35. Francis I. —(continued)
CHAPTER XXXV. Francis I. —(continued) 1515-1547
Soon after Francis became king, he (settled) to go on with the war in Italy, which had answered so badly for Charles VIII. and Louis XII. He was not more successful than they in the end, but he began by winning the victory of Marignan against some Swiss who had come to help his enemies in Italy. The chief Italian cities had joined together against him, and a Spanish army had come to their help; but after this battle, Francis, without any more fighting, gained two of the towns for which he most cared; the Swiss went away home, and Francis went back to France, where his people admired him more than ever, and where he began to turn his mind to the business of governing the country. Unhappily, he chose a bad man to be his chief minister, and so brought great troubles upon his people. His mother, too, who was a friend of the minister's, often made things go ill by her meddling and dishonesty. After Francis had been king about three years, his first quarrels with Charles V. <, who was then only the King of Spain,> began. Both Francis and Charles were anxious to have the King of England, Henry VIII., on their own side. Francis had begun by making friends with Wolsey, one of Henry's chief ministers, and with him he had agreed that there should be a meeting between Henry and Francis of a very splendid kind, where they would talk over their disputes and try to settle them in a friendly way. A place in France was chosen for this meeting. Henry was to come over with his chief barons, and a great train of followers. They were to bring their tents with them, and Francis wrote to propose to Wolsey that the English king should give orders that his tents should not be too expensive, and said he would give the same orders to his French nobles. But the English ministers would not hear of this, and said everything should be as grand as possible. After this the only question was which nation would show the greatest riches and splendour. Tents were set up with the walls and ceiling of precious stuffs, such as satin and cloth of gold; golden trees were arranged round them with leaves of green silk; the English palace was made entirely of crystals, which flashed in the sunlight. The great lords, but especially the English, wore handsome dresses of silk and velvet, covered with gold chains and jewels of different kinds.
Francis's sister Margaret and other French ladies came to see the tournament with which the meeting was to open. The kings both joined in it, Henry so roughly that he killed the man who was fighting against him, and hurt his own horse so that it died in the night. The next morning Francis went to Henry's tent very early, while Henry was still in bed. It had been arranged that the two kings should never meet except in a solemn way, arranged beforehand, great care being taken to prevent either of them from doing harm to the other by taking him prisoner or putting him to death; for people remembered how the Duke of Burgundy had been murdered on a bridge while making a treaty with his enemy before one of the Dauphins of France, and they were afraid of the same thing happening again.
But Francis, who was brave and generous to people of his own rank, and never would have done harm to an enemy of his own class who could not defend himself, trusted to Henry's honour, and took with him only two gentlemen and a page. Outside the English tent he met two hundred archers on guard, and asked for the king. "He is asleep," they said. Francis knocked at the door and went in. Henry was surprised, but said, "You do right to trust me," and gave Francis a rich collar. "I will be your valet," said Francis, giving Henry a bracelet of precious stones, and helping him to put on his clothes. After this meeting the kings soon became friends, and treated each other quite familiarly. One day when they were watching a wrestling match going on before the ladies, Henry seized Francis's collar and said, "Let us wrestle." Henry was the stronger of the two, but Francis was the more active; he threw down Henry, at which the English king was much vexed. After all, the two kings did not settle much at this meeting, which is known as the Field of the Cloth of Gold, in honour of all the splendid stuffs that had been shown there. Francis had not even done what he most wished, made Wolsey and Henry inclined to take his side against Charles.
Charles came to meet them on their way back to England, and treated them in a humble respectful manner which pleased them, and made Wolsey his firm friend. As Wolsey had much power over Henry, this was a great success for Charles.
Soon after this the old Emperor died, and it was then that Francis and Charles both wished to be chosen as the new Emperor. Charles was successful, and two years afterwards the first war between Francis and Charles began. Charles tried to take Milan and the part of Italy which Francis had won by his first victory, away from the French king, Francis's general was able to do nothing, because the queen, his mother, took away for herself the money which the king had meant to be used in the war. She also quarrelled with one of the king's most powerful relations and subjects, the Duke of Bourbon. Francis had treated him ill, and the queen treated him worse, till at last he forgot his duty to his king and his country, and made friends with Charles V. He left France and joined one of the Emperor's armies. Francis, finding his general driven out of Italy, marched there himself, at the head of a large and fine army, against the advice of his ministers at home. He went to besiege a town named Pavia, in which was the Spanish general with a body of his men; while Francis with his troops waited outside the town, an army of Germans came up (outside him) to help the Spaniards in Pavia. The king between the two armies was obliged to fight under great difficulties. The battle was so fierce at one time that it is said, "You could see nothing but heads and arms flying in the air." Some of the Spanish troops ran backwards to find shelter from the guns of the French; Francis, thinking that they were yielding, rushed out from the camp, and went on farther and farther, not noticing that his army was not following him, and that the Spaniards were getting in between him and the camp. He had only a small body of followers, his enemies gathered round him, his horse was killed, and at last he gave up his sword to one of the Spanish officers. He was treated with great respect; his enemies admired his bravery so much, that they kept bits of his clothes and of his armour as relics.
