Critical relations between the Houses of France and Austria — Julius III and Ottavio Farnese — Henri II supports the latter against the Pope and Charles V — The War of Parma — Unpopularity of the Emperor in Germany — Revival of the League of Schmalkalde — Maurice of Saxony — Intrigues between France and the Lutheran princes — Treaty of Chambord — Bed of Justice of June 12, 1552 — Henri II, having decided to take the field in person, appoints Catherine Regent, but with very restricted powers — The King reviews his army at Vitry — French plan of campaign — The Constable takes Metz by stratagem — Henri II advances to Nancy, deposes the Regent of Lorraine, the Duchess Christina, and sends the young Duke Charles III to France — The King joins the Constable at Metz and invades Alsace — Refusal of Strasburg to admit the French — Flight of Charles V from Innspruck — The French fall back from the Rhine — The King in the trenches before Ivoy — Termination of the "Austrasian expedition" — Its results
FOR some time past it had been increasingly evident that nothing short of a miracle could avert a fresh rupture between the Houses of France and Austria: the only question was how long would the inevitable struggle be delayed. In addition to those old subjects of dispute, the retention of the States of the Duke of Savoy by France, and of Navarre by the Spaniards, each cherished several other grievances. The French Government complained of encouragement given by the Spaniards to the insurgents at Bordeaux; of the hostile attitude adopted by the Emperor during the war of Boulogne, when he had despatched a herald to forbid Henri II to attack Calais;01 of his attempts to thwart the royal negotiations in Switzerland,02 and of the punishment he had inflicted on the captains oflandsknechts who had served in France, one of whom, named Vogelsberger, a particular friend of the Constable, he had caused to be executed for high treason.
Charles V was irritated against France by her refusal of his demand for the extradition of those captains who had taken refuge there, by the voyages of French vessels to the Indies, and by the incessant intrigues of the French agents in Italy.
Italy was always the apple of discord, and it was here that hostilities began. The favour shown by the French to Orazio Farnese, the betrothed of Diane de France, had aroused the jealousy of his elder brother Ottavio, who, in 1549, proceeded to make his peace with his Imperial father-in-law. Paul III thereupon deprived him of Parma, and declared the duchy annexed to the States of the Church. Ottavio declined to submit to the will of his grandfather and endeavoured to regain possession of the town by force; and this unseemly family squabble so affected the health of the old Pontiff that on November 10, 1549, he died. France despatched all her cardinals to the Conclave, and made great efforts to secure the election of the French candidate; but they were of no avail, and the choice of the Sacred College fell upon the Cardinal del Monte, formerly Legate of Paul III at the Councils of Trent and Bologna, who became Pope under the name of Julius III (February 8, 1550).
The new Pontiff had no sons or grandsons to aggrandize or quarrel with, and, being of a quiet and pleasure-loving disposition, his only desire was for compromise and peace. As an earnest of his good intentions, he began by restoring Parma to Ottavio Farnese, and flattered himself that he had thereby removed the chief cause of dissension. But the long-standing enmity between the Farnesi and Ferrante Gonzaga, and the disputed suzerainty of Emperor and Pope over Parma and Piacenza, rendered Julius's well-meaning efforts abortive. The viceroy, on the ground that the suzerainty belonged to his master, established a sort of blockade of Parma, whereupon Ottavio threw himself on the protection of Henri II. Either through irritation at the conduct of his vassal, or in the hope of extinguishing so dangerous a spark, the Pope declared the fief forfeited and applied to Charles V for assistance, thereby kindling the very conflagration which it was his desire to avert.
The French Court did not fail to avail itself of so excellent a pretext for intervention in Italy, and by a treaty signed on May 27, 1551, the King formally took Ottavio Farnese under his protection and promised him 2,000 foot soldiers, 200 men-at-arms, and a yearly grant of 12,000 gold crowns.
