Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886)/Chapter 2
(1515–1520.)
THE YOUNG KING AND HIS RIVALS.
While the young Queen sat in her chamber, reading her missal, submitting to her mother-in-law, and embroidering red silken counterpanes, the Duchess of Alençon queened it over the court of France, the brilliant Egeria of half-a-dozen poets. For Claude, although the wife and daughter of a king, was none the less a quiet, narrow-chested girl, fifteen years old, gentle, pious, and awkward, with neat, pure features and smooth-braided hair that had no special charm or grace. Francis, with his ideas of splendour and chivalry, desired a different queen for his sumptuous court. And her he found in Margaret, a woman then of three-and-twenty, both learned and witty, and with a charm more attractive than beauty in her slender carriage and tender smile—Margaret, young, de moult joyeuse vie, et la meilleure compagnie possible. Margaret was virtually the Queen of France.
Hers was a dangerous although an honourable position. She was young, and, under the spell of that sweet pale face, that abundant soft blonde hair, her brother's courtiers called her the most beautiful of women. She was unhappily married, and possessed neither love nor esteem for her husband. She ruled without scruple the laxest court of Europe. Yet, singular among the women of that court, the Duchess of Alençon never had a lover.
The virtue of the young Princess, gay as she seemed, was quite secure. She looked on all her would-be lovers with a sweet, remote ironical compassion, and turned away to seek her books again. She had an almost pedantic love of learning; theology, grammar, classics, romances, she gave them each a share of the curiosity and interest with which she envisaged life. All these tastes and qualities helped to secure her virtue; but even greater than they as a safeguard we must place her absolute, unrivalled devotion to her brother.
It was the fashion then at court for people of quality to select a motto or device expressing their personality. Duchess Margaret was clever at making these posies; she supplied them to her brother, to his mistress, to half-a-dozen others. For herself, she selected a sunflower turning to the sun, and underneath she wrote, "Non inferiora secutus." The phrase is exact; no lower light did she ever follow, no wandering glory led her from the worship of that sun of hers. Through all history, I think, we never come again upon a devotion sustained so long and at so high a pitch as this of Margaret d'Angoulême for her brother. And this idolatry demanded many sacrifices. She was to offer it her life and her constant service, the interests of her husband, the happiness of her child. She offered it her judgment, almost her conscience. And for his sake, in her middle age, already weary of the world, she should forsake the mystical meditation in which she delighted, to compose the Heptameron to please him in his illness.
Louisa of Savoy was scarcely less devoted. As great a love and ambition filled her heart, but was met and thwarted there by other passions, by intenser personal cravings. She was not like Margaret, a sunflower, seeing only one object, turning only to that. She was a passionate, personal, violent woman—eager for love, eager for money, eager for power, yet subordinating these intense desires to her motherly ambition. Her passion was as strong as Margaret's devotion. Both these women lived only for the glory of Francis. Let us see of what stuff this idol was made.
There is, I believe, no good portrait of Francis in his youthful manhood. The face so familiar to us is of a later date: a dreadful face, with its sly and carnal look, the long coarse nose, and full voluptuous mouth. It seems as if some pressure of blood on the brain weighed down the eyelids over those small and narrow eyes, and inflamed those florid cheeks, over which the coarse dark hair falls down. A dreadful face truly—apoplectic, sensual, indifferent, cunning. But, from the frequent contemporary representations of the Field of the Cloth of Gold, we can believe that in 1520 the King looked different from this. Still slender, tall, and elegant in figure, he rode his horse gracefully, and was first in every pastime. His long face, with the small eyes, is not yet swollen and reddened by indulgence and disease. It has, indeed, a gentle, benevolent, and royal expression; an air of kind knightliness: and this is the pose which Francis affected. He was to be the Amadis of kings. He was brave to folly, ideally rash in love and in war; he was fantastically honourable. A story in the Heptameron relates how, having discovered in his court a stranger who had conspired to murder him, Francis gave a great hunt, and, leading the traitor aside to a lonely glade, he offered to cross swords with him in fair fight, and then sent him pardoned away. Such stories as these captivated the popular imagination; and the splendid court of Francis, his love of art, his taste in architecture, his considerable skill in poetry, all this completed the national enchantment; for France, notwithstanding her love of thrift, has ever demanded glory or magnificence from her rulers. Also the person of the King was widely known. His habit of traversing the country through and through, hunting, pleasuring, inspecting frontiers, made all men acquainted with their monarch. And the nation, delighted with his showy chivalry, found their Prince a picturesque object for devotion.
