Scarcely had Francis I. ascended the throne, on the 12th of January, 1515, when he made the Duke of Bourbon's great position still greater by creating him constable of France. Was it solely to attach to himself the greatest lord and one of the most distinguished soldiers of the kingdom, or had, perhaps, as has already been hinted, the favor of the queen-mother something to do with the duke's speedy elevation? The whole history of Charles of Bourbon tends to a belief that the feelings of Louise of Savoy towards him, her love or her hate, had great influence upon the decisive incidents of his life. However that may be, the young constable, from the moment of entering upon his office, fully justified the king's choice.



He it was who, during the first campaign in Italy, examined in person, with the shepherd who had pointed it out, an unknown passage across the Alps; and, on the 13th and 14th of September, he contributed greatly to the victory of Melegnano. "I can assure you," wrote Francis I. to his mother, the regent, "that my brother the constable and M. de St. Pol splintered as many lances as any gentlemen of the company whosoever; and I speak of this as one who saw; they spared themselves as little as if they had been wild boars at bay." On returning to France the king appointed the constable governor of conquered Milaness; and to give him a further mark of favor, "he granted him the noble privilege of founding trades in all the towns of the kingdom. This, when the Parliament enregistered the king's letters patent, was expressly stated to be in consideration of Bourbon's extraordinary worth, combined with his quality as a prince of the blood, and not because of his office of constable." [Histoire de la Maison de Bourbon, by M. Desormeaux, t. ii. p. 437.] The constable showed that he was as capable of governing as of conquering. He foiled all Emperor Maximilian's attempts to recover Milaness; and, not receiving from the king money for the maintenance and pay of his troops, he himself advanced one hundred thousand livres, opened a loan-account in his own name, raised an army-working-corps of six thousand men to repair the fortifications of Milan, and obtained from the Swiss cantons permission to enlist twelve thousand recruits amongst them. His exercise of authority over the Lombard population was sometimes harsh, but always judicious and efficient. Nevertheless, in the spring of 1516, eight months after the victory of Melegnano and but two months after he had driven Emperor Maximilian from Milaness, the Duke of Bourbon was suddenly recalled, and Marshal de Lautrec was appointed governor in his place. When the constable arrived at Lyons, where the court then happened to be, "the king," says Fleuranges in his Memoires, "gave him marvellously good welcome;" but kings are too ready to imagine that their gracious words suffice to hide or make up for their acts of real disfavor; and the Duke of Bourbon was too proud to delude himself. If he had any desire to do so, the way in which the king's government treated him soon revealed to him his real position: the advances he had made and the debts he had contracted for the service of the crown in Milaness, nay, his salary as constable and his personal pensions, were unpaid. Was this the effect of secret wrath on the part of the queen-mother, hurt because he seemed to disdain her good graces, or an act arising may be from mistrust and may be from carelessness on the king's part, or merely a result of the financial disorder into which the affairs of Francis I. were always falling? These questions cannot be solved with certainty. Anyhow the constable, though thus maltreated, did not cry out; but his royal patroness and mother-in-law, Anne of France, daughter of Louis XI., dowager-duchess of the house of Bourbon, complained of these proceedings to the king's mother, and uttered the word ingratitude. The dispute between the two princesses grew rancorous; the king intervened to reconcile them; speedy payment was promised of all that was due to the constable, but the promise was not kept. The constable did not consider it seemly to wait about; so he quitted the court and withdrew into his own duchy, to Moulins, not openly disgraced, but resolved to set himself, by his proud independence, above the reach of ill-will, whether on the king's part or his mother's.

Moulins was an almost kingly residence. "The dukes," said the Venetian traveller Andrew Navagero, in 1528, "have built there fortress-wise a magnificent palace, with beautiful gardens, groves, fountains, and all the sumptuous appliances of a prince's dwelling." No sooner did the constable go to reside there than numbers of the nobility flocked thither around him. The feudal splendor of this abode was shortly afterwards enhanced by an auspicious domestic incident. In 1517 the Duchess of Bourbon was confined there of a son, a blessing for some time past unhoped for. The delighted constable determined to make of the child's baptism a great and striking event; and he begged the king to come and be godfather, with the dowager Duchess of Bourbon as godmother. Francis I. consented and repaired to Moulins with his mother and nearly all his court. The constable's magnificence astonished even the magnificent king "five hundred gentlemen, all clad in velvet, and all wearing a chain of gold going three times round the neck," were in habitual attendance upon the duke; "the throng of the invited was so great that neither the castle of Moulins nor the town itself sufficed to lodge them; tents had to be pitched in the public places, in the streets, in the park." Francis I. could not refrain from saying that a King of France would have much difficulty in making such a show; the queen-mother did not hide her jealousy; regal temper came into collision with feudal pride. Admiral Bonnivet, a vassal of the constable and a favorite of the king, was having built, hard by Chatellerault, a castle so vast and so magnificent, "that he seemed," says Brantome, "to be minded to ride the high horse over the house of M. de Bourbon, in such wise that it should appear only a nest beside his own." Francis I., during a royal promenade, took the constable one day to see the edifice the admiral was building, and asked him what he thought of it. "I think," said Bourbon, "that the cage is too big and too fine for the bird." "Ah!" said the king, "do you not speak with somewhat of envy?" "I!" cried the constable; "I feel envy of a gentleman whose ancestors thought themselves right happy to be squires to mine!" In their casual and familiar conversations the least pretext would lead to sharp words between the Duke of Bourbon and his kingly guest. The king was rallying him one day on the attachment he was suspected of having felt for a lady of the court. "Sir," said the constable, "what you have just said has no point for me, but a good deal for those who were not so forward as I was in the lady's good graces." [At this period princes of the blood, when speaking to the king, said Monsieur; when they wrote to him, they called him Monseigneur.] Francis I., to whom this scarcely veiled allusion referred, was content to reply, "Ah! my dear cousin, you fly out at everything, and you are mighty short-tempered." The nickname of short-tempered stuck to the constable from that day, and not without reason. With anybody but the king the constable was a good deal more than short-tempered the chancellor, Duprat, who happened to be at Moulins, and who had a wish to become possessed of two estates belonging to the constable, tried to worm himself into his good graces; but Bourbon gave him sternly to understand with what contempt he regarded him, and Duprat, who had hitherto been merely the instrument of Louise of Savoy's passions, so far as the duke was concerned, became henceforth his personal enemy, and did not wait long for an opportunity of making the full weight of his enmity felt. The king's visit to Moulins came to an end without any settlement of the debts due from the royal treasury to the constable. Three years afterwards, in 1520, he appeared with not a whit the less magnificence at the Field of Cloth of Gold, where he was one of the two great lords chosen by Francis I. to accompany him at his interview with Henry VIII.; but the constable had to put up with the disagreeableness of having for his associate upon that state occasion Admiral Bonnivet, whom he had but lately treated with so much hauteur, and his relations towards the court were by no means improved by the honor which the king conferred upon him in summoning him to his side that day. Henry VIII., who was struck by this vassal's haughty bearing and looks, said to Francis I., "If I had a subject like that in my kingdom, I would not leave his head very long on his shoulders."

More serious causes of resentment came to aggravate a situation already so uncomfortable. The war, which had been a-hatching ever since the imperial election at Frankfort, burst out in 1521, between Francis I. and Charles V. Francis raised four armies in order to face it on all his frontiers, in Guienne, in Burgundy, in Champagne, and in Picardy, "where there was no army," says Du Bellai, "however small." None of these great commands was given to the Duke of Bourbon; and when the king summoned him to the army of Picardy, whither he repaired in all haste with six thousand foot and three hundred men-at-arms raised in his own states, the command of the advance-guard, which belonged to him by right of his constableship, was given to the Duke of Alencon, who had nothing to recommend him beyond the fact that he was the husband of Marguerite de Valois and brother-in-law of the king. Bourbon deeply resented this slight; and it was remarked that he frequently quoted with peculiar meaning a reply made by a Gascon gentleman to King Charles VII., who had asked him if anything could shake his fidelity, "Nothing, sir, nothing; not even an offer of three such kingdoms as yours; but an affront might." The constable did not serve a whit the less valiantly and brilliantly in this campaign of Picardy; he surprised and carried the town of Hesdin, which was defended by a strong garrison; but after the victory he treated with a generosity which was not perhaps free from calculation the imperialist nobility shut up in the castle; he set all his prisoners at large, and paid particular attention to the Countess de Roeux, of the house of Croy, whom he knew to have influence with Charles V. He was certainly not preparing just then to abandon the King of France and go over to the camp of the emperor; but he was sufficiently irritated against Francis I. to gladly seize an opportunity of making new friends on the rival side.