The base of operations of the French armies was naturally Piedmont. Brissac, who, it will be remembered, had so distinguished himself at the siege of Perpignan in 1543, had lately succeeded the Prince of Melfi as governor of that province, and he was entrusted with the command. With one corps he laid siege to Chieri and other places belonging in name to the Duke of Savoy, but garrisoned by Spanish troops, and took them; while a second corps compelled the Papal-Imperialist forces to raise the siege of Parma. The massacre of a troop of Italian soldiers in the service of France, by the orders of Gonzaga, afforded a pretext for aggression in another direction, and Paulin de la Garde, issuing from the ports of Provence with some forty galleys, fell upon a Spanish merchant fleet off Hyères and secured a rich booty.
Nominally, however, Henri II and Charles V were still at peace; the former was supposed to be merely acting as the protector of Ottavio Farnese, the latter as the auxiliary of the Pope. But this pretence could not long be observed, and in the early spring of 1552 open war broke out.
It was, however, the affairs of Germany, not of Italy, which caused the mask to be thrown aside.
On April 24, 1547, Charles V had crushed the princes of the Schmalkaldic League on the field of Mühlberg and taken the rebel leaders, John Frederick of Saxony and Philip, Landgrave of Hesse, prisoners. This victory laid Germany, to all appearance, at his feet, and it looked as if he were at last about to grasp the fruit of so much toil and statecraft. But it might be said of Charles, as of Hannibal, that, though he knew how to gain victories, he had never learned how to utilise them; and in May 1548, he committed the most fatal error of his whole career by promulgating the celebrated Interim of Augsburg, by which he essayed to impose the status quo in religious matters, while awaiting the decision of the Council of Trent.
This was the occasion of new troubles: the Lutherans rejected "this poisoned sop," and Saxony, Brandenburg, and the great town of Magdeburg revolted, while the Papacy and the Catholics protested against the "sacrilegious intervention of the temporal power in spiritual affairs." Both parties in Germany feared that the Emperor intended to take advantage of the religious troubles to establish his political domination, and for the moment Lutherans and Catholics forgot their respective grievances.
The eventual division of Charles's vast dominions contributed to increase his embarrassments. For a long time it had been his intention to leave Spain, the Netherlands, and his Italian States to his son Philip, reserving the Empire for his brother the King of the Romans and his son Maximilian after him. But from 1548 he reverted to his old principle that the whole power of the Hapsburgs should be primarily in one hand, and proposed that Philip should marry Ferdinand's daughter, be nominated second King of the Romans, and become Emperor after the death of his uncle. Ferdinand accepted this arrangement, then refused, while Charles persisted in his design, "in order to establish and preserve the greatness of our House." In November 1550, the ill-feeling between the two brothers culminated in so violent an altercation that Ferdinand declined to have any communication with the Emperor except by letter.
Public opinion in Germany was wholly on the side of Ferdinand and Maximilian. The Spanish troops quartered there had rendered themselves odious to the people, and the hatred with which they were regarded reacted to the prejudice of Philip, whose ungracious personality presented a very unfavourable contrast to the frank, good-humoured, and kindly Maximilian. Every day Charles's rule became more unpopular.
The Emperor's unpopularity in Germany might have mattered little if France had still been in the exhausted condition in which François I had left her. But the marvellous recuperative power which she has always displayed had enabled her to recover from the drain which the late King's ambitious enterprises had imposed upon her, and she was now once more in a position to grapple with her great adversary both on the Po and on the Rhine. To retain his hold on Italy, Charles must needs withdraw his garrisons from Germany, and the outbreak of the War of Parma gave the rebel princes an opportunity of which they were not slow to take advantage.
The revival of the League of Schmalkalde was rendered infinitely more formidable to the Emperor by the defection of Maurice of Saxony. Hitherto Maurice, although a Protestant, had preferred to subordinate his religious convictions to his interests, and had been rewarded by the Electorate of Saxony, vice John Frederick deposed.03 But the reproaches of his co-religionists, who had renamed him Judas, weighed, if not upon his conscience, at any rate, upon his pride, and having become, by the Imperial favour, a great prince of the Empire, his interests were now in antagonism with those of his benefactor, who aimed, he believed, at the curtailing, if not the abolition, of the liberties of the German princes. Finally, he had a personal grievance against Charles in the continued captivity of his father-in-law, the Landgrave of Hesse, whom the Emperor absolutely refused to set at liberty.