But woe to those who expected more solid qualities from Francis. Fickle and variable as he was versatile, he veered from point to point with every wind. At bottom a profoundly indifferent nature, he cared only for the convenience of the moment. He accepted devotion gracefully, but it did not occur to him to repay it. His confidence was the one reward he bestowed on those who gave their lives to him; and this went far with the women who adored him. It gave them an exquisite sense of participation in his interest. He kept his grateful sister all her life travelling from province to province en commis-voyageur de royauté. He left half the cares of his country to his mother. But woe to any who, in her hour of need, expected to receive a like aid or service from the King. The Queen of Navarre never got her kingdom from him. Madame de Chateaubriand, in her dreadful prison guarded by her jealous and ferocious husband, was left to die without a word. A certain Louise de Crevecœur discovered too late the heartlessness of her lover. "Do you not know?" she writes, "that those in prison make use of poison; my children and I eat nothing without I find an antidote for our food. It is for my love of you that they hurt me thus; and you endure it. This is sharper to me than the pain that I suffer." How terrible a light this chance-found letter casts on the figure of the gay, handsome, brave young Amadis who was at this time the hero of Europe. "It is for my love of you that they hurt me thus; and you endure it!" From many an honest servant of Francis this cry must have gone up; for neither gratitude nor pity beat under that dinted breast-plate of his. Yet, after all these years, knowing the end, and despite our great contempt, we feel the glamour that surrounds the figure of this ardent young poet and soldier, this brilliant hero of the Renaissance. And how much more did not his radiance blind the women who adored him as their hero and their king!
"Scrivere a Luisa di Savoia è come scrivere alla stessa Trinità." So wrote the witty, blasphemous Cardinal Bibbiena. And it was true. Francis repaid the love and service of his worshippers by his confidence. Louisa and Margaret were scarcely less powerful than himself. On all political questions he consulted these contrasted minds: the violent, autocratic Louisa, and Margaret the modest and humane. Unconsciously to themselves, these different natures paralysed each other; and the policy of Francis is a brilliant tissue of inconsistencies, uncertainties, and sudden disasters.
Francis, though so newly King of France, did not forget that by inheritance he was, also, through his descent from Valentina Visconti, hereditary Duke of Milan. The Sforzas, the successful usurpers, claimed possession as nine points of the law, and Maximilian the Emperor demanded Milan by right of his overlordship. Each was equally resolved to possess in that city the key of Italy. But these words, Milan, Italy, meant more to Francis than a mere political position. To his intensely artistic temperament, a corner of Italy was more precious than the whole of France. Milan to him meant beauty, poetry; gardened villas in which to pass a soft abandoned leisure; women more fair than those of his kingdom; churches and palaces which he, the great builder, knew how to value; lax and subtle Lombard art. From the first days to the last of his life the thought of Milan haunted him like a passion, and to the shadow of unpossessed Italy he constantly sacrificed his substantial realm of France. His first hazard ended in success, and made the name of the little town of Marignano a word to conjure with in France. No sooner was his reign begun, than with Lautrec and with Bayard, with the chivalry of France, the young King resolved to conquer his longed-for inheritance. He sent Bayard in advance with La Palice. No sooner did they set foot in Piedmont than they took prisoner Prospero Colonna, the general of the Swiss in the pay of Maximilian Sforza. When this news reached Francis, who was at Lyons with his mother, his sister, and his wife, nothing could restrain him from marching into Italy. He sent his wife, who was near her confinement, with Louis and Margaret, to the familiar palace of Amboise. He left Louisa—"Madame" as she was now styled—Regent of France, bade them farewell, and soon was in the mountains. He arrived in Lombardy in time to follow up the successes of Bayard and La Palice. The Swiss, rumoured invincible, had gathered in large reinforcements to defend Milan. Near Marignano the French under Francis encountered them. "It was," says General Trivulzio, "a battle of giants. They fought all night."
"The 13th of September, which was Thursday, 1515," writes the proud mother in her journal, "my son vanquished and defeated the Swiss near Milan; the battle began at five hours after noon; it lasted all the night and the morrow until eleven o'clock in the morning; and this very day I left Amboise to go on foot to Nostre Dame des Fontaines, to commend to her that which I love more than myself. It is my son, glorious and triumphant Cæsar, subjugator of the Helvetians.
"Sunday, the 14th of October, of the year 1515, Maximilian, son of the late Louis Sforza, was besieged in the Castle of Milan by the French, and made a conditional surrender to my son.
"The 14th of December 1515 my son took the oath of peace with the King of England."
Thus, a year after his accession, we find Francis a conqueror in Italy, at peace with the Great Powers, adored and glorified in France; so begins his reign.
There were in Europe at this time two other sovereigns, young and rich, though without the brilliant elegance of the French monarch. Europe lay, in fact, at the feet of these three youths, two of them caring for little else but war as a chivalrous game, and peace as magnificent leisure; while the third was equally uninspired by public spirit, being engrossed already with the dreams of a subtle and tremendous ambition.
In 1519 the old Emperor Maximilian died, and each of these three kings stood forward to contest the Empire.
The eldest of them was Henry of England, eighth of the name. He was twenty-eight years of age, handsome, tall, blond, and ruddy. "His features," says Ludovico Falier, "are not merely beautiful—they are angelic." Robust in figure, he did not yet show signs of the extravagant corpulence of his middle age. He was vigorous and active in all sports, vain, jealous, arrogant, but as yet the arrogance seemed only a bluff English sort of dignity. Handsome, rich, and valiant as he was, Henry had not much chance for the empire. His kingdom was not a large enough state. "No one was on the side of the King of England," says Fleurange.
