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A
Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb. If you'd like Not Just the Tudors ad free to get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to historyhit. With a historyhit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my own recent two part series, A World Torn, the Dissolution of the Monasteries and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com taking.
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Care of your eyes shouldn't be a hassle. That's why Warby Parker is a one stop shop for all your vision needs. Our prescription glasses and sunglasses are expertly crafted and unexpectedly affordable. Stop by a nearby store or use our app to virtually try on frames and get personalized recommendations. Did we mention we offer eye exams and take vision insurance too? For everything you need to see, head to your nearest Warby Parker store or visit warbyparker.com today. That's warbyparker.com.
- [01:06]
A
Hello, I'm Professor Susannah Lipscomb and welcome to Not Just the Tudors From History Hit the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Boleyn to the Aztecs, from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to samurais, relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. Not, in other words, just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. The fields outside the Italian city of Pavia lay shrouded in mist on the morning of the 24th of February 1525. Beneath a sky veiled in fog, a king prepared to charge into battle. Francois Francis I of France was 30 years old and loved standing at the centre of things, the centre of court, the centre of culture, the centre of Europe. Tall, handsome and battle hungry, he had led his army into Italy for glory and revenge. What stood against him were the forces of his greatest rival and princely contemporary Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. A mixture of Spaniards, Germans and Italians, men pulled from across Charles vast European dominions sought to frustrate Francis. When the fighting began, it was chaos. Gunpowder and pikes tore through French cavalry. Trees exploded. Knights were dragged from their saddles and hacked down in the mud. By the end of the day, Renaissance Europe would have its turning point. The French king taken prisoner on the battlefield and the myth of noble warfare shattered beyond repair. This is the story of that battle and the two great monarchs behind it, Francis the First and Charles V rivals warriors and Renaissance men. Their struggle would reshape not only Italy, but the very idea of kingship in early modern Europe. Joining me today is the author of the brand new books Renaissance Monarchs at War and Francis I, a biography of the King of France, both out this year. He is Glenn Richardson professor of Early Modern History at St Mary's University, Twickenham. Professor Richardson joined me on the podcast before to talk about Cardinal Wolsey and the Field of Cloth of Gold. Today he joins me again to tell the gripping story of the Battle of Pavia and the two Renaissance titans who shaped it. I'm Professor Susannah Lipscombe and this is not just the Tudors from History Hit. Glenn, welcome back to the podcast. How are you?
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C
Thank you very much. Susanna, lovely to be with you again.
- [03:59]
A
Can I just start with this? Two books in one year. It makes the rest of us feel positively stuckardly. How ever did you manage it?
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C
I wasn't sure how I would, but I think I managed it by panic, really. I needed to get them done. I didn't entirely. I had hoped to have them both out by now. In truth, the anniversary year didn't quite make that. So I'm not such a spectacular success. But the fact that as we'll see, the events of 25 going to 26 and Francis's return to France after his time, after Pavia, constitute a sort of restarting his reign. So it will still have an import. The short answer is I don't know, but somehow I managed. So there we go.
- [04:42]
A
Yes, I'm feeling fairly capacious about the 500th anniversary of various things coming up as well in England. So you've just corrected my pronunciation there, so I'm going to try and use yours from now on.
- [04:55]
C
Actually, it's a good point. I've spoken to a number of Pavians and we all have our way of doing it, but apparently the syllables are all more or less even. Pavia. Pavia, Pavia. I always end up saying Pavia or Pavia or so let's just say whatever we say.
- [05:11]
A
Okay, so you've made the claim that the Battle of Pavia is more important but less well known than battles like Lepanto or Muhlberg. Why hasn't it achieved the same level of fame?
- [05:29]
C
That's an interesting question. I think because memorialization of battles tends to be taken up, doesn't it, in our experience, with subsequent ideas of nationhood and people's history, etc. The French don't particularly want to know about it for obvious reasons. Unlike Marignano, which they're very happy to share with the Italians as a great victory 10 years earlier in 1515, the Spanish monocle, or Spain as such. It seems remote. You know, it's the Bourbon dynasty. It's a different. They come from an entirely different origin. It really doesn't seem to have a lot to do with Spanishness anymore. Likewise with was the Holy Roman Empire, the German lands. Nobody really wants to claim it, which I think is an odd inflection of how it was at the time in that it affected everybody, but nobody really wanted to know about. It was a complete pain for everyone, including actually Charles, who was the ostensible victor. And there were battles around which ideas of not perhaps nationhood, but perhaps Christendom and all that sort of thing can cohere. Obviously Lepanto is made much more of than it probably deserves. And there are other battles, I think Mohac, a year later, when the Ottomans invaded Hungary and Louis the king of Hungary, the young king, was killed at that battle, is equally or is important. But I think that Pavia sort of gets lost in the midst of other things, even though I would say at the time it was the early 16th century equivalent of Agincourt, and for similar reasons, as you just alluded in your introduction, the slaughter of the French nobility. In fact, directly, it was the greatest slaughter of the French nobility on the field of battle since Agincourt, and for not the same, but similar technical kind of reasons. And like Agincourt, although it had no immediate strategic profound change over time, it did show the way as how things were going to develop, which I trust we'll explore.
