The usher Bodin despatched to Spain to visit the young princes — His journey to Pedraza, where he finds them deprived of their French attendants and subjected to the most rigorous confinement — His interview with them — Extraordinary precautions taken by the Spaniards to guard against the escape of their prisoners — A copy of Bodin's report is sent to Margaret of Austria, thanks to whose intercession the boys' captivity is rendered more tolerable — François marries Eleanor of Austria by procuration at Toledo — Arrival of Anne de Montmorency and the Cardinal de Tournon at Bayonne to make the final arrangements for the release of the princes — The counting and weighing of the ransom — Montmorency and the Constable of Castile — Release of the Dauphin and the Duc d'Orléans — Arrival of the Queen and the princes at Bayonne — Meeting of François and Eleanor at the Convent of Veyrières, near Mont-de-Marsan
AS in the exhausted condition of France the immense sum required for the ransom of the young princes must take some months to raise, and as both François and his mother were anxious to learn how they were being treated, immediately on the conclusion of the Peace of Cambrai, an usher of Louise of Savoy's Household named Bodin, who enjoyed his Majesty's confidence and was well acquainted with Spanish, was despatched to Spain to visit them.
The poor boys had paid dearly for the paternal breach of faith, and had been treated neither with the respect which their rank exacted nor with the kindness due to their tender years. On François's refusal to fulfil the terms of the Treaty of Madrid, they had been withdrawn from the care of Queen Eleanor, and confined first in the fortress of Ampudia, and afterwards in that of Villalpando. Until the beginning of 1528, when France had declared war against Charles V, they had been allowed to retain the suite which had accompanied them to Spain, and which consisted of some seventy persons; but since that time they had been separated from all their French attendants, not excepting their tutor and physician, who were imprisoned in various fortresses.01 The princes themselves were removed to the citadel of Pedraza, in the midst of the mountains of Castile, where they were surrounded entirely by Spaniards, for the most part rough soldiers. Don Inigo de Tovaros, Marquis of Verlana, the governor of the citadel, had them kept under the closest surveillance; no person from the outside world was allowed to have access to them, and all attempts made to obtain news of them only served to increase the rigour of their confinement.
Bodin has left an interesting account of his mission, which shows that, notwithstanding the peace which had just been concluded between them, and the fact that François was about to become the Emperor's brother-in-law, the French King's every action still inspired the cautious Charles with the deepest suspicion, and that his Imperial Majesty no more scrupled to exploit the paternal sentiments of his rival than he had his sufferings as a captive.
To begin with, Bodin was compelled to remain more than a month at Narbonne, awaiting a safe-conduct from the Emperor, who was then at Barcelona. The safe-conduct eventually arrived, and he set out at once, hoping that, by travelling night and day, he might be able to make up for lost time; but at the frontier he was stopped by a Spanish officer, who conducted him to Perpignan, where he was kept for four days under the closest surveillance, his guards having received orders that he was not to be allowed to speak to any one, save in their presence. A gentleman of the Emperor's Household then arrived, and escorted him to Barcelona, where he was obliged to remain for a week. At Saragossa, to which he was next taken, still strictly guarded, the officials of the Customs took an inventory of all his belongings and insisted on his paying duty, though his safe-conduct franked him. Finally, after further delays, he reached Pedraza, but experienced great difficulty in obtaining permission to enter the town. When it was eventually accorded him, he was taken to an inn, over which a number of soldiers immediately mounted guard.
On the morrow, Bodin was presented to the Marquis of Verlana, the governor of the citadel, who conducted him to the room in which the Dauphin and the Duc d'Orléans were confined. "They led me," he writes, "into a rather dark chamber of this fortress, which had neither tapestries nor hangings of any kind, and only straw mattresses. In this chamber were my said lords, seated on little stone seats opposite the window of the said chamber, which is furnished both within and without with solid iron bars, while the wall is ten feet thick. The said window is so high that only with great difficulty can my said lords enjoy air and light. It is a place where persons accused of grave crimes might well be detained, and most wearisome and unhealthy for those of the young and tender age of my said lords. They were poorly clad in a sort of black-velvet riding-costume, with black-velvet caps, without silk ribbons or ornaments of any kind, white stockings, and black-velvet shoes. It was impossible for me to refrain from shedding tears."
Mastering his emotion, Bodin bowed to the Dauphin and told him in French that the King, the Duchesse d'Angouleme, and the Queen of Navarre02 had commissioned him to visit them, to bid them be of good courage, since a treaty of peace had just been concluded, and, so soon as the necessary formalities had been completed, the princes would be restored to their father and their country.
