and nails cut short and his beard worn | splendor at the baptism of the dauphin, long. If he were handsome and gallant and the marriage of Lorenzo de Médicis, he might hope to be taken under the pro- Duc d'Urbino, with Madeleine de la Tour, tection of some noble lady and provided the heiress of the Comte d'Auvergne. with employment at court, a post in the Leo had been solicited to be sponsor to army, or even a benefice in the Church, the prince, and had sent his nephew, Lofor since the disposal of its patronage had renzo, to represent him. The ceremonies come into the hands of the king such was were splendid. The great court of the frequently bestowed upon laymen. palace was covered by a vast awning, under which assembled all the flower of the French nobility, all the great dignitaries of the Church, the ambassadors of all the foreign courts, and many foreign princes. At the supper every course was brought in to a flourish of trumpets, and between each there was a ballet performed by seven companies of demoiselles dressed in the costumes of Germany, Italy, and Spain, and beating time to their steps with tambourines. There were jousts on horseback and on foot, and a sham siege, for which an elaborately-constructed fortress made of wood had been raised. It was at the Château d'Amboise, which Charles the Eighth had rebuilt in the Italian style, that Francis held his court in the earlier years of his reign. He did not care for cities, but loved to blend the splendors of his palace with the natural beauties of the woods and fields. It was a court of romance, the joyous life that Boccaccio drew, with much of the wild extravagance of Ariosto, a realization of those boyish_day-dreams by the Charente and Loire. But although its headquarters were at Amboise, this joyous court was never stationary, but was always en route: Like a moving romance [says Michelet] a Pantagruelian pilgrimage, the whole length of the Loire, from château to château, from forest to forest. Everywhere the chase and the deafening horn. Everywhere the grand banquet beneath the trees for some thousands of guests. Then all disappeared. The poor envoys of the king of Spain never knew where or how to join the king of France. He rose very late, as did also that other king, his mother. They came in vain in the morning. the king was asleep. They returned later; the king was on horseback, far away in the forest. The evening was too pleasant; business to-morrow. The next day he was gone; the court was en route; the envoys would find some belated servitors who told them hastily the king slept ten leagues from there. King Francis [says Brantôme] having chosen and formed a troop, which he called la petite bande, of the ladies of his court, the most beautiful and gentle, and whom he loved best, often stole away from the court and went away to other houses to hunt the stag and pass the time, and there he would dwell thus retired, eight days, ten days, sometimes more, sometimes less, as it pleased his humor. But mingled with this Arcadian life were fêtes as gorgeous as those of Louis the Fourteenth. There was one of notable people to bring within doors a large number of snowballs, and gather together all the apples, eggs, and other things that would serve for projectiles, they could find. The assault commenced, but very soon the besieged had exhausted their ammunition; in the excitement of the moment some one snatched up a burning log from the hearth and cast it through the window. It fell upon the king's head, inflicting a severe wound. The physician found it necessary to cut his hair close to his head. From that time he allowed his beard to grow. A few weeks afterwards every pretender to fashion, whether of court or town, appeared with beard and cropped head. But all other fêtes were as nothing when compared with the ever famous Field of the Cloth of Gold. Maximilian being dead, Francis became a rival candidate with Charles for the imperial throne, and desiring the alliance of England, invited Henry to meet him near Calais. The interview between the two monarchs took place upon a great plain between Ardres and Guines which divided their territories. The ground was covered with tents, the principal of which were adorned both within and without with cloth of gold. The nobles of the two nations vied with each other in the splendor of their appointments. "Several there," says an old historian quaintly, "carried their forests, their meadows, their mills upon their shoulders." Henry had constructed for himself a vast palace of wood and glass which glittered in the sunshine like the prolusion of a Crystal Palace; it was divided into four compartments, and covered with a cloth painted to represent freestone. Within was a spacious court with two fountains, from each of which flowed wine, water, and hippocras. The entire edifice had been brought over from England in pieces that were joined together by pegs, but neither stone nor mortar was employed. Francis's palace was no less splendid and ingenious than that of his brother monarch. He had caused to be constructed beside a building in the form of a Roman amphi theatre, three tiers in height, and a pavil ion sixty feet square, covered on the outside with cloth of gold, and within with blue velvet embroidered with fleur de lis, but a high wind destroyed this last and But, alas, all this kingly cordiality was brated it; the next year Henry concluded an alliance, offensive and defensive, with the emperor against France. Francis had so impoverished both himself and his nobles by these extravagances, that upon the breaking out of the war he found himself without the means of equipping or feeding his troops, and was obliged to resort to the most oppressive imposts to raise money.