Francis I and Sixteenth-Century France (Variorum Collected Studies) 2015932396, 9781472461490, 9780367598273, 1472461495

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VARIORUM COLLECTED STUDIES SERIES

Francis I and Sixteenth-Century France

Robert J. Knecht

Robert J. Knecht

Francis I and Sixteenth-Century France

I~ ~~o~f!;n~~~up LONDON AND NEW YORK

First published 20 15 by Ashgate Publishing 2 Park Square , Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxfordshire OX 14 4RN 52 Vanderbi lt Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an inforrna business First issued in paperback 20 20 This edi t ion© 2015 Robe1i J. Knecht Robert J. Knecht has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any e lectronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, inc luding photocopying and recording, or in any information storage o r retrieval syste m, without permissio n in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without inte nt to infringe .

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: 2015932396 VARIORUM COLLECTED STUDIES SERIES CS1055

ISBN 13: 978- 1-4724-6149-0 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978-0-367-59827-3 (pbk)

To Maureen

CONTENTS Introduction Acknowledgements The Concordat of 1516: a reassessment

IX

xx

16- 32

University of Birmingham Historical Journal 9, 1963

II

'Our Trinity!': Francis I, Louise of Savoy and Marguerite d' Angouleme

71- 89

Gender, Power and Privilege in Early Modern Europe, eds J. Munns and P. Richards. Harlow: Pearson, 2003

III

The Field of Cloth of Gold

IV

The court of Francis I

Fram;ois fer et Henri Vlll: Deux princes a la Renaissance, ed. C. Giry-Deloison. Lille: Centre d 'histoire de la region du Nord et de ! 'Europe du Nord-Ouest, 1995

37-51

1-22

European Studies Review 8, 1978

V

Popular theatre and the court in sixteenth-century France

364- 373

Renaissance Studies 9, 1995

VI

Francis I, 'Father of Letters'?

17-28

Court and Humour in the French Renaissance: Essays in Honour ofProfessor Pauline Smith, ed. S.A. Stacey. Bern: Peter Lang, 2009

VII

Francis I and the ' Mirror for princes'

1- 22

English translation of 'Fram;ois fer et le Miroir des Princes', Le savoir du prince du Mayen-Age aux Lumieres, ed. R. Halevi. Paris: Fayard, 2002, pp. 81- 110

VIII

The early Reformation in England and France: acompanson History 57, 1972

1-16

CONTENTS

VIII

IX

Francis I, 'Defender of the Faith'?

106-127

Wealth and Power in Tudor England: Essays Presented to S. T. Bindoff, eds E.W. Ives, R.J. Knecht and J.J. Scarisbrick. London: Athlone Press, 1978

X

Francis I and Paris

18-33

History 66, 1981

XI

Charles III of Bourbon, Henry VIII and Charles V

1- 16

English translation of 'Charles ill de Bourbon, Henri VJJJ et Charles Quint 'from Le Duche de Bourbon des origines au Connetable (Actes du colloque de Mou/ins des 5 et 6 octobre 2000). Varennes-sur-Allier:Bleu autour, 2001, pp. 47-54

XII

Francis I in Aquitaine: a British view

1-10

English translation of 'Fran9ois fer en Aquitaine: Temoignage britannique 'from Provinciales: Hommage aAnne-Marie Cocula, eds J. Mondot and P Loupes. Bordeaux: Presses universitaires de Bordeaux, 2009, Vol. 11, pp. 563- 72

XIII

Francis I and the Lit de justice: a ' legend' defended

53-83

French History 7, 1993

XIV Francis I and Fontainebleau

93-118

The Court Historian 4, 1999

xv

'Haulse (Paris) haulse bien hault ta porte ': the entry of the Emperor Charles V into Paris, 1540

85- 105

Renaissance Reflections: Essays in memory of C.A. Mayer, eds PM Smith and T. Peach. Paris: Champion, 2002

XVI The French and English nobilities in the sixteenth century: a comparison

61-78

'The Contending Kingdoms ': France and England 1420- 1700, ed. G. Richardson. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008

