to beat him well. Meanwhile he kept close watch of the
Spaniards at Cerisoles. Francis I. could not resist. Then
was produced a burst of enthusiasm worthy of the glorious
days of Marignano. All the gentlemen wished to set out for
the army and the court found itself deserted. They brought
their courage and they brought also money, which the Duke
d'Enghien borrowed to pay his soldiers. The men-at-arms
charged splendidly, but the battle would have been lost with-
out the veteran bands of the French and Swiss foot. The
routed Imperialists left on the field of battle 12,000 dead
and their cannon and baggage ; the French did not lose
200 men (1544).

But France had to combat half of Europe ; instead of in-
vading the Milanais it was necessary after the glorious day of
Cerisoles to detach from the army of Piedmont 1 2,000 chosen
men to defend Picardy and Champagne ; Henry VIII.
had just disembarked at Calais and was besieging Boulogne.
Charles V. had entered Champagne and had captured St.
Dizier. The Imperialists reached Chateau-Thierry and
alarm spread in the capital. The Parisians commenced to
emigrate with their goods to Orleans. " My God," cried
Francis I., " thou art making me pay dearly for this crown
which I believed I received from thy hand as a gift ! " But
the hostile camp was distressed by want and sickness ; the
English obstinately remained before Boulogne instead of
joining their allies. Charles V., pressed to prevent the
progress of the Lutherans in Germany, consented to treat.

Peace was signed at Crespy. The emperor and the king
mutually restored whatever they had conquered from each
other ; Francis continued to hold Savoy and Piedmont ;
Charles promised, moreover, the investiture of the Milanais
to a younger son of the king, but this young prince died.
Henry VIII., although left alone, refused to treat. Finally,
he decided in June, 1546, to lay down his arms and restore
Boulogne in consideration of 2,000,000 francs to be paid in
eight years.

Francis I. survived this last treaty only a few months.
He died March 31, 1547. An odious act, the massacre of the
Waldenses, had tarnished his last years. His son, Henry
II., succeeded.



CHAPTER X.

THE THIRD PERIOD OF RIVALRY BETWEEN THE
HOUSES OF FRANCE AND AUSTRIA (1547-59).



Supremacy of Charles V. Fifth War against France (1547-56).
Last Struggle for Italian Independence. Treaty of Cateau-Cam-
bresis (15 59)-



CHARLES V. profited by the death of Francis I. and the

embarrassments of his successor to overwhelm the German

_ .. Protestants before the hand of France could

Supremacy of .

Charles v. Fifth be extended for their protection. Since the
France ^ow- treat y signed at Cadan in Bohemia between
56). the Lutherans and Catholics (1534) the

insurrection of the Anabaptists of Munster (1534) and the
war of -Charles V. against Francis I. had hindered the
struggle from bursting out in Germany. But since the
treaty of Crespy in 1544 left Charles V. free from all con-
cern on the side of France, and since a truce of five years,
concluded with Souleiman in 1545, delivered him from all
anxiety on the side of the Ottomans, he believed the
moment come to arrest the progress of the Lutherans.
Brandenburg, Misnia, Thuringia, and the Palatinate had
gone over a little before to the side of the Reformation.
In 1543 the Archbishop of Cologne in his turn abjured, and
despite his abjuration intended to retain his electorate and
his archbishopric. But Rome under Paul III. had developed
an energy which now stimulated that of the emperor.
The Council of Trent had opened (December 13, 1545). and
at its first sessions had irrevocably broken with the Protes-
tants. Condemned canonically, they saw the Pope accord
the emperor 13,000 men to reduce them, a considerable
subsidy, and half the revenues of the Spanish Church for a
year. Luther died in 1546, and did not behold the com-
mencement of the hostilities which he dreaded. The

109



HO CONSEQUENCES OF THE REVOLUTION. [BOOK II.

League of Smalkalde had great strength, but it lacked one
chief because it had too many. The treason of Maurice
of Saxony, who went over to the emperor's side, broke
the league. The Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave
of Hesse alone remained in arms. They counted upon
Francis I. The death of that prince determined the
emperor to attack the elector at Mtihlberg on the Elbe ; he
defeated him and made him prisoner (April 23, 1547). The
landgrave alone could not resist; he tendered his submission.