In April 1551, a colonel of the League of Schmalkalde, Sebastian von Burtenbach, fleeing from the wrath of the Emperor, arrived at Amboise to offer his services to the French Court. Through the intermediary of Burtenbach, Henri II entered into relations with Albert Alcibiades, Margrave of Culmbach, another discontented ally of the Emperor; and Albert undertook to proceed to Magdeburg, which Maurice was then besieging, and convey to him the proposals of France. Simultaneously, Jean du Fraisse, Bishop of Bayonne, the Ambassador of France to the German princes, attended the meeting of the Diet and made overtures to several of the Lutheran leaders.
Maurice, having soon decided to accept the French proposals and betray his master, as he had formerly betrayed his co-religionists, took charge of the negotiations; and on October 5, 1551, at Friedwald, he signed with Du Fraisse a treaty of alliance, "pro Germaniæ patriæ libertate recuperanda," which was confirmed on January 15, 1552, at Chambord, in the presence of Albert Alcibiades and the two sons of the dispossessed Elector of Saxony.
By this treaty both the King of France and the League of Schmalkalde agreed to bring into the field 50,000 infantry and 20,000 cavalry, in order to drive the Emperor from Germany; and the princes, in return for his Majesty's assistance, authorised him to take possession of the towns of Toul, Metz, and Verdun — the "Three Bishoprics" — which he was to govern in the quality of "Vicar of the Empire."
The Constable had opposed as long as possible an enterprise of which no one could foresee the ultimate issue. But the Guises, backed as they now were by the whole weight of Diane's influence, had proved too strong for him. Besides, Henri II, very obstinate in his hatreds as in his affections, detested Charles V. He had never forgotten the cruel captivity to which he had been subjected in Spain — an experience which had embittered the whole of his early life — nor the Emperor's endeavours to dismember his inheritance for the benefit of his younger brother; while the insulting attitude adopted by Charles V towards him at the time of the War of Boulogne, and the punishment inflicted upon the landsknecht captains who had served under him, had tended to revive his resentments. The temptation to humble his own and his father's enemy, and, at the same time, to complete the defence of the north-eastern frontier of France by the annexation of the Three Bishoprics, was one which he found impossible to resist.
Before beginning the campaign, the King decided to take a step more in accordance with constitutional than absolute monarchy, and to obtain from the Parlement of Paris, the most authoritative assembly in his kingdom, its approval of the measures upon which he had decided and the money required for their execution. Accordingly, on February 12, 1552, surrounded by his Court, he held a Bed of Justice, and, having announced to the assembled magistrates his resolution to make war upon the Emperor, called upon the Constable to explain the reasons of his policy. This Montmorency did in a long and very able speech, putting the case for his master so skilfully that the supplies were voted with enthusiasm.
Henri having resolved to take the field in person, the appointment of a Regent was, of course, necessary, and Catherine was accordingly nominated. But the powers entrusted to the Queen were very different from those which François I had conferred upon Louise of Savoy — Diane had seen to that — and the appointment of the Chancellor, Bertrandi, and Annebaut as her colleagues practically annulled her authority. Catherine contrived to dissemble her mortification with her usual skill; but she declined to allow herbrevet to be published, being unwilling that the public should know in what small estimation her husband held her.