XVII The sword and the pen: Blaise de Monluc and his Commentaires

104-118

Renaissance Studies 9, 1995

1- 14

Index This volume contains xx + 332 pages

INTRODUCTION It was on 1 January 1515 that Francis I succeeded his cousin, Louis XII, on the throne of France. He was only 20 and was to rule for 32 years. Louis's reign had ended disastrously. The French, who, in 1494, under Charles VIII, had invaded Italy conquering the duchy of Milan and the kingdom ofNaples had been driven out of the peninsula by a coalition that included the Swiss cantons, then seen as the leading military power in Europe. As recently as 1512, they had invaded Burgundy and besieged Dijon. The local commander had bought them off by a treaty which Louis XII had refused to ratify. So the Swiss in 1515 harboured a grudge. One of Francis's first tasks, therefore, on becoming king was to recover the territories France had lost in Italy and to punish the Swiss. Like all young noblemen at the time, he had been educated to fight, but had only a limited military experience. Yet within a year he invaded Italy with a huge army, mainly composed of cavalry, but including a sizeable infantry and artillery rated second to none in Europe. After appointing his mother, Louise of Savoy, as regent, he set off to join his army in Grenoble. On the way, he stopped in Lyons where a spectacular pageant greeted him, including a water pageant on the river Saone. This involved a winged stag which was intended to remind Francis of a legend whereby Clovis, King of the Franks, had been shown a ford that would enable him to cross a river and defeat the Almains. The entry was soon followed by an equally spectacular crossing of the Alps. Instead of using the usual passes, a French captain pointed to another used only by local peasants. Its passage did not prove easy, as Francis explained in a letter to his mother: 'We are in the strangest country ever seen by man' , he wrote. Sappers had to remove obstacles and bridge torrents, while guns had to be dismantled and their parts lowered into chasms on ropes. But the effort paid off. The Swiss, who had been guarding the other passes, finding themselves by-passed, had to fall back while a force of papal cavalry was taken by surprise and put out of action, depriving the Swiss of cavalry support. Francis was ready to treat with the Swiss rather than fight them. Some cantons responded and a treaty was drawn up, but men from other cantons, who were in Milan, decided to fight on. By then, Francis had set up camp at the village ofMarignano, a few miles south of Milan. At dawn on 14 September the Swiss poured out of Milan as silently as possible, hoping to take the French by surprise, but they could not help throwing up a huge cloud of dust into the

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INTRODUCTION

sky. This alerted the French. A fierce battle ensued which lasted two days and cost thousands of lives. Among the dead were many French noblemen whose bodies were put into lead coffins and transported back across the Alps to their homes in France. The battle ended in a French victory but only after a force of Venetian cavalry had arrived in the nick of time shouting 'San Marco! San Marco!' The battle was followed by a wave of propaganda in France. Francis was hailed not only as the new Hannibal on account of his crossing of the Alps, but also as the new Julius Caesar for, like him, he had defeated the Swiss. Since the thirteenth century Caesar had joined a prestigious circle of 'preux' noted for their virtus. Francis was praised not only for his bravery in the battle, but also for his magnanimity. Frarn;:ois Demoulins in a book entitled Commentaires des Guerres Galliques, published in 1519, described three imaginary meetings between Francis and Julius Caesar, one of them in the forest of Fontainebleau. By showing them as close friends the author evidently hoped to show that the king was a worthy successor of the Roman commander. Addressing Francis, Demoulins writes: 'It should be noted that two drops of water could not be more alike than your fortune and that of Caesar'. Caesar served as another example to the French nobility, for he had been a writer as well as a soldier. This encouraged a number of French nobles to write their memoirs, notably Francis's childhood friend, Florange, and Guillaume du Bellay. Later in the century, they were joined by Blaise de Monluc whose Commentaires contain much advice on tactics, strategy, fortification and leadership. (XVII) The fact that Francis was not only defeated but captured in 1525 at the battle of Pavia did not, it seems, undermine his reputation among his subjects. He remained 'le noble roy Frarn;:oys' for the rest of the sixteenth century and, following the outbreak of France's religious wars in 1562, his reign was remembered with nostalgia as a 'golden age'. And so it lasted until the assassination of Francis's grandson, Henry III, the last Valois king, in 1589. Thereafter, Francis was virtually expunged from public consciousness. In April 2000 the French periodical, L 'Histoire, conducted a survey of heroworship among its readers. They were asked: 'if you could chat for one hour with a famous French historical figure, whom would you choose?' Twelve such figures received more than 1% of the vote. The top scorer was Charles de Gaulle with 29% followed by Napoleon with 17%, Louis XIV with 10%, Charlemagne with 6%, Henry IV with 5% and poor Joan of Arc with only 3%. As for Francis I, he scored only a miserable 1% after participants had been offered a second choice. Yet the 500th anniversary of his accession is now being celebrated in France in a number of exhibitions and conferences. As far as I am aware, these will be the first ever accorded to the monarch, for all the past centennial years (1915, 1815, etc.), have been dominated by other events:

