The Serpent and the Moon: Two Rivals for the Love of a Renaissance King (15 page)

The superstitions of the Middle Ages still held with regard to royalty, and it was commonly believed that as long as the sovereign’s body remained unburied, it could cause miracles. The body of the queen remained exposed for some time in the chapel at Blois, and the saintly little queen inspired pilgrimages to her catafalque. The children were also taken to pray by their mother’s coffin, though there were now only five; Louise, the firstborn, who brought a good omen to Marignano, had died at age two in 1517, and eight-year-old Charlotte had died of measles shortly after her mother, on September 8. The king turned to Diane and appointed her to care for the royal children, the greatest honor he had shown her to date.

In view of the greater disaster of the war that had befallen France, the queen’s death passed almost unnoticed. There is little to remind us of this gentle queen, “a pearl among women and a clear mirror of her own goodness without a single stain.”
⁷

While the king of France was in Lyons mourning his queen, he learned that Charles de Bourbon, now the emperor’s lieutenant general, was attacking Marseilles. François headed south and arrived to find that the enemy had retreated; the effect of the plague on Bourbon’s troops and the fierce resistance of the town forced the imperial army to withdraw. Provence was retaken by the French. As
Charles de Bourbon moved his army back to Italy, the king seized his chance to follow and take revenge on his traitorous cousin, and to reverse the losses of Bonnivet.

Louise de Savoie was anxious to prevent her son from making an impetuous advance and hurried to his side in Aix-en-Provence. She was too late, and moved on with speed to Avignon, arriving on October 5, 1524. Again, she missed her son. In Avignon, she heard the news she dreaded: François had pressed on toward the mountains after the Constable.

The French king’s army was the best fighting force he had ever raised, and his soldiers had fought well all summer. Although the autumn was advancing, François was loath to lay these troops off for the winter. Against all advice, and with lightning speed, the king pressed home his advantage. By October 20 he had reached Milan, which he invested,
⁸
and was met by the representatives of the city. He accepted their homage but did not enter because of the plague. François I’s approach appealed to the good Milanese, who had been obliged to change masters a dozen times in the past quarter century. Since they had refused to take up arms for the imperial viceroy Charles de Lannoy, they sent the keys of the city to the French king. Lannoy meanwhile moved his men on to the strategically important city of Lodi, which controlled the crossing of the Adda River.

François was further encouraged to hear that the pope, Clement VII, wished to change sides and join with France, possibly bringing Florence and Venice with him. With the promise of such extra force, the king advanced to lay siege to the fortified city of Pavia, which the main imperial army had occupied on leaving Milan. Pavia was the ancient capital of Lombardy, a fabled city of a hundred towers that had once rivaled Milan. It was well fortified, enclosed within thick walls on three sides; the Ticino River protected the fourth.

Bourbon eventually joined Charles de Lannoy and his exhausted troops in Lodi. Faced with the prospect of imminent battle against his former king and countrymen, Bourbon left to recruit more soldiers for the imperial cause. The garrison within Pavia was commanded by a
Spaniard, Antonio de Leyva, whom Blaise de Montluc,
⁹
one of François I’s most valiant marshals, described as the greatest general in Europe, were it not for his severe gout.

Word reached the château of Blois of a victory in Milan, but it was too soon for rejoicing. The king arrived at Pavia on October 24, 1524, and surrounded the city. Then, on November 9, with part of his army laid low by a stomach infection, and winter closing in, François mounted an assault that failed to dent the walls, or the resistance of the Spanish. The French regrouped and planned their next attack from a number of vantage points surrounding the walled and fortified town. The siege continued, and although the town sent word that there was no shortage of food, one of the French officers, Pierre d’Aumout, wrote home to his mother that he had heard the Spanish were beginning to eat their horses.

Winter arrived with its cold, rain, and fog. Still the king did not leave for France to wait to mount a spring offensive. Swiss reinforcements arrived for the French, as did others from Giovanni de’ Medici (known as Giovanni della Bande Nere) in Florence. Boredom set in, and the French and Swiss troops complained of the cold. François tried to draw the enemy out by sending ten thousand of his soldiers to Naples. It was an expensive ruse and a mistake. The Spanish were not drawn out—and with reason. On the freezing cold night of February 3, 1525, reinforcements arrived for the besieged of Pavia from Lodi, where Lannoy had waited for Charles de Bourbon. With the emperor’s money, the French traitor had succeeded in recruiting fresh troops—thirteen thousand Germans, six thousand Italians, three thousand Spanish, eight hundred lances, and a thousand light cavalry he would command himself. This mighty force, led by the imperialist Charles de Lannoy, the marquis de Pescara (said to be the cleverest of the Spanish generals), and Charles de Bourbon, encircled the French camp. François I found himself caught between the town’s garrison and the imperial reinforcements. He decided to wait.

As the troops on both sides were demoralized and deserting, the impasse could not last forever. Charles de Lannoy chose to attack the
French during the early hours of February 24, the emperor’s birthday and the Feast of Saint Matthew. His soldiers wore white tunics over their armor to help them recognize one another in the dark, and they set to work, breaching the walls of the park that lay outside the city. At first light, they succeeded: some seven thousand Spanish troops charged through the breached garden wall, cutting off the French line of retreat to Milan. As soon as they reached the city walls, they were able to reinforce their garrison inside.