Meanwhile there occurred the event which was to decide his conduct and his destiny. His wife, Suzanne of Bourbon, died at Chatellerault, in April, 1521, after having lost the son whose birth had been celebrated with such brilliancy at Moulins, and having confirmed by her will the settlement upon her husband of all her possessions, which had already been conferred upon him by their marriage contract. From whom came the first idea of the proposal to which this death was ere long to lead? Was it the chancellor, Duprat, who told the mother of Francis I. that the will and the settlement might be disputed at law, and that she would then enter into possession of a great part of what belonged to the House of Bourbon? Was it Louise of Savoy herself who conceived the hope of satisfying at one and the same time her cupidity and the passion she felt for the constable, by having an offer made to him of her hand, with the retention secured to him of those great possessions which, otherwise, would be disputed, and which a decree of Parliament might take away from him? Between these two explanations of what occurred at that time, there is no certain choice afforded by historical documents; but the more reasonable conviction is, that the passion of Louise of Savoy was the first and the decisive cause of the proposal made to the constable. He was then thirty years old; Louise of Savoy was forty-five, but she was still beautiful, attractive, and puissant; she had given the constable unmistakable proofs of her inclination for him and of the influence which his inclinations exercised over her: she might well flatter herself that he would be attracted by the prospect of becoming the king's step-father and almost a sharer in the kingly power, whilst retaining that of the great feudal lord. The chancellor, Duprat, full of ability and servility, put all his knowledge, all his subtlety in argument, and all his influence in the Parliament at the disposal of Madame Louise, who, as a nearer relative than the constable, claimed the possessions left by his wife, Suzanne of Bourbon. Francis I., in the name of the crown, and in respect of the constable's other possessions, joined his claims to those of his mother. Thus the lawsuit with which the duke was threatened affected him in every part of his fortune. It was in vain that more or less direct overtures, on behalf of Madame Louise and of the king himself, were made to induce him to accept the bargain offered: his refusal was expressed and given with an open contempt that verged upon coarseness. "I will never," said he, "marry a woman devoid of modesty."

The lawsuit was begun and prosecuted with all the hatred of a great lady treated with contempt, and with all the knowingness of an unscrupulous lawyer eager to serve, in point of fact, his patroness, and to demonstrate, in point of law, the thesis he had advanced. Francis I., volatile, reckless, and ever helpless as he was against the passions of his mother, who whilst she adored, beguiled him, readily lent himself to the humiliation of a vassal who was almost his rival in puissance, and certainly was in glory. Three lawyers of renown entered upon the struggle. Poyet maintained the pretensions of the queen-mother; Lizet developed Duprat's argument in favor of the king's claims; Montholon defended the constable. The Parliament granted several adjournments, and the question was in suspense for eleven months. At last, in August, 1523, the court interest was triumphant; Parliament, to get rid of direct responsibility, referred the parties, as to the basis of the question, to the king's council; but it placed all the constable's possessions under sequestration, withdrawing the enjoyment of them wholly from him. A few years afterwards Poyet became chancellor, and Lizet premier-president of Parliament. "Worth alone," say the historians, "carved out for Montholon at a later period the road to the office of keeper of the seals."

The constable's fall and ruin were complete. He at an early stage had a presentiment that such would be the issue of his lawsuit, and sought for safeguards away from France. The affair was causing great stir in Europe. Was it, however, Charles V. who made the first overtures as the most efficient supporter the constable could have? Or was it the constable himself who, profiting by the relations he had established after the capture of Hesdin with the Croys, persons of influence with the emperor, made use of them for getting into direct communication with Charles V., and made offer of his services in exchange for protection against his own king and his own country? In such circumstances and in the case of such men the sources of crime are always surrounded with obscurity. One is inclined to believe that Charles V., vigilant and active as he was, put out the first feelers. As soon as he heard that Bourbon was a widower, he gave instructions to Philibert Naturelli, his ambassador in France, who said, "Sir, you are now in a position to marry, and the emperor, my master, who is very fond of you, has a sister touching whom I have orders to speak to you if you will be pleased to hearken." It was to Charles V.'s eldest sister, Eleanor, widow of Manuel the Fortunate, King of Portugal, that allusion was made. This overture led to nothing at the time; but the next year, in 1522, war was declared between Francis I. and Charles V.; the rupture between Francis I. and the Duke of Bourbon took place; the Bourbon lawsuit was begun; and the duke's mother-in-law, Anne of France, daughter of Louis XI., more concerned for the fate of her House than for that of her country, and feeling herself near her end, said one day to her son-in-law, "My son, reflect that the House of Bourbon made alliance with the House of Burgundy, and that during that alliance it always prospered. You see at the present moment what is the state of our affairs, and the lawsuit in which you are involved is proceeded with only for want of alliances. I do beg and command you to accept the emperor's alliance. Promise me to use thereto all the diligence you can, and I shall die more easy." She died on the 14th of November, 1522, bequeathing all her possessions to the constable, who was day by day more disposed to follow her counsels. In the summer of 1522, he had, through the agency of Adrian de Croy, Lord of Beaurain, entered into negotiations not only with Charles V., but also with Henry VIII., King of England, deploring the ill behavior of Francis I. and the enormity of existing abuses, and proposing to set on foot in his own possessions a powerful movement for the reformation of the kingdom and the relief of the poor people, if the two sovereigns would send "persons of trust and authority into the vicinity of his principality of Dombes, to Bourg-en-Bresse, whither he on his side would send his chancellor to come to an agreement with them and act in common." In the month of March, 1523, whilst the foreign negotiations thus commenced and the home-process against the constable were pursuing a parallel course, Bourbon one day paid a visit to Queen Claude of France at the hour when she was dining alone. She was favorably disposed towards him, and would have liked to get him married to her sister Renee, who subsequently became Duchess of Ferrara. She made him sit down. Francis I., who was at dinner in an adjacent room, came in. Bourbon rose to take leave. "Nay, keep your seat," said the king; "and so it is true that you are going to be married?" "Not at all, sir." "O, but I know it; I am sure of it; I know of your dealings with the emperor. And bear well in mind what I have to say to you on the subject." "Sir! is this a threat, pray? I have not deserved such treatment." After dinner he departed and went back to his hotel hard by the Louvre; and many gentlemen who happened to be at court accompanied him by way of escort. He was as yet a powerful vassal, who was considered to be unjustly persecuted.

Charles V. accepted eagerly the overtures made to him by Bourbon in response to his own; but, before engaging in action, he wished to be certified about the disposition of Henry VIII., King of England, and he sent Beaurain to England to take accurate soundings. Henry at first showed hesitation. When, Beaurain set before him all the advantages that would accrue to their coalition from the Duke of Bourbon's alliance: "And I," said the king, brusquely, "what, pray, shall I get?" "Sir," answered Beaurain, "you will be King of France." "Ah!" rejoined Henry, "it will take a great deal to make M. de Bourbon obey me." Henry remembered the cold and proud bearing which the constable had maintained towards him at the Field of Cloth of Gold. He, nevertheless, engaged to supply half the expenses and a body of troops for the projected invasion of France. Charles V. immediately despatched Beaurain to the Duke of Bourbon, who had removed to Montbrison, in the most mountainous part of his domains, on pretext of a pilgrimage to Notre-Dame du Puy. Beaurain was conducted thither, in great secrecy, on the 17th July, 1523, by two of the duke's gentlemen, and passed two days there shut up in a room adjoining the constable's apartment, never emerging save at night to transact business with him. On the 18th of July, in the evening, he put into Bourbon's hands his letters of credit, running thus: "My dear cousin, I send to you Sieur de Beaurain, my second chamberlain. I pray you to consider him as myself, and, so doing, you will find me ever your good cousin and friend." The negotiation was speedy. Many historians have said that it was confined to verbal conventions, and that there was nothing in writing between the two contracting parties. That is a mistake. A treaty was drawn up in brief terms by Beaurain's secretary, and two copies were made, of which one was to be taken to Charles V. and the other to be left with the Duke of Bourbon. It stipulated the mutual obligations of the three contracting parties in their offensive and defensive league. Bourbon engaged to attack Francis I. but he would not promise to acknowledge Henry VIII. as King of France. "I am quite willing to be his ally," he said, "but his subject, his vassal, no! All I can do is to leave myself, as to my relations towards him, in the emperor's hands." A strange and noble relic of patriotism in that violent and haughty soul, more concerned for its rights than its duties, and driven to extremity by the acts of ungrateful and unthoughtful injustice, to which the great lord and the valiant warrior had been subjected. The treaty having been signed with this reservation, Bourbon sent, about midnight, for Saint-Bonnet, Lord of Branon, whom he intended to despatch to Charles V., and, after having sworn him, "I send you," said he, "to the emperor, to whom you will say that I commend myself humbly to his good graces, that I beg him to give me his sister in marriage, and that, doing me this honor, he will find me his servant, his good brother, and friend."

The fatal step was taken. Bourbon was now engaged in revolt against his king and his country, as well as in falsehood and treason—preliminary conditions of such a course. He needed tools and accomplices; and though he had a numerous and devoted following, he could not feel sure of them all for such a purpose. The very day after the conclusion of his treaty with Charles V., one of his most intimate and important confidants, John of Poitiers, Lord of St. Vallier, who was present at Montbrison during the negotiation of the treaty, said to him in the morning, "Sir, it was your wish; I heard all; and I spent the whole night thinking about it; tell me, I pray you, do you feel sure of your friend?" "I was not more fond of the brother I lost at Melegnano," said the constable; "I should not have felt more sure of him." "Well, then," rejoined St. Vallier, "fancy that it is that brother who is speaking to you, and take in good part what he is about to say to you. This alliance which is offered to you will bring upon France the Germans, the Spaniards, and the English; think of the great mischief which will ensue—human bloodshed, destruction of towns, of good families and of churches, violation of women, and other calamities that come of war. Reflect also on the great treason you are committing; when the king has started for Italy and left you in France, putting his trust in you, you will go and stab him in the back, and destroy him as well as his kingdom. You belong to the House of France, and are one of the chief princes of the country, so beloved and esteemed by all that everybody is gladdened at the very sight of you. If you should come to be the cause of so great ruin, you will be the most accursed creature that ever was, accursed for a thousand years after your death. For the love of God consider all this; and if you have no regard for the king and Madame his mother, who, you say, are treating you wrongfully, at least have some regard for the queen and the princes her children, and do not wilfully cause the perdition of this kingdom, whose enemies, when you have let them into it, will drive you out of it yourself." "But, cousin," said the constable, quite overcome, "what would you have me to do? The king and Madame mean to destroy me; they have already taken away a part of my possessions." "Sir," replied Saint-Vallier, "give up, I pray you, all these wicked enterprises; commend yourself to God, and speak frankly to the king." If we are to believe Saint-Vallier's deposition, when, six months afterwards, he was put on his trial and convicted for his participation in the plot and treason, the constable was sufficiently affected by his representations to promise that he would abandon his design and make his peace with the king: but facts refute this assertion. In the latter months of 1523, the stipulations of the treaty concluded at Montbrison on the 18th of July were put into execution by all the contracting parties; letters of exchange from Henry VIII. were sent to Bale for the German lanzknechts he was to pay; the lanzknechts crossed the Rhine on the 26th of August, and marched through Franche-Comte in spite of its neutrality; the English landed at Calais between the 23d and 30th of August, to co-operate with the Flemings; the Spaniards began the campaign, on the 6th of September, in the direction of the Pyrenees; and the Duke, of Bourbon on his side took all the necessary measures for forming a junction with his allies, and playing that part in the coalition which had been assigned to him.

