Background
In 1518, the world established in Western Europe after the battle of Marignano staggered. The cause of contention between the leading powers was the question of the new emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Emperor Maximilian I wanted his throne to be inherited by Habsburg, and therefore launched a campaign in support of the Spanish king Charles, while the French king Francis offered himself as an alternative candidate. At the same time, the papacy and the Empire had to deal with the growing influence of Martin Luther, who was supported by many of the imperial nobles, and Francis with the English cardinal Thomas Wolsey, who tried to increase the influence of England (and himself) in the affairs of the continent by offering his services as an intermediary in negotiations between the warring parties.
The death of Maximilian in 1519 made the question of choosing a new emperor the cornerstone of European politics. Pope Leo X, who did not like the presence of Spanish soldiers (in the Kingdom of Naples) a few dozen kilometers from Rome, supported the French candidacy. Princes-electors (with the exception of Friedrich of Saxony) promised their support to both candidates (or rather to the one who will pay the most). Even before his death, Maximilian promised 500,000 florins each to the electors who would vote for Carl; Francis offered 3 million each, but Karl interrupted his offer, borrowing a huge amount from the Fuggers. However, the outcome of the vote was determined by non-unprecedented bribes (which included the papal promise to make the Archbishop of Mainz his permanent legate). The general unpopularity of the choice of the emperor of the French forced the electors to pause, and when Carl led his army on the field near Frankfurt, where the elections were held, the electors immediately voted for him. When, on October 23, 1520, Charles V was crowned emperor, Spain, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Burgundian Netherlands came under his rule.
Cardinal Wolsey, hoping to increase the influence of Henry VIII on the affairs of the continent, suggested England as a mediator for settling disputes between Francis and Carl. In 1520, Heinrich and Francis met on the field of golden brocade, and immediately after this, Walsey met with Karl in Calais. The conference, which was supposed to solve all the problems, ended without any particular result.
Strategy
In December 1520, Francis began preparations for war. Since the English King Henry VIII expressed a clear intention to oppose who would break peace on the continent, the French decided instead of declaring war to rely on the support of opponents who were to invade Spanish and imperial territories. One attack – along the Meuse – was led by Robert III de la Marc, and the other – by Navarre – was formally headed by Henry II of Navarre, from whom Ferdinand II of Aragon took away family possessions in 1512 (but in fact the army was commanded by Andre de Foy ). Both attacks were financed by the French, but at the official level, France denied everything.
In June, the imperial troops under the command of Henry of Nassau invaded northern France, ransacked the cities of Andre and Mouzon, and besieged Tournai. However, the stubborn defense of Mezieres , commanded by Bayard and Montmorency, gave France time to gather an army.
Heinrich of Nassau repulsed the invasion along the Meuse, and Andre de Foy managed to take Pamplona, but on June 30, 1521, he was defeated at Escquiroz and knocked out of Navarre.
Meanwhile, Karl was busy with affairs related to Martin Luther. On May 25, 1521, at the end of the work of the Worms Reichstag, Carl, under the pressure of the papal nuncio Girolamo Aleander, issued the Edict of Worms declaring Martin Luther a heretic. At the same time, Karl promised the Pope to return the Medici to Parma and Piacenza, and Milan to the Sforza family. Needing imperial support against heresy, Leo X promised his support in expelling the French from Lombardy. As a result, France remained in Italy only ally to the Republic of Venice.
On October 22, 1521, Francis met the main imperial army, commanded by Charles V personally, near Valenciennes. He did not dare to attack immediately, as Charles III de Bourbon advised him, and this gave Charles V time to retreat. When the French were finally ready to go forward, the heavy rains began to make the pursuit difficult, and the imperial army was able to leave without a fight.
Shortly thereafter, French troops, commanded by Gufier and Claude de Guise, laid siege to Hondarribia, a key city at the mouth of the Bidasoa river on the French-Spanish border, and the subsequent maneuvers provided the French with an important springboard in northern Spain, which they held for the next two years.
In Italy, the Allies concentrated about 23,000 people near Bologna, under the command of the elderly Prosper Columns. The French governor in Naples, Lautrec, hardly recruited 12,000 Swiss, who alone could resist the magnificent Spanish infantry.