INTRODUCTION

XI

the First World War, the Congress of Vienna, the death of Louis XIV. In any case, no one in France under the Bourbon kings would have dared to celebrate a Valois and under the republic Francis's reputation has been at best mixed. In the late sixteenth century, as Francis was still remembered as 'le noble roy Frarn;:oys', two historians associated with the house of Bourbon begged to differ. They were Frarn;:ois Beaucaire de Peguillon and Antoine de Laval, captain of the chateau of Moulins. In his old age Beaucaire wrote a history of France entitled Rerum gallicorum commentaria which contained a vehemently hostile treatment of Francis I. He is presented as interested only in womanizing and hunting. He allegedly left affairs of state to his mother and mistresses. His chancellor, Antoine Duprat, is portrayed as the vilest of men :'bipedum omnium nequissimus' . As for Laval, his book entitled Desseins de professions nobles et publiques, published in Paris in 1605 and 1612, is especially hostile towards Louise of Savoy (II) The hostility of these historians towards Francis I is easily explained. In 1521 the Bourbon demesne formed an unusually compact block in central France with its own distinctive administration. The duke, Charles III, whom Francis had appointed as Constable of France, was all powerful within his demesne. (XI) His relations with the king were at first friendly rather than intimate. Bourbon figured prominently at the Field of Cloth of Gold (III). But in 1521 Francis failed to give him command of the army's vanguard in a military campaign in northern France. Soon afterwards, the Constable's wife, Suzanne, died childless. Francis's mother claimed her inheritance as her nearest relative and Francis demanded the return of certain fiefs. Both suits were submitted to the Parlement of Paris, but without waiting for its verdict Louise did homage to Francis for part of the Bourbon demesne. In August 1523 the Parlement ordered Bourbon's lands to be sequestered. The duke was a vassal of both Francis and the Emperor Charles V and under feudal law a vassal who felt unjustly treated by one suzerain could seek redress from another. Bourbon decided to throw in his lot with the Emperor. He became an imperial commander and was killed in 1527 during the sack of Rome. His harsh treatment at the hands of Francis and his mother explains the bitterness of historians loyal to the house of Bourbon, but they were not alone. After the assassination in 1589 of Francis I's grandson, Henry III, and the accession of Henry IV, the first king of the Bourbon line, Francis's reputation slumped. Bayle in his Dictionnaire historique et critique (1697) described him as 'one of those great princes in whom great qualities are mixed with great faults'. Bayle credited him with courage and generosity, but criticized him for allowing himself to be ruled by women and unworthy favourites. Francis 's reputation reached its nadir in 1832 when Victor Hugo published his play, Le roi s 'amuse. This was given a stormy reception when first performed in Paris and banned by the government on account of its alleged immmorality.

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INTRODUCTION

It contained a scene in which a virtuous young woman is seduced by Francis I whom she takes to be a poor student. Not everyone shared the government's revulsion. In 1850 Giuseppe Verdi signed a contract to produce a new opera for the Teatro La Fenice in Venice. 'Oh!' he wrote to his librettist, 'Le Roi s 'amuse is the greatest subject and perhaps the greatest drama of modern times'. The result was Rigoletto which ran ino serious trouble with the Venetian censors. Verdi omitted the seduction scene from the opera, but the military governor of Venetia still considered it immoral. Eventually Verdi had to make changes: Francis I became the duke of Mantua and the names of the other characters were changed, Triboulet, the king's fool , becoming Rigoletto. Hugo's Leroi s 'amuse reflected current historical thinking. Thus the great historian, Jules Michelet, thought Francis's upbringing could be summed up in two words: 'women' and 'war' or 'war to please women' . 'This dangerous object', he wrote, 'was born one might say, between two prostrate women, his mother and his sister, and thus they remained in this ecstasy of worship and devotion'. (II) It is to an Englishman , however, that one must turn for the most severe judgement. In a lecture delivered in Oxford in the 1860s Bishop Stubbs said of Francis: 'all that is bad about him is too substantial and effective; all that seems good and noble is sham, and a sorry sham, a very ragged covering to the mismanagement, misrule, and tyranny that make him the fit representative ... of the worst dynasty that ever reigned in Europe since the rotten empire of Rome fell to pieces ... ' . But, even in the nineteenth century, Francis had defenders. In 1832 an historian, called Paulin Paris, decided after reading Hugo 's Le roi s 'amuse, to refute 'the astonishing picture of the court of Francis I that the poet presented to the general public' . He judged it to be a caricature of one of the most brilliant reigns France had ever experienced. His reading of Michelet's Histoire de France increased his determination 'to fight the assertions and hypotheses offered with so much daring, malevolence and diseased fantasy '. But it was only in 1879, after receiving a manuscript by Leon Techener entitled Portefeuille de Franr;ois fer that Paris took up his pen. His work was published posthumously by his son, Gaston, in 1885 under the title Etudes sur Franr;ois Premier roi de France, sur sa vie privee et son regne. Among the lies Paulin set about refuting were the following: that Louise of Savoy had educated her son in wickedness, that he had nearly seduced Louis XIl 's wife; that M. de Chateaubriant had murdered his wife after she had been raped by Francis, that the financier Semblarn;;ay was the innocent victim of Louise 's hatred; that the constable of Bourbon was likewise the victim of the same passion, that the duchesse d'Etampes was bribed by Charles V into betraying Francis and, finally, that in his last years Francis was 'devoured by a cruel and shameful disease '. All or nearly all of these yarns, Paulin maintained, first appeared after