According to what appears, he had harbored a design of commencing his enterprise with a very bold stroke. Being informed that Francis I. was preparing to go in person and wage war upon Italy, he had resolved to carry him off on the road to Lyons, and, when once he had the king in his hands, he flattered himself he would do as he pleased with the kingdom. If his attempt were unsuccessful, be would bide his time until Francis I. was engaged in Milaness, Charles V. had entered Guienne, and Henry VIII. was in Picardy: he would then assemble a thousand men-at-arms, six thousand foot and twelve thousand lanzknechts, and would make for the Alps to cut the king off from any communication with France. This plan rested upon the assumption that the king would, as he had announced, leave the constable in France with an honorable title and an apparent share in the government of the kingdom, though really isolated and debarred from action. But Francis had full cognizance of the details of the conspiracy through two Norman gentlemen whom the constable had imprudently tried to get to join in it, and who, not content with refusing, had revealed the matter at confession to the Bishop of Lisieux, who had lost no time in giving information to Sire de Breze, grand seneschal of Normandy. Breze at once reported it to the king, and his letter ran: "Sir, there is need also to take care of yourself, for there has been talk of an attempt to carry you off between here and Lyons, and conduct you to a strong place in the Bourbon district or on the borders of Auvergne." Being at last seriously disquieted for the consequences of his behavior towards the constable, Francis took two resolutions: one was, not to leave him in France during his own absence; the other was, to go and see him at Moulins, at the same time taking all necessary precautions for his own safety, and win him over once more by announcing an intention of taking him off to Italy and sharing with him the command of the army. On approaching Moulins the king recalled the lanzknechts who had already passed the town, entered it himself surrounded by his guards, and took up his quarters in the castle, of which he seized the keys. At his first interview with the constable, who was slightly indisposed and pretended to be very much so, "I know," said he, "that you are keeping up a connection with the emperor, and that he is trying to turn your discontent to advantage, so as to beguile you; but I have faith in you; you are of the House of France and of the line of Bourbon, which has never produced a traitor." "It is true, sir," said the constable, without any confusion; "the emperor, informed by public rumor of the position to which I am reduced, sent Beaurain to offer me an asylum in his dominions and a fortune suitable to my birth and my rank; but I know the value of empty compliments. Hearing that your Majesty was to pass by Moulins, I thought it my duty to wait and disclose this secret to you myself rather than intrust it to a letter." The king showed signs of being touched. "I have an idea of taking you away with me to Italy," said he: "would you come with me willingly?" "Not only to Italy," was the answer, "but to the end of the world. The doctors assure me that I shall soon be in a condition to bear the motion of a litter; I already feel better; your Majesty's kindnesses will soon complete my cure." Francis testified his satisfaction. Some of his advisers, with more distrust and more prevision, pressed him to order the arrest of so dangerous a man, notwithstanding his protestations; but Francis refused. According to what some historians say, if he had taken off the sequestration laid upon the constable's possessions, actually restored them to him, as well as discharged the debts due to him and paid his pensions, and carried him off to Italy, if, in a word, he had shown a bold confidence and given back to him at once and forever the whole of his position, he would, perhaps, have weaned him from his plot, and would have won back to himself and to France that brave and powerful servant. But Francis wavered between distrust and hope; he confined himself to promising the constable restitution of his possessions if the decree of Parliament was unfavorable to him; he demanded of him a written engagement to remain always faithful to him and to join him in Italy as soon as his illness would allow him; and, on taking leave of him, left with him one of his own gentlemen, Peter de Brentonniere, Lord of Warthy, with orders to report to the king as to his health. In this officer Bourbon saw nothing more or less than a spy, and in the king's promises nothing but vain words dependent as they were upon the issue of a lawsuit which still remained an incubus upon him. He had no answer for words but words; he undertook the engagements demanded of him by the king without considering them binding; and he remained ill at Moulins, waiting till events should summon him to take action with his foreign allies.

This state of things lasted far nearly three weeks. The king remained stationary at Lyons waiting for the constable to join him; and the constable, saying he was ready to set out and going so far as to actually begin his march, was doing his three leagues a day by litter, being always worse one day than he was the day before. Peter de Warthy, the officer whom the king had left with him, kept going and coming from Lyons to Moulins and from Moulins to Lyons, conveying to the constable the king's complaints and to the king the constable's excuses, without bringing the constable to decide upon joining the king at Lyons and accompanying him into Italy, or the king upon setting out for Italy without the constable. "I would give a hundred thousand crowns," the king sent word to Bourbon, "to be in Lombardy." "The king will do well," answered Bourbon, "to get there as soon as possible, for despatch is needful beyond everything." When Warthy insisted strongly, the constable had him called up to his bedside; and "I feel myself," said he, "the most unlucky man in the world not to be able to serve the king; but if I were to be obstinate, the doctors who are attending me would not answer for my life, and I am even worse than the doctors think. I shall never be in a condition to do the king service any more. I am going back to my native air, and, if I recover a day's health, I will go to the king." "The king will be terribly put out," said Warthy; and he returned to Lyons to report these remarks of the real or pretended invalid. While he was away, the constable received from England and Spain news which made him enter actively upon his preparations; he heard at the same time that the king was having troops marched towards Bourbonness so as to lay violent hands on him if he did not obey; he, therefore, decided to go and place himself in security in his strong castle of Chantelle, where he could await the movements of his allies; he mounted his horse, did six leagues at one stretch, and did not draw bridle until he had entered Chantelle. Warthy speedily came and rejoined him. He found the constable sitting on his bed, dressed like an invalid and with his head enveloped in a night-cap. "M. de Warthy," said Bourbon, "you bring your spurs pretty close after mine." "My lord," was the reply, "you have better ones than I thought." "Think you," said Bourbon, "that I did not well, having but a finger's breadth of life, to put it as far out of the way as I could to avoid the king's fury?" "The king," said Warthy, "was never furious towards any man; far less would he be so in your case." "Nay, nay," rejoined the constable, "I know that the grand master and Marshal de Chabannes set out from Lyons with the archers of the guard and four or five thousand lanzknechts to seize me; and that is what made me come to this house whilst biding my time until the king shall be pleased to hear me." He demanded that the troops sent against him should be ordered to halt till the morrow, promising not to stir from Chantelle without a vindication of himself. "Whither would you go, my lord?" said Warthy: "if you wished to leave the kingdom, you could not; the king has provided against that everywhere."

"Nay," said Bourbon, "I have no wish to leave the kingdom; I have friends and servants there." Warthy went away from Chantelle in company with the Bishop of Autun, Chiverny, who was one of the constable's most trusted friends, and who was bearer to the king of a letter which ran thus: "Provided it please the king to restore to him his possessions, my lord of Bourbon promises to serve him well and heartily, in all places and at all times at which it shall seem good to him. In witness whereof, he has signed these presents, and begs the king to be pleased to pardon those towards whom he is ill disposed on account of this business. CHARLES." In writing this letter the constable had no other object than to gain a little time, for, on bidding good by to the Bishop of Autun, he said to him, "Farewell, my dear bishop; I am off to Carlat, and from Carlat I shall slip away with five or six horses on my road to Spain." On the next day but one, indeed, the 8th of September, 1523, whilst the Bishop of Autun was kept prisoner by the troops sent forward to Chantelle, the constable sallied from it about one in the morning, taking with him five-and-twenty or thirty thousand crowns of gold sewn up in from twelve to fifteen jackets, each of which was intrusted to a man in his train. For a month he wandered about Bourbonness, Auvergne, Burgundy, Beaujolais, Vienness, Languedoc, and Dauphiny, incessantly changing his road, his comrades, his costume, and his asylum, occasionally falling in with soldiers of the king who were repairing to Italy, and seeking for some place whence he might safely concert with and act with his allies. At last, in the beginning of October, he arrived at Saint-Claude, in Franche-Comte, imperial territory, and on the 9th of October he made his entry into Besancon, where there came to join him some of his partisans who from necessity or accident had got separated from him, without his having been able anywhere in his progress to excite any popular movement, form any collection of troops, or intrench himself strongly in his own states. To judge from appearances, he was now but a fugitive conspirator, without domains and without an army.