On November 28, 1521, Charles, Heinrich, and the Pope signed an alliance agreement against France. The Allies made a serious mistake by embarking on the siege of Parma, instead of occupying Milan and expelling the French before they could concentrate their forces. Because of this, Lautrec was able to gather part of the forces (13 thousand) and join the 4,000 Venetian detachment. However, in anticipation of the concentration of his troops, the governor did not dare go to the rescue of besieged Parma, but only advanced to the river Po. When Lautrec’s money dried up, the mercenaries began to leave, forcing him to retreat to Milan. The Allies moved to Lautrec, which, leaving the garrison in the strongholds of Milan, Novara and Arona, cleared the Duchy of Milan and settled into winter apartments in the Venetian possessions. Thus, the whole of Lombardy, with the exception of Cremona , was lost by the French. But the dissolution of the papal troops by Cardinal Julius de Medici and the transfer of 16 thousand Swiss to the side of Francis suspended the successes of the allies.
On April 27, 1522, the battle of Bicocca was held , in which the French suffered a terrible defeat. Morally repressed, the Swiss returned to their cantons, and Lautrec, left virtually without troops, was forced to leave Lombardy and retreat to France. The column and Fernando d’Avalos, left without an enemy, began to besiege Genoa , and on May 30 captured the city.
France cornered
De Foy’s defeat prompted England to enter the war. In May 1522, the English ambassador gave Francis an ultimatum, which listed the charges brought by England to France (in particular, support for John Stewart in Scotland ) – all of them were rejected by Francis. On June 16, 1522, Henry VIII and Charles V signed the Treaty of Windsor, in accordance with which each of the contracting parties undertook to send 40,000 soldiers to invade France. Carl agreed to compensate England for the debts that France would refuse to pay due to England entering the war; to seal the union, Karl agreed to marry the only daughter of Heinrich – Mary . In July, the British attacked Brittany and Picardy from Calais. Francis did not have enough money to organize decent resistance, and the British army plundered these territories.
To find the money, Francis tried various methods, but made the main litigation with Carl de Bourbon. The Duke of Bourbon received most of his lands through marriage with Suzanne de Bourbon, who died shortly before the outbreak of the war. Louise of Savoy – Suzanne’s cousin and mother of the king – insisted that these lands should now go to her as the closest relative of the deceased. Francis considered that the seizure of disputed lands would strengthen his financial situation to a degree sufficient to continue the war, and began to confiscate them piece by piece on behalf of Louise. Infuriated by this, Bourbon, who had fallen into increasing isolation at court, began to seek an alliance with Charles V against the king of France.
In 1523 the circumstances were the worst for France. After the death of Antonio Grimani, Andrea Gritti, a veteran of the War of the Cambrai League, became the new Doge of Venice. He quickly began negotiations with the emperor, and on July 29 he signed the Treaty of Vorms, according to which the Republic of Venice withdrew from the war. Bourbon continued his secret negotiations with Carl, offering to launch an uprising against France in exchange for money and German troops. When Francis, fearing a conspiracy, summoned him to Lyon in October, he pretended to be ill and fled to the imperial city of Besancon. Enraged Francis ordered the execution of all the allies of Bourbon, whom he was able to seize, but the Duke de Bourbon himself, refusing the last offer of reconciliation, openly entered the service of the Emperor.
After this, Carl invaded southern France through the Pyrenees. De Foix successfully defended Bayonne from the Spaniards, but in February 1524, Carl managed to beat off Hondarribia. Meanwhile, on September 18, 1523, a huge British army commanded by the Duke of Suffolk moved from Calais to join the Flemish-imperial forces. The French, all whose forces were diverted to repel the attacks of the Imperials, could not oppose anything to him, and Suffolk soon crossed the Somme, ruining everything in its path and stopped only a few dozen kilometers from Paris. However, Carl was unable to support the British offensive, and Suffolk, not wanting to storm the capital of France alone, turned away from Paris on October 30, returning to Calais in mid-December.
Now Francis has switched to Lombardy. In October 1523, the 18,000-strong French army under the command of Guillaume Gufier de Bonive marched through Piedmont to Novara, where they joined the army of Swiss mercenaries of approximately the same size. Prospero Colonna, who had only 9 thousand people, retreated to Milan. However, Gufier de Bonive overestimated the size of the imperial army, and instead of attacking the city, he settled into winter apartments. By December 28, when Charles de Lannoy replaced the deceased Column in his post, the Imperials were able to gather another 15,000 Landsknechts and a large army under the command of de Bourbon, and many Swiss left the French army, and Gufier de Bonive began to retreat. The defeat of the French in a battle on the Sesia River, where Bayard, who commanded the rearguard, died, demonstrated the superiority of the arquebusers’ groups over the more traditional troops; the French army retreated across the Alps in disarray.