All through the winter of 1551-2, active preparations for the coming struggle were in progress throughout the whole of France. Henri II, unlike his father, entertained a high opinion of the warlike qualities of the French, and had resolved to trust, in a great measure, to the valour of his own subjects; and this decision was hailed with enthusiasm. "There is no need to say with what alacrity and good-will every man made ready for this war. . . . There was not a town in which the drums did not beat to call out the young men, many of whom quitted father and mother in order to enlist. Most of the shops were emptied of their workmen, so great was the ardour among people of all conditions to take part in this expedition and to see the River Rhine."04 Many of the provincial gentry, unable to find places in the cavalry, armed themselves at their own expense, and joined the infantry as lanspessades, or foot-lancers, and from early January to the end of March an endless procession of men-at-arms, light-horsemen, arquebusiers, pikemen, cannon, baggage-wagons, and camp-followers might have been seen wending its way towards the Lorraine frontier.
The army was concentrated between Chalons and Troyes, and at Vitry, in the first week in April, Henri II reviewed it. It was an imposing, if motley array, and comprised, according to Boyvin du Villars, 15,000 French infantry, drawn mostly from the southern and south-western provinces, 9,000 landsknechts, 7,000 Swiss, 1,650 men-at-arms, about 3,000 light horse,05 1,000 mounted arquebusiers, 2,000 men of the arrière-ban, or reserve, six Scottish and one English company, 200 gentlemen of the King's Household, 400 archers of the Guard, and some 500 gentlemen volunteers.06
The King complimented each arm in turn, and warmly thanked the gentlemen volunteers for their loyalty. He then ordered the cannon, of which there were sixty pieces of various calibre, to be tested in his presence. This process was sometimes attended by alarming results, but, on the present occasion, no mishap appears to have occurred.
The plan of campaign was as follows: The Constable, with the advance-guard of the army, was to possess himself, without bloodshed if it could possibly be avoided, of the towns of Toul, Metz, and Verdun; while the King and the Duc de Guise would enter Lorraine, under the pretext of putting the affairs of that duchy in order, and deprive the Duchess Christina, niece of the Emperor, of the regency which she exercised on behalf of her son, Charles III, who was only ten years old. This effected, they were to join the Constable at Metz, and the whole army would enter Germany by way of Alsace, perhaps to co-operate with the Lutheran princes, and, in any case, to endeavour to extend the frontier of France as far as the Rhine. The intrigues of the Guises, cadets of the House of Lorraine, and possessors of several bishoprics in this part of France, had paved the way for the success of the first two points of this plan.
Leaving the King at Joinville, Montmorency, accompanied by the Bourbon princes, crossed the Meuse and marched on Toul, whose magistrates, at the instigation of the bishop, Toussaint d'Hocédy, a former protégé of Cardinal Jean de Lorraine, admitted him without even a pretence of resistance (April 5). Having placed a garrison in Toul, Montmorency continued his march, entered the Lorraine town of Pont-a-Mousson without striking a blow, carried by assault the Abbey of Gorze, the advance-post of Metz, which the Imperialists had fortified, and arrived before the walls of that town.
In Metz itself there was no Imperial garrison, and, thanks to the efforts of Cardinal de Lenoncourt, its bishop, who was wholly devoted to France, a great part of the population had already been gained over. Nevertheless, the Constable only succeeded in getting possession of it by stratagem. The municipal authorities having consented to allow him and the princes to enter on condition that they brought with them only two companies, he formed them entirely of picked veterans. When the Messins discovered how they had been duped, it was too late; one company was already in the centre of the town, while the other had seized one of the gates. And so Metz passed into French possession, to remain there for more than three centuries (April 10).
On his side, Henri II, accompanied by Guise, La Marck and Saint-André, left Joinville on April 11, and, after taking formal possession of Toul, advanced to Nancy. On his arrival, he issued a proclamation, announcing that he had come as "the protector and preserver of the person and property" of the Duke Charles; and, the better to protect and preserve the little prince, he separated him from his disconsolate mother and sent him to the French Court, to be brought up with the Dauphin and eventually to marry Madame Claude, gave the regency to his uncle, the Comte de Vaudémont, who was entirely devoted to France, and placed garrisons in all the fortresses. He then turned northwards, and on Easter Sunday (April 17) joined the Constable at Metz.