Such, however, were his fame and importance as a great lord and great warrior, that Francis I., as soon as he knew him to be beyond his reach and in a fair way to co-operate actively with his enemies, put off his departure for Italy, and "offered the redoubtable fugitive immediate restitution of his possessions, reimbursement from the royal treasury of what was due to him, renewal of his pensions and security that they would be paid him with punctuality." Bourbon refused everything. "It is too late," he replied. Francis I.'s envoy then asked him to give up the sword of constable and the collar of the order of St. Michael. "You will tell the king," rejoined Bourbon, "that he took from me the sword of constable on the day that he took from me the command of the advance-guard to give it to M. d'Alencon. As for the collar of his order, you will find it at Chantelle under the pillow of my bed." Francis I., in order to win back Bourbon, had recourse to his sister, the Duchess of Lorraine [Renee de Bourbon, who had married, in 1515, Antony, called the Good, Duke of Lorraine, son of Duke Rend II. and his second wife, Philippine of Gueldres]: but she was not more successful. After sounding him, she wrote to Francis I. that the duke her brother "was determined to go through with his enterprise, and that he proposed to draw off towards Flanders by way of Lorraine with eighteen hundred horse and ten thousand foot, and form a junction with the King of England." [M. Mignet, Etude sur le Connetable de Bourbon, in the Revue des Deux Mondes of January 15, 1854, and March 15 and April 1, 1858.]

Under such grave and urgent circumstances, Francis I. behaved on the one hand with more prudence and efficiency than he had yet displayed, and on the other with his usual levity and indulgence towards his favorites. Abandoning his expedition in person into Italy, he first concerned himself for that internal security of his kingdom, which was threatened on the east and north by the Imperialists and the English, and on the south by the Spaniards, all united in considerable force and already in motion. Francis opposed to them in the east and north the young Count Claude of Guise, the first celebrity amongst his celebrated race, the veteran Louis de La Tremoille, the most tried of all his warriors, and the Duke of Vendome, head of the younger branch of the House of Bourbon. Into the south he sent Marshal de Lautrec, who was more brave than successful, but of proved fidelity. All these captains acquitted themselves honorably. Claude of Guise defeated a body of twelve thousand lanzknechts who had already penetrated into Champagne; he hurled them back into Lorraine, and dispersed them beneath the walls of the little town of Neufchateau, where the princesses and ladies of Lorraine, showing themselves at the windows, looked on and applauded their discomfiture. La Tremoille's only forces were very inferior to the thirty-five thousand Imperialists or English who had entered Picardy; but he managed to make of his small garrisons such prompt and skilful use that the invaders were unable to get hold of a single place, and advanced somewhat heedlessly to the very banks of the Oise, whence the alarm spread rapidly to Paris. The Duke of Vendome, whom the king at once despatched thither with a small body of men-at-arms, marched night and day to the assistance of the Parisians, harangued the Parliament and Hotel de Ville vehemently on the conspiracy of the Constable de Bourbon, and succeeded so well in reassuring them that companies of the city militia eagerly joined his troops, and the foreigners, in dread of finding themselves hemmed in, judged it prudent to fall back, leaving Picardy in a state of equal irritation and devastation. In the south, Lautrec, after having made head for three days and three nights against the attacks of a Spanish army which had crossed the Pyrenees under the orders of the Constable of Castille, forced it to raise the siege and beat a retreat. Everywhere, in the provinces as well as at the court, the feudal nobility, chieftains and simple gentlemen, remained faithful to the king; the magistrates and the people supported the military; it was the whole nation that rose against the great lord, who, for his own purposes, was making alliance with foreigners against the king and the country.

In respect of Italy, Francis I. was less wise and less successful. Not only did he persist in the stereotyped madness of the conquest of Milaness and the kingdom of Naples, but abandoning for the moment the prosecution of it in person, he intrusted it to his favorite, Admiral Bonnivet, a brave soldier, alternately rash and backward, presumptuous and irresolute, who had already lost credit by the mistakes he had committed and the reverses he had experienced in that arena. At the very juncture when Francis I. confided this difficult charge to Bonnivet, the Constable de Bourbon, having at last got out of France, crossed Germany, repaired to Italy, and halted at Mantua, Piacenza, and Genoa; and, whilst waiting for a reply from Charles V., whom he had informed of his arrival, he associated with the leaders of the imperial armies, lived amongst the troops, inoculated them with his own ardor as well as warlike views, and by his natural superiority regained, amongst the European coalition, the consideration and authority which had been somewhat diminished by his ill-success in his own country and his flight from it. Charles V. was some time about sending an answer; for, in his eyes also, Bourbon had fallen somewhat. "Was it prudent," says the historian of Bourbon himself, "to trust a prince who, though born near the throne, had betrayed his own blood and forsworn his own country? Charles V. might no doubt have insured his fidelity, had he given him in marriage Eleanor of Austria, who was already affianced to him; but he could not make up his mind to unite the destiny of a princess, his own sister, with that of a prince whose position was equally pitiable and criminal. At last, however, he decided to name him his lieutenant-general in Italy; but he surrounded him with so many colleagues and so much surveillance that he had nothing to fear from his remorse and repentance." [Histoire de la Maison de Bourbon, t. ii. p. 531.] Bourbon, however, though thus placed in a position of perplexity and difficulty, was none the less an adversary with whom Bonnivet was not in a condition to cope.

It was not long before this was proved by facts. The campaign of 1524 in Italy, brilliant as was its beginning, what with the number and the fine appearance of the troops under Bonnivet's orders, was, as it went on, nothing but a series of hesitations, contradictory movements, blunders, and checks, which the army itself set down to its general's account. Bonnivet, during his investment of Milan, had posted Bayard with a small corps in the village of Rebec. "The good knight, who was never wont to murmur at any commission given him, said, 'Sir Admiral, you would send me to a village hard by the enemy, the which is without any fortress, and would need four times so many men as I have, for to be in safety and to hold it.' 'Sir Bayard,' said the admiral, 'go in peace; on my faith I promise you that within three days I will send you plenty of men with you for to hold Rebec, since I well know that it is not to be held with so few men; but never you mind; there shall not a mouse get out of Milan without you have notice of it.' And so much did he say of one sort and another that the good knight, with great disgust, went away with the men told off to him to his post in Rebec. He wrote many times to the admiral that he was in very dangerous plight, and that, if he would have them hold out long, he should send him aid; but he got no answer. The enemies who were inside Milan were warned that the good knight was in Rebec with very little company; so they decided on a night to go and surprise and defeat him. And the good knight, who was ever on his guard, set nearly every night half his men to watch and to listen, and himself passed two or three nights at it, in such sort that he fell ill, as much from melancholy as from cold, and far more than he let it appear; howbeit he was forced to keep his room that day. When it came on towards night, he ordered some captains who were with him to go on the watch. They went, or made show of going; but, because it rained a little, back went all those who were on the watch, save three or four poor archers, the which, when the Spaniards approached within bow-shot of the village, made no resistance, but took to flight, shouting, 'Alarm alarm!' The good knight, who in such jeopardy never slept but with his clothes on, rose at once, had the bridle put on a charger that was already saddled, and went off with five or six men-at-arms of his, straight to the barrier whither incontinently came up Captain Lorges and a certain number of his foot, who bore themselves mighty well. The uproar was great and the alarm was hot. Then said the good knight to Captain Lorges, 'Lorges, my friend, this is an unequal sort of game; if they pass this barrier we are cooked. I pray you, retire your men, keep the best order you can, and march straight to the camp at Abbiate-Grasso; I, with the horse I have, will remain in the rear. We must leave our baggage to the enemy; there is no help for it. Save we the lives if possible.' . . . The enemy sought on all sides for the good knight, but he had already arrived at Abbiate-Grasso, where he had some unpleasant words with the admiral; howbeit, I will not make any mention of them; but if they had both lived longer than they did live, they would probably have gone a little farther. The good knight was like to die of grief at the mishap that had befallen him, even though it was not his fault; but in war there is hap and mishap more than in all other things." [Histoire du bon Chevalier sans Peur et sans Reproche, t. ii. pp. 120-123. Les Gestes et la Vie du Chevalier Bayard, by Champier, pp. 171-174.]

The situation of the French army before Milan was now becoming more and more, not insecure only, but critical. Bonnivet considered it his duty to abandon it and fall back towards Piedmont, where he reckoned upon finding a corps of five thousand Swiss who were coming to support their compatriots engaged in the service of France. Near Romagnano, on the banks of the Sesia, the retreat was hotly pressed by the imperial army, the command of which had been ultimately given by Charles V. to the Constable de Bourbon, with whom were associated the Viceroy of Naples, Charles de Lannoy, and Ferdinand d'Avalos, Marquis of Pescara, the most able amongst the Neapolitan officers. On the 30th of April, 1524, some disorder took place in the retreat of the French; and Bonnivet, being severely wounded, had to give up the command to the Count of St. Pol and to Chevalier Bayard. Bayard, last as well as first in the fight, according to his custom, charged at the head of some men-at-arms upon the Imperialists, who were pressing the French too closely, when he was himself struck by a shot from an arquebuse, which shattered his reins. "Jesus, my God," he cried, "I am dead!" He then took his sword by the handle, and kissed the cross-hilt of it as the sign of the cross, saying aloud as he did so, "Have pity on me, O God, according to Thy great mercy" (Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam); thereupon he became incontinently quite pale, and all but fell; but he still had heart enough to grasp the pommel of the saddle, and remained in that condition until a young gentleman, his own house-steward, helped him to dismount and set him down under a tree, with his face to the enemy. The poor gentleman burst into tears, seeing his good master so mortally hurt that remedy there was none; but the good knight consoled him gently, saying, "Jacques, my friend, leave off thy mourning; it is God's will to take me out of this world; by His grace I have lived long therein, and have received therein blessings and honors more than my due. All the regret I feel at dying is that I have not done my duty so well as I ought. I pray you, Jacques, my friend, let them not take me up from this spot, for, when I move, I feel all the pains that one can feel, short of death, which will seize me soon." The Constable de Bourbon, being informed of his wound, came to him, saying, "Bayard, my friend, I am sore distressed at your mishap; there is nothing for it but patience; give not way to melancholy; I will send in quest of the best surgeons in this country, and, by God's help, you will soon be healed." "My lord," answered Bayard, "there is no pity for me; I die having done my duty; but I have pity for you, to see you serving against your king, your country, and your oath." Bourbon withdrew without a word. The Marquis of Pescara came passing by. "Would to God, gentle Sir Bayard," said he, "that it had cost me a quart of my blood, without meeting my death, that I had been doomed not to taste meat for two years, and that I held you safe and sound my prisoner, for by the treatment I showed you, you should have understanding of how much I esteemed the high prowess that was in you." He ordered his people to rig up a tent over Bayard, and to forbid any noise near him, so that he might die in peace. Bayard's own gentlemen would not, at any price, leave him. "I do beseech you," he said to them, "to get you gone; else you might fall into the enemy's hands, and that would profit me nothing, for all is over with me. To God I commend ye, my good friends; and I recommend to you my poor soul; and salute, I pray you, the king our master, and tell him that I am distressed at being no longer able to do him service, for I had good will thereto. And to my lords the princes of France, and all my lords my comrades, and generally to all gentlemen of the most honored realm of France when ye see them."