- [07:49]
A
Absolutely. So let's think then about contests, because one thing you explain in your book that's very important is about how ideals of chivalry and classical virtue were influencing the actions of both Francis I and Charles V during the Italian wars. Can you give us a precis?
- [08:10]
C
I can try to do that. It's very complicated in that you can't really think off the top of your head reasons why necessarily the French kings would want to invest so much time, energy and money as they do from the late 15th century in Italy, or indeed the kings of Aragon and subsequently Castile and Spain would do the same, except that or that they had a very strong sense of their ancestry. And that certainly for Francis, his immediate predecessor, Louis xii, and before him Charles VIII had pursued dynastic claims to both the Angevin inheritance, so kind of the southern half of Italy in the case of Charles viii, and more closely for Francis and Louis, the connection between the Visconti family and the Valois, which needn't detain us because it could detain us all our time in trying to explain, but essentially the Visconti family, who had been the Dukes of Berlin, married into the valois in the 14th century, and successive Valois claimants had not had time to do things, were, you know, otherwise occupied. But Louis XII decided that he really wanted to pursue that claim and did so successfully in 1500 1501. And as his successor, and as the successor of the Orleans, Angouleme, Valois kind of condensed dynasty, Francis felt obligated to do the same thing. So, in a sense, that sort of chivalric impetus to secure your inheritance, to do no less than what your ancestors have done, was very strong, I think, also in the case of Frances and to some extent Louis, their own personal upbringing, their education, which had been in the newly fashionable, to some extent, let's not exaggerate, but to some extent, in the studio humanitatis, in the revived interest and respect for Greek and Roman literature, philosophy, architecture, sculpture, science, all of that gave what we call Italy or the Italian lands, a kind of classical cachet, which probably meant quite a lot for both those monarchs and was seen as a way of, I suppose, legitimizing enhancing their claims to exceptional monarchy. As Machiavelli says, you know, if a prince is going to do things, he must do things exceptionally, and that's the milieu into which Francis is born. Charles is also born into that, and so is our old friend Henry VIII of England, who. Who is by no means more than a bit player in. In what goes on. So if you think of Henry's relationship, to take an English parallel, his attitude towards the supposed conquest of France, and looking back to Agincourt, so too with Francis and his sense that his. His imperial kingship, basically what it amounts to, that his kingship was imperial and therefore he had to have an empire. And what better empire than the Roman Empire? And there are various ways which that gets demonstrated in the propaganda of his early reign. When he first takes the Duchy of Milan in 1515, a book is produced which makes a direct comparison between Francis and Julius Caesar. The commentaries of Caesar are turned into, as it were, the commentaries of Francis on his conquest of Milan in 1515, having lost it in circumstances which we may come to the desire to regain, that was a burning ambition for Francis for the rest of his reign. Now, having said all of that, there are, as will perhaps become clear, certainly there are lots of financial advantages, if you can justify the cost of the war. It's a very rich part of it still is, you know, it's a very rich part of Ital, the Lombardy, the northern part, and the tax revenues from Genoa and Milan and the areas around it would certainly have helped the French king's coffers. And there were estates and lands which he could give to his nobles to show that he was looking after their interests and valuing them as the chivalric companions for his monarchy. So all of those things go to this conglomeration of, I suppose, ideals and impetuses which these kings feel. And without going into detail, Charles feels a lot about the southern Italy in particular, because of the connection of southern Italy to the crown of aragon in the 15th century and before you've given.
- [12:49]
A
Us a sense of Francois's character and outlook and this sense of justification that he has in what he's doing, I'm going to ask a slightly annoying question, because I remember being told at school that nothing in history was inevitable, but do you think the Italian wars, in the context of this sort of political culture, this outlook, were inevitable, or do you think if they'd had a different kind of mindset, it could have prevented this widespread conflict? You know, is it fundamentally rooted in this kind of chivalric ideal, really?
- [13:23]
C
Well, I'm sorry to reinforce the message of your school teachers, but I too, I think there's nothing inevitable about it. Had either of them had other interests or other focuses, and there are other conflicts between the two of them, Francis and Charles, but I think not quite inevitable. But it was very likely, given what I was just saying about the association which had been revived in the Renaissance itself, the importance of the Roman Republic or the Roman Empire. It just drew people's imagination to that part of the world. After all, the conflict between Charles and Francis fundamentally, was not about Milan so much as about the Duchy of Burgundy, on which they never fought, on the soil of which they never fought. It's so odd that Charles V just explained, was the successor of the Valois dukes of Burgundy, who'd married into the Habsburgs to prevent Louis XI taking the Netherlands and things back in about 1477. And so that's what the actual dynastic, driving conflict was about. And it's almost as if Italy gets sort of. I keep saying Italy for ease of reference, but the Italian states get drawn into that for the reasons I've been trying to explain. So there's nothing inevitable. Once it gets started, though, it's very hard to get out of.