The French army, after the king was taken, had been utterly defeated, all the commanders who had not been killed were prisoners, and many of the chief nobles of France were either dead or dying. The soldiers who were left alive wandered back into France, many of them dying on the way from hunger and misery. The king was carried from one prison to another, and at last to Madrid in Spain. As soon as he was made prisoner, Francis wrote to his mother a letter, in which he told her that he had lost everything except his life and his honour, begged her to govern the country prudently for him, and said he still hoped that God would at last help him out of his troubles.
He stayed in prison for nearly a year, after which he could bear it no longer, and agreed to a peace with Charles, by which he promised to give back to the Emperor some of the lands which were then his, and to give up trying to conquer others, which he had always till now said ought to belong to him. Francis was to go back to his country, and send his two eldest sons, the Dauphin and the Duke of Orleans, to stay as prisoners till he should have done all that he promised.
But when he made these promises the king had no idea of keeping them. He rode off into France, sent his little boys to take his place, and calling together some of his nobles, told them of the promises he had made, and asked their advice as to whether or not he should keep them, saying that he could not give away a part of the country without the people of the country agreeing to it. This was only his plan to find an excuse for refusing to keep his word. The nobles told him as he wished, that he had not the power of giving away any part of France without their leave, and that they would not allow him to do so. They said that Charles had obliged him to make the promise against his will, and that therefore he was not bound to keep it. Francis was not a man who would have paid any attention to the wishes of his subjects unless they had been the same as his own; but he made them an excuse to give Charles for breaking his word, and the war went on as before.
We hear little of how the young French princes, who were quite children, were treated in Madrid. It may be thought that it was very unkind of the king to go away safely himself and leave his little boys to stay in prison for his sake; but we must remember how important it was for the whole kingdom that the king should be at liberty, and also that it was much more unpleasant for him to be a prisoner than for the children. They had each other, and a body of French servants to wait on them, and we may hope that they were not uncomfortable, on the whole. They went back to their home three years afterwards, when a peace was made between Francis and Charles, called the ladies' peace, because it was arranged by two ladies, the king's mother on one side, and the emperor's sister on the other. Francis, in making this peace, thought only of his own affairs, and did not try to get anything they wished for his allies, the people who had helped him in the war.
The people of France, meanwhile, were by no means well off. The mother of the king kept for her own use the money that should have been spent on the affairs of the kingdom, and as so much had been used for the war, the taxes were heavier than ever. There were five bad seasons one after another, in which no frost came all the winter. The insects not being killed by the cold increased in number till they became a plague, eating all the fruits and grain. The peasants had to satisfy themselves with what they could find in the fields, with thistles, mallows, and weeds; they made bread of fern-roots, beech-masts, and acorns. While the poor people were in this distress, the king's court and the nobles were rich enough to spend money upon all sorts of amusements and strange fancies. There is a list of the way in which Francis spent his private money the year before peace was made with Charles. He bought pictures, musical instruments, jewels, diamonds, and pearls, a splendid bronze horse and rider, rare trees, some creatures for a menagerie, "eight horses, four camels, six ostriches, a lion, eleven pair of birds, eight hares," and a horse for the king's cook, that he might be always near the king to make his soup. A great deal was spent on fine buildings, but nothing for the good of his country, or to help his poor subjects in their distress.
A few years later another war began with Charles. Francis, seeing that Charles had many more friends than he had, made a treaty with the Turks, who at that time had become very strong, both by land and sea, and who often attacked Charles's empire on the east side opposite to France. The Turks had a great man for their sultan, which means the same as our king; they were useful friends to have, but it was thought at that time very horrible that Christians should make friends with Turks, and many people who would have been friends of Francis were turned against him by his doing so. Francis was to attack Charles in Italy, and the Turks on the eastern side of Germany. Charles would have been able to defend himself against Francis alone, but with the Turks on the other side he was soon glad to make peace, and Francis gained a little more land.
After this there was a third war, during which Francis won his last victory in Italy. It did not bring him much good, and soon afterwards peace was again made. Francis was worn out with his active life, though he was little more than fifty years old. He died two years after his last peace with Charles, and Henry VIII., King of England, died in the same year. Francis was admired and loved by many of his subjects, as he had many of the good qualities which they cared for the most, because they were like their own. He was active, brave, generous, cheerful, good-natured; but he was not altogether a good king, though better than many of those who came both before and after him. He was selfish, never thinking of any one but himself, and he was untruthful, so that his word could not be trusted. He treated his good sister Margaret, towards the end of his life, with great unkindness.