The Dauphin listened with a puzzled expression, and, instead of replying, turned to the Marquis of Verlana, and said to him in Spanish that he understood not a word of what the man was saying, and that he wished that he would speak in the language of the country. Bodin, in amazement, repeated to him in Spanish what he had just said, and then inquired if it were possible that he had forgotten French.
"How could I remember it," replied the prince, "when I never see any of my attendants with whom I can speak it?"
The Duc d'Orléans then stepped forward and said: "Brother, this is the usher Bodin." The Dauphin replied that he knew him well, but that he had not wished to say so; and the two princes besieged Bodin with questions about the King, their grandmother, their aunt the Queen of Navarre, their youngest brother the Duc d'Angoulême, and various nobles and ladies of the Court, and, in fact, about everyone and everything in which they were interested, for they had received no news from France during the whole of their imprisonment.
During this conversation, they passed, with the governor's permission, into an adjoining room, even more sparsely furnished than the other, but better lighted. The boys at once ran to the window to get a breath of fresh air, and then began playing with two little dogs, which were there. "That is the only pleasure which the princes have," remarked one of the officers of the fortress, who had followed them, to Bodin, who replied bitterly that it was a poor pastime for princes of such exalted rank.
"You see," observed another, "how the sons of the King your master are treated, with no company but that of the soldiers of the Spanish mountains, and neither exercise nor education." And he added, laughing sarcastically: "I believe that if the King of France were minded to send here some artist, the Dauphin might suddenly become a famous master, as he spends his days in modelling little wax figures."
Bodin replied that he hoped that in less than three months their Highnesses would have found occupation more suitable to their rank; but the Marquis of Verlana retorted that neither in three nor in four months would they have left Spain; and then gruffly intimated that the interview had lasted long enough, and that the Frenchman must withdraw.
The latter requested permission to return on the morrow, which was at first refused, but eventually accorded. He came, bringing with him two velvet caps with gold ornaments and white plumes, which he reverently kissed, and was about to present to the boys, when the captain of the guard snatched them out of his hands, and, showing them to the princes, who were very anxious to have them, said that he would keep them for their Highnesses. The superstitious Spaniards appear to have been afraid that Bodin might be a magician, and have invested these objects with qualities which would assist their precious hostages to escape from prison and return to France; and, for the same reason, when the usher, observing that the boys had grown greatly during their captivity, proposed totake their measure for the information of the King, they refused to permit it.
The faithful Bodin took leave of his young masters with tears in his eyes, and prepared to set out on his journey to France. At the moment of departure, he found that his horse had been stabbed in the shoulder by one of his guards, who had taken a fancy to him, and hoped that, by temporarily disabling the unfortunate animal, he would oblige his master to leave him behind. In this, however, he was disappointed, as Bodin preferred to travel by easy stages rather than lose his horse, whose recovery was no doubt facilitated by the numerous delays to which the Frenchman had again to submit.
At length, he reached the frontier and took leave of his escort, who had kept him under the closest observation all the way from Pedraza.03 François and Louise of Savoy were filled with indignation and alarm when they received Bodin's report, and lost no time in sending a copy to Margaret of Austria, begging her to use her influence with the Emperor to secure some amelioration of the young hostages' lot. Thanks to his aunt's intercession,04 Charles gave orders that the princes were to be treated with as much consideration as was compatible with their security, and, though they continued to be very closely guarded, their French attendants were restored to them, they were given clothes more in accordance with their station, and the remainder of their captivity was comparatively tolerable.
The governor of the citadel of Pedraza was, however, right when he predicted, on the occasion of Bodin's visit, that the brothers would remain another four months in Spain, and, in point of fact, it was not until the summer of 1530 that they recovered their liberty. This delay was caused by the difficulty experienced in raising their ransom, which proved a terrible tax on the exhausted finances of France, and by the suspicion which each nation seemed to entertain of the good faith of the other.
At the beginning of 1530, the Vicomte de Turenne was despatched to Spain to wed Queen Eleanor, on behalf of François, and, after numerous objections raised by the Spanish Court on the question of his powers, the marriage was celebrated at Toledo (March 20). After the ceremony, the Queen set out for Vittoria, where she was to remain until the arrangements had been completed for the liberation of the princes, when she was to accompany them to France. The boys had hoped that they would be at once conducted to Vittoria to join their stepmother; but they were kept at Pedraza for some weeks longer, and it was not until the beginning of June that they reached Vittoria, under the escort of Don Pedro Hernandez de Velasco, Constable of Castile.
