Margaret of Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (Robinson 1886)/Chapter 4
(1521–1524.)
CONSTABLE BOURBON.
"Il me fault mesler de beaucoup de chouses que me doibvent bien donner crainte": thus Margaret wrote to Briçonnet in 1521. Already, indeed, she must have felt the dreadful approach of nearer troubles than wars with the Emperor or uneasy peace with England. In that year the King took from his school-fellow, Constable Bourbon, the right to lead the vanguard, and gave it to his brother-in-law d'Alençon, a man without genius or experience of warfare. In the next summer Louisa of Savoy began a lawsuit against this Constable Bourbon, her cousin, in which she laid claim to the Bourbon estates. Charles de Montpensier, a Bourbon Cadet, had married Suzanne, the hunchbacked daughter of Pierre Duke of Bourbon and Anne of Beaujeu. Naturally he took possession of the vast inheritance which came with his wife from her father and her mother. But the Crown declared that the estates of Anne of Beaujeu lapsed at her death to the King; that she had, in fact, a mere life-interest in them. And Louisa, a niece of Pierre, claimed his inheritance on the death of Suzanne. Thus, in her cruel anger, she hoped to denude the Constable of the whole of the heritage of his dead wife. Such a hatred as hers, altering the whole course of Europe for many years, deserves to be explained. Louisa was a violent hater; nor was this the first shock that her private spite had given to the public weal of France. She had already hated the House of Foix: Madame de Chateaubriand, the King's almost royal mistress, and her brothers Lautrec and Lescun, the Viceroys at Milan. In order to secure the disgrace of Lantrec, Louisa had intercepted the money which the King had finally despatched to pay the Swiss troops in the Milanese. Louisa embezzled the money, and the mercenaries revolted. Lautrec was disgraced, and France lost Milan.
And now Madame directed her hate against a greater rival with larger interests at stake. The Constable Bourbon was, after the King, the most important personage of France. He possessed, through his marriage with Suzanne of Bourbon-Beaujeu, no less than seven French provinces. When his eldest child was born the King stood sponsor; and the guests were served at table by five hundred gentlemen in velvet. No prince in Europe displayed a more stately magnificence than he. He was, indeed, a striking and picturesque figure, this half-Italian soldier, only five years older than the King, but looking more resolved, maturer, with his tragic Southern aspect, set mouth, and great melancholy eyes. He was no less brave than Francis, and a far better leader; for, indeed, good soldiership was his natural inheritance from his Bourbon ancestors, who had all been generals, and his Gonzaga forebears, all Condottieri. He was the cousin of those Mantuan Gonzagas who had but lately added Montferrat to their domains. This French Gonzaga was no less resolved to rise. Through a prudent marriage, he had become the richest man in France; and he was determined that his courage and address should make him the most powerful. Already, in 1513, Louis XII. had created him Constable of France as a reward for his prowess in battle. King Francis, on his succession, might, however, have annulled this dangerous favour. No wise sovereign would permit a prince, young, popular, of a great race, and immensely rich, to remain Constable of France An office so powerful, if occupied at all, should only be filled, as a compliment to bygone valour, by some decrepit general too old to mutiny. For the Constable was virtually king of the army. The Sovereign himself, in time of war, could order nothing save through him. Knowing this, and seeing the Constable's proud and resolute mien, Henry of England had said, in 1520, "Were he my subject, he should no longer wear his head!"
But Bourbon meant to wear his head and, if possible, a crown upon it. He found a means to keep in favour with the King through the all-powerful influence of Louisa. Louisa was forty-five years old, but still very handsome; she was far more ardent and vehement than in her youth, violent and tender at once, credulous as to the effect of her own charms; in fact, a woman made to be detached. She fell passionately in love with this dark young Bourbon whom she had brought up with her own children; and for some time he made great use of her affection. She was the King's mother and a very clever woman, still handsome, still courted; no doubt, in spite of the thirteen years difference between them, he would have married her if no heir had been born to Francis; and during the first three years of his reign Queen Claude gave the King only daughters. But in 1518 the Dauphin was born; in 1519 Henry, the King's second son. And then Bourbon began to shift his plans. If he still courted Louisa, it was in the hope of winning Renée, Queen Claude's young sister, whom he wished to marry, and as a means to the favour of the Duchess Margaret, with whom he fell in love; and gradually Madame perceived that she had lost him. She remembered all that she had done for him; how her influence had kept him in power; all the pensions she had heaped upon him, 24,000 livres as Constable, 14,000 as Gentleman of the Chamber, 24,000 as Governor of Languedoc; this in addition to his vast estates. She remembered that she was old and he was young, that she loved him and he used her to his profit. And then, in her furious indignation, she strove to undo all that she had done, to shatter this grandeur she had herself built up. So in 1521 the King took the leading of the Vanguard from Bourbon, who was at least a soldier, and gave it to Alençon. And in 1522 Madame began her lawsuit for the Bourbon estates.