The real rival of Francis was Charles of Austria, King of Spain. These two were rivals, not only for the empire, but for Burgundy, for Milan, for Navarre, and for the Netherlands. They were nearly equal in power, for, while the domain of Charles was the vaster, that of Francis was more homogeneous and more compact. In temperament as different as in interests, each was born to be the antagonist of the other.
Charles was the youngest of the three. Born in 1500, he was nineteen years old at the time of the death of his grandfather. In the previous year, on the decease of his mother's father, Ferdinand, he had succeeded to the crown of Spain, for, though his mother was recognised as Queen, she was unfit to govern. She was that poor mad Queen of Arragon, who mourned so tragically the brutal Austrian husband who ill-used her. Charles was brought up far from the fantastic neighbourhood of his mother. He and his sister were given into the care of his father's sister, the politic Margaret of Austria, who educated them in the Netherlands, where she ruled as Maximilian's governor. But all her care and healthy influence could not prevent Charles from inheriting the sombre temperament of Juana. The man who, when Emperor of half the world, should turn monk and dwell in the Escurial, was as a boy without brilliance, without activity, without fire; a pale, taciturn, studious lad, he seemed no formidable rival. "Un quidam certain petit roi," said the French, and laughed in their sleeves. They did not notice his hungry eyes, his powerful chin; they did not see the subtlety and power of combination which this pious, quiet lad inherited from Ferdinand and Isabel—the rare outbursts of determined energy which showed him the grandson of the fiery Max. He was, in truth, a most formidable adversary.
So it appeared when, in 1517, the three Kings, as candidates for the Empire, sent from France, from Spain, from England, their delegates to Frankfort. "As many were for the King of France as for the Catholic King," says Fleurange, "but not one for the King of England. And the day came at last when the election must be made, when it was cried aloud in the great Church of Frankfort, 'Charles, Catholic King, elected Emperor!' And this being done gave great joy to these who wished well to the Catholic King, and great mourning to them who were for the King of France, and they were vexed and bewildered, for they had spent in vain the moneys they once had."
Francis had lost the chance on which he had surely reckoned. He never forgave his rival. On the other hand, he looked for help and friendship to Henry of England. It was natural that the two defeated candidates should band themselves together against the winner. Francis was sincerely attracted to Henry. Friendship, no less than policy, counselled him to make this tall, vigorous, blond young Saxon his ally. But Henry, it would appear, had never much reliance on his brilliant neighbour. He had the inbred natural English mistrust of a French jackanapes, and, in this special case, it did as well as penetration. He was jealous of Francis's success in sport, in love, in war, and, while the French King thought he was winning Henry by his grace and his vivacity, he was really only fostering the blind antagonism of Henry, only feeding his jealousy, and his dislike to feel himself inferior. Moreover, though it was certainly advantageous for France—always more or less at war with the Empire—to make a firm alliance with England, England could choose between France and Austria; and England, with her laden ships sailing ever to and from the port of Antwerp—commercial, industrious England might naturally choose the power which ruled the Netherlands.
In the treaty of 1515 between France and England, there stood a clause providing that the two kings should meet each other in personal interview at some place on the confines of their dominions, somewhere between French Ardres and English Calais.
At last, in 1520, this friendly encounter was finally arranged. France and England half ruined their resources for each to shine once in the eyes of the other. During three weeks the jousting and revelling went on; for three weeks Francis tried all his graces on his rival, hoping to win his trust, and gaining instead his deadly jealousy. The whole court of either country was present on the field, "All clinquant, all in gold, like heathen gods." The two sad neglected queens encountered there, and there Henry met in the French camp Margaret's beautiful English maid of honour, the black-eyed, slim Anne Boleyn. There met two rivals no less potent than their masters: Wolsey of Canterbury, with his retinue of colossals, and Charles de Montpensier, Constable Bourbon, bearing in his hand the sword of France. Henry of England looked on the Constable, noted the tragic face, wedged like a knife in the hilt between the black masses of his hair, and said to Francis: "Were he my servant, I would cut off his head!" Had Francis taken this advice, he had not paid too dear for the Field of the Cloth of Gold.
But no end, none, did reward that vast expense. Henry would give no promise of alliance, and when the splendid camps were struck, and the French court were journeying home to Paris, Francis was overtaken by the news that Henry had gone to meet the Emperor at Wael. Without flourish or display the secret Charles had gained his ends. In a plain soldier's tent he arranged his business with England. Almost directly after, war was declared between France and the Empire, on the vexed questions of Milan and Navarre. England remained neutral for the nonce; but it was reported that Henry would bring forward his claim to the crown of France when Charles invaded Burgundy. So, in wars and rumours of wars, ended the tourneys of the Field of Gold.