INTRODUCTION

Xlll

the death of Francis whose greatness had been universally proclaimed by his contemporaries. 'One is frightened' , he wrote,'by the superficial treatment accorded to the history of France and by the zeal with which historians embrace all that detracts from the renown of old France and of her kings'. My own interest in Francis was first aroused about 1956 when a publisher invited me to write a biography of the Emperor Charles V. I did not feel the need for such a work as two good biographies in English already existed. So I began to look at the other two rulers who dominated Europe in the early sixteenth century. Another historian was working on Henry VIII. This left Francis I, who was virtually unknown to me, as I had been trained as a medieval British historian. Two biographies in English and several more in French seemed to me lightweight. An exception was the biography by Charles Terrasse (1945). His approach was that of an art historian conscious of the hugely important legacy ofFrancis's patronage. ' The king' , he writes, ' dominated his reign. He is present everywhere, acting everywhere, closely tied to his people in both heart and spirit. The nation has fixed its destiny with him ... with his qualities and faults, his natural generosity, his fantasy, his love of liberty, and his very name Francis appears as the embodiment of the French people'. Much as I enjoyed reading Terrasse, his treatment of Francis seemed to me altogether too eulogistic. I decided to take a closer look. Francis I is now mainly remembered for the part he played in the Italian wars, leading his troops victoriously at the battle of Marignano in 1515 and disastrously ten years later at Pavia, a defeat which led to his year-long captivity in Spain. He gained his freedom by promising to hand over Burgundy to the Emperor only to break his word. Francis is also celebrated as an outstanding patron of art and architecture who helped to promote the Renaissance north of the Alps, but I approached his reign from a different angle. Comparative history can be rewarding. Two essays in the present volume compare certain religious or social aspects in France and England (VIII and XVI). I began to compare Francis I's relations with his clergy with that of Henry VIII of England. This led me to the Concordat which he signed with pope Leo X at Bologna soon after Marignano. (I) This agreement has traditionally been interpreted as an act of royal authoritarianism designed to curb the power of the French or Gallican church. Francis, it was claimed, gained so much from the Concordat that he was never tempted to follow Henry VIII's example of breaking with Rome. but my experience of the English scene prompted me to question this judgement, for state control of the church was not necessarily a safeguard against religious schism. The English kings controlled episcopal appointments long before the Reformation, yet this did not prevent Henry VIII's breach with Rome. Furthermore, the French crown enjoyed so much control over the church in France before 1516 that the Concordat cannot be said to have destroyed its

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independence. Nor did Francis gain as much authority over it as Henry VIII did over his by breaking with Rome. Contemporaries viewed the Concordat, not as a triumph for the monarchy, but as a capitulation to the Holy See, for it acknowledged papal supremacy and restored the payment of annates to Rome which had been abolished in 1438. This was why the Concordat was bitterly resisted by Gallican bodies like the Parlement and University of Paris. It was once assumed that Francis, following Marignano, was strong enough to impose his will upon the pope, but in my view that had not been his objective: by satisfying a long-standing demand for the annulment of the Pragmatic Sanction, he hoped to enlist papal support for his policies in Italy. If so, his policy failed. In 1521 Pope Leo X signed an alliance with the Emperor Charles V, and a year later the French were driven out of Italy. One of the great challenges facing Francis was the rise of Protestantism. This at first took the form of Lutheranism which was in certain respects very close to the kind of evangelical humanism which several Frenchmen, including Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples, promoted. As far as the Sorbonne or theological faculty of the university of Paris was concerned, both Lutheranism and evangelical humanism were equally heretical, but this view was not shared by the king. As ' the most Christian king', he was in duty bound to eradicate heresy from his kingdom, but defining it proved difficult. Since the start of his reign, Francis had protected humanists. He had even invited Erasmus to take charge of a college for the study of classical languages, and close links existed between the court and the Cercle de Meaux, a group of evangelical scholars and preachers led by bishop Bri