In honour of the monarch, Montmorency held a review and saluted his arrival with a salvo from fifty cannon. His Majesty was much pleased with so splendid a reception, but his satisfaction was somewhat discounted, when he learned that a party of the enemy's light horse, who were hovering in the neighbourhood, had taken advantage of it to pillage the baggage. On entering the town, the King swore to observe the municipal privileges; nevertheless, instead of leaving the authority in the hands of the sheriffs, he entrusted it to a strong garrison, commanded by Brissac's brother, the Sieur de Gonnor, a protégé of Montmorency.
If we are to believe the Vieilleville Mémoires, the King had wished to give him the post, but he had declined, and strongly counselled his Majesty to reassure the Germans by showing respect for the customs and privileges of the people of Metz. Guise and Vendôme were of the same opinion, and the King would have followed their advice had it not been for the Constable, who boasted that "he would enter Strasburg and the other Rhine cities as easily as he would plunge a piece of wood into butter." However that may be, the high-handed treatment of Metz was to prove a serious blunder.
The duchy and the bishoprics of Lorraine being thus occupied, and their communications with their magazines in Champagne assured, on April 20 the French broke up from Metz and directed their march towards the Vosges and the Rhine. They crossed the mountains, not without considerable difficulty, for the winter's snow still lay there, and descended into Alsace. In Lorraine, the inhabitants had shown themselves well disposed towards the invaders, but in Alsace, which was thoroughly German in speech and feeling, the people were distinctly hostile. "Not a soul came to us with provisions, and we were obliged to go a distance of five or six leagues for forage and food, and to take a strong escort too; since, if even ten men went together, they never came back."07
From Saverne, which was reached on May 3, the King opened communications with the magistrates of Strasburg, and Montmorency, rather naively, imagined that he would be able to repeat the stratagem which had succeeded so well at Metz. But the Strasburgers, who were aware of what had happened in that town, were on their guard, and peremptorily refused to receive the King if he were accompanied by more than forty gentlemen of his Household; indeed, they declined to allow the troops to approach within cannon-shot, "being proud and haughty and not accustomed to see men of war occupying their beds."08 And so the project of the French Nestor came to nothing, and Henri II contented himself with revictualling his army from Strasburg, and decided to follow another route.
Accordingly, having left a detachment at Saverne to maintain his communications with France, he turned northwards and marched on Haguenau, which, when threatened by an assault, promptly capitulated. At Haguenau, where the women of the town "crowded the parapets of the walls, the steeples, and the tallest houses to get a view of the camp," the French found the widows and children of several landsknecht captains whom the Emperor had caused to be put to death because of their attachment to France. The King summoned them all before him, distributed a sum of 10,000 crowns among the women, provided the young men with arms and accoutrements and gave them commissions in his German companies, selected four boys as pages of his Ecurie, and found places for fiveothers about the persons of the princes and the gentlemen of his Household.
Leaving Haguenau on May 10, the King advanced to Weissembourg, where he was very well received. He was about to resume his northward march, when the Rhine princes, assembled at Worms, and the Imperial Chamber of Speyer sent to beg him to advance no further and to remind him that he had been invited to protect and not to conquer — a fact which his Majesty seemed in danger of forgetting. The national sentiment, indeed, had been profoundly moved by Henri II's treatment of Metz and the insolence of the French troops, who conducted themselves as if they were in a conquered country; and it was plain that if the King neglected the warning he had received, he would rally all Germany to the Emperor.
That potentate, meanwhile, was in parlous case. Simultaneously with the advance of his French allies into the Rhineland, Maurice of Saxony had broken up his camp before Magdeburg and marched rapidly southwards. On April 1, he entered Augsburg and was within striking distance of the Emperor, who had taken up his residence at Innspruck, whence he could supervise the proceedings of the Council of Trent. Charles, although protected by a mere handful of troops, remained where he was until the confederates were almost upon him, when he escaped over the Brenner to Villach, in Carinthia; while the Council of Trent dispersed in confusion.