- [14:47]
A
And what is the consequence in the end for these independent Italian city states of the Italian wars?
- [14:54]
C
Well, I think that's what both Francesco Gicardini, who was an Italian statesman, and his near contemporary Machiavelli talk about constantly, is that when the Italian states have been squabbling with each other and the Sforza against the Visconti and the Visconti, the Medici, and there's the. And Venice has come back onto the mainland having lost a lot of its territory or at least as advantageous trading situation with the arrival of the Ottomans into the Mediterranean. So everybody's sort of squabbling the whole time with each other. And as both those commentators talk about the terrible consequences. And of course, let's not forget the papacy, which also returns to Italy from Avignon in the middle of the 15th century and becomes a very important part of central Italy. All those entities and powers pursuing their own legitimate interests, sooner or later pull in these big guys who have literally got big armies and big guns who can start fighting not just for you or against you, but over the top of you. And that's what, that's why, you know, Machiavelli talks about, you know, Italy as being like a. Excuse the expression, like a brothel or, you know, a prostitute. She's been through so many hands. You know, anybody who. Who wants it can have a kind of thing. And it's a kind of despairing analogy which he makes desperate that the Italian state should cohere and have a. Some sense of not exactly nationality, but a sense of the patriarch and look after themselves and. And see what they have more in common than against each other. And if only they could do that, they'd be all right. It has very profound consequences for the Italian states who are drawn into it. But the papacy is equally important in that process.
- [16:44]
A
How does the pope manage to keep the papal states from French and imperial aggression?
- [16:51]
C
Well, I mean, it depends on what pope you're talking about, doesn't it? Because many popes, Because I know, because all of them do different things, you know, Julius II is, in the early 16th century, is very aggressively trying to assert the independence of the papacy. Before him, Alexander VI Borgia is trying to create basically a Borgia family dynasty out of the area of the papal states. And then poor old Leo X and Clement vii, the two Medici popes who follow Julius II are trying to look after their family's interests in Florence, while also each of them in their own way tried to actually, to be fair to them, act out some sort of more general. The papacy needs protected space as the head of Christendom. And then Farnese Paul III after him, after them, likewise. So the papacy is trying to solve the issue sometimes by backing one side against the other, sometimes trying to be genuinely neutral between the two. But that's very difficult. And sometimes making the whole thing far more complicated by injecting their own dynastic ambitions. Because as we all know, the popes of the period are dynastic princes. Borgia's Spanish, but the others are Italian. And they've all got interests in building up their dynastic holdings within the peninsula into which the ambitions of Aragon, of then, of Habsburg and Valois or collide or cohere.
- [18:22]
A
Do we have evidence of what Charles and Francis thought of each other?
- [18:27]
C
I think we do. It's. I think they want to think the best of each other, or at least they say they want to think the best of each other. There are, as I said, these inherent dynastic conflicts between them or tensions from both of them become kings as young men. I don't think they find a lot personally to admire in each other. They're polite, etc. Unlike, if I may say so, our friend Henry and Francis, who I'd always maintained are also quite, you know, Bolshy with each other, but actually quite admire each other. I think Francis quite admires Henry and I think Henry grudgingly quite admires Francis. And there is a basis for something like a grudging but genuine respect there. One doesn't get the sense ever that Charles and France has, even at the moments when they do come at their closest ever, really managed to get beyond diplomatic niceties. Charles is just a very different kind of more reserved. Francis is ebullient, he's. He's sort of spontaneous. He just does crazy things sometimes. He's very accident prone, you know, jumps in, playing with these mates when he's a young man and, and at least on the battlefield he can be very impetuous. Where Charles is much more reserved, is perhaps personally less self confident. So they're just very two different types of guys. Whereas I think Henry and Francis kind of get each other a bit better.
- [19:58]
A
Yes, that makes sense. Okay, so let's get down to brass tux then. So why was Pavia such a tempting target for Francis? You've given us a sense of context in terms of this dynastic claim, this sense of culture, chivalric culture, that's driving him on. But why Pavier?