* carried it away. Midway between the two | ments of the most splendid description camps was erected a tent which in the which lasted many days. richness of its ornaments surpassed all the rest, and it was here, after many dip-as evanescent as the pageants that celelomatic delays, mounted on horseback, the two sovereigns met and embraced one another with every demonstration of affection. When the articles of the treaty were read and signed, Francis expressed a desire to entertain his kingly brother; but Henry, who seems to have been suspicious throughout, was not willing to confide his person to the keeping of the French without due precautions, and proposed that while he dined with the queen of France at Ardres, Francis should be received by the queen of England at Guines; thus they would have been hostages for each other. But Francis, full of impulsive generosity, grew impatient of these Machiavellian precautions, and resolved to put an end to them in a manner that shamed the less chivalrous monarch. One morning, accompanied by only two gentlemen and a page, he presented himself at the Château de Guines and demanded of the governor, "Where is the chamber of my royal brother?" "Sire, the king is not yet awake," was the reply. "That is no matter," replied Francis. And being conducted to the royal bedchamber, knocked at the door, entered, and walked to the king's bedside. Greatly moved by this generous confidence, Henry exclaimed, "Brother, you have done the noblest thing that ever one man did to another, and shown me the great confidence I ought to have in you. I am your prisoner and I pledge you my faith." Then they made an exchange of splendid presents, and when the English king rose the French king insisted upon acting as his valet and assisting him to dress. The next morning Henry took horse, unattended, to the Château d'Ardres, in imitation of his visitor, and performed the same attentions to his brother of France. All this may seem very silly stuff to the nineteenth century, but nevertheless it is full of meaning as another momentary revival of dying chivalry. Then followed jousts and tourneys, but they were mere gorgeous spectacles, bearing the same relation to the tournaments of feudalism as a stage representation does to the reality. Fighting had come to be regarded rather as a disagreeable necessity than the pleasure of life, the value of which seems ever to increase with the progress of luxury. Besides courtesies and fighting there were feasts and entertain It was Francis who commenced that infamous institution, the royal mistress, the curse of France during so many generations. He was twice married, first to Claude the eldest daughter of Louis XII., a mariage de convenance; she was a princess of religious and retired habits, who bore him three sons, Francis, Henry, and Charles, and four daughters. Her many virtues procured for her the title of la bonne reine. The contempt of her husband and the hatred of her mother-in-law, probably shortened her life; she died in 1524. His next wife was Eleanor of Austria, the sister of Charles V., and the widow of Emmanuel of Portugal; she fell in love with him during his captivity in Madrid. This was another political marriage, and her life was no happier than that of her predecessor; the tyranny of the queen-mother, and the insolence of the favorites, drove her from the court, while the enmity and the wars between her husband and brother were unceasing afflictions to her. It must be confessed [says Brantôme] that before him (Francis the First) the ladies came but little to court, and only in small numbers. It is true that Queen Anne † commenced her court of ladies greater than other preceding queens, and without her the king, her husband, cared but little for them; but King Francis coming to reign, considering that all the decoration of a court was the ladies, wished to increase them more than was the ancient custom. Very often have I seen our kings go into the country, into the towns and elsewhere, and there dwell and make merry for * The entire revenues of the crown amounted under this reign to about 5,600,000 livres, and the expenses of his ordinary household absorbed more than one Field of the Cloth of Gold must have still further decreased the residue. The