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The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France. R. Knecht J.
Читать онлайн.Название The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France
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isbn 9780007393381
Автор произведения R. Knecht J.
Издательство HarperCollins
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