But the Emperor's position, however humiliating, was less critical than may at first sight appear, for the excesses of the rebel princes, who had laid waste the country through which they passed with ruthless cruelty, joined to the irritation aroused by the proceedings of the French King, had effected a reaction in his favour and strengthened the hands of the middle party in Germany; and there was every hope that the Diet, which was to meet at Passau on May 27, would succeed in effecting some compromise between Charles and his disaffected subjects.
On his side, the "protector of German liberties" received intelligence that Mary of Hungary had thrown a considerable force into the duchy of Luxembourg, which might threaten his line of retreat, and this removed any doubts which he might have entertained as to the imprudence of venturing farther from his base. Accordingly, "having watered their horses in the Rhine," the French turned their backs on the great river and began their homeward march. They did not, however, return by the most direct route, for, after snapping up Verdun — the last of the Three Bishoprics — they invaded Luxembourg, captured Rodemachern, Damvilliers, Ivoy and other places, and reinstated Diane's son-in-law, the Maréchal de la Marck, in his duchy of Bouillon, of which he had been deprived by the Emperor.
Ivoy offered some resistance and did not surrender until it had been subjected to a bombardment from nearly forty cannon. Henri II entered the trenches and amused himself by pointing the pieces, as though he had been a junior officer of artillery, to the delight of the soldiers, but to the great alarm of the Constable, who remonstrated with him on the impropriety of thus exposing himself to danger. "Sire," said he, "if you wish to act like this, we shall have to regard the life of a King as of no more account than that of a bird upon a branch, and have a new forge to forge them afresh every day."09 At Sedan, where the King arrived in the last week in June, he was taken ill, and we find both Catherine and Diane applying to the Constable for news of him. However, his illness was not of long duration, and in a few days he was able to rejoin the army, which was finally disbanded at Étréaupont on July 26.
Thus ended the "Austrasian expedition," as this military promenade was called. Its results, if less splendid than Henri II had anticipated, were, nevertheless, of the highest importance. In the first place, it had created a diversion in favour of the rebel princes, who would otherwise have had to fear an attack upon their rear by the Imperial army of the Netherlands. In the second, the effective protectorate of France had been established over Lorraine, the custody of its little ruler's person secured, and the Austrian influence of Christina of Denmark replaced by the French influence of the Comte de Vaudémont. In the third, the north-eastern frontier had been strengthened by the acquisition of several fortresses and the recovery of La Marck's duchy of Bouillon. Finally, France had Metz.
Notes
(1) According to the Vieilleville Mémoires, the herald informed the King that, if he ignored the Imperial prohibition, his master would treat him "as a young man." To which Henri II replied that "if the Emperor addressed himself to him, he would accommodate him as an old dotard."
(2) The old alliance of France with the Swiss cantons and their confederates (Grisons, Valais, Saint-Gall, and Mulhausen) had been renewed in June 1549, notwithstanding the opposition of Berne and Zurich, irritated by Henry II's persecution of the Protestants.
(3) Dr. Kitchin, "History of France," vol. ii, says that Maurice had been given the administration of Magdeburg and Halberstadt. He had certainly been promised the protectorate, but he had not yet come into actual possession; and the non-fulfilment of the Emperor's promise was one of his grievances.
(4) Mémoires de Vieilleville.
(5) The figures given by Rabutin (Guerres belgiques) differ considerably from the above. He gives the number of men-at-arms as between 1,000 and 1,100, with 2,000 light horse, and from 1,200 to 1,500 harquebusiers à cheval. The men-at-arms, he tells us, were mounted on powerful Turkish or Spanish horses, clad in complete armour, and armed with long lances, long swords, and sometimes with maces; the light cavalry wore only corselets, arm-pieces and bourguignettes (light casques), and carried half-lances, short, curved swords, and pistols. The pistol, it may be observed, was a weapon which had only been recently introduced.
(6) Boyvin du Villars, Mémoires.
(7) Mémoires de Vieilleville.
(8) Rabutin, Guerres belgiques.
(9) Brantôme.