- [20:19]
C
Okay, well, as I said earlier, in 1515, claiming to be the Duke of Milan in succession to Louis xii, Francis does invade and successfully takes the Duchy of Milan, which he holds till about 1521, when in the course of conflicts about not specifically necessarily Milan, but Burgundy and various other things. To cut a long story short, despite the efforts of Cardinal Wolsey, and Henry VIII to contrive a universal peace which will bring Christianity together. The two of them start fighting, and in the course of that, in November 1521, Pavi is taken back by Charles. So Francis loses that, and again, it take too long to explain, but over the course of the next two to three years, all kinds of stuff go on. Francis is busy defending his own territory from Charles. There's the rebellion of his subject, the Duke of Bourbon. For all kinds of complicated territorial reasons, it's not until the autumn of 1524 that Francis is in a position once more to militarily assert his claim on Milan, which he does, and he gets Milan back quite easily. The imperialists who had invaded Provence earlier that year, withdraw and they go to a number of cities in the outskirts of Lombardy. And Francis walks into Milan, basically, but he's very conscious that they are at Cremona and other places and that Pavia, which is a very strong fortified town, if he doesn't get it, they will. So he thinks the best thing to do is go and get it quickly and he expects. Actually, I'm not sure he's even thinking of a siege immediately. He thinks that Pavia will sort of capitulate quite quickly. But he's wrong in that the garrison commander, a guy called Antonio Daller, is determined that he's going to hold the town. And what was intended to be a quick campaign, and then that would secure the whole of, not just Milan, but Lombardy turns into a siege which lasts through the autumn and winter of 24 into 25. So I don't think Pharaoz is that interested in the city itself, but it has to be got, and that's why he besieges it.
- [22:52]
A
And the imperial forces hatch a bold and complicated plan to capture Francis. So how did they pull this off?
- [23:04]
C
Well, not quite the way they intended, but it's hard to. To describe without sort of visual sources. But at the base of the city of Pavia is the River Ticino, and it runs along one side of the city's walls, and that's regarded as kind of defense. Bit like London has the Thames to defend it. So if you think of the north bank of the Thames and the Tower of London, etcetera, that's kind of how Pavia is situated. And what the French do is they actually throw a circle of guns, the new exciting weaponry of the period, field and siege guns, around the city. And over the course of the winter, they try to bring it to an end, but not successfully. All the while, the imperial forces, particularly under Bourbon and the Marquess of Pescara, who's the imperial commander. They start to creep, Creep in on the French from about three sides. So that by the end of, say, January 1525, the French are surrounding Pavia, but the imperialists are around at least three sides of them. And they're reinforced by a whole new, but virtually an army in itself, of landsknechts, the German infantry soldiers who come down under the great Georg von Frondsburg, who's the imperial Landskirch commander. And so the sieges become besieged and just to the north of Pavia. So if you imagine, again, with an English example, if you imagine, as it were, the city of London, the space of that there is a hunting park standing out beyond the Tower of London. There's the hunt, there's the city. Well, imagine that's the hunting park. And in the middle of that, Francis has set up a camp at a. At a manor house called Mirabello. And the imperialists think that's where he is stationed. He's not, in fact, but that's where they think he is. So the idea is what they're going to do is they'll take some of the infantry and the cavalry, they'll break down the walls at this hunting park, which is to the north of the city. They'll march down the very early morning, like 4 o' clock in the morning, they'll march down and while Francis and everybody is still asleep, in theory, they'll capture him. And having captured him, that will then take away the reason for the siege, because they've got him and they can bargain with him and the siege can come to an end, which is an interesting tactic. And of course, the French commanders want the siege to take one step back. Once the siege had been established in late November, all the French command, well, not all, but most said, look, you, Majesty, you might want to pop back home now and just leave us to do this. And Francis has a very interesting attitude. He says, well, we've gotten to some scrapes in the last half dozen years, since I conquered Milan back in 1515. I think I'm the best man for the job, so I'm going to stay and oversee this. And so that's what he does. But the fact that the king is there makes it the focus, because, of course, like chess, if you take the king out, that's the end of the war. And I. I think, you know, that's actually the. The tactic. And they do. They break down the walls of. They make two holes in the walls and income the lands connects marching down the park early in the morning. But Francis isn't at Mirabello. They do attack this little manor house, but France isn't there. So the king is actually to the west of Mirabello with his cavalry and. And that begins the second stage of the battle.
- [26:51]
B
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- [27:34]
A
And we see Francis taking a huge personal risk. Why does he do that?