"He lived for two or three hours yet. There was brought to him a priest, to whom he confessed, and then he yielded up his soul to God; whereat all the enemy had mourning incredible. Five days after his death, on the 5th of May, 1524, Beaurain wrote to Charles V., 'Sir, albeit Sir Bayard was your enemy's servant, yet was it pity of his death, for 'twas a gentle knight, well beloved of every one, and one that lived as good a life as ever any man of his condition. And in truth he fully showed it by his end, for it was the most beautiful that I ever heard tell of.' By the chiefs of the Spanish army certain gentlemen were commissioned to bear him to the church, where solemn service was done for him during two days. Then, by his own servitors was he carried into Dauphiny, and, on passing through the territory of the Duke of Savoy, where the body was rested, he did it as many honors as if it had been his own brother's. When the news of his death was known in Dauphiny, I trow that never for a thousand years died there gentleman of the country mourned in such sort. He was borne from church to church, at first near Grenoble, where all my lords of the parliament court of Dauphiny, my lords of the Exchequer, pretty well all the nobles of the country and the greater part of all the burgesses, townsfolk, and villagers came half a league to meet the body: then into the church of Notre-Dame, in the aforesaid Grenoble, where a solemn service was done for him; then to a house of Minimes, which had been founded aforetime by his good uncle the bishop of Grenoble, Laurens Alment; and there he was honorably interred. Then every one withdrew to his own house; but for a month there was a stop put to festivals dances, banquets, and all other pastimes. 'Las! they had good reason; for greater loss could not have come upon the country." [Histoire du bon Chevalier sans Peur et sans Reproche, t. ii. pp. 125-132.]

It is a duty and an honor for history to give to such lives and such deaths, as remarkable for modesty as for manly worth, the full place which they ought to occupy in the memory of mankind.

The French army continued its retreat under the orders of the Count of St. Pol, and re-entered France by way of Suza and Briancon. It was Francis I.'s third time of losing Milaness. Charles V., enchanted at the news, wrote on the 24th of May to Henry VIII., "I keep you advertised of the good opportunity it has pleased God to offer us of giving a full account of our common enemy. I pray you to carry into effect on your side that which you and I have for a long while desired, wherein I for my part will exert myself with all my might." Bourbon proposed to the two sovereigns a plan well calculated to allure them. He made them an offer to enter France by way of Provence with his victorious army, to concentrate there all the re-enforcements promised him, to advance up the Rhone, making himself master as he went of the only two strong places, Monaco and Marseilles, he would have to encounter, to march on Lyons from the side on which that city was defenceless, and be in four months at Paris, whether or no he had a great battle to deliver on the march. "If the king wishes to enter France without delay," said he to Henry VIII.'s ambassador, "I give his Grace leave to pluck out my two-eyes if I am not master of Paris before All Saints. Paris taken, all the kingdom of France is in my power. Paris in France is like Milan in Lombardy; if Milan is taken, the duchy is lost; in the same way, Paris taken, the whole of France is lost." By this plan Bourbon calculated on arriving victorious at the centre of France, in his own domains, and there obtaining, from both nobles and people, the co-operation that had failed him at the outset of his enterprise. The two sovereigns were eager to close with the proposal of the Frenchman, who was for thus handing over to them his country; a new treaty was concluded between them on the 25th of May, 1524, regulating the conditions and means of carrying out this grand campaign; and it was further agreed that Provence and Dauphiny should be added to the constable's old possessions, and should form a state, which Charles V. promised to raise to a kingdom. There was yet a difficulty looming ahead. Bourbon still hesitated to formally acknowledge Henry VIII. as King of France, and promise him allegiance. But at last his resistance was overcome. At the moment of crossing the frontier into France, and after having taken the communion, he said to the English ambassador, Sir Richard Pace, in the presence of four of his gentlemen, "I promise you, on my faith, to place the crown, with the help of my friends, on the head of our common master." But, employing a ruse of the old feudal times, the last gasp of a troubled conscience, Bourbon, whilst promising allegiance to Henry VIII., persisted in refusing to do him homage. Sir Richard Pace none the less regarded the question as decided; and, whilst urging Cardinal Wolsey to act swiftly and resolutely in the interests of their master, he added, "If you do not pay regard to these matters, I shall set down to your Grace's account the loss of the crown of France."

Bourbon entered Provence on the 7th of July, 1524, with an army of eighteen thousand men, which was to be joined before long by six or seven thousand more. He had no difficulty in occupying Antibes, Frejus, Draguignan, Brignoles, and even Aix; and he already began to assume the title of Count of Provence, whilst preparing for a rapid march along by the Rhone and a rush upon Lyons, the chief aim of the campaign; but the Spanish generals whom Charles V. had associated with him, and amongst others the most eminent of them, the Marquis of Pescara, peremptorily insisted that, according to their master's order, he should besiege and take Marseilles. Charles V. cared more for the coasts of the Mediterranean than for those of the Channel; he flattered himself that he would make of Marseilles a southern Calais, which should connect Germany with Spain, and secure their communications, political and commercial. Bourbon objected and resisted; it was the abandonment of his general plan for this war and a painful proof how powerless he was against the wishes of the two sovereigns, of whom he was only the tool, although they called him their ally. Being forced to yield, he began the siege of Marseilles on the 19th of August. The place, though but slightly fortified and ill supplied, made an energetic resistance; the name and the presence of Bourbon at the head of the besiegers excited patriotism; the burgesses turned soldiers; the cannon of the besiegers laid open their walls, but they threw up a second line, an earthen rampart, called the ladies' rampart, because all the women in the city had worked at it. The siege was protracted; the re-enforcements expected by Bourbon did not arrive; a shot from Marseilles penetrated into Pescara's tent, and killed his almoner and two of his gentlemen. Bourbon rushed up. "Don't you see?" said Pescara to him, ironically, "here are the keys sent to you by the timid consuls of Marseilles." Bourbon resolved to attempt an assault; the lanzknechts and the Italians refused; Bourbon asked Pescara for his Spaniards, but Pescara would only consent on condition that the breach was reconnoitered afresh. Seven soldiers were told off for this duty; four were killed and the other three returned wounded, reporting that between the open breach and the intrenchment extended a large ditch filled with fireworks and defended by several batteries. The assembled general officers looked at one another in silence. "Well, gentlemen," said Pescara, "you see that the folks of Marseilles keep a table well spread for our reception; if you like to go and sup in paradise, you are your own masters so far; as for me, who have no desire to go thither just yet, I am off. But believe me," he added seriously, "we had best return to Milaness; we have left that country without a soldier; we might possibly find our return cut off." Whereupon Pescara got up and went out; and the majority of the officers followed him. Bourbon remained almost alone, divided between anger and shame. Almost as he quitted this scene he heard that Francis I. was advancing towards Provence with an army. The king had suddenly decided to go to the succor of Marseilles, which was making so good a defence. Nothing could be a bitterer pill for Bourbon than to retire before Francis I., whom he had but lately promised to dethrone; but his position condemned him to suffer everything, without allowing him the least hesitation; and on the 28th of September, 1524, he raised the siege of Marseilles and resumed the road to Italy, harassed even beyond Toulon by the French advance-guard, eager in its pursuit of the traitor even more than of the enemy.

In the course of this year, 1524, whilst Bourbon was wandering as a fugitive, trying to escape from his country, then returning to it, after a few months, as a conqueror, and then leaving it again at the end of a few weeks of prospective triumph, pursued by the king he had betrayed, his case and that of his accomplices had been inquired into and disposed of by the Parliament of Paris, dispassionately and almost coldly, probably because of the small esteem in which the magistrates held the court of Francis I., and of the wrong which they found had been done to the constable. The Parliament was not excited by a feeling of any great danger to the king and the country; it was clear that, at the core, the conspiracy and rebellion were very circumscribed and impotent; and the accusations brought by the court party or their servants against the conspirators were laughable from their very outrageousness and unlikelihood; according to them, the accomplices of the constable meant not only to dethrone, and, if need were, kill the king, but "to make pies of the children of France." Parliament saw no occasion to proceed against more than a half score of persons in confinement, and, except nineteen defaulters who were condemned to death together with confiscation of their property, only one capital sentence was pronounced, against John of Poitiers, Lord of Saint-Vallier, the same who had exerted himself to divert the constable from his plot, but who had nevertheless not refrained from joining it, and was the most guilty of all the accomplices in consequence of the confidential post he occupied near the king's person. The decree was not executed, however; Saint-Vallier received his reprieve on the scaffold itself. Francis I. was neither rancorous nor cruel; and the entreaties, or, according to some evil-speakers of the day, the kind favors, of the Lady de Brew, Saint-Vallier's daughter and subsequently the celebrated Diana of Poitiers, obtained from the king her father's life.

