certain result was divided councils. Bourbon urged to push forward to Lyons, calculating on his friends and dependants in France flocking to him there; but Pescara had probably different instructions, and accordingly advised that they should descend on Provence, and lay siege to Marseilles. This was palpably the suggestion of the emperor, for he was ambitious of securing Marseilles, and holding it as a key to the south of France, as Calais was to the north, in the hands of the English. Thither, therefore, they marched, entered Provence on the 2nd of July, and on the 19th of August they sat down before Marseilles with an army of 16,000 men.
But the situation of the imperial troops very soon became extremely hazardous there. The place was strongly fortified; it contained a garrison of 3,200 men, and these were zealously supported by 9,000 of the inhabitants, who, detesting the Spaniards, took up arms and fought most gallantly. Bourbon and Pescara spent forty days in mining and bombarding the place, when they became aware of a tempest gathering which boded their utter destruction. This was Francis marching from Avignon at the head of 40,000 men. Neither Henry nor the emperor had made those diversions in Languedoc and Picardy which they had promised, and thus the whole weight of the army of Francis was at liberty to descend upon them.
Bourbon and Pescara precipitately abandoned the siege, and made for the Alps, in order to regain Italy. If Francis had been contented with this success, he would have stood at the close of the year 1524 on most advantageous ground: spite of the threatened combination of attacks upon him, he would have stood victorious over them all within the boundaries of France. But it was not his nature to rest satisfied with such a position. His ardent temperament spurred him on to secure yet more signal benefits, to pursue and complete the blow upon his adversaries. He therefore resolved to pursue the imperialists into Italy, and he flattered himself that he should speedily wrest from them all that they had won from him. He hastened along the beaten road over Mount Cenis, whilst his imperial foes were working their arduous way through the intricate rocks and ravines of the Riviera del Mare. It became a regular race for the first arrival. Francis hoped to descend upon the plains of Piedmont and Lombardy, and reach Milan before Bourbon and Pescara; but, apprised of his intentions, they put out all their energies, and by the time Francis had arrived at Vercelli, they had reached Alva. They pushed by forced marches to Milan, but there they found a pestilence raging; and, throwing a garrison into the castle, they hastened out at the Porta Romana, as the troops of Francis entered the Porta Ticina.
At this moment Francis committed a military error, which probably deprived him of the triumph of thoroughly routing his enemies. To have continued the pursuit was almost certainly to have destroyed the imperialist force, for it was worn down by its severe marches, and the road to Lodi by which Pescara retreated was actually strewn with his exhausted horses. The army of Pescara was the sole imperial force now in Italy, and its defeat would have been the immediate recovery of the Milanese territory. But Francis was beguiled into the delay of besieging Pavia, in which Pescara had left a strong garrison under Antonio da Leyva. Pavia was a well-fortified city, situated on the deep and rapid Ticino, in a peculiarly strong position, and had repeatedly defied armies for a long time together, particularly those of the Lombards and of Charlemagne. The moment Pescara heard of Francis sitting down before it, he exclaimed that he was saved! Every exertion was made by the imperialists to profit by the time thus given them. The Duke of Bourbon hastened over the Alps to Germany to raise 12,000 men, for which purpose he had pawned his jewels. Lannoy, the viceroy of Naples, pledged the regular revenues of that kingdom for ready cash for the hiring of troops, and great activity was displayed in raising an army and posting it betwixt the Adda and Ticino.
For three months Francis continued lying before Pavia, and committed the further error of weakening his forces, by detaching 6,000 of them, under Albany, the late regent of Scotland, to menace the kingdom of Naples. There Francis contrived to lie during the winter, whilst his enemies were inciting the King of England to aid their efforts to crush him in the spring. This mission to England would appear to have been hastened by some mysterious coquetting which was discovered to be carrying on betwixt the Court of England and Louise, the mother of Francis, in his absence. An Italian, named Giovanni Joacchino, appeared in England under the character of a merchant. It was soon known that this pretended merchant was the emissary of Louise, and De Praet, the ambassador of the emperor, became alarmed at his presence. Wolsey did not conceal the real character of the man, but promised to disclose to De Praet whatever overtures he should make from the Court of France. But for eight months Joacchino stayed at London, and was in such close intercourse with the cardinal that De Praet grew more and more suspicious. He wrote these suspicions to the emperor, and to Margaret of Savoy, the governess of the Netherlands, and had the mortification to find one of his messengers intercepted on the way, his despatches seized, and carried to the English council. It is patent that the tide of Wolsey's hopes and feeling was on the turn; that the repeated neglect of Charles V. to keep his promise of securing the popedom, had converted him already from an open friend to a secret enemy, and this was the more marked by the circumstance of Henry now demanding payment from the emperor of the sums he had borrowed when in England, and the greater sums due from Francis, for which Charles had made himself responsible.
These disclosures, however, and the remonstrances of Clement VII., by the Archbishop of Capua, aroused Henry to a display of affected zeal for the imperial cause. He ordered Sir John Russell to pay over to the Duke of Bourbon 50,000 crowns, with a power to add five or ten thousand more, if he thought it advisable, and instructions were sent to Dr. Pace to urge the Venetians to secure the Alpine passes, so as to cut off the reinforcements of the French; and Sir Gregory da Casale was instructed to concert with Lannoy, the Viceroy of Naples, for the protection of that kingdom from the attacks of Albany, and to drive the French wholly out of Italy.
In the beginning of February, 1525, the imperialist generals thought themselves strong enough to attack the French in their entrenchments. These entrenchments