Fernando d’Avalos and Charles III de Bourbon , having under the command of about 11 thousand people, crossed the Alps and in the beginning of July invaded Provence. Passing through most of the smaller settlements without resistance, Bourbon entered the capital of the province, Aix-en-Provence, on August 9 and proclaimed himself “Count of Provence,” recognizing Henry VIII’s dependence on the latter in support of the struggle against Francis. In mid-August, de Bourbon and d’Avalos besieged Marseille, the last fortress of Provence, which remained in French hands. However, the attack on the city failed, and when the French army arrived in Avignon at the end of September, led by Francis I personally, they had to retreat to Italy.
Here the battle of Pavia took place. The battle of Pavia (February 24, 1525) was a key battle during the Italian Wars (1494-1559) between the Spaniards and the French. The first battle of the New time , which marked the beginning of the successful use of handguns. It resulted in a Hapsburg victory. (We have a whole article focused on this battle)
Madrid
After the battle of Pavia, the fate of the French king and of France itself became the object of sophisticated diplomatic maneuvers. Charles V, who did not have enough money to continue the war, preferred to forget about his promise to marry a representative of the House of Tudors, given to Henry VIII, and instead sought the hand of Isabella Portuguese, who had a richer dowry. Meanwhile, the Duke de Bourbon urged Heinrich to invade France and divide it into a pair, and d’Avalos pushed to seize Naples and proclaim himself king of Italy.
Louise of Savoy , who remained the regent of France during the absence of her son, tried to collect troops and money to prepare for the expected invasion of British troops in Artois. At the same time, she sent the first French embassy to Suleiman the Magnificent, asking for assistance, but the embassy died in Bosnia. In December 1525, a second embassy was sent, which reached Istanbul with secret letters requesting assistance for the liberation of King Francis and a proposal to attack the Hapsburgs. On February 6, 1526, the embassy returned with a response from Suleiman, laying the foundations of the Franco-Turkish alliance. Suleiman wrote a letter to Charles V, demanding the release of Francis, as well as the payment of an annual tribute by the Holy Roman Empire; when this did not follow, in the summer of 1526 the Turks invaded Hungary.
De Lannoy and d’Avalos wanted to send Francis to Neapolitan Castel Nuovo, but Francis himself believed that he would be able to secure his release if he personally met with Charles V, and demanded that he be sent to Spain. Fearing conspiracy on the part of the duke de Bourbon, the imperial and Spanish commanders agreed, and on 12 June, Francis was taken to Barcelona.
Originally, Francis was kept in a villa near Benisano (near Valencia ), but then he was transferred to Madrid and placed there in a castle. Nevertheless, Carl refused to meet with him before reaching an agreement. Carl demanded the transfer of not only Lombardy, but also Burgundy and Provence, forcing Francis to declare that the laws of France do not allow him to give lands belonging to the Crown without the consent of Parliament, which obviously would not have followed.
In September, Francis became seriously ill, and his sister, Margherita of Navarre, went to him. The imperial doctors, who examined the patient, came to the conclusion that his illness was caused by grief from the inability to meet with the emperor. Despite the protest of the Chancellor Merkurino Gattinara, who believed that the issues of mercy should not interfere in politics, Carl visited the patient, and he went on the mend. Francis tried to escape, but the attempt was unsuccessful, and Margarita of Navarre had to return to France.
At the beginning of 1526, Carl was faced with demands from Venice and the Pope for the restoration of Francesco Maria Sforza on the throne of the Duchy of Milan, and was worried that an agreement with France could not be achieved before the start of a new war. Francis, realizing that the arguments about the impossibility of the return of Burgundy to Carl did not work, decided to agree to give it for the sake of his own release. On January 14, 1526, Charles V and Francis I signed the Treaty of Madrid, according to which the French king refused claims to Italy, Flanders and Artois, gave Burgundy to Charles V, agreed to send two sons to the Spanish court as hostages, and return to the Duke de Bourbon all the lands taken from him.
March 6, Francis was released, and accompanied by de Lannoy went to Futerrabia. On March 18, he crossed the Bidasoa river to the north, entering the land of France, while his two sons proceeded south, taking hostages to Spain. By this time, Cardinal Wolsey and the French ambassador drew up a preliminary draft of a peace treaty between England and France (which was ratified by the French side in April 1527).
Francis, however, did not feel any desire to fulfill the rest of the Madrid Treaty. On March 22, with the blessing of the Pope, he declared himself unconnected with the terms of the Madrid Treaty, as signed under pressure. Meanwhile, Pope Clement VII , fearing the growing influence of the emperor in Italy, offered Francis I and Henry VIII to conclude an alliance against Charles V. Henry, who did not receive anything under the Madrid Treaty, agreed, as a result of which the War of the Cognac League began.