Francis I., greatly vexed, it is said, at the lenity of the Parliament of Paris, summoned commissions chosen amongst the Parliaments of Rouen, Dijon, Toulouse, and Bordeaux, and made them reconsider the case. The provincial Parliaments decided as that of Paris had. The procedure against the principal culprit was several times suspended and resumed according to the course of events, and the decree was not pronounced so long as the Duke of Bourbon lived. It was abroad and in his alliance with foreign sovereigns that all his importance lay.

After Bourbon's precipitate retreat, the position of Francis I. was a good one. He had triumphed over conspiracy and invasion; the conspiracy had not been catching, and the invasion had failed on all the frontiers. If the king, in security within his kingdom, had confined himself to it, whilst applying himself to the task of governing it well, he would have obtained all the strength he required to make himself feared and deferred to abroad. For a while he seemed to have entertained this design: on the 25th of September, 1523, he published an important ordinance for the repression of disorderliness and outrages on the part of the soldiery in France itself; and, on the 28th of December following, a regulation as to the administration of finances established a control over the various exchequer-officers, and announced the king's intention of putting some limits to his personal expenses, "not including, however," said he, "the ordinary run of our little necessities and pleasures." This singular reservation was the faithful exponent of his character; he was licentious at home and adventurous abroad, being swayed by his coarse passions and his warlike fancies. Even far away from Paris, in the heart of the provinces, the king's irregularities were known and dreaded. In 1524, some few weeks after the death [at Blois, July 20, 1524] of his wife, Queen Claude, daughter of Louis XII., a virtuous and modest princess more regretted by the people than by her husband, Francis made his entry into Manosque, in Provence. The burgesses had the keys of their town presented to him by the most beautiful creature they could find within their walls; it was the daughter of Antony Voland, one of themselves. The virtuous young girl was so frightened at the king's glances and the signs he made to his gentry, evidently alluding to her, that, on returning home, she got some burning sulphur and placed herself for a long while under the influence of its vapor, in order to destroy the beauty which made her run the risk of being only too pleasing to the king. Francis, who was no great or able captain, could not resist the temptations of war any more than those of the flesh. When Bourbon and the imperial army had evacuated Provence, the king loudly proclaimed his purpose of pursuing them into Italy, and of once more going forth to the conquest of Milaness, and perhaps also of the kingdom of Naples, that incurable craze of French kings in the sixteenth century. In vain did his most experienced warriors, La Tremoille and Chabannes, exert themselves to divert him from such a campaign, for which he was not prepared; in vain did his mother herself write to him, begging him to wait and see her, for that she had important matters to impart to him. He answered by sending her the ordinance which conferred upon her the regency during his absence; and, at the end of October, 1524, he had crossed the Alps, anxious to go and risk in Milaness the stake he had just won in Provence against Charles V.

Arriving speedily in front of Milan, he there found the imperial army which had retired before him; there was a fight in one of the outskirts; but Bourbon recognized the impossibility of maintaining a siege in a town of which the fortifications were in ruins, and with disheartened troops. On the line of march which they had pursued, from Lodi to Milan, there was nothing to be seen but cuirasses, arquebuses tossed hither and thither, dead horses, and men dying of fatigue and scarcely able to drag themselves along. Bourbon evacuated Milan, and, taking a resolution as bold as it was singular, abruptly abandoned, so far as he was personally concerned, that defeated and disorganized army, to go and seek for and reorganize another at a distance. Being informed that Charles III., Duke of Savoy, hitherto favorable to France, was secretly inclining towards the emperor, he went to Turin, made a great impression by his confidence and his grand spirit in the midst of misfortune upon both the duke and his wife, Beatrix of Portugal, and obtained from them not only a flattering reception, but a secret gift of their money and their jewelry; and, equipped with these resources, he passed into Germany to recruit soldiers there. The lanzknechts, who had formerly served under him in France, rushed to him in shoals; he had received from nature the gifts most calculated to gain the hearts of campaigners: kind, accessible, affable and even familiar with the common soldier, he entered into the details of his wants and alleviated them. His famous bravery, his frankness, and his generosity gained over those adventurers who were weary of remaining idle; their affection consoled Bourbon and stood him in stead of all: his army became his family and his camp his country. Proscribed and condemned in France, without any position secured to him in the dominions of Charles V., envied and crossed by that prince's generals, he had found full need of all the strong tempering of his character and of his warlike genius to keep him from giving way under so many trials. He was beginning to feel himself near recovery: he had an army, an army of his own; he had chosen for it men inured to labor and fatigue, accustomed to strict discipline; and thereto he added five hundred horsemen from Franche-Comte for whose devotion and courage he could answer: and he gave the second command in this army to George of Freundsberg, an old captain of lanzknechts and commandant of the emperor's guard, the same who, three years before, on seeing Luther boldly enter Worms, said to him, with a slap on the shoulder, "Little monk, this is a daring step thou art going to take! Nor I, nor any captain of us, ever did the like. If thy cause is good, and if thou have faith in thy cause, forward! little monk, in God's name forward!" With such comrades about him, Bourbon re-entered Milaness at the head of twelve or thirteen thousand fighting men, three months after having left it, alone and moneyless. His rivals about the person of Charles V., Lannoy, Viceroy of Naples, and the Marquis of Pescara, could not help admiring him, and he regained in the imperial camp an ascendency which had but lately been very much shaken.

He found the fresh campaign begun in earnest. Francis I.'s veteran generals, Marshals La Tremoille and Chabannes, had advised him to pursue without pause the beaten and disorganized imperial army, which was in such plight that there was placarded on the statue of Pasquin at Rome, "Lost—an army—in the mountains of Genoa; if anybody knows what has become of it, let him come forward and say: he shall be well rewarded." If the King of France, it was said, drove back northward and forced into the Venetian dominions the remnants of this army, the Spaniards would not be able to hold their own in Milaness, and would have to retire within the kingdom of Naples. But Admiral Bonnivet, "whose counsel the king made use of more than of any other," says Du Bellay, pressed Francis I. to make himself master, before everything, of the principal strong places in Lombardy, especially of Pavia, the second city in the duchy of Milan. Francis followed this counsel, and on the 26th of August, 1524, twenty days after setting out from Aix in Provence, he appeared with his army in front of Pavia. On learning this resolution, Pescara joyously exclaimed, "We were vanquished; a little while and we shall be vanquishers." Pavia had for governor a Spanish veteran, Antony de Leyva, who had distinguished himself at the battle of Ravenna, in 1512, by his vigilance and indomitable tenacity: and he held out for nearly four months, first against assaults, and then against investment by the French army. Francis I. and his generals occasionally proceeded during this siege to severities condemned by the laws and usages of war. A small Spanish garrison had obstinately defended a tower situated at the entrance of a stone bridge which led from an island on the Ticino into Pavia. Marshal de Montmorency at last carried the tower, and had all the defenders hanged "for having dared," he said, "to offer resistance to an army of the king's in such a pigeon-hole." Antony de Leyva had the bridge forthwith broken down, and De Montmorency was stopped on the borders of the Ticino. In spite of the losses of its garrison in assaults and sorties, and in spite of the sufferings of the inhabitants from famine and from lack of resources of all sorts, Pavia continued to hold out. There was a want of wood as well as of bread; and they knocked the houses to pieces for fuel. Antony de Leyva caused to be melted down the vessels of the churches and the silvern chandeliers of the university, and even a magnificent chain of gold which he habitually wore round his neck. He feared he would have to give in at last, for want of victuals and ammunition, when, towards the end of January, 1525, he saw appearing, on the northern side, the flags of the imperial army: it was Bourbon, Lannoy, and Pescara, who were coming up with twenty thousand foot, seven hundred men-at-arms, a troop of Spanish arquebusiers, and several pieces of cannon. Bourbon, whilst on the march, had written, on the 5th of January, to Henry VIII., and, after telling him what he meant to do, had added, "I know through one of my servants that the French have said that I retired from Provence shamefully. I remained there a space of three months and eight days, waiting for battle. I hope to give the world to know that I have no fear of King Francis, for, please God, we shall place ourselves so close together that we shall have great trouble to get disentangled without battle, and I shall so do that neither he nor they who have held such talk about me shall say that I was afraid of being there." The situation was from that moment changed. The French army found themselves squeezed between the fortress which would not surrender and the imperial army which was coming to relieve it. Things, however, remained stationary for three weeks. Francis I. intrenched himself strongly in his camp, which the Imperialists could not attack without great risk of unsuccess. "Pavia is doomed to fall," wrote Francis to his mother the regent on the 3d of February, "if they do not reenforce it somehow; and they are beating about to make it hold on to the last gasp, which, I think, will not be long now, for it is more than a month since those inside have had no wine to drink and neither meat nor cheese to eat; they are short of powder even." Antony de Leyva gave notice to the Imperialists that the town was not in a condition for further resistance. On the other hand, if the imperial army put off fighting, they could not help breaking up; they had exhausted their victuals, and the leaders their money; they were keeping the field without receiving pay, and were subsisting, so to speak, without resources. The prudent Marquis of Pescara himself was for bringing on a battle, which was indispensable. "A hundred years in the field," said he, in the words of an old Italian proverb, "are better than one day of fighting, for one may lose in a doubtful melley what one was certain of winning by skilful manoeuvres; but when one can no longer keep the field, one must risk a battle, so as not to give the enemy the victory without a fight." The same question was being discussed in the French camp. The veteran captains, La Tremoille and Chabannes, were of opinion that by remaining in the strong position in which they were encamped they would conquer without fighting. Bonnivet and De Montmorency were of the contrary opinion. "We French," said Bonnivet, "have not been wont to make war by means of military artifices, but handsomely and openly, especially when we have at our head a valiant king, who is enough to make the veriest dastards fight. Our kings bring victory with them, as our little king Charles VIII. did at the Taro, our king Louis XII. at Agnadello, and our king who is here present at Melegnano." Francis I. was not the man to hold out against such sentiments and such precedents; and he decided to accept battle as soon as it should be offered him. The imperial leaders, at a council held on the 23d of February, determined to offer it next day. Bourbon vigorously supported the opinion of Pescara.