- [27:42]
C
Good question. Because he's Francis. Because in this period, you know, kings are still expected to command on the battlefield. One of the great things that Charles V is just angsts, chews his fingernails about day and night is the fact that he has been overlord of the Netherlands and then, you know, the King of Aragon and elected holy emperor for 10 years. In fact, he writes this thing in his diary, effectively a few months before Pavia, in which he says exactly this. Oh God, I haven't done anything. I wish I could have an opportunity to do something to make my name and oh, I don't know what I'm going to do. Little knowing that within a few months he's going to have this great victory. So like I said before, Francis thinks that he's the best man for the job because after all, he did conquer Milan himself and that's what kings are supposed to do. And he was very effective at Marignano in pulling together. And this is the crucial point in pulling together the cavalry, the infantry and the artillery. I won't go into details, but he managed to win that battle in 1515 by closely coordinating the three elements of the army against his enemies. Now why he leads the battle in 1525 is that he's there, he's under threat himself. Who better to defend himself than himself? So he gets his gendarmerie together. He's aware that these, as I was explaining, the German landsknechts have penetrated the defensive part which the French have been occupying. And so he says, let's do what we did at Marignano, which is smash into the imperial cavalry who are protecting the infantry, get rid of them, then we can smash straight into the infantry a la Agincourt and whack them off the field. And victory's mine. And he's got, you know, all his great commanders and the flower of the French nobility is there with him, and they're all up for it, and they know this guy succeeded before, and off they go. But the crucial difference here is that because of the displacements of the battlefield, the artillery, which had been firing on the oncoming landsknechts in support of Francis own Swiss mercenaries who are fighting for him at Marignano, who is fighting against the Swiss at Pavia, the Swiss are on his side, and they're trying to defend the park against these oncoming imperial landsknechts. And the difference from Marignano is that he's got to stop the artillery firing in support of his infantry in order for his cavalry to come in with this brilliant, smashing tactic from the left. And he does, goes charging in, and at first, all goes well, the imperial cavalry are scattered. But what he doesn't realize, and this is the third element of the battle, what he doesn't realize is as he comes to the end of the charge and appears to have scattered the enemy cavalry in front of him, he comes against a copse of woodland into which Pescara, one of his commanders, has positioned about a thousand riflemen, Arquebusier, who had been involved, as I said earlier, with capturing the little manor house of Mirabello, they have now moved back up into the park. And so he quickly gets them into position and they start. They just open fire on the French cavalry as they come to the end of their run. So they're losing momentum, they're coming to a halt and sudden are being shot at by Bussiers and the new. The rifle, the relatively new weapon. And they're being shot dead from their saddles, as you said at the outset, wounded. And then as that happens, the. The imperial cavalry swing sort of right up against them, and the French cavalry are caught between the cops, the arquebusiers, and then the oncoming infantry. And it's just, you know, man to man slaughter. They are noblemen, pull from their horses, fighting for their life for the next sort of 45, 50 minutes or so, Francis himself, his horse is killed beneath him, crashes to the ground. He gets up and starts fighting, and he has to fight for some minutes for his own life, eventually sort of saying, I am the king. And the Marquess of Pescara eventually rides up and almost much defends him as captures him, and he's able to Surrender. But, you know, very, very close rank, you know, at the Admiral Bonnivet, some of his leading commanders are killed, which is why I make the. The analogy to. To Agincourt. So in theory was a great plan. It would have worked, but it just. It lacked the coordination of the disparate elements in the fog and the mist of an early sort of February morning. And that's kind of what happened. It was a bit of a mess.
- [32:54]
A
And it's this slaughter of the flower of French nobility that makes the battle.
- [33:00]
C
Quite so exceptional, isn't is all the elements I've just been talking about, the cavalry, artillery, infantry, Arquebusiers, rapidly, they'd become part of warfare in Italy since about 1503, 1504. So there's nothing new in itself, but it's just the various concatenations of how things worked. And what is perhaps different is the. As you've just alluded, it's the overwhelming slaughter on one side as against the other. The Italian style of warfare. In the previous century, lots of people rode around, there were battles, but not a lot of people were affected. But as people like Tricardini and indeed Machiavelli say, with that. That determination in the second and third decade of the century to win at all costs, the consequences in terms of wounded and dead are much higher. And of course, the capture of the king himself. He's the first French king to be captured, and I think I'm right in saying the last French king to be captured in battle, John at Poitiers and Francis at Pavia. So, yeah, it's important for that, for that reason, in intermediacy. But strategically, nothing immediately happens. It's of great significance, except, as you.
- [34:17]
A
Say, of course, this extraordinary thing of the king being captured. How does the rest of Europe react to the news that the king of France has been taken captive?
- [34:26]
C
Well, I can tell you how one person reacts. That is Henry viii, he just shouts for joy and describes the messenger as like the Archangel Gabriel, that his great enemy has been overwhelmed in battle. And I think people are absolutely shocked that this could happen, that this great king of France, he's a very powerful figure, should have put himself into that situation and have been captured. So it had that spectacle and that spectacularness. The reports of it go around quite quickly. So it happens the 24th of February, which we should, of course, mark, is the emperor's 25th birthday. So the 24th of February, 1525 is his. Her 25th birthday. And that he doesn't find out about it. He's in The Alcata in Madrid. When, when he finds out about a month later, the full consequences of it. Henry finds out about the same time, but news goes all around. The Venetians find out about quite quickly and are very worried. So, yeah, it's, it's, it's a sensation.
- [35:33]
A
And how would a high profile captive like Francis have been treated?
