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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
An additional complication was the fact that Naples was a papal fief. Its hereditary transmission was determined by a bull of investiture of 1265 which conferred the kingdom on Charles d’Anjou and his heirs in the direct or collateral line up to the fourth degree of kinship. Charles VIII was too far removed in kinship from Charles d’Anjou to qualify, but this did not deter him from pressing his claim. In 1493, Naples was ruled by Ferrante I, the brother-in-law of Ferdinand of Aragon, as part of a kingdom comprising the whole of Italy south of the States of the Church except Sicily which belonged to Ferdinand. Ferrante was hardly a docile vassal of the papacy: he had been excommunicated by Pope Innocent VIII and had opposed the election of Alexander VI, who repeatedly called on the French king to attack Naples.
Charles VIII wanted Naples not only for itself but as a springboard from which to launch a crusade against the Turks. The fifteenth century had seen a rapid expansion of Turkish power westward under Sultan Mehmet II. After capturing Greece and Albania, the Turks established a foothold in southern Italy in August 1480. The death of Mehmet in May 1481 was followed by a respite. In 1482 the Turks were driven out of southern Italy, but they remained a threat. There was general agreement among the Christian powers of the need for a new crusade aimed ultimately at freeing Constantinople and the Holy Places; but there was no consensus as to who should lead it. Two possible candidates were Charles VIII and Maximilian, King of the Romans. Although Philippe de Commynes doubted Charles’s sincerity in proposing a crusade, ample evidence suggests otherwise. As Robert Gaguin, on an embassy to England, explained: the king, his master, was anxious to follow the example set by Henry IV of England, who at the end of his life had planned to lead an expedition to the Holy Land. He was also much impressed by the efforts of Ferdinand of Aragon to wrest the kingdom of Granada from the Saracens. A Venetian envoy wrote from Rome in June 1495: ‘You may be sure that the king’s intention is to attack the Turks. He has made the vow to God and would already have launched his enterprise if so many troubles had not befallen him. I, who have spoken to His Majesty, know this to be true.’
In planning a crusade Charles was almost certainly influenced by a number of legends. One was that of Charlemagne, who had allegedly freed the Holy Places and handed them over to the emperor in Constantinople. Another was that of a king of France, called Philip ‘le despourveu’, who had travelled incognito to Naples in order to rescue the king of Sicily and his daughter from the Saracens. A prophecy popular in the 1490s forecast that a French prince called Charles, crowned at fourteen and married to Justice, would destroy Florence and be crowned in Rome after purging it of bad priests. He would then sail to Greece, become its king, defeat the Turks and end his life as king of Jerusalem.
Charles was also subject to less fanciful influences. There were Neapolitan exiles at his court, such as Antonello San Severino, who wanted his help to return to their native land. He gave them pensions and the use of a fortress in Burgundy until he could raise an army in support of their cause. Alongside the Neapolitans were Frenchmen, like Etienne de Vesc or Guillaume Briçonnet, who could see opportunities of personal enrichment or advancement arise out of a French intervention in Italy. Briçonnet was anxious to get a red hat. Even outside the court there was support for a French expedition south of the Alps. The bankers of Lyon and the merchants of Marseille wanted to expand their commercial interests in the Mediterranean at the expense of the Venetians and Aragonese.
Even within Italy there were forces working for a French intervention. Lodovico Sforza, nicknamed Il Moro, the effective ruler of the duchy of Milan, urged the king of France as early as 1491 to make good his claim to Naples. He suggested that Genoa might serve as a base for an attack on the southern kingdom. In January 1494 he was much alarmed when Alfonso, who had tried several times to have him assassinated, became king of Naples. His appeals to the king of France became desperate. Among Italian states, Florence was the only ally of the king of Naples, for the silk trade on which much of its prosperity depended passed through his territories, yet even there support for a French invasion existed. Many Florentines, who resented the autocratic ways of Piero de’ Medici, looked favourably towards France. For example, the Dominican preacher Savonarola prophesied Charles VIII’s coming in his Lenten sermon of 1493. ‘I have seen’, he exclaimed, ‘in the sky a suspended sword and I have heard these words: Ecce gladius Domini super terram cito et velociter. The sword fell bringing about wars, massacres and numberless ills.’ As for the Venetians, their foreign policy was primarily dictated by commercial interests: they wanted to maintain the status quo in the Adriatic and were, in general, opposed to any move which might antagonize the Turks. Yet they needed French help against the Habsburgs, who, having gained control of Trieste and Fiume, were entertaining maritime ambitions. Thus the Venetians were among the first to encourage Charles VIII to seize Naples. Another Italian who exerted similar pressure upon the king was Cardinal Giuliano della Rovere. He came to France shortly after his defeat in the papal conclave of 1492. Hoping to use a French invasion to topple his successful rival, Pope Alexander VI, he assured the French of the support of the Colonna faction which controlled the port of Ostia and several castles in the Roman Campagna.
Yet if Charles was under heavy pressure at home and abroad to invade Italy, support for such an enterprise among his own subjects was far from unanimous. According to a Florentine envoy it was opposed by the princes of the blood, most other nobles, royal councillors, prelates, finance ministers and all the people. Belgioioso, the Milanese ambassador, remarked: ‘It is truly a miracle that the king, young as he is, has persevered in his design in spite of all the opposition he has encountered.’ Charles himself informed the Italians in 1494 that he had left his kingdom ‘against the wishes of the princes and great nobles’. The opposition, however, was not united. Some great nobles resented the influence exercised by de Vesc and Briçonnet over the king. Louis d’Orléans wanted to divert the expedition from Naples to Milan, to which he had inherited a claim from his grandmother Valentina Visconti. The Bourbons showed no enthusiasm for the enterprise, yet took part in it. Nobles generally believed that the costs of equipping themselves for such a distant campaign would not be offset by the results. However, the main focus of opposition lay in the towns of northern France which refused royal demands for a subsidy. Many French people disapproved of the king leaving his kingdom when the Dauphin was still only an infant.
Commynes tells us that the French invasion of Italy in 1494 was poorly prepared. ‘All things necessary to so great an enterprise’, he writes, ‘were lacking.’ But Guillaume de La Mare, a usually reliable eyewitness, wrote on 27 March: ‘the Neapolitan campaign … is being prepared with the utmost prudence and zeal …There is nothing that the king is not putting into execution with extreme activity and care.’ Collecting the funds necessary to such a campaign was a matter of primary importance. Marshal d’Esquerdes informed Charles that he would need one million gold écus before the start of the campaign and another million once the army had crossed the Alps. The king managed to raise the first million by resorting to various expedients. The great nobles were asked for a loan of 50,000 ducats and contributions were also requested from the Chambre des comptes and other state departments. What the clergy offered is unknown, but a number of bonnes villes responded with varying generosity. Lyon offered 10,000 livres, while Paris refused to give anything. Amiens gave 3000 livres, half as much as the king had demanded. Parts of the royal domain were sold or mortgaged to the tune of 120,000 livres. The wages of royal officials and pensioners were delayed for six months. Finally, the taille was increased to 575,000 livres. As far as the second million was concerned, Charles relied mainly on contributions from various Italian cities.
On 13 February 1494, shortly after the death of Ferrante of Naples, Charles VIII travelled to Lyon and assumed the title of King of Sicily and Jerusalem. He dispatched an ambassador to the pope asking for the investiture of Naples, but on 18 April, at a secret consistory, Alexander conferred it on Ferrante’s son Alfonso. This volte-face by the pope, who had previously been hostile to Ferrante, did