Antony de Leyva was notified the same evening of their decision, and was invited to make, as soon as he heard two cannon-shots, a sortie which would place the French army between two fires. Pescara, according to his custom, mustered the Spaniards; and, "My lads," said he, "fortune has brought you to such extremity that on the soil of Italy you have for your own only that which is under your feet. All the emperor's might could not procure for you to-morrow morning one morsel of bread. We know not where to get it, save in the Frenchman's camp, which is before your eyes. There they have abundance of everything, bread, meat, trout and carp from the Lake of Garda. And so, my lads, if you are set upon having anything to eat tomorrow, march we down on the Frenchmen's camp." Freundsberg spoke in the same style to the German lanzknechts. And both were responded to with cheers. Eloquence is mighty powerful when it speaks in the name of necessity.

The two armies were of pretty equal strength: they had each from twenty to five and twenty thousand infantry, French, Germans, Spaniards, lanzknechts, and Swiss. Francis I. had the advantage in artillery and in heavy cavalry, called at that time the gendarmerie, that is to say, the corps of men-at-arms in heavy armor with their servants; but his troops were inferior in effectives to the Imperialists, and Charles V.'s two generals, Bourbon and Pescara, were, as men of war, far superior to Francis I. and his favorite Bonnivet. In the night between the 23d and 24th of February they opened a breach of forty or fifty fathoms in the wall around the park of Mirabello, where the French camp was situated; a corps immediately passed through it, marching on Pavia to re-enforce the garrison, and the main body of the imperial army entered the park to offer the French battle on that ground. The king at once set his army in motion; and his well-posted artillery mowed down the corps of Germans and Spaniards who had entered the park. "You could see nothing," says a witness of the battle, "but heads and arms flying about." The action seemed to be going ill for the Imperialists; Pescara urged the Duke of Bourbon and Lannoy, the Viceroy of Naples, to make haste and come up; Lannoy made the sign of the cross, and said to his men, "There is no hope but in God; follow me and do every one as I do." Francis I., on his side, advanced with the pick of his men-at-arms, burst on the advance-guard of the enemy, broke it, killed with his own hand the Marquis of Civita-San-Angelo, and dispersed the various corps he found in his way. In the confidence of his joy he thought the victory decided, and, turning to Marshal de Foix, who was with him, "M. de Lescun," said he, "now am I fain to call myself Duke of Milan." But Bourbon and Pescara were not the men to accept a defeat so soon; they united all their forces, and resumed the offensive at all points; the French batteries, masked by an ill-considered movement on the part of their own troops, who threw themselves between them and the enemy, lost all serviceability; and Pescara launched upon the French gendarmerie fifteen hundred Basque arquebusiers, whom he had exercised and drilled to penetrate into the midst of the horses, shoot both horses and riders, and fall back rapidly after having discharged their pieces. Being attacked by the German lanzknechts of Bourbon and Freundsberg, the Swiss in the French service did not maintain their renown, and began to give way. "My God, what is all this!" cried Francis I., seeing them waver, and he dashed towards them to lead them back into action; but neither his efforts, nor those of John of Diesbach and the Lord of Fleuranges, who were their commanders, were attended with success. The king was only the more eager for the fray; and, rallying around him all those of his men-at-arms who would neither recoil nor surrender, he charged the Imperialists furiously, throwing himself into the thickest of the melley, and seeking in excess of peril some chance of victory; but Pescara, though wounded in three places, was none the less stubbornly fighting on, and Antony de Leyva, governor of Pavia, came with the greater part of the garrison to his aid. At this very moment Francis I. heard that the first prince of the blood, his brother-in-law the Duke of Alencon, who commanded the rear-guard, had precipitately left the field of battle. The oldest and most glorious warriors of France, La Tremoille, Marshal de Chabannes, Marshal de Foix, the grand equerry San Severino, the Duke of Suffolk, Francis of Lorraine, Chaumont, Bussy d'Amboise, and Francis de Duras fell, here and there, mortally wounded. At this sight Admiral Bonnivet in despair exclaimed, "I can never survive this fearful havoc;" and raising the visor of his helmet, he rushed to meet the shots which were aimed at him, and in his turn fell beside his comrades in arms. Bourbon had expressly charged his men to search everywhere in the melley for the admiral, and bring him in a prisoner. When, as he passed along that part of the battle-field, he recognized the corpse, "Ah! wretch," he cried, as he moved away, "it is thou who hast caused the ruin of France and of me!" Amidst these dead and dying, Francis still fought on; wounded as he was in the face, the arms, and the legs, he struck right and left with his huge sword, and cut down the nearest of his assailants; but his horse, mortally wounded, dragged him down as it fell; he was up again in an instant, and, standing beside his horse, he laid low two more Spaniards who were pressing him closely; the ruck of the soldiers crowded about him; they did not know him, but his stature, his strength, his bravery, his coat of mail studded with golden lilies, and his helmet overshadowed by a thick plume of feathers pointed him out to all as the finest capture to make; his danger was increasing every minute, when one of Bourbon's most intimate confidants, the Lord of Pomperant, who, in 1523, had accompanied the constable in his flight through France, came up at this critical moment, recognized the king, and, beating off the soldiers with his sword, ranged himself at the king's side, represented to-him the necessity of yielding, and pressed him to surrender to the Duke of Bourbon, who was not far off. "No," said the king, "rather die than pledge my faith to a traitor where is the Viceroy of Naples?" It took some time to find Lannoy; but at last he arrived and put one knee on the ground before Francis I., who handed his sword to him. Lannoy took it with marks of the most profound respect, and immediately gave him another. The battle was over, and Francis I. was Charles V.'s prisoner.



He had shown himself an imprudent and unskilful general, but at the same time a hero. His conquerors, both officers and privates, could not help, whilst they secured his person, showing their admiration for him. When he sat down to table, after having had his wounds, which were slight, attended to, Bourbon approached him respectfully and presented him with a dinner-napkin; and the king took it without embarrassment and with frigid and curt politeness. He next day granted him an interview, at which an accommodation took place with due formalities on both sides, but nothing more. All the king's regard was for the Marquis of Pescara, who came to see him in a simple suit of black, in order, as it were, to share his distress. "He was a perfect gentleman," said Francis I., "both in peace and in war." He heaped upon him marks of esteem and almost of confidence. "How do you think," he asked, "the emperor will behave to me?" "I think," replied Pescara, "I can answer for the emperor's moderation; I am sure that he will make a generous use of his victory. If, however, he were capable of forgetting what is due to your rank, your merits, and your misfortunes, I would never cease to remind him of it, and I would lose what little claim upon him my services may have given me, or you should be satisfied with his behavior." The king embraced him warmly. He asked to be excused from entering Pavia, that he might not be a gazing-stock in a town that he had so nearly taken. He was, accordingly, conducted to Pizzighittone, a little fortress between Milan and Cremona. He wrote thence two letters, one to his mother the regent and the other to Charles V., which are here given word for word, because they so well depict his character and the state of his mind in his hour of calamity:—

1. "To the Regent of France: Madame, that you may know how stands the rest of my misfortune: there is nothing in the world left to me but honor and my life, which is safe. And in order that, in your adversity, this news might bring you some little comfort, I prayed for permission to write you this letter, which was readily granted me; entreating you, in the exercise of your accustomed prudence, to be pleased not to do anything rash, for I have hope, after all, that God will not forsake me. Commending to you my children your grandchildren, and entreating you to give the bearer a free passage, going and returning, to Spain, for he is going to the emperor to learn how it is his pleasure that I should be treated."

2. "To the Emperor Charles V.: If liberty had been sooner granted me by my cousin the viceroy, I should not have delayed so long to do my duty towards you, according as the time and the circumstances in which I am placed require; having no other comfort under my misfortune than a reliance on your goodness, which, if it so please, shall employ the results of victory with honorableness towards me; having steadfast hope that your virtue would not willingly constrain me to anything that was not honorable; entreating you to consult your own heart as to what you shall be pleased to do with me; feeling sure that the will of a prince such as you are cannot be coupled with aught but honor and magnanimity. Wherefore, if it please you to have so much honorable pity as to answer for the safety which a captive King of France deserves to find, whom there is a desire to render friendly and not desperate, you may be sure of obtaining an acquisition instead of a useless prisoner, and of making a King of France your slave forever."

The former of these two letters has had its native hue somewhat altered in the majority of histories, in which it has been compressed into those eloquent words, "All is lost save honor." The second needs no comment to make apparent what it lacks of kingly pride and personal dignity. Beneath the warrior's heroism there was in the qualities of Francis I. more of what is outwardly brilliant and winning than of real strength and solidity.