Charles V. abused his victory by perfidy and harshness.
The elector, stripped of his electorate, which the emperor
gave to Maurice, was condemned to perpetual imprison-
ment. The landgrave was arrested in violation of promised
faith, and these two illustrious captives were insolently
dragged in the conqueror's train through the German
cities in order that they might realize their humiliation and
that of the German liberties. The latter in fact seemed
lost. The cities were filled with foreign soldiery, and
heavy taxes were laid upon the people.

The emperor was not less happy in Italy against the
Guelphs than in Germany against the Protestants. At
Genoa the conspiracy of Fieschi against the Dorias failed
by the unexpected death of their audacious chief (Janu-
ary 2, 1547). Sienna received a Spanish garrison ; in
Lombardy, finally, Pietro Luigi Farnese was assassinated ;
his successor, Octavio, kept nothing but the city of Parma.
The Imperialists occupied Piacenza, and Philip of Spain
came to supervise the movements of the pontifical court.

Intoxicated with his triumph, Charles V. believed that he
was able alone to solve the religious question which
divided the world ; he promulgated at Augsburg his
famous "interim" (May 15, 1548). Everything bent
before the new Charlemagne.

Germany, endeavoring to find her constitution, has per-
petually oscillated between two opposite points. Otto I.,
Henry II., Frederick Barbarossa, drew her in the direction
of unity ; the great interregnum pressed her back toward
division. Charles V. took up then the eternal problem, but
he committed the fault which had caused the failure of his
great predecessors : he complicated this enterprise with
many others. The Italian republics in the Middle Ages
had saved German feudalism ; France in Modern Times
saved the German principalities.



CHAP. X.] RIVALRY OF FRANCE AND AUSTRIA. in

When Henry II. saw the disastrous consequences of the
defeat of the German princes and the omnipotence of the
emperor in the empire, he said to himself that such a
mighty person must not be allowed the time to become
settled, and he resolved upon war. The treaties with the
Swiss and the Ottomans were renewed. He ransomed
Boulogne from the English, whom he won to his side,
though betrothing Mary Stuart, the Queen of Scotland,
to the dauphin ; he recalled the French prelates from the
Council of Trent, and sustained the house of Farnese in
Parma and Piacenza against the Pope allied to the emperor.
But while this policy made him almost everywhere the
enemy of the orthodox, the friend of heretics or miscreants,
he offered in expiation the blood of his Protestant subjects.
The edict of Chateaubriand ordered the condemnation of
the Protestants without appeal, closed the schools and the
tribunals against whoever had not a certificate of orthodoxy,
and. by a custom borrowed from the worst times of the
Roman Empire, promised informers the third part of their
victims' property (1551).

In Germany especially was it important to act. The
king secretly allied himself with the Protestant princes and
with Maurice of Saxony, who betrayed the emperor now
that he had nothing more to hope from him. He took the
name of Protector of German Liberties, and considered him-
self as vicar of the empire authorized in seizing the cities
of Metz, Toul, and Verdun, three sovereign bishoprics in
the midst of the duchy of Lorraine (1551). The occupation
was made without obstacle. Toul opened its gates. Metz,
a free and prosperous city, would allow none to enter save
the chiefs of the army ; the soldiers followed, the gates
were seized, and Metz belonged to France. The same sur-
prise was attempted upon Strasburg, another great free
city. The Strasburgers replied with cannon balls. Henry
could only boast of having watered his horses at the Rhine.
Still when returning he seized Montmedy, Ivoy, Bouillon,
which he did not keep, and Verdun, which has remained to
France (April, 1552).

On his side Maurice of Saxony had barely missed cap-
turing Charles V. in Innsbruck. The aged emperor had
just time to flee across the snows and the mountains. The
work of his entire life was overturned in a day; he under-
stood it and submitted. The compromise of Passau abol-



H2 CONSEQUENCES OF THE REVOLUTION. [BOOK II

ished the interim and granted liberty of conscience to the
Lutherans (1552). It was the alliance of France with
Maurice of Saxony which had caused Charles V. this
bitter deception ; so he turned against her with fury. At
the head of 60,000 men he laid siege to Metz. The Duke
of Guise defended the place with so much heroism that the
emperor was obliged to retire after having lost half his
soldiers. " I well see," he said, " that fortune is a woman
who loves better a youthful king than an aged emperor."
He should have accused no one but himself for having
undertaken such an operation in the most unfavorable
season. He was more happy the following year against
Terouanne, which he took and razed.

