como and Novara; the marquis of Mantua claimed Peschiera; the pope wanted Parma and Piacenza; the duke of Savoy asked for Vercelli; and the Venetians were keen to recover Brescia. In December 1512 the Swiss set up Massimiliano Sforza, the son of Lodovico il Moro, as duke of Milan. Soon afterwards, in February 1513, Pope Julius II died. He was succeeded by Cardinal Giovanni de’ Medici, who took the name of Leo X. Although no friend of France, he was more peaceable than his predecessor. Louis skilfully exploited the changed situation. In March 1513, Venice reached an agreement with him regarding the partition of north Italy. France renewed her ‘Auld Alliance’ with Scotland in the hope of containing Henry VIII, who was anxious to cut a dash on the Continent. Louis also signed a truce with Ferdinand: each agreed to respect the status quo in Navarre. All that remained of the Holy League was a coalition of England, the Empire and the Swiss Confederation.

A disastrous year

Louis XII might have been expected to leave Italy alone after his last disastrous campaign, particularly as Henry VIII and Maximilian were now threatening his northern frontiers, but he would not accept the loss of Milan. His new treaty with Venice encouraged him to launch another trans-Alpine campaign. He gathered an army 12,000 strong in April 1513 and placed it under the command of Louis de La Trémoïlle, who was assisted by d’Aubigny and Trivulzio. It crossed the Alps in May and captured Alessandria. Four thousand Swiss shut themselves up in Novara. The French, meanwhile, seized Milan with the help of the anti-Sforza faction within the city. Heartened by this success, La Trémoïlle laid siege to Novara. The town was bombarded and its walls breached, but, hearing that a Swiss relief army was approaching, La Trémoïlle withdrew to Trecate. Here he pitched camp and, believing that he was not being pursued, allowed his troops some rest. The Swiss, however, launched a furious attack, taking the French by surprise. The main blow fell on the German mercenaries, the landsknechts, who were nearly all wiped out. One of the few survivors was the future Marshal Florange, who allegedly received forty-six wounds. The gendarmerie was never seriously engaged in the battle. La Trémoïlle, it seems, waited for an attack that never came, allowing his infantry to be cut to pieces. When he realized that all was lost, he ordered his men to retreat. By the end of June they were back in France. After the French débâcle all the towns in the duchy of Milan, except those under Venetian occupation, submitted to Sforza.

The French defeat in Italy coincided with an invasion of northern France. In mid-June a huge English army commanded by the earl of Shrewsbury and the duke of Suffolk landed in Calais. After joining an imperial army, it laid siege to Thérouanne. Louis XII hurriedly sent an army to Artois under the seigneur de Piennes with orders to relieve Thérouanne but to avoid a pitched battle. He managed to get supplies through to the beleaguered garrison, but as his men-at-arms were returning from their mission, they were intercepted near Guinegatte. Obeying orders, they avoided an engagement, but as they retreated they spread confusion among the French reserve. The retreat became a headlong flight, hence the name ‘Battle of the Spurs’ given to the action. Among the captains who fell into English hands were the duc de Longueville and Bayard. Thérouanne surrendered on 23 August, but instead of marching on Amiens and Paris, the English seized Tournai which they kept until 1521.

More misfortunes soon befell Louis XII. Early in September, 20,000 to 30,000 Swiss invaded Burgundy and laid siege to Dijon. The town’s governor, La Trémoïlle, knowing that his men were outnumbered and that no relief could be expected soon, opened talks with the enemy. They were strong enough to bid for high stakes. Under the Treaty of Dijon, which La Trémoïlle signed in his master’s name, Louis gave up all his claims to Milan and Asti. He also promised to buy off the Swiss for 400,000 écus. La Trémoïlle handed over hostages as security for the treaty’s execution, and the Swiss returned to their cantons. Dijon and Burgundy had been saved, but Louis disavowed La Trémoïlle and refused to ratify the treaty. His breach of faith was not soon forgiven by the Swiss.

The winter of 1513 brought no relief to France’s ailing monarch. Anne of Brittany died without giving him the son he had wanted so much. Her claim to Brittany passed to her daughter, Claude. On 18 May 1514 she married François d’Angoulême. The ceremony at Saint-Germain-en-Laye was a simple affair, as the court was still in mourning for the queen. Eyewitnesses, noting Louis’s sickly appearance, did not give him long to live, but he was about to spring a surprise. In January 1514 he drew closer to Pope Leo X by recognizing the Fifth Lateran Council and in March he renewed his truce with Ferdinand of Aragon. His master stroke, however, was to drive a wedge between Henry VIII and Maximilian. An Anglo-French treaty, signed in London in August, was sealed by a marriage between Louis and Henry’s sister Mary. Public opinion was shocked that a girl of eighteen, universally acclaimed for her beauty, should marry a gouty dotard of fifty-three, but she was ready to pay a heavy price to become queen of France. Henry had also promised to allow her to choose her second husband, a likely prospect, given Louis’s age and health.