- [35:39]
C
Well, I think with great respect, he was conveyed off the battlefield by Pescara and taken to the forward command post. And I think he had some fairly superficial wounds which were dressed. And then he was taken to the Certosa of Pavia, the kind of fortified monastery which is now in the suburbs of Milan for a few days. And then he gets taken eastwards to a fortress called Pizzigatone, where he writes to his mother, Louise de Savoir, who's very, very important in what follows. Hello, Mummy, I had a really bad day at work. Can you help? Which translates as, you know, all is lost, save my life and my honor. I fought well, but I lost. I'm in a bit of a pickle. Can you help out? And then he's taken from there. They're actually sending him. The planets send him to Naples, which I think Francis believed in the adage, see Naples and die. So he says, no, I'm not going there because it's very much, you know, Charles's territory. So he says, which is interesting is he suggests he goes to Spain instead. And Charles didn't want that. But Pescara says to him, all right, well, I'll, you know, I'll discuss it with the boss and eventually it is agreed that he can come to. He sails from release, well, Genoa somewhere, But he sails across to. There's been suggestions he hoped to be rescued halfway through, but he sails on a, on a French fleet, but manned by Spanish sailors to Barcelona. And then he travels overland down to Madrid and he's sort of held in a relatively austere captivity, but he's fated all the way. People have heard about this great battle and by the reports which the ambassadors, the Venetians and others who are accompanying the party say that he's received more like. It's like a celebrity visiting more which Charles is not pleased about than a captured prisoner. Charles and Francis exchange letters. Francis does the whole. Well, my chivalric brother, you know, we've had this bit of a battle between us. Ha. Aren't we great blokes together? And let's sort this out between us. I'm sure we can come to some arrangement to which Charles is like, these are my Terms you agree to them or you don't go anywhere. There's none of that banter that he's so good at, Francis, so good at, which you see at the Field of Plot of Gold with Henry. But I think that's what he's trying to do. He's trying to charm and come on, these things happen and let's sort this out. But Charles is determined and this again, you asked me about the difference between them. Charles, not unreasonably, sees this as literally a God given victory. And he sees, he wants peace, all right, but he wants peace on his terms. So he wants the Duchy of Burgundy, which is the lovely part of eastern France, back as part of his inheritance. He wants Francis to abandon all his claims to Italy and various other bits and pieces along the border between France and Flanders. And it's all kind of one way traffic, which is why I often contrast the Treaty of Madrid, which it becomes in 1526, with other peace treaties which do work, because this one really doesn't. Charles sees himself as being exactly the magnanimous monarch that he's expected to be in that having Francis totally in his power, he graciously concedes that Francis may be King of France again, provided he does these things. Francis, of course, sees it as completely unacceptable that he should be bargained. He has to bargain to get his own crown back. And we could go through all the, the ins and outs of it and takes about a year. Francis gets ill at one point, quite seriously ill, some kind of fever and an abscess in his nose, which is eventually sort of sorted out, but basically in the end, he's got no choice, he has to agree. But he signs a declaration before he signs the Treaty of Madrid, a secret declaration saying that because this is imposed upon him under duress, he is not bound by it. So, you know, signing the treaty with one hand and holding the other hand with his fingers crossed behind his back kind of thing, he signs the treaty in January 1526 and is released, but he has to give his two eldest sons, Francois and Henri, as hostages for his performance of the terms of the Treaty of Madrid. So, I mean, the victory. And Charles's advisors are writing to him more or less from the first day, saying, you know, you really must use this to bring about a fantastic peace. Imagine what could happen. I mean, some of them are very idealistic. Imagine what could happen if you and the King of France got together, you could form this fabulous, you know, block against not only Lutheran heresy which is rising, but the Ottomans, you know, you could really bring Christendom together. And I think at some level, Charles is inspired by this, you know, chivalric, almost crusading kind of idea. Other people are much more direct. Well, you've got him where he can't get away. Force him to do what you want, you'll never have a better opportunity. And Charles actually takes the second approach, I think, but with consequences are that Charles becomes so apparently powerful by that that everybody else starts to panic that Charles is now too powerful. Because when you think of all those conglomerations of territories in the Netherlands, in Austria, Hungary, in Spain, in the New World, never mind his claims in Italy and even in the Middle east, there's never been a more powerful prince in Europe. And nobody necessarily thinks that's a fantastic idea. So Francis has a bulwark against the preponderant power of Charles suddenly becomes what we all need to support.
- [42:08]
B
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- [43:32]
A
Yes, I'm struck by the fact that for Frances, it's almost unthinkable that he could be threatened with his crown being taken from him. Because, you know, to be king of France for him is ontological. It is who he is. He can't, you know, there's no way this could be stripped away from him.
- [43:52]
C
Absolutely.
- [43:53]
A
And also, I've always been horrified, especially since I read Leah Redmond Chang's Young Queens about the nature of the deal that struck, I mean we've got an eight year old and a six year old being sent to Spain and they don't come back until the younger one is 11. I have a six year old. So this really is a blow to my heart. And just to think about what that. And it really made a difference. If we think about French history subsequent to this, the character of that young. The second who eventually becomes king is defined. Defined by this experience in his childhood, isn't is.