Towards the end of April, Montmorency, who after the return of the King from captivity had been created Grand- Master of France, arrived at Bayonne, accompanied by Tournon, Archbishop of Bourges, now a cardinal, to make the final arrangements for the payment of the ransom and to receive the Queen and the princes. Here he was joined by Louis van Praet, who was to represent the Emperor, and several officials of the Spanish Treasury. On the 29th, the Grand-Master invited Van Praet to dine, and afterwards conducted him into a strong-room and showed him gold to the amount of 1,200,000 crowns piled up in glittering heaps.05 "You see," said he, "what steps the King is taking to pay the Emperor, and that it is his intention to execute the articles of the peace in order to recover his children. And it is much better to employ it in this business than in making war and causing the effusion of human blood."
A few days later, the French began to deliver the money, which was packed in sacks of 10,000 crowns each, and conveyed to the house of Don Alvaro de Lugo, a high official of the Imperial Treasury, who carefully counted the contents of each sack as it was brought to him.
The next proceeding was to weigh the money, which was carried out by Treasury officials of both nations, under the supervision of the Cardinal de Tournon. It was then found that the coinage had been so debased by the unscrupulous Du Prat, that most of the money was of short weight, and the French had in consequence to find a further 41,000 crowns to make good the deficiency.
After this difficulty had been satisfactorily adjusted, the gold was packed in boxes of 25,000 crowns each, which were sealed up by the officials on either side and placed in a room in Don Alvaro's house, twelve guards being posted "above, below, and about it."06
All these formalities naturally occupied a great deal of time, and fresh delays were constantly being occasioned by the exasperating punctiliousness of the Spaniards, which drove Montmorency and Tournon to the point of distraction. At length, however, it was arranged that the princes and the money should change hands on the Bidassoa, between Fontarabia and Andaye, on the same spot where François had been released four years before, on the morning of July 1.
On June 30, Montmorency, who since the beginning of the month had been waiting impatiently at Saint-Jean-de-Luz, sent a messenger to Bayonne with orders for the gold to be brought to him, and was congratulating himself that the end of his labours was in sight, when he received news of an incident which threatened to postpone it indefinitely.
It appears that the previous day the Constable of Castile, who was now at Fontarabia, had sent a courier to Don Alvaro de Lurgo at Bayonne. The soldier who guarded Don Alvaro's house, where, as we have said, the princes' ransom had been deposited, having received the strictest orders that no unauthorised person was to be allowed to approach, refused the man permission to pass, and it was not until he had been kept waiting for some considerable time — four hours, according to his own account — that he was able to deliver his message. So incensed was the Constable of Castile at the detention of his courier, that he informed Montmorency and Tournon that until the amplest apology was forthcoming from the French Government for the affront that had been put upon him in the person of his emissary, he should refuse to deliver over the Queen and the princes, which, of course, meant that the exchange could not possibly take place on the appointed day, and that fresh arrangements would have to be made.
Montmorency, however, was determined not to submit to the immense inconvenience and expense which this would entail, merely to satisfy the amour-propre of a personage who was notoriously ill-disposed towards the French and had done everything in his power to hinder the negotiations; and the early hours of the following morning found the treasure and its escort wending their way towards the Bidassoa. First, came fifty men-at-arms and three companies of infantry; then, thirty-one mules, each carrying 40,000 crowns in boxes, and each escorted by four French and two Spanish foot-soldiers; next, another mule bearing the fleur-de-lis and the various documents which had to be handed over with the ransom, among them Henry VIII's discharge for the money which had been paid to him; while the Grand-Master, in gala costume, and mounted on a magnificent horse with an immense plume on its head, brought up the rear, with forty gentlemen of his Household.
On reaching Andaye, on the French bank of the Bidassoa, Montmorency at once despatched an officer to Fontarabia, who found that the Constable had just issued orders for the princes to be conducted back to Renteria, from which they had arrived on the previous day. That personage informed him that, quite apart from the matter of the courier, there was another and much stronger reason why the exchange could not take place — namely, that Montmorency had assembled at Saint-Jean-de-Luz a larger force than the convention which had been drawn up between the representatives of the two nations permitted.
The officer replied that the Grand-Master insisted on the affair going forward, but, at the same time, if his Excellency maintained that he had failed in any part of his engagements, he was quite prepared to give him satisfaction in person.
Upon this, the Spaniard, whose courage was not equal to his arrogance, and who did not at all relish the prospect of meeting so redoubtable a warrior as Montmorency in single combat, changed countenance, and, after some demur, promised that the princes should be brought to the Bidassoa with as little delay as possible.