But the warrior's heroism, in conjunction with what is outwardly brilliant and winning in the man, exercises a great influence over people. The Viceroy of Naples perceived and grew anxious at the popularity of which Francis I. was the object at Pizzighittone. The lanzknechts took an open interest in him and his fortunes; the Italians fixed their eyes on him; and Bourbon, being reconciled to him, might meditate carrying him off. Lannoy resolved to send him to Naples, where there would be more certainty of guarding him securely. Francis made no objection to this design. On the 12th of May, 1525, he wrote to his mother, "Madame, the bearer has assured me that he will bring you this letter safely; and, as I have but little time, I will tell you nothing more than I shall be off to Naples on Monday—, and so keep a lookout at sea, for we shall have only fourteen galleys to take us and eighteen hundred Spaniards to man them; but those will be all their arquebusiers. Above all, haste: for, if that is made, I am in hopes that you may soon see your most humble and most obedient son." There was no opportunity for even attempting to carry off the king as he went by sea to Naples; instead of taking him to Naples, Lannoy transported him straight to Spain, with the full assent of the king and the regent themselves, for it was in French galleys manned by Spanish troops that the voyage was made. Instead of awaiting the result of such doubtful chances of deliverance as might occur in Italy, Francis I., his mother, and his sister Margaret, entertained the idea that what was of the utmost importance for him was to confer and treat in person with Charles V., which could not be done save in Spain itself. In vain did Bourbon and Pescara, whose whole influence and ambitious hopes lay in Italy, and who, on that stage, regarded Francis I. as their own prisoner rather than Charles V.'s, exert themselves to combat this proposal; the Viceroy of Naples, in concert, no doubt, with Charles V. himself as well as with Francis I. and his mother, took no heed of their opposition; and Francis I., disembarking at the end of June at Barcelona first and then at Valentia, sent, on the 2d of July, to Charles V. the Duke de Montmorency, with orders to say that he had desired to approach the emperor, "not only to obtain peace and deliverance in his own person, but also to establish and confirm Italy in the state and fact of devotion to the emperor, before that the potentates and lords of Italy should have leisure to rally together in opposition." The regent, his mother, and his sister Margaret congratulated him heartily on his arrival in Spain, and Charles V. himself wrote to him, "It was a pleasure to me to hear of your arrival over here, because that, just now, it will be the cause of a happy general peace for the great good of Christendom, which is what I most desire."

It is difficult to understand how Francis I. and Charles V. could rely upon personal interviews and negotiations for putting an end to their contentions and establishing a general peace. Each knew the other's pretensions, and they knew how little disposed they were, either of them, to abandon them. On the 28th of March, 1525, a month after the battle of Pavia, Charles V. had given his ambassadors instructions as to treating for the ransom and liberation of the King of France. His chief requirements were, that Francis I. should renounce all attempts at conquest in Italy, that he should give up the suzerainty of the countships of Flanders and Artois, that he should surrender to Charles V. the duchy of Burgundy with all its dependencies, as derived from Mary of Burgundy, daughter of the last duke, Charles the Rash; that the Duke of Bourbon should be reinstated in possession of all his domains, with the addition thereto of Provence and Dauphiny, which should form an independent state; and, lastly, that France should pay England all the sums of money which Austria owed her. Francis I., on hearing, at Pizzighittone, these proposals read out, suddenly drew his sword as if to stab himself, saying, "It were better for a king to end thus." His custodian, Alancon, seized his arm, whilst recalling him to his senses. Francis recovered calmness, but without changing his resolution; he would rather, he said, bury himself in a prison forever than subscribe to conditions destructive of his kingdom, and such as the States General of France would never accept. When Francis I. was removed to Spain he had made only secondary concessions as to these requirements of Charles V., and Charles V. had not abandoned any one of his original requirements. Marshal de Montmorency, when sent by the king to the emperor on the 2d of July, 1525, did not enter at all into the actual kernel of the negotiation; after some conventional protestations of a pacific kind, he confined himself to demanding "a safe conduct for Madame Marguerite of France, the king's only sister, Duchess of Alencon and Berry, who would bring with her such and so full powers of treating for peace, the liberation of the king, and friendly alliance to secure the said peace, that the emperor would clearly see that the king's intentions were pure and genuine, and that he would be glad to conclude and decide in a month what might otherwise drag on for a long while to the great detriment of their subjects." The marshal was at the same time to propose the conclusion of a truce during the course of the negotiations.

Amongst the letters at that time addressed to Francis I., a prisoner of war, is the following, dated March, 1525, when he was still in Italy:—

"My lord, the joy we are still feeling at the kind letters which you were pleased to write yesterday to me and to your mother, makes us so happy with the assurance of your health, on which our life depends, that it seems to me that we ought to think of nothing but of praising God and desiring a continuance of your good news, which is the best meat we can have to live on. And inasmuch as the Creator bath given us grace that our trinity should be always united, the other two do entreat you that this letter, presented to you, who are the third, may be accepted with the same affection with which it is cordially offered you by your most humble and most obedient servants, your mother and sister— LOUISE, MARGUERITE."

This close and tender union of the three continued through all separations and all trials; the confidence of the captive king was responsive to the devotion of his mother the regent and of his sister who had become his negotiatrix. When the news came of the king's captivity, the regency threatened for a moment to become difficult and stormy; all the ambition and the hatred that lay dormant in the court awoke; an attempt was made to excite in the Duke of Vendome, the head of the younger branch of the House of Bourbon, a desire to take the regent's place; the Parliament of Paris attacked the chancellor, Duprat, whom they hated—not without a cause; but the Duke of Vendome was proof against the attempts which were made upon him, and frankly supported the regent, who made him the chief of her council; and the regent supported the chancellor. She displayed, in these court-contentions, an ability partaking both of firmness and pliancy. The difficulties of foreign policy found her equally active and prudent. The greatest peril which France could at that time incur arose from the maintenance of the union between the King of England and Charles V. At the first news of the battle of Pavia, Henry VIII. dreamed for a moment of the partition of France between Charles and himself, with the crown of France for his own share; demonstrations of joy took place at the court of London; and attempts were made to levy, without the concurrence of Parliament, imposts capable of sufficing for such an enterprise. But the English nation felt no inclination to put up with this burden and the king's arbitrary power in order to begin over again the Hundred Years' War. The primate, Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote to Cardinal Wolsey, "It is reported to me that when the people had orders to make bonfires for the capture of the King of France, many folks said that it was more reason for weeping than for rejoicing. Others openly expressed their desire that the King of France might be set at liberty, that a happy peace might be concluded, and that the king might not attempt to conquer France again, a conquest more burdensome than profitable, and more difficult to keep than to make." Wolsey himself was cooled towards Charles V., who, instead of writing to him as of old, and signing with his own hand, "your son and cousin," now merely put his name, Charles. The regent, Louise of Savoy, profited ably by these feelings and circumstances in England; a negotiation was opened between the two courts; Henry VIII. gained by it two millions of crowns payable by annual instalments of fifty thousand crowns each, and Wolsey received a pension of a hundred thousand crowns. At first a truce for four months, and then an alliance, offensive and defensive, were concluded on the 30th of August, 1525, between France and England; and the regent, Louise of Savoy, had no longer to trouble herself about anything except the captivity of the king her son and the departure of her daughter Margaret to go and negotiate for the liberation of the prisoner.

The negotiation had been commenced, as early as the 20th of July, at Toledo, between the ambassadors of Francis I. and the advisers of Charles V., but without any symptom of progress. Francis I., since his arrival in Spain, had been taken from strong castle to strong castle, and then removed to Madrid, everywhere strictly guarded, and leading a sad life, without Charles V.'s coming to visit him or appointing him any meeting-place. In vain did the emperor's confessor, the Bishop of Osma, advise him to treat Francis I. generously, and so lay upon him either the obligation of thankfulness or the burden of ingratitude; the majority of his servants gave him contrary counsel. "I know not what you mean to do," wrote his brother, the Archduke Ferdinand; "but, if I were wise enough to know how to give you good counsel, it seems to me that such an opportunity should not be lost, but that you should follow up your good fortune and act in such wise that neither the King of France nor his successors should have power hereafter to do harm to you or yours." That, too, was Charles V.'s own way of thinking; but, slow and patient as he was by nature, he relied upon the discomforts and the wearisomeness of prolonged captivity and indecision for tiring out Francis I. and overcoming his resistance to the harsh conditions he would impose upon him. The regent, Louise, made him an offer to go herself and treat with him, at Perpignan, for the king's liberation; but he did not accept that overture. The Duke of Alencon, son-in-law of Louise, had died at Lyons, unable to survive the shame of his flight at the battle of Pavia; and the regent hinted that her daughter Marguerite, three months a widow, "would be happy if she could be agreeable to his Imperial Majesty," but Charles let the hint drop without a reply. However, at the end of August, 1525, he heard that Francis I. was ill: "from great melancholy he had fallen into a violent fever." The population of Madrid was in commotion; Francis I. had become popular there; many people went to pray for him in the churches; the doctors told the emperor that there was fear for the invalid's life, and that he alone could alleviate the malady by administering some hope. Charles V. at once granted the safe-conduct which had been demanded of him for Marguerite of France, and on the 18th of September he himself went to Madrid to pay a visit to the captive. Francis, on seeing him enter the chamber, said, "So your Majesty has come to see your prisoner die?" "You are not my prisoner," answered Charles, "but my brother and my friend: I have no other purpose than to give you your liberty and every satisfaction you can desire." Next day Marguerite arrived; her mother, the regent, had accompanied her as far as Pont-Saint-Esprit; she had embarked, on the 27th of August, at Aigues-Mortes, and, disembarking at Barcelona, had gone to Madrid by litter; in order to somewhat assuage her impatience she had given expression to it in the following tender stanzas: