Julius repaired with negotiation what had been lost by arms. He persuaded Maximilian to sign a truce with Venice, to join the Union against France, and to recall the 4000 German troops that had been part of the French army. On his urging, the Swiss marched down into Lombardy with 20,000 men. The French forces, decimated by victory and the loss of their German contingent, fell back before a converging mass of Swiss, Venetian, and Spanish soldiery, and retreated to the Alps, leaving ineffectual garrisons in Brescia, Cremona, Milan, and Genoa. Out of apparently complete disaster the “Holy Union” had in two months after the battle of Ravenna, through papal diplomacy, driven the French from Italian soil; and Julius was hailed as the liberator of Italy.
At the Congress of Mantua (August, 1512) the victors divided the spoils. On the insistence of Julius, Milan was given to Massimiliano Sforza, Lodovico’s sort; Switzerland received Lugano and the territory at the head of Lago Maggiore; Florence was forced to restore the Medici; the Pope regained all the Papal States won by the Borgias, and besides acquired Parma, Piacenza, Modena, and Reggio; only Ferrara still eluded the pontifical grasp. But Julius left many problems to his successor. He had not really driven out the foreigners: the Swiss held Milan as a guard for Sforza, the Emperor claimed Vicenza and Verona as his reward, and Ferdinand the Catholic, wiliest bargainer of them all, had consolidated the power of Spain in southern Italy. Only French power seemed finished in Italy. Louis XII sent another army to take Milan, out it was defeated by the Swiss at Novara with the loss of eight thousand Frenchmen (June Ó, 1513). When Louis died (1515), nothing remained of his once extensive Italian empire except a precarious foothold at Genoa.
But Francis I proposed to recapture it all. Moreover (Brantôme assures us), he had heard that Signora Clerice of Milan was the most beautiful woman in Italy, and he desired her consumingly.9 In August, 1515, he led over a new Alpine pass 40,000 men—the largest army yet seen in these campaigns. The Swiss came out to meet it; at Marignano, a few miles from Milan, a furious battle raged for two days (September 13–14, 1515); Francis himself fought like a Roland, and was knighted on the spot by the Chevalier de Bayard; the Swiss left 13,000 dead on the field; they and Sforza abandoned Milan, and the city became again a French prize.
The councilors of Leo X, vacillating, asked Machiavelli’s advice. He warned against neutrality between King and Emperor, on the ground that the papacy would be as helpless before the victor as if it had taken part; and he recommended an entente with France as the lesser of two evils.10 Leo so ordered; and on December 11, 1515, Francis and the Pope met at Bologna to arrange terms of concord. The Swiss signed a similar peace with France; the Spaniards retired to Naples; the Emperor, foiled again, surrendered Verona to Venice. So ended (1516) the wars of the League of Cambrai, in which the partners had changed as in a dance, and the last condition of affairs was essentially as the first, and nothing had been decided except that Italy was to be the battlefield on which the great powers would fight duel after duel for the mastery of Europe. The papacy yielded Parma and Piacenza to France; Venice rewon her possessions in northern Italy, but was financially exhausted. Italy was devastated; but art and literature continued to flourish, whether by the stimulus of tragic events, or by the impetus of a prosperous past. The worst was yet to come.
IV. LEO AND EUROPE: 1513–21
The conference at Bologna pitted prestige and diplomacy against audacity and power. The handsome young King, magnificent in goldbraided cloak and zibeline furs, came with victory in his plumes and armies at his back, eager to swallow all Italy, merely keeping the Pope as a policeman; against which Leo had nothing but the glamour of his office and the subtlety of a Medici. If Leo thereafter played King against Emperor, and veered from side to side elusively, and simultaneously signed treaties with each against the other, we mnst not be too righteous about it; he had no other weapons to wield, and he had the heritage of the Church to protect. His opponents also used those weapons, in addition to brandishing regiments and artillery.
The secret agreements made at this meeting have remained secret to this day. Apparently Francis tried to bring Leo into an alliance with him against Spain; Leo asked for time to think it over—diplomacy’s way of saying no; it was contrary to the age-long policy of the Church to let the Papal States be hemmed in by one power on both north and south.11 The one definite result of the Concordat of 1516 was the repeal of the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges. This Sanction (1438) had asserted the superior authority of a general council over that of the popes, and had given the French king the right to appoint to all major ecclesiastical offices in France. Francis consented to annul the Sanction, provided the royal power of nomination remained; Leo agreed. It might seem a defeat for the Pope; but in so agreeing Leo was only accepting a custom centuries old in France; and without so planning it he was marrying Church and state in France in a way that left the French monarchy no fiscal reasons for supporting the Reformation. Meanwhile he ended the long conflict between France and the papacy over the relative power of councils and popes.
The conference concluded by the French leaders begging forgiveness of Leo for having warred against his predecessor. “Holy Father,” said Francis, “you must not be surprised that we were such enemies to Julius II, since he was always the greatest enemy to us; insomuch that in our times we have not met with a more formidable adversary. For he was in fact a most excellent commander, and would have made a much better general than a pope.”12 Leo gave all these doughty penitents absolution and benediction, and they ended by almost kissing his feet away.13
Francis returned to France under a halo of glory, and for a time contented himself with Venus and mercury. When Ferdinand II died (1516) the French King planned again the conquest of Naples, perhaps as a glorious means of checking the excess population of France. Nevertheless he signed a treaty of peace with Ferdinand’s grandson Charles I, the new King of Aragon, Castile, Naples, and Sicily. But when Maximilian died (1519), and his grandson Charles was put forward to succeed him as head of the Holy Roman Empire, Francis thought himself fitter to be Emperor than the nineteen-year-old King of Spain, and actively sought election. Leo was again in a dangerous position. He would have preferred to support Francis, for he foresaw that the union of Naples, Spain, Germany, Austria, and the Netherlands under one head would give that ruler such preponderance of territory, wealth, and men as would destroy the balance of power that had hitherto protected the Papal States. And yet the election of Charles over papal opposition would alienate the new emperor precisely when his aid was vitally needed to suppress the Protestant revolt. Leo hesitated too long to make his influence felt; Charles I was chosen emperor, and became Charles V. Still playing balance of power, the Pope offered Francis an alliance; when the King in turn hesitated, Leo abruptly signed an agreement with Charles (May 8, 1521). The young Emperor offered him almost everything: the return of Parma and Piacenza, aid against Ferrara and Luther, the reconquest of Milan for the Sforza family, and the protection of the Papal States and Florence from any attack.
In September, 1521, the duel was renewed. “My cousin Francis and I,” said the Emperor, “are in perfect accord; he wants Milan, and so do I.”14 The French forces in Italy were led by Odet de Foix, Vicomte de Lautrec; Francis had appointed him at the solicitation of Lautrec’s sister, who was for the moment the King’s mistress. Louise of Savoy, the King’s mother, resented the appointment, and secretly diverted to other uses the money provided for Lautrec’s army by Francis;15 and the Swiss in that army deserted for lack of pay. As a strong papal-imperial force—ably commanded by Prospero Colonna, the Marquis of Pescara, and the historian Guicciardini—approached Milan, the Ghibelline supporters of the Empire there raised a successful revolt of the overtaxed populace. Lautrec withdrew from the city into Venetian territory; the troops of Charles and Leo took Milan almost bloodlessly; Francesco Maria Sforza, another son of Lodovico, became Duke of Milan as an imperial vassal; and Leo could die (December 1, 1521) in the unction of victory.