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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
One of Louis XII’s major reforms was the reorganization of the Grand conseil, or king’s council acting as a lawcourt. It can be traced back to 1469 and a continuous series of archives, starting in 1483, shows that by then the council was meeting regularly and beginning to acquire a distinct identity. But it was Louis who, in August 1497, gave it a permanent staff of legal experts capable of coping with its growing legal business. Their competence included disputes between sovereign courts, complaints levelled at royal officials, quarrels over fiefs or ecclesiastical benefices, as well as appeals in civil and criminal cases. Being directly under the king, the council facilitated his intervention in criminal cases which touched him personally, such as that of Marshal Gié. Regarding the Grand conseil as a rival, the parlement showed its hostility on several occasions; but Louis placated it by giving it precedence and allowing its members to sit in the Grand conseil whenever they wished.
Louis’s concern to streamline the judicial system extended to France’s newest provinces. In Normandy the highest court of law, dating from the time of the dukes, was the Echiquier which met occasionally and had no permanent staff. Louis turned it into a permanent body with four presidents and 28 councillors. Under Francis I it became the Parlement of Rouen. In Provence, the Conseil éminent of the old counts of Provence was turned by Louis into a parlement with one president and eleven councillors. Finally, in Brittany justice was administered by the Grands Jours, a commission renewable each year. The members were partly Bretons and partly recruits from the Parlement of Paris. It functioned alongside a council, which was an administrative and judicial body. Gradually the commission developed at the expense of the council: in 1491 it acquired a permanent staff and fixed annual sessions. However, it did not become a parlement till 1554.
A major obstacle to judicial efficiency in early modern France was the survival of unwritten customary law. This varied from one locality to another; it was entirely pragmatic, serving particular needs as they arose. Because customs were variable and ill-defined, they needed to be validated by a judge before they could be used as evidence. In the Middle Ages attempts had been made by various kings to distinguish good customs from bad ones. Royal intervention took the form of a written declaration establishing what customs were to apply to a particular area. Professional jurists also produced coutumiers in which the customary law of whole provinces was written down. But it was only in the fifteenth century, when the kingdom was sufficiently unified politically, that the crown was able to think of providing an official, authenticated and coherent set of customs. The lead was given by Charles VII, but little further progress was made till 1497, when Charles VIII altered the procedure by which definitive customary laws were arrived at. Henceforth, a royal judge in a given area drew up a tentative list of customs after consulting his colleagues and local worthies. Representatives of the three estates then met to discuss the draft, which had to be approved by a majority of each estate’s representatives before being published in the king’s name. Much of this work was done under Louis XII, who commissioned two distinguished parlementaires – Roger Barme and Thibaut Baillet – to write down the customs of northern France. Till the end of the reign these two legists, acting in concert with the baillis, sénéchaux and representatives of the three estates in each area, verified and confirmed many customs after weeding out accretions. Georges d’Amboise signed the first rédaction at Tours on 5 May 1508 and many others quickly followed, but the task was unfinished when Louis died. Several provinces had to wait a century before their customs were verified.
In 1506, Louis was acclaimed by the spokesman of the notables at Blois as ‘father of the people’. He became renowned for his efforts to spare his subjects taxes, to give them justice and to provide them with security. His praises were sung throughout the sixteenth century. Even after Henry IV’s reign there were demands for a return to the time of Louis XII. His role, according to Russell Major, was ‘more to make the monarchy beloved than to change its character’.
The Genoese rebellion
Although Louis XII had relinquished his rights in Naples, he had not abandoned all his Italian interests. His authority as duke of Milan had been legitimized in April 1505 by the emperor’s investiture and he was also count of Asti and ‘protector’ of Genoa. Early in 1506 a popular rising in Genoa against the rule of the local patricians turned into a revolt against the French. At first Louis tried to temporize, but the rebels set up a new administration headed by a doge. On 12 March they massacred Frenchmen who had taken refuge in a fort. Taking this as a personal affront, Louis gathered a large army in the spring of 1507 and invaded Genoa. The doge fled and the city surrendered. Louis annexed Genoa to his domain, destroyed its charters, executed sixty rebels and threatened to impose a huge fine on the inhabitants. Later he relented: most of the citizens were allowed to keep their lives and property, and their fine was reduced. A new governor, Raoul de Lannoy, was ordered to run the city humanely and fairly. The king appreciated Genoa’s importance as a commercial and financial centre. He did not want to see it destroyed and therefore refused to allow the bulk of his army into it. He did, however, impose his authority in an entry acclaimed by contemporaries as the ceremonial climax of his reign. Wearing full armour, a helmet with white plumes and a surcoat of gold cloth, he rode a richly caparisoned black charger beneath a canopy carried by four Genoese notables dressed in black. Along the route young girls holding olive branches begged for mercy.
France and Venice had been allies since 1500. The Venetians had taken advantage of the French conquest of Milan by nibbling at the eastern edge of the duchy. But the long-term objectives of the allies were not necessarily identical. The Venetians were alarmed by the closeness of the French to their own terra firma. The two powers also differed about the emperor. In February 1508, Maximilian attacked the Venetians. Louis was about to send a force to help them, when he learned that they had signed a truce with Maximilian. He felt badly let down as they had not consulted him. The pope, meanwhile, had his own reasons for falling out with the Venetians. His desire to extend the States of the Church into the Romagna ran counter to Venice’s territorial ambitions. Moreover, Venetian policy towards the Turks contradicted the pope’s aim of mounting a crusade.
In December 1508 representatives of the emperor, the kings of France and Aragon, and the pope met at Cambrai. However divergent their individual aims may have been, they all wanted to abase the pride of Venice. Anticipating her defeat, they agreed to share the spoils: Verona and control of the Adige valley would go to Maximilian, Brescia to Louis XII, Ravenna to the pope and Otranto to Ferdinand of Aragon, now king of Naples. For some unknown reason, Louis decided to fire the opening shot, while his allies undertook to declare themselves one month later. The pope simply placed Venice under an interdict.
On 16 April 1509, three days after declaring war on Venice, Louis crossed the Alps to take charge of military operations. An important innovation was the decision to place infantry under the command of noblemen, who previously would have considered such a role beneath their dignity. In addition to 20,000 infantry (including 8000 Swiss mercenaries) the king disposed of about 2000 men-at-arms. His lieutenants included names familiar from earlier campaigns such as Gian Giacomo Trivulzio, La Trémoïlle, La Palice, Chaumont d’Amboise and San Severino. Among younger men, going into action for the first time, were the king’s cousin, Charles de Bourbon-Montpensier, and his nephew, Gaston de Foix. The Venetian army was larger: it comprised, according to Guicciardini, 2000 Italian lances, 3000 light cavalry (including Albanian stradiots) and 20,000 infantry. The commanders included Bartolomeo d’Alviano and Niccolò Orsini, count of Pitigliano.
On 14 May the two armies faced each other at Agnadello. Instead of attacking the French as they crossed the river Adda, Pitigliano preferred to wait for them within a well-fortified camp. He was ordered, however, to move to higher ground, and this gave the French a chance to attack him in the open. D’Alviano, commanding the Venetian vanguard, bore the brunt of the attack and repulsed it, but the rest of the Venetian army was too widely spread out to come to his aid. He and his cavalry were consequently surrounded and captured. His infantry fought on bravely, only to be annihilated by a much larger