Louis and Mary were married at Abbeville on 9 October. After the wedding night Louis boasted that he had ‘performed marvels’, but few believed him, least of all François d’Angoulême, who stood most to lose from the king’s remarriage. ‘I am certain,’ he declared, ‘unless I have been told lies, that the king and queen cannot possibly have a child.’ Within a short time, Louis began to show signs of wear and tear. The Basoche put on a play in which he was shown being carried off to Heaven or to Hell by a filly given by the king of England. Soon after Christmas, Louis fell ill at the palace of the Tournelles in Paris. He died on 1 January 1515 and was immediately succeeded on the throne by François d’Angoulême. Soon afterwards Mary Tudor secretly married the duke of Suffolk, whom Henry VIII had sent to France to congratulate François on his accession.

FIVE The church in crisis

The French or Gallican church faced a serious crisis at the end of the Middle Ages, which was constitutional as well as moral. The papacy had become an absolute monarchy: it controlled appointments to ecclesiastical benefices by means of ‘provisions’ and ‘reservations’ and it taxed the clergy by means of annates, tenths, and so on. All this caused much discontent among the clergy. Cathedral and monastic chapters resented the loss of their traditional right to elect their bishops and abbots; the clergy begrudged paying taxes to the papal Curia. The demand arose for the reform of the church in its head and its members. But who was to carry out that reform? Could the papacy be trusted to reform itself?

During the fourteenth century some churchmen began to argue that the responsibility for reform lay not with the papacy but with a General Council. The Dominican John of Paris put forward the theory that a council, since it represented the whole church, was superior in authority to the pope and might depose him if he misused his power. Marsilio of Padua, in his Defensor Pacis, denied Christ’s institution of the papal primacy and argued in favour of the superiority of a council since it represented the people. Supporters of the conciliar theory were able to put it into practice following a disputed election to the papacy in 1378. The only way of solving the problem of two rival popes seemed to be to call a General Council. This offered a chance, not merely of healing the Great Schism, but also of bringing about reform through a limitation of papal authority. The Council of Constance (1414–18) managed to heal the schism, but otherwise was a disappointment. It issued two decrees: one laid down that a General Council derived its authority directly from Christ; the other provided that such a council should meet at regular intervals. Both decrees represented a victory for the conciliar party, but not a decisive one. It was difficult to see how a General Council, meeting occasionally, could assert its authority over a permanent and powerful papacy. The traditional concept of the papacy remained intact, and the new pope, Martin V, did not confirm the decrees of the council. By banning appeals from the pope to another tribunal, he implicitly rejected the doctrine of conciliar supremacy.

This, however, was not the end of attempts to put a General Council above the pope. The decisive battle between the pope and the conciliarists was fought at the Council of Basle (1431–49). In May 1439 it declared as a dogma of the Christian faith that ‘the General Council is above the pope’. It deposed Pope Eugenius IV, replacing him with Felix V; it abolished annates and reservations; and it passed a decree providing for regular provincial and diocesan synods. Yet it failed to defeat the pope for two reasons. First, the radicalism of the council alienated some of its best members; many bishops withdrew when they saw representatives of the lower clergy and universities gaining the ascendancy. Secondly, the princes of Europe failed to give the council their full support, knowing that they could secure more political advantages from the pope than from a council. A few European states, including France, adopted some of the reform decrees of the Council of Basle without even considering the papacy.

Representatives of the Gallican church, meeting at Bourges in 1438, drew up a constitution called the Pragmatic Sanction, which King Charles VII promulgated in July. It declared a General Council to be superior in authority to the pope, abolished annates, forbade appeals to Rome before intermediate jurisdictions had been exhausted, abolished papal reservations, except in respect of benefices vacated at the Curia, and restored the election by chapters of bishops, abbots and priors. The papacy was allowed to collate to a small proportion of benefices, but all expectatives were banned save in respect of university teachers and students. The Pragmatic Sanction guaranteed the latter a third of all prebends while regulating their rights. It also tried, albeit more timidly, to protect the church from royal interference in its affairs: the king was asked to avoid imperious recommendations and to desist from violence in supporting his protégés. Yet he was allowed to present ‘benign solicitations’ from time to time on behalf of candidates showing zeal for the public good.