- [44:35]
C
Yes, it's interesting that. That's right. You can't believe how young they are. And that in a sense to our modern understanding that, that, that would even become an aspect of a peace settlement. And yet as we know, that was actually quite usual for that period. I think Charles really wants to. The reason why what Charles insists on that is exactly because of that, that pull at the heart that you've identified that he wants, he wants to get Francis by something that will really hold him and he believes that that is the keeping of his children. After all he could have got, you know that there were some. For all I've been saying about Ashingore, there were quite a few French noblemen still about and he could have had any number of them as hostages passages. But Charles would know that that produced be political. But that sort of tying Francis tightly to him through his children is part of Charles's strategy, which is really hard for us. Had they been 18 and 22, it might have been different. But no, as you say, they're really young boys and there's the, the in when they meet their father as he's coming out of Spain on the river which divides Spain from France, there's this very brief moment where they meet on a pontoon and. And the father just embraces his sons and. And then they're gone. And of course that did. You're right that, that did invest in certainly in Henry ii. And for all we know, Francis, the dauphin, he dies of course not that many years after his return, but certainly. And we know that in Henry it developed an intense hatred of Charles and a very big discontent with his own father that he would put him in that position. The two of them had a very difficult relationship for the rest of Francis's life. And it's interesting that the person to whom Henry looks is another kind of father figure and de Montmorency, the constable who takes him as best he can under his wing when he returns. And that's a whole other story about this extraordinary relationship between him and Montmorency. But yeah, it's emblematic. I think of old, just the visceral, familial. We can talk about dynasties, but this is real familial, kind of into relationship. And of course, we have to think of Eleanor, Charles's sister, who has recently just been widowed. She'd been married to the King of Portugal, and suddenly she's married to Francis, who she knows can't stand her, and who, at the time of her entry procession, a year or two later, when she comes to France, Francis sets up his mistress, Madame de Temps, as the English ambassador reports, in a window of the time of the Queen's procession, and is seen publicly adoring his mistress. You know, he couldn't insult Eleanor, his queen, more directly. And Eleanor is there because of her brother, because of the. So when we talk about dynasty, we have to sometimes remember it really meant family and actual real people involved. And it gives you a clue as to how direct and visceral it is, which may be to take us right back to the original point, maybe gives us an insight into why some of these fightings and things are so personal. It's hard to get into their heads, but I think that's important.
- [48:09]
A
How free was Francis, having been released to do what he wanted with these two boys in captivity? Did it bind his hand?
- [48:20]
C
Well, I think in a sense, it's the inverse of what you were saying. I think that Francis judges that Charles can't really do anything too much to them. So the first thing that happens is that with the advice of people like Woolsey in England, and certainly Louise de Savoie, whose grandchildren are involved in all this as much as her own son, is to try to build up a counter imperial alliance that will sooner get these boys home than otherwise, which is called the League of Cognac, which is set up in 1526. And even Clement VII, when he hears about the terms of the release of Francis, he says that segment is going to be going to work. Charles has thrown away. By trying to be too demanding, Charles has thrown away his best chance of actually getting halfway even to where he wants to be, because taking the sums imposing this thing, he's got to give back the whole of Burgundy. Everybody knows that's unreasonable. And that's how Francis steps through the loop that threatens to pose around him. And he is able to depend on the fact that nobody is going to let Charles do anything terrible to his boys. Okay, so the League of Cognac doesn't. Doesn't produce the great counterstroke to Charles that Francis hopes it might do. But what it does do is to prevent Charles from doing anything more severe. And begins the basis of. Now Francis is free of coming to a settlement which is on a better basis, which they do three years later with the so called Treaty of the Ladies, the, the Peace of Cambrai in 1529, which again, you know, women are involved in this peacemaking. So we've got Eleanor, of course, but there's also Louise and you've got Margaret of Savoy, Charles's aunt, his regent in the Netherlands. And those two women are able to negotiate together with their respective councils to bring about a much more realistic basis for an accommodation between the two. So the boys are released, Charles accepts an indemnity for Burgundy rather than actually physically taking control of it. And it's a much, in theory at least, it's a much better basis, a much more realistic, practical basis for the resolution of the Habsburg Valois conflict than was achieved by Charles dominating things in, in 1526. It doesn't result in a permanent peace, but it does result in peace for about, about six years or so, which between those two is, is not bad going. So, yeah, it's just interesting that, that it's the two women who, who negotiate that.
- [51:14]
A
And how much of a sticking point was sovereignty over Milan after this Lady's Peace, how much does it remain a thorn between Francis and Charles?