nobles in return for exemp their own expense in time of war; but the decay of tion from taxation were still obliged to serve the king at feudalism, and the employment of trained mercenaries, had rendered war an infinitely more costly business to kings than it had been in the old times. third of this sum, and such festivities as that of the †The queen of Louis the Twelfth. days together without bringing any ladies with | appearance in state affairs; the Count- Up to this period woman had been a mere "breeder of sinners," playing no part in the great business of life, since nature had unfitted her for the life of fighting and turmoil by which she was surrounded; but with the advent of luxury, and softer and more elegant manners, her influence rose; and an influence not of good, but of evil, it became for France. To the old romantic devotion of knighterrantry now succeeded that elegant, sensual gallantry which endured until the Revolution. It was the legitimate successor of chivalry, refined of the rudeness of its progenitor and the heart. Gallantry, to use an euphuistic phrase, seemed the sole employment of the court, and those who were not inclined to it found but little favor in the king's eyes. His three sons gloried in having mistresses, and their father, far from blaming such errors, would scarcely have acknowledged them as of his race had their manners been severe. "I have heard tell," says Brantôme, "that the king greatly desired the honorable gentlemen of his court should never be without mistresses, and if they were he considered them coxcombs and fools."* It was the fashion of the time, and before that omnipotent power, vice, virtue, and decency have ever been mere names. The king never stirred abroad without being accompanied by a train of demoiselles. Even when he went to meet the pope at Marseilles he was accompanied by la petite bande; les filles de joie, as he styles them in an old document, wherein he authorizes his treasurer to pay them twenty golden crowns each. In his youth, according to the testimony of Brantôme, his amours were indiscriminate and often vulgar, but after a time a favorite sultana became paramount, influencing not only his domestic life, but every department of the state. "Women made all," says an historian of the period, "even the generals and captains." This is their first *The following anecdote will better illustrate the shameless immorality of the age than pages of description. Bonnivet, the admiral, who was a lover of the Comtesse de Châteaubriand, dared to lift his eyes to the king's sister, the princess Marguerite. He invited the king and the court to his château. They came. In the night, by means of a trap door, he introduced himself into the princess's chamber, and began to plead his passion in a very violent manner. His face bore next day the marks of his reception. Yet he does not appear to have in any way lost the king's favor by this infamous attempt. But a more evil feminine influence even than that of the mistresses was exercised by the Duchess d'Angoulême, the queenmother, a beautiful, clever, but infamous woman. Her intrigues were shameless; her furious passions wrought infinite mischief; her overbearing insolence drove both the queens from court; her avarice was insatiable; she lost the king Milan by appropriating the soldiers' pay, and thereby causing a revolt among the Swiss mercenaries. This was but the sequel to an even worse deed. When Lautrec, the commander, returned to France, the king overwhelmed him with wrath, and demanded the cause of the disaster. "For eighteen months," replied Lautrec, "the men-at-arms have not been paid." Francis, astounded at hearing such an assertion, called the Sieur Semblançay, the secretary of finance. "Did you not receive four hundred thousand ducats to send to Italy?" "Assuredly," he replied, "but the queen-mother imperiously demanded the entire sum, and upon her acquittance I delivered it." The acquittance, however, was not to be found; it had been stolen by a creature of the duchess's in the service of Semblançay. The latter was thrown into prison, and a suit commenced against him which lasted two years; he was ultimately convicted of having wrongly administered the finances of the kingdom, and sentenced to death. And this man had grown grey in the service of four kings! This affair gratified two passions of the queen-mother her avarice and her hate. Lautrec was a brother of the Comtesse de Châteaubriand, of whose influence she was furiously jealous, and to discredit her relations was to injure her. Besides which, he had, it was said, talked too freely of the duchess's amours. He was a man of undoubted abilities, but stern and arrogant, and he had done much by his conduct to disgust the Milanese with French government. Charles and the pontiff, both at hostilities with France, taking advantage of this sentiment, the imperial troops, under the command of Prosper Colonna, But for entered the Milanese territory. the mutiny of the Swiss, in