The marriage of the Infante of Spain, Philip, with Mary
Tudor, Queen of England, imperiled France. But Henry
displayed great activity (1554); he invaded the Nether-
lands and beat the Imperialists at Renty, about thirteen
miles southwest of St. Omer. On the south he occupied
Corsica, while Brissac defended Piedmont with rare ability.
But in Tuscany Strozzi, a Florentine exile in the pay of
France, was beaten at Marciano, and the Spaniards could
commence the siege of Siena (1554). The chief of the
Imperialists, Giovanni Jacobo de Medici, inaugurated this
undertaking by horrible ravages. He made of this beauti-
ful country, then covered with habitations and luxuriant
gardens, the sad Maremma of to-day. Blaise de Montluc
with a few French troops prolonged the resistance. It was
only after having lost 20,000 inhabitants that Siena capit-
ulated and underwent Spanish protection (1555).

These isolated successes did not console Charles V.
for his check before Metz and the defeat of Renty. After
thirty-five years of efforts he saw all his projects overthrown.
France was not humbled, Germany was not reduced to
servitude, Protestantism was not crushed. Discourage-
ment took possession of him : with the Protestants he
signed the peace of Augsburg, with France the truce of Vau-
celles (February 5, 1556) ; then he placed his crowns of Spain,
Italy, and the Netherlands upon the head of his son, Philip
II. (1556), and resigned the empire to his brother, the
archduke Ferdinand, who was already King of the
Romans. From that moment the house of Austria was
separated into two branches, and the vast dominions of
Charles V. were forever divided. The monarch, volun-



CHAP. X.] RIVALRY OF FRANCE AND AUSTRIA. 113

tarily fallen, went in quest of repose to the monastery of
Yuste.

The truce of Vaucelles had been concluded for five
years ; it lasted scarcely five months.

At the moment when Philip II. lost Germany he seemed

to gain England by a second marriage, espousing the queen

of that country, Mary Tudor. He had

The last strug- J ' J . , . ,

gie for Italian already one son, Don Carlos ; for him he
Tr d eaty nd of ce ca- reserved all the Spanish possessions and it
teau-Cambresis. was agreed that the child who might be born
from this new union should reign at once over the Nether-
lands and over England ; that is to say, that London and
Antwerp should be under the same master, the Thames
and the Escaut under the same laws, and that the North
Sea should become an English lake. Thus France was
in her present and future seriously menaced by this domina-
tion which hemmed her in on three sides, and which could
bring upon her an English invasion against which she had
no longer to hope the assistance of Germany. Henry II.
had signed with Charles V. the truce of Vaucelles at the
beginning of 1556; he broke it the same year (November) so
as not to give Philip II. the time to become established.
The Holy See was then occupied by an old man full of
fire, Paul IV., who was appalled at seeing the Spaniards
beside him and upon him at Naples and Milan. The king
and the pontiff united. One army under the command of
Montmorency was sent toward the Netherlands, another
under the Duke of Guise into Italy. They wished to
limit Philip II. to Spain. Henry II. should be strengthened
on the north by provinces adjacent and easy of defense ;
the duke Francis of Guise, descending on his mother's
side from the house of Anjou, hoped to become King of
Naples. The plan was well combined. The energetic
Paul IV. placed his spiritual power at the service of France
and the Italian cause. He sustained Siena and openly
attacked the Viceroy of Naples, following the example of
the Popes of the Middle Ages, arming and reviewing the
population, and even preaching a crusade against the Span-
iards, " that offspring of Jews and Moors, the real dregs
of the earth."

At the news that the Duke of Guise, invested with the
realm of Naples by the Holy See, was approaching with
15,000 men, Philip II. made a few concessions to the



H4 CONSEQUENCES OF THE REVOLUTION. [BOOK II.

Italians in order to divide them ; he restored Piacenza to
Farnese and gave up Siena to the Grand Duke of Tuscany.
This was his salvation in Italy. The Duke of Guise
traversed the Milanais without obstacle and entered Rome
in triumph, but the Pope was unable to furnish him all the
succor promised and he failed before Civitella, the first
Neapolitan stronghold which he attacked. He endeavored
in vain to bring the Duke of Alva to a battle. The
Spaniard let malady decimate the French army, and then
carried the war into the pontifical territory and marched
upon Rome. Immovable until the last moment despite
the departure of the French, Paul IV. yielded only when
he saw the Romans themselves ready to open the gates of
Rome to the Spaniards, and to spare the capital of the
Christian world the horrors of another capture by storm
and of another pillage (1557).