- [51:30]
C
Well, that's a really interesting point because I think this is where we get the shift. What started off as a, you know, chivalric dynastic, all the things we've been talking about, competition about this bit of land that my dad owned or whoever. After that defeat and with the strengthening of Charles's power in Italy, it starts to actually become a strategic point because if you think what's also happening around this time, obviously, as far as Charles is concerned, you've got the rise of Lutheranism and the Protestant situation in Germany. So Charles begins to think. And also that's the first thing. Second thing is, after 10 years in Spain, where Charles had started in a very dodgy kind of way, they didn't want to know about him. They much preferred his brother Ferdinand. Charles is actually starting to really work with the Spanish quite effectively. His taxation, his various policies there mean that it's starting to become actually his, his strategic strong point, militarily and otherwise. It's sort of becoming home in a way. But troops and things that he needs to shift from Spain, from his holdings in the south in Italy. Think of the Ottomans coming in from the east. We mentioned the Battle of Mohacs in 1526 and the capture of half of Hungary by the Ottomans. Suddenly that bit of Italy, if you think about it, there's Genoa, there's the port it controls the passes up through the Alps into Austria towards Hungary. And eventually, of course, it will become significant even as far northwest as the Netherlands. They later call it what becomes the Spanish Road. That is, it begins to have not just a dynastic, but actually a very important strategic center, part of Charles Empire and subsequently filled the seconds. And in a funny way, had the Battle of Pavia happened and not happened rather, and had all that not been thought about, one wonders whether that would necessarily have become. I mean, it goes as far forward, doesn't it, as not my period, as we say, but as Napoleon, you know, that quadrilateral in the north part of Italy becomes incredibly important for the Austrians, etc. So that's the origins of that connection between Habsburg Spain, Habsburg Austria, Austria and northern Italy, as not a sort of quixotic point of dynastic competition, but actually a really important piece of the strategic board. And that happens during the 1530s and 1540s, so that by the end everyone forgets about Burgundy, which was ostensibly the core reason of the fight between these two. It becomes Milan and northern Italy as the military, economic, strategically important centerpiece of Charles chessboard in Europe.
- [54:35]
A
Absolutely. And I suppose if we were to tie this story up, the end of it really would be 1559. You know, does the peace of Cateau Cambresis mark victory for the Habsburgs really over the Valois? Initially, I think.
- [54:52]
C
I think so, essentially, yes. We missed out because there's so much else to talk about. But in 1536, Francis just happens to invade Savoy and take Turin and places like that, clearly with an eye to extending control and as a bulwark against what's becoming a Habsburg center. Francis never, ever, ever gives up the possibility, even if he can't own it. Some of the later treaties, which we needn't go into, have ideas about the Dauphin, Francois and then Henry Henri becoming Duke of Milan, and even Charles d', Angouleme, his younger brother, becoming Duke of Milan in due course. But none of that comes to anything. So, yes, I think the French sort of begin to accept that the Habsburgs and Charles and then Philip, of course, are just too strong there and is it really worth it anymore? And aren't they better off consolidating their position? Of course, Henry II continues Francis's policies of allying at times with German Protestant princes to create problems for Charles So in a sense, the point of battle does shift north, actually back to Austria and the three cities, Metz, Thul and Verdun, which are taken in the 1550s. So it's only in the 1550s that the battle between Valois and Habsburg comes home, as it were, and both sides basically want to bring that to an end. And then as we know, the irony of the whole thing, you know, the it's at the celebrations of the piece of Cato Cambrecy where Henry II is wounded and dies in the tournament with catastrophic results for the French monarchy and what becomes the French wars of religion and the collapse of that strong central monarch. And concomitant with that, within a few years, the rise of the Dutch against Philip in the role to the Netherlands, when of course, the Spanish road through Genoa, Milan, Austria becomes really important for Parma and other people, Ulva and then Palmer bringing forces to counteract the Dutch. And, you know, the rest of it is, as we know, the 30 years war and everything. So.
- [57:14]
A
But yes, that extraordinary irony of Henry II dying, celebrating peace, finally having given up Milan for the thing, I mean, he's basically given as a sacrificial lamb throughout for this, for this relationship with the Habsburgs. But this has been an amazing tour de force, a whip through huge amounts of history. Thank you so much for kind of positioning this important battle for us in our minds now, Pavia 1525. But there's so much more to know about it, which I imagine a listener could really get into if they happen to pick up a copy of a book called Renaissance Monarchs of War, for.
- [57:58]
C
Example, they might well do.
- [58:01]
A
Glenn, it's a pleasure as ever. Thank you so much for coming on.
- [58:05]
C
Thank you very much.
- [58:08]
A
Thank you for listening to this episode of Not Just the Tudors from History Hit. Thank you also to my researcher, Max Wintool, my producer Rob Weinberg, and to Amy Haddo, who edited this episode. We are always eager to hear from you, including receiving your brilliant ideas for subjects we can cover. So do drop us a line@notjusthetorshistoryhit.com and I look forward to joining you again for another episode. Next time on Not Just the Tutorial, Tutors from History Hit.
- [58:44]
B
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