The French at Pisa.
In the eleventh century the King of Tunis asked of the Pisan merchants at his Court: “What are the Florentines?” “They are our Arabs of the desert,” replied those prosperous tradesmen. “They are our poor!”
But in the next century these Arabs of Tuscany proved themselves formidable rivals to their neighbours; though for another hundred years Pisa, with diminishing resources, retained a superior prestige. That superiority of hers became the occasion of her final ruin; for in 1197 when Volterra, Lucca, Florence, San Miniato, Arezzo, and Siena united in the Great Guelf League of Independence, Pisa alone stood out resolutely Ghibelline, isolated in the dignity of her Imperialism. This abstention of Pisa, then the first of the Tuscan cities, gave to Florence the front place in the League, and made her the head of the Guelfs in Central Italy.
Thenceforth, for centuries Florence gloriously flourished, while the fame of Pisa dwindled to a mere proverb, an old tale but half believed. First she lost her supremacy, then her wealth, then herrenown, and at last her independence. A family of despots arose in her midst. Soon she was to regret this comparative liberty, for in 1397 Giangaleazzo Visconti conquered the city, and left it, on his death in 1402, to his mistress, Agnese Mantegazza, and to their son, Gabriello Maria Visconti. But Messer Gabriel’ Maria was not strong enough to keep Pisa single handed against his envious neighbours of Florence, Genoa, and Lucca; so on April 