At the sound of three cannon shots, the imperial troops on one side, and those from the Pavia garrison on the other, attacked the French, who were caught between them. As the fog lifted with the dawn, François saw that his position just north of the city between the Vernavola stream and the eastern wall of the Mirabello Park was still superior to that of the enemy. He held the high ground, and the troops inside Pavia were weak from starvation and taking a battering. The king and his horse wore full armor, and a white plume flowed from his helmet to his shoulders, making him instantly recognizable. The French were more than holding their own on both fronts, and their fortified line fought off the imperialist advance. All was going well until, inexplicably, the king, a chivalrous knight of the old school, decided to lead his heavy cavalry
¹⁰
in a wildly courageous but ill-considered charge—a
furia francese
across and in front of his own artillery’s line of fire. This was a disastrous move as the French did not dare fire blindly into the mêlée for fear of hitting their own troops.

The heavy winter rains and flooded river had turned the plain around the town into a bog of clinging mud, which pinned down both men and horses. The Spanish light cavalry had a better chance of maneuvering than the French heavy cavalry, their riders’ long lances proving useless among the trees in the park. Charging behind their mounted troops, the French infantryman were pelted by clods of mud flying from the horses’ hooves. Frenchmen in heavy armor were pulled off their warhorses down into the mud by Spanish infantry hiding behind trees. Unable to move quickly, they were easily knifed through the joints of their armorplates. If the imperial soldiers could not find a gap to stab
through, they inserted their rifles into the suits of armor and fired. Grouped together, these primitive, slow-to-load, inaccurate rifles—the arquebus—with a range of four hundred yards, made the imperial soldiers invincible.

When the Swiss mercenaries saw that the situation was hopeless, they fled, abandoning the French cavalry, who fought on with heroic fervor. As his men were driven back in every direction, François’ trumpeter could be heard again and again calling for help to come to the king’s side. Disregarding the danger he was in, François drew the best of his nobles to surround him and fight. All of them perished, and on that day France lost the flower of its young nobility. The king’s horse was shot from under him with twenty bullets. François continued fighting on foot, swiping at all comers with his great gold-hilted battle sword, until there was just one Frenchman left standing with him.

The Spanish
arquebusiers
had torn off his splendid silver surcoat, yet François fought on bravely to the last. Covered in blood and blinded from a gash above his eyebrow, he was wounded in the arm, hand, and leg, and unable to move for the bodies piled around him. His trumpeter, too, had been silenced. Encircled by the enemy aiming their arquebuses at him, the king was finally brought down. He would have been killed had not Charles de Lannoy recognized him by his splendid gold-inlaid armor, and the long plume hanging from his helmet. The viceroy and his bodyguard forced their way through the soldiers surrounding the stricken king. As the viceroy dismounted, François raised his visor in defeat. Charles de Lannoy kissed the king’s hand and received his sword. Like jackals, Lannoy’s Neapolitan soldiers hacked at François’ armor for souvenir pieces—proof that they had been present at the capture of the king of France.

At Pavia on February 24, 1525 the French suffered their most bloody and decisive defeat since Agincourt in 1415. So many of the country’s bravest and best lay dead. The Spanish took no prisoners other than those worthy of a great ransom. Eight thousand Frenchmen and mercenaries lost their lives, while only seven hundred of the imperial troops were killed. Among the king’s friends, Fleurange and Montmorency were captured. Admiral Bonnivet, a veteran of many battles, declared: “I cannot survive such disaster, such destruction,” and
opened his visor to face certain death. When the Constable saw the body of Bonnivet, who had been given his command in the French army, he is said to have declared: “Miserable man—you are the cause of France’s ruin and my own.”
¹¹

The emperor’s lieutenant, the viceroy of Naples, showed there was still chivalry in warfare. He escorted the king to a monastery nearby so that his wounds could be dressed and he could avoid being taken into Pavia as a prisoner. As ill luck would have it, at the monastery François came face-to-face with his former Constable. The king ignored him, but Charles de Bourbon had triumphed.

W
ITH François in custody, there was nothing to prevent Charles de Bourbon conquering France and taking whatever he wanted. But the emperor would not risk Bourbon claiming such a prize and did not allow him to advance.

As soon as she received news of the defeat at Pavia and her son’s capture, Louise de Savoie immediately set about organizing the internal defense of an incredulous country. The remnants of the court—women, old men, and children—were traumatized by the French defeat. There was not one among them who had not suffered a loss. With her son, her “Caesar” in captivity, and Queen Claude dead, it was up to Louise de Savoie to hold the country together and negotiate for the king’s return. Her first thought was for François, and she sent him encouraging letters. She saw that Henry VIII had to be neutralized, and convinced the English king that to attack France would only help the emperor. Her task now was to negotiate with Charles V for her son’s release. In order to be nearer Italy and news of François, the regent and her daughter Marguerite moved to Lyons. There can be no doubt that France lost the Battle of Pavia partly due to the treachery of the duc de Bourbon, and Louise de Savoie must have known she had contributed greatly to this. All her formidable intelligence and energy became engaged in saving what she could of the debacle.

Fate was not kind to Marguerite’s husband, the duc d’Alençon. Described as “a man of shallow understanding,” he had the misfortune to survive the Battle of Pavia without injury. Left without orders, he did not join the king but, in his retreat, destroyed the bridges behind him and made his way to Lyons. There he met with a torrent of blame from the regent and from his wife. One month later, he died of pleurisy, although a number of historians incorrectly claim he died just after his arrival, unable to live with his shame and remorse.

Louis de Brézé was not at Pavia. As Grand Sénéchal, his role was to secure Normandy, which was vulnerable to an attack by the English. Shortly after the battle, Louise de Savoie appointed him governor of Normandy, a position of honor previously held by the duc d’Alençon, and usually reserved for a Prince of the Blood. It was, therefore, a mark of the great faith the regent had placed in him to hold Normandy against the English.

Diane was at Rouen when she heard the news of the French defeat and of the king’s capture. At the request of the regent she returned to court and, in the absence of their father, comforted the royal children, who knew and loved her.