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The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France. R. Knecht J.
Читать онлайн.Название The Rise and Fall of Renaissance France
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780007393381
Автор произведения R. Knecht J.
Издательство HarperCollins
In the spring of 1501, Louis raised a new army and placed it under the command of Stuart d’Aubigny. After a general muster at Parma on 25 May, the army crossed the Appenines. Meanwhile, Ferdinand sent an army under Gonzalo da Cordoba to establish a foothold in Calabria and along the coast of Apulia. Early in July, the French invaded the kingdom of Naples using the same terror tactics as in the Milanese. Any town offering resistance, however slight, was brutally sacked. The worst massacre was at Capua where all the defenders were put to the sword and the entire population – estimated at 8000 – was wiped out. The streets flowed with blood as the French and Swiss raped, looted and burned. Against such barbarity Federigo III of Naples offered no resistance. On 4 August the French entered Naples. Federigo, who threw himself on their mercy, was better treated than Sforza had been. He was allowed to travel to France in regal style and given a pension and the county of Maine, spending his last years peacefully in the Loire valley.
While planting garrisons in the kingdom of Naples, d’Aubigny sent La Palice to occupy the Abruzzi and the provinces of Capitanata and Basilicata. The period between August 1501 and June 1502 was marked by the greatest expansion of French power in Italy. Louis XII’s Italian dominions, including Milan and Asti, covered an area of 75,000 square kilometres. No king of France had ever owned as much territory since the start of the Capetian dynasty in AD 887; none was to have as much again before 1789. Realizing the economic potential of his new dominions, Louis took steps to exploit them. Early in August 1501 he appointed Louis d’Armagnac, duc de Nemours, as viceroy in Naples. Nemours, however, was a mediocrity incapable of standing up to his Spanish rival, Gonzalo da Cordoba.
The Spaniards had carefully avoided collaborating with the French in the conquest of Naples. Working strictly for themselves they had occupied the territories – the two Calabrias and Apulia – given to them by the Treaty of Granada. Soon, however, squabbles developed between the allies. A major difficulty concerned the two provinces that had been overlooked by the treaty. After the French had occupied them, Gonzalo claimed them for Aragon. In the spring of 1502 he entered Capitanata and expelled the French from several forts. Following the breakdown of talks between Nemours and Gonsalo, on 9 June the Spaniards captured Tripalda. There followed months, even years, of desultory warfare without, it seems, any overall strategy. Each captain did more or less as he thought best. Certain engagements caught the imagination of chroniclers. One was the famous duel between the French knight Bayard and the Spanish captain Alonso de Sotomayor, which ended in the latter’s death. Another was the epic encounter between French and Spanish knights – eleven on each side – which was watched by a thousand people from the walls of Trani.
Louis XII returned to Italy in the summer of 1502. His presence raised the morale of his troops. They invaded Apulia in July and soon afterwards Calabria. By the end of the summer the Spaniards held only a few towns along the Adriatic coast, including Barletta, where Gonzalo had his headquarters. Though Nemours disposed of larger forces, he allowed them to succumb to disease, hunger and desertion. As his army dwindled in size, the Spaniards received reinforcements by sea. Gonzalo was not only a brave soldier but a brilliant tactician. His military reforms led to the creation of the tercio in the sixteenth century. Abandoning the use of light cavalry, he relied mainly on infantry and provided it with better protection than in the past. The old companies which were too small for modern warfare were grouped into larger coronelias, each supported by cavalry and artillery.