At eight o'clock in the evening, the Queen and the princes arrived on the Spanish bank of the river, and the exchange took place at once, with very much the same formalities as had been observed at that of the King, the most minute precautions being taken on both sides to guard against any attempt at treachery. Montmorency and Don Alvaro de Lurgo, with the coffers containing the ransom, embarked in a barge, which was manned by twelve rowers and a steersman. They were accompanied by eleven French gentlemen and two pages of the same height as the Dauphin and the Duc d'Orléans. At precisely the same moment, the Constable of Castile and Van Praet, with the princes and ten Spanish gentlemen, entered a similar barge, which was propelled by the same number of oarsmen. The princes and the pages wore poniards, the gentlemen both sword and poniard. Both barges then rowed out to mid-stream, where a raft had been moored, on which stood two gentlemen, one French, the other Spanish. The Spaniard called the Constable, the Frenchman the Grand-Master; and the two plenipotentiaries mounted the raft together, and passed thus from one barge to the other. The persons of their respective suites — summoned one by one, a Frenchman and a Spaniard alternately — followed, until the Spanish barge, in which the princes had remained, was occupied by the French, and that containing the ransom was filled by Spaniards. Then the barges cast off from the raft and made for either bank, "the Spaniards bearing away the gold crowns, and the Grand-Master the treasure of France."
In the meanwhile, the Queen had crossed the river with her ladies and the Cardinal de Tournon, and, guided by torchlight, the whole company set out at once for Saint-Jean-de-Luz, where they arrived at midnight. From that town Montmorency despatched a messenger to Bordeaux to announce the glad news to the King and Louise of Savoy, who were waiting there with the whole Court; and on July 3 François started to meet his bride and his sons.
The Queen and the princes, who were greeted in every town and village through which they passed with transports of joy, reached Bayonne on the evening of the 2nd. Great preparations had been made for their coming. A bridge had been constructed over the Adour, "so cunningly and ingeniously built, that people knew not whether they were on land or sea"; the streets between the bridge and the citadel, where the royal party was lodged, were decorated "triumphantly and magnificently"; "people habited in divers costumes" scattered money among the people, and "whoever wanted it might pick it up," and "comédies, facéties, et fantaisies" were performed "so wonderfully and ingeniously that never had son of man heard tell of such enterprises."07 The Queen and the princes assisted at one of these entertainments — a pastoral play, written by the secretary of the Cardinal de Tournon, in which, we are told, the actors wore costumes of white taffeta, each of which had cost fifty livres tournois.
On the morrow, they resumed their journey, Eleanor riding in a litter, the princes on horseback. At Tartas, they were magnificently received by the King of Navarre, and at Mont-de-Marsan, where they arrived on the 6th, the Queen was informed that the King would meet her, with a small retinue, that evening at the Convent of Veyrières, about four leagues distant. Eleanor reached the rendezvous at nine o'clock, and was escorted by the Grand-Master and the Spanish Ambassador to the apartment prepared for her. François arrived two hours later, accompanied by the Cardinal de Lorraine, Chabot de Brion, and a few gentlemen of his Household, and gave the Queen "as good and honourable a reception as it was possible for a man enamoured of a lady to do." At midnight, the nuptial Mass was celebrated by the Bishop of Lisieux, First Almoner to the King, after which their Majesties retired.
Notes
(1) According to Henri Martin, some of them were sent to the galleys, and the galleys to which they were assigned being captured by Barbary corsairs, the unfortunate Frenchmen were carried off as slaves to Tunis, where they remained until the taking of that town by Charles V.
(2) The Duchesse d'Alençon had married Henri d'Albret, King of Navarre, in January 1527.
(3) Relation de l'huissier Bodin, Archives générales de Belgique; Le Guay, Négociations dipomatiques entre la France et l'Autriche durant les trente premières annees du XVIe siècle, Paris, 1845; Mignet, la Rivalite de François Ier et de Charles-Quint.
(4) "Your Majesty," she wrote, "God has graciously given you fine children, so you are the better able to judge of the paternal tenderness and regrets of the King. I entreat you, out of friendship for him, to grant his request." — Madame Coignet, la Fin de la vieille France: François Ier.
(5) This was the sum which it had been agreed should be handed over to the Spaniards at the moment of the princes' liberation. Of the balance of the ransom, 590,000 crowns had been already paid to Henry VIII, to reimburse him for a like sum lent to the Emperor, and the rest had been converted into an annual charge of 25,000 crowns on certain estates in Flanders belonging to the Duchesse de Vendôme.
(6) Ordonnance de Montmorency, Bayonne, May 25, 1530, cited by Decrue, Anne de Montmorency à la Cour de François Ier.
(7) Godefroy, Cérémonial françois.