To the disaster of St. Quentin was due the recall of the
Duke of Guise, so fatal to the hopes of the Pope and of
Italy. The Spaniards, 50,000 strong, under the orders of
King Philip, and of the duke Philibert of Savoy, having
entered Picardy, had invested St. Quentin. The place had
neither solid fortifications, munitions,, nor food. The
Admiral Coligny threw himself into the city with 700 men.
Montmorency approached to provision it, but camped so
near the enemy with an army very inferior in number, and
took so few precautions, that he was obliged to fight with-
out having assured his retreat ; the French army was
destroyed and he himself remained a prisoner (August 10).
The King of Spain was advised to march upon Paris ; he
preferred to make himself master of St. Quentin, Ham,
and Noyon. While the conquerors wore themselves out in
this war of sieges, Henry II. had time to put imposing
forces on foot, and the Duke of Guise returned from Italy.

Named generalissimo, this daring captain struck a mighty
blow. In the dead of winter suddenly he besieged Calais
and captured it after eight days (January, 1558). The
shame of St. Quentin was lost in the glory of this resound-
ing success. The Duke of Guise was placed above all con-
temporary generals ; the popularity of the house of Lor-
raine dates from that day.

Calais was recaptured, but the Spaniards remained always
upon the Somme. The Marshal de Termes, having also
been defeated at Gravelines (1559), Henry II. opened



CHAP. X.] RIVALRY OF FRANCE AND AUSTRIA. 115

negotiations for peace. After conferences lasting four
months the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis was concluded
(April 25, 1559) on the basis of mutual restitutions in the
Netherlands and Italy. The Duke of Savoy recovered his
states on the two sides of the Alps (Bresse, Bugey, Savoy,
Piedmont) except Pignerol, Chieri, and Savigliano, which
France retained until the rights of Louise of Savoy,
grandmother of Henry II., had been decided. She kept
also the marquisate of Saluzzo, but abandoned Siena to
the Medici and Corsica to the Genoese. The three bishop-
rics depending upon the empire, it did not belong to Spain
to demand their restitution ; England left Calais to France
in return for 500,000 crowns. Philip again possessed
Charolais, a little country inclosed in the French provinces,
and which the French would be able to sieze without
striking a blow at the first rupture, but he did not restore
to Jane d'Albret the portion of her kingdom of Navarre
which Spain had retained during half a century.

Thus what had been commenced in 1530 at Bologna, was
accomplished in 1559 in a little city of Cambresis. The
Austro-Spanish domination was firmly planted at the north
and south of the Italian peninsula ; the Holy See as a
temporal power found itself reduced to helplessness ; the
dukes of Florence, Parma, and Ferrara were held in lead-
ing strings, and even the frontier of Italy remained in the
hands of foreigners.

This was for Italy a great misfortune and for France a
check, because the house of Austria despite its division
into two branches remained as formidable at the end as at
the beginning of the struggle. In very truth Philip II.
was stronger than Charles V. But this check served also
as a lesson. When losing on the side of Italy provinces
remote, and which by no means brought in what it cost to
defend them, France gained on the north Calais that is to
say, the liberation of her territory, and the reconquest of
her integrity and the three bishoprics which constituted a
triple advance guard of strongholds on the frontier of
Champagne ; conquests useful, necessary, truly national,
while the more or less durable acquisition of Naples or of
Milan interested only the dynasty of Valois.

Furthermore, if the French policy was vanquished be-
yond the Alps it triumphed beyond the Rhine. The
imperial authority, null in the empire before Charles V., had



n6 CONSEQUENCES OF THE RE I'OLU TION. [BOOK II.

been for a moment elevated by that prince to the degree of
making men fear that he would destroy at one blow both
the political and the religious liberties of Germany. France
aided the German princes to defend themselves, and the
peace of Augsburg guaranteed their independence. This
was perhaps an evil for real German interests, and for
civilization in general, but it was surely a benefit for
France, inasmuch as a monarchy faithfully obeyed from
the Meuse to the Oder, and from the Alps to the North
Sea, would have exposed her to terrible dangers. The
acquisition of Italy was by no means a compensation to the
house of Austria for what she lost upon the Rhine and the
Danube. Poor and robust, Germany would have given
her real chief a strength which enervated Italy could not
furnish.

Besides, so many wars did not remain entirely fruitless.
They had two important results, the creation of the system
of political equilibrium balance of power which long
protected the minor states against the ambition of the
great, and the development of the Renaissance. The
peoples of Europe, mingled in the conflict, became better
acquainted, and, brought into contact with a brilliant civili-
zation, acquired a taste for the arts, letters, and sciences,
which after having remained till then the almost exclusive
possession of the Italians, now became the common posses-
sion of Christian nations. France was the first to inherit
from Italy. It was in her, as we shall shortly see, that the
Renaissance shone with more effulgent splendor than it
had cast outside the peninsula.

Finally, these wars had in every state consequences at
once political and military. The nobility, kept in a distant
and hostile country under the harness, became supple in
obedience to the king, and the discipline of camps conse-
crated the revolution commenced by gunpowder and by
standing armies. Although the attempt to create a national
infantry by means of the free archers had not succeeded,
bands were formed in France, Spain, and Germany which
made a profession of military affairs, which had the draw-
backs of mercenary soldiers, the qualities of veteran troops,
and which assured an immense superiority to those who
could pay for them that is to say, the kings. Likewise, if
the feudal weapons, the lance and the sword, remained the
principal weapons till Henry IV., others, as the pistol and



CHAP. X.] RIVALRY OF FRANCE AND AUSTRIA. 1 1?

the arquebuse, and especially the cannon, commenced to
play a part in battle ; Louis XL with his instinct of power
had given attention to a good organization of artillery, and
in 1479 concentrated all the administration in the hands of
a grand master. In 1494 his son took no less than a
hundred and forty drawn cannon for the Italian expedi-
tion.

Every noble formerly could have a lance, a strong suit
of armor, and a good war horse, by means of which he threw
himself with impunity into the densest battalions of peas-
ants. Powder equalized conditions upon the battlefield as
the kings were going to equalize them in civil life. The
villain was about to become the equal of the best armed
knight at the same time that the inaccessible fortresses
which had so long sheltered the violence and activity of
the feudal lords ceased to be impregnable. The king
alone could possess artillery, because this weapon was too
costly for individuals, and because the law was to declare
it an exclusively royal weapon. With cannon the royal
will could be made to triumph everywhere.



BOOK III.

REVOLUTION IN INTERESTS, IDEAS, AND
CREEDS.



CHAPTER XI.

THE ECONOMIC REVOLUTION, OR DISCOVERY OF
AMERICA AND OF THE PASSAGE TO INDIA.



First Maritime Discoveries. Vasco da Gama (1497) and the Colonial
Empire of the Portuguese. Christopher Columbus (1492). Cortes
(1519). Magellan (1520). Pizarro (1529). Colonial Empire of the
Spaniards. Consequences of the New Discoveries. Introduction of
Posts and of Canals with Locks.



UP to the present we have considered the political revo-
lution which gave the kings of the fifthteenth and sixteenth

centuries the power of directing at the will of
discoveries! 1 " e their personal ambition the national forces at

that time brought together in their hands. We
must now discuss the revolution which, in consequence of
maritime discoveries, was taking place at the same time in
material interests.

All through the Middle Ages the commercial routes traced
by the Greeks and Romans had been followed. However,
civilization, on reaching the farthest lands of the West, had
turned the eyes of the people toward the mysterious extent
of that unknown sea. The Mediterranean could not be their
center of activity ; they had become familiar with the billows
of the ocean and had developed confidence in the compass.
The Basques, pursuing the whales which sported in their
gulf, had pressed their chase and their ships toward the
north; the Scandinavians, then exuberant with life and
force, had from Norway gained Iceland, then Greenland,

118



THE ECONOMIC REVOLUTION, 119

and had descended by Labrador as far as the lands where
rise to-day the magnificent cities of the American Union.
The Normans, on the contrary, turning toward the southeast,
had coasted along the promontories of Spain, and arriving in
front of the Strait of Gibraltar, instead of entering the Medi-
terranean, the uncontested domain of Italians, Provengals,
and Catalans, had not feared to venture toward the African
shores. The people of Dieppe in 1364 reached Guinea,
whence they brought back gold dust, ivory, pepper, and gray
amber; and a gentleman from the environs of their city,
John of Bethencourt, in 1402 made the conquest of the
Canaries. Associated with the people of Rouen, they did
not cease until 1410 from sending ships annually to the
African coast. The misfortunes of France, which then com-
menced, and the English invasions made this traffic cease.
Through commercial jealousy they had so well guarded the
secret of their discovery that they have lost the honor of it.

There were, however, eyes which saw these vessels pass,
and men who grew indignant at strangers coming from so dis-