In April 1503, Gonzalo launched an offensive. He defeated d’Aubigny at Seminara on 21 April and a week later crushed Nemours at Cerignola. The duke was killed and the bulk of his army had to retreat to the Capua region where it awaited reinforcements. A relief army under La Trémoïlle arrived in Rome just as a new pope was being elected and remained there for three months, supposedly to protect the conclave. Meanwhile, the French position in the south crumbled away. In mid-July, Gonzalo entered Naples effortlessly. He failed, however, to capture Gaeta where the two French armies joined forces at the end of the summer. During the harsh winter that followed both sides suffered hardships. Eventually, Gonzalo offered the French generous surrender terms which they accepted, much to Louis XII’s dismay. He ordered Chaumont d’Amboise to detain troops returning from southern Italy who had served him ‘so badly’, and rounded on his own fiscal officials, accusing them of not paying the army. About twenty were tried and two at least were executed. The disaster in southern Italy, however, was irreversible. On 31 March 1504, Louis and Ferdinand signed a truce of three years.
The succession problem
By marrying Anne of Brittany, Louis XII had hoped to produce a son. So far, however, the queen had borne him only a daughter whom the Salic law debarred from the throne. The king’s nearest male heir was his second cousin, François d’Angoulême, who in 1500 was six years old. He was being brought up at Amboise by his mother, Louise of Savoy. Both were closely supervised by Pierre de Gié, a marshal of France of Breton origin. Being firmly committed to Brittany’s union with France, Gié hoped to see it maintained by a marriage between the king’s daughter Claude and François. But Anne was determined to protect her duchy’s independence and, for this reason, favoured an alternative match between Claude and Charles of Ghent, the infant son of Archduke Philip the Fair and grandson of the Emperor Maximilian. Finding himself caught in the crossfire between Anne and Gié, Louis pursued contradictory policies. Whether he did so out of weakness or duplicity is not easy to unravel.
On 30 April 1501 the king signed a secret declaration nullifying in advance any marriage between his daughter and another than François. Meanwhile, the idea of marrying Claude to Charles of Ghent was strongly canvassed by Anne with the backing of Georges d’Amboise. Claude’s dowry was to comprise Milan, Asti and Naples, the duchies of Burgundy and Brittany and the county of Blois. Had this marriage taken place, France would have been dismembered. That Louis XII should have entertained such a possibility is difficult to understand. He may have agreed to Anne’s proposal simply in order to extort the investiture of Milan from the emperor. He may also have felt covered by the secret declaration made in April 1501. Be that as it may, the betrothal of Claude and Charles was celebrated in August 1501, and Philip the Fair and his wife, Juana of Castile, visited France in November and met their prospective daughter-in-law. As for Maximilian, he promised to confer Milan’s investiture on Louis, but only verbally and within the secrecy of his own chamber.
Early in 1504, as Louis fell seriously ill, Gié persuaded him to confirm his declaration of April 1501. He also ordered a strict watch to be kept on all river traffic and roads leading to Brittany, so as to prevent Anne from returning there with her daughter in the event of Louis’s death. The king, however, recovered, and Gié came under fire from both Anne and Louise of Savoy. The latter’s servant, Pierre de Pontbriant, brought damaging charges to the king, which were subsequently used to prepare Gié’s indictment. He was accused inter alia of ordering the queen’s detention and of alienating her from Louise. In July a royal commission was appointed to investigate the charges.
Maximilian, in the meantime, drew closer to Louis. On 22 September the Treaty of Blois was concluded. It consisted of three separate agreements. The first was an alliance between Maximilian, Philip the Fair and Louis XII which Ferdinand of Aragon was conditionally invited to join. Louis renounced his claim to Milan in return for an indemnity of 900,000 florins, and Maximilian promised to give him the investiture of Milan within three months. The second agreement was a league against Venice which involved Pope Julius II. The third revived the projected marriage between Claude de France and Charles of Ghent. If Louis died without a direct male heir, the couple were to get Milan, Genoa, Brittany, Asti, Blois, Burgundy, Auxonne, the Auxerrois, the Mâconnais, and Bar-sur-Seine! On 7 April 1505, Maximilian conferred the investiture of Milan on Louis and his male descendants. However, the accord between the two rulers was upset in November by the death of Isabella of Castile. She bequeathed her kingdom to her husband, Ferdinand of Aragon, thereby setting aside the rights of her daughter