The Pragmatic Sanction, however, was not strictly applied after 1438. The French crown used it to check papal pretensions without showing respect for the liberties it enshrined. The king commonly disposed of benefices as he wished, his ‘benign solicitations’ all too often being brutal commands. Louis XI abolished or restored the Pragmatic for his own political ends. A delegate at the Estates-General of 1484, after the accession of Charles VIII, complained that under the late king the church had declined: elections had been annulled, unworthy people had been appointed to benefices, and holy persons had been relegated to a ‘vile and ignominious’ condition. The deputies demanded the restoration of the Pragmatic Sanction, but the government of the Beaujeus was unwilling to renounce Louis XI’s authoritarian ways. Equally opposed to the Pragmatic were the bishops who owed their sees to royal favour. In May 1484 the Beaujeus sent a delegation to Rome with the aim of securing a Concordat. The pope, however, insisted on a formal condemnation of the Pragmatic Sanction; and in November 1487, Innocent VIII demanded its abolition. The French crown was unwilling to give way – the Pragmatic was potentially useful against the papacy without seriously threatening royal authority – and the talks with the Holy See accordingly foundered. In the absence of an agreement, the crown did as it wished, sometimes allowing the Pragmatic to operate, sometimes conniving with the papacy at its violation.

Meanwhile, the idea of a General Council lived on. During the second half of the fifteenth century people in many European countries demanded one. The appeal to a council in France came mainly from two directions: first, from the Gallican church whenever the king for political reasons violated the Pragmatic Sanction or threatened to replace it by a Concordat with the papacy; secondly, from the crown itself, whenever it wanted to put pressure on Rome. This had unfortunate consequences: the more the conciliar idea was exploited for political ends, the less the papacy felt inclined to call a council, fearing that it would revive the old question of authority in the church. In 1460, Pius II forbade any future appeal to a council in the bull Execrabilis.

On 12 November 1493, King Charles VIII summoned a reform commission to Tours. The members, who were drawn from abbeys and university colleges where discipline had been maintained or restored, called for the enforcement of the Pragmatic Sanction, but failed to get the support of high-ranking churchmen who had a vested interest in the old order. In 1494 the Gallican church was as sick as it had been at the end of Louis XI’s reign. The pope and the king continued to dispose of benefices without regard for the rights of chapters or patrons. While rival candidates for benefices fought each other in the parlements, the benefices themselves were sometimes left vacant for years. Bishops, who were often primarily courtiers, soldiers and diplomats, enriched themselves by accumulating benefices, including monasteries which they could hold in commendam.

Charles VIII wrote to the French bishops from Italy on 29 October 1494: ‘We hope to go to Rome and be there around Christmas. Our aim is to negotiate over the Gallican church with a view to restoring its ancient liberties and to achieving more if we can.’ In Florence he met Savonarola, who urged him to rescue Christendom from its current distress, and in Rome he was pressed by Cardinal della Rovere to depose Pope Alexander VI and call a General Council. But the king’s position in Italy was too precarious to allow him to tackle church reform seriously. Louis XII was also hamstrung at the start of his reign. He needed the pope to obtain the annulment of his marriage to Jeanne de France, and was therefore obliged to give up the idea of a General Council at least for the time being. He was also unwilling to allow free elections to church benefices or to abstain from imposing his own candidates on chapters. His chief minister, Georges d’Amboise, archbishop of Rouen, belonged to one of those rich bourgeois families which were accustomed to securing the finest abbeys and wealthiest bishoprics for their members. He was devoted to the king’s person and opposed any reduction of his authority.

In March 1499 an Assembly of Notables, meeting at Blois, was asked by Louis to look into ways of improving the administration of justice; but the ordinance that resulted from its deliberations failed to address the questions of burning concern to church reformers. While proclaiming the king’s determination to uphold ‘the fine constitutions contained in the sacred decrees of Basle and the Pragmatic Sanction’, it made no mention of elections, reservations, expectatives and commends. When the parlement registered the ordinance, the university, whose objections had been disregarded, went on strike. The chancellor ordered the strike to be lifted unconditionally and the parlement imposed sanctions on the university, which appealed directly to the king without success. In the end the university capitulated and the sanctions were lifted.