Bourbon was quite aware that the King's mother, rightly or wrongly, was certain to gain her suit. He was also aware that, shorn of his lands, his power would be gone. He was the greatest landowner in France; the extent of his estates had become a proverb.
"L'Empereur est grand terrein,
Plus grand que Monsieur de Bourbon,"
writes Clément Marot. He was, in fact, the standard of comparison. He was resolved not to lose his importance. But only two courses now were open to him: either, relying on Louisa's past affection, to marry her, the rival heir, or, in case of a decision granted in her favour, to mutiny against the crown of France.
Charles of Bourbon, indignant, high-spirited, outraged, decided on the latter course. He was already regarded as the head of the popular party. The graver of the nobles were with him, Louis de Brézé, Seneschal of Normandy, St. Vallier, and many others. "All the great personages," says Charles V., "are for him." The Parliament, no less, saw in the Constable the advocate of its rights and privileges, persistently disregarded by the King. The lawyers were with him, and the Liberal bourgeois. He was supposed to be the great reformer, the man who had the wrongs of the country at heart. "This virtuous prince," writes Cardinal Wolsey, "seeing the ill-conduct of the King and the vast extent of abuses, wished to reform the kingdom and assuage the poor people." This, of course, is stating the case from the point of view of the enemies of France. Yet, if Bourbon had remained in his own provinces, there is no saying how his rebellion might have ended.
England and the Empire saw with delight this dissension between Francis and the greatest of his subjects. They each sent a secret envoy to the Constable; and it was privately agreed that, as soon as Francis should be gone to reconquer Milan, the English should invade Picardy, the Germans and Spaniards enter Guienne and Burgundy, while the Constable should seize the central provinces. The kingdom conquered, each should satisfy what he considered his just claims. Henry should take the North, and call himself in earnest King of France; Charles regain his old dukedom of Burgundy; the Constable should govern Provence and Bourbonnais as a sovereign prince. So three claimants should be satisfied, and France exist no more.
To such a pass the enmity of Louisa and his own furious anger had driven the Constable. He had of late had much to suffer. The King had publicly insulted him at table; his generalship was taken from him; his estates were to be handed to another. But at present Bourbon endured in silence, waiting for an expedient to leave Paris almost in battle array.
Let us hear how it struck a contemporary. "And my said Lord of Bourbon," writes the Bourgeois of Paris, "on Friday, the 27th of March of the said year 1522, left Paris, by the King's leave, to go through Brie and towards Provence; and he took with him all the archers and all the crossbowmen of Paris, in order to take five or six hundred evil livers and bandits which did much harm in the flat country there. And many of them were hung. And thence he went into his own land of Bourbonnais.
"In the said year 1523, Friday the 11th of September, news was brought to Paris by Réné, the Lyons' messenger, that Monsieur de Bourbon had left the land of France; and on Our Lady's day in September had departed in secret from his land of Bourbonnais; and by the sound of trumpet he was proclaimed a traitor throughout the land of France; and it was proclaimed that whoso should take the said Lord of Bourbon and deliver him into the hands of the said Grand Master, my Lord Alençon, or into the hands of M. de la Palisse, the King would grant him 10,000 golden crowns; or for information where he could be taken, 20,000 ordinary crowns."
But soon it became known that no one would easily earn those 10,000 golden crowns; for M. de Bourbon was in the camp of the Emperor, preparing to invade Provence. The tide of opinion suddenly turned. Bourbon was no longer a popular hero; men saw in him, and justly, a traitor leagued against his country with her bitterest enemies. Nothing could have been better for Francis, whose carelessness and frivolity had begun to disgust the more serious of his subjects. He was again the Knight of France, the champion of the French, the Ogier of his time; the true Amadis defending his kingdom from a traitor; while Bourbon, mistrusted even by his allies, obtained but the third place in the Emperor's army. The Marseillais fought so well against the Constable that a panic seized the invading army, thrust back pell-mell into Italy, defeated without a blow. Meanwhile the nobles of Bourbon's party refused to rise. The rebellion came to nothing.