consequence of the non-arrival of their pay, Lautrec could have made head against them; as it was, Milan fell into their hands, and Genoa soon afterwards shared the same fate. About the same period, Henry of En gland, actuated by the counsels of Wolsey, who was in the pay of the empire, on some contemptible and frivolous pretext, declared war against the man to whom two years previously he had sworn eternal friendship. An army, under the command of Surrey, invaded French territory, but effected nothing. In the next year Venice, which had hitherto been Francis's ally, finding his cause in Italy desperate, entered into the league against him. Thus did the unfortunate monarch find himself alone, and encompassed by enemies. It was now the dauntlessness and power of his character shone forth, and instead of shrinking back within the defensive, he daringly resolved to march into Italy, and attack his enemies in their strongholds. But not even yet was the sum of his misfortune complete. He had already begun his march towards Lyons when he received intelligence that the Constable de Bourbon was in league with Charles, and had promised to aid the imperial troops to invade France as soon as the king had crossed the Alps. The naturally frank and generous character of Francis is admirably displayed in his mode of acting upon this warning. He at once started for Moulins, where the constable, who had pretended illness to excuse his absence from the army, was then lying, and told him unreservedly all he had heard; upon which Bourbon protested his innocence in such solemn terms that Francis accepted his pledge, and refused to have him arrested, as more cautious councillors advised. Immediately afterwards the traitor fled, and the king was doomed to bitterly expiate his too credulous trustfulness. Not considering it safe to quit his territory, he gave up the command of the invading army, thirty thousand strong, to Admiral Bonnivet, and by fortifying all frontier towns, and arresting all suspected persons, entirely defeated the conspiracy. This king certainly displayed considerable The queen-mother, who had always been jealous of the Bourbons, on account of the partiality shown by Anne of Brittany, the queen of Louis the Twelfth, for that branch of the royal family, had poisoned the mind of her son against the constable. His merits had never received their due reward, and he had been treated with uniform coldness and suspicion. But upon the death of his wife, the duchess, enamored of his fine person, formed the idea of marrying him. Not only did he repel her advances, but treated them with score and ridicule. From that hour she swore his destruction, and commenced by instituting a lawsuit to deprive him of his estates, which she claimed partly for herself, partly for the king. It was then he opened negotiations with the imperial court which promised him the hand of the emperor's sister. Eleanor, who afterwards became the queen of Francis, together with Provençe and Dauphiné, which he was to rule under the title of king. genius by the manner in which he kept all Europe, and even domestic treachery, at bay. The brief and rapid wars of the feudal ages had been succeeded by those slow and strategic operations which made the military art until the appearance of Buonaparte. Bonnivet, who had been selected to command the army, not on account of his abilities, which were mediocre, but because of his known hatred to Bourbon, which was a pledge of his fidelity, and of the king's friendship for him, was outgeneralled and outnumbered, and at Biagrassa was totally and irretrievably defeated. It was on that field fell the Chevalier Bayard, the last of the knights of chivalry. That same year Charles invaded France, entering through Provence. But still the masterful genius of the king was equal to the occasion, and the imperialists, decimated by disease and famine, were compelled to retire back into Italy. It was now that Francis's good angel deserted him, and rashness and evil counsel ruined all his glory. He had still a magnificent army under his command, and with this he resolved once more to invade Milan. To this course he is said to have been determined by the persuasions of Bonnivet, who represented conquest as certain and easy. He had become enamored of a Milanese lady, and was desirous of revisiting her; hence his assurances. Upon such trifles hang wars, the lives of thousands, and the fate of great empires. Again Milan opened her gates, and Sforza and the imperialists retired before the invaders. But instead of pursuing and destroying them, as he might have easily done, Francis, by some strange error of judgment, sat down before Pavia, a strongly fortified and well-garrisoned town, and sent half his army to make a descent upon Naples. For three months he laid close siege to this place, and reduced it almost to the extremities of famine; the imperialists were scarcely strong enough to attack him. But the vigor and selfsacrifice of Bourbon, now in the imperial forces, came to their aid; he pawned his jewels, took a journey into Germany, and with the proceeds raised twelve thousand mercenaries. With these reinforcements the enemy advanced towards Pavia. The unanimous advice of the French council of war was to retire, and decline a battle. There was only one dissentient voice, that of the fatal Bonnivet, who urged the disgrace of retreat. Again the king listened, because, probably, it harmonized with his own feelings. He had sworn to take | Wolsey, disappointed of the papal throne, On February 24, 1525, was fought a fatal and renowned battle. The troops on both sides were splendid. The first advantage was with the French, but the treacherous and mercenary Swiss, worthy forefathers of the brigand innkeepers of to-day, who were forever betraying those who trusted them, and whose every vice and virtue were absorbed in the greed for gold, at the critical moment deserted their posts. The day was lost. But the king fought with the heroism of a knight-errant. Wounded severely, thrown from his horse, he fought on foot and killed seven men with his own hand. One by one the officers and nobles who had gathered round him were slain, and he stood alone, and though almost fainting with exhaustion, still wielded his terrible sword. Thus he was found by a follower of Bourbon's who entreated him to throw down his arms, but he would have died rather by the hands of the Spanish soldiers who were attacking him than have yielded to his traitorous subject. And so he would have fallen, had not Lannoy, the Spanish general, come up at the time, and to him he delivered his sword. The Spaniard took it, knelt and gave him his own, saying: "It does not become so great a monarch to remain disarmed in the presence of a mere subject of the emperor." Here again we hear the noble and sweet voice of the olden time, so soon to be forever silenced in the hell-born war of creeds. Ten thousand men fell in this engagement, and two weeks afterwards there was not one French soldier within the length and breadth of Italy. "All is lost save honor," wrote Francis to his mother, whom he had appointed regent in his absence. It was now that the nobler side of the character of the woman who had been the root of all the mischief displayed itself. Spite of all she had done, she loved her son. She gathered together the remnants of the army that had found their way back, made new levies, and assembling the nobles at Lyons, exhorted them to stand by their country in this terrible extremity. She also appealed to the Tudor, who, frightened at the prodigious success of Charles, lent a ready ear to her pleadings; and what was more important, It Most harshly and rigorously did Charles treat his royal captive, and the conditions of freedom he proposed, including as they did the surrender of Burgundy, Provence, and Dauphiné, were so monstrous, that Francis passionately drew his dagger, and pointing it at his breast, exclaimed: were better a king should die thus!" While the mother was working with heart and brain within his kingdom to procure his release, the sister, Marguerite d'Alençon, afterwards so famous as Marguerite de Navarre, made a journey into Spain to intercede for the captive, and bring him the comfort of her affection. There was a wondrous romantic love between this brother and sister, of which there is scarcely any parallel. He was in her eyes a god rather than a man, an idol, an incarnation of all that was physically and mentally glorious in creation; this passionate worship might be understood during the days of his youth, but even during his last years, when disease and excess had disorted his form and rendered his features coarsely repulsive, he was still her demigod, glorious as ever; her eyes could see no change. When she arrived in Spain, She found her brother [says Brantôme] in so piteous a state that, if she had not come, he would have died; so much better she knew his constitution and complexion than did all his physicians, and treated him and caused him to be treated, as she understood him, so well, that she cured him. Thus the king often said that without her he would have died, and that he owed her that obligation which he would always remember, and would love her, as he did, unto his death. Marguerite was young, beautiful, learned, and talented, and all these gifts she set to work to procure his liberation. * She spoke to the emperor so bravely [to again quote Brantôme] and so honestly also, upon the bad treatment he had used towards the king, her brother, that he was astonished; remonstrating with him upon the ingratitude and felony he, a vassal, used towards his lord on account of Flanders, then reproached him with the hardness of his heart, to be so little piteous to so great and good a king, and that using him in that fashion was not the way to gain a heart so noble and royal as that of the king, her brother, and so sovereign; and should he die of his rigorous treatment, his death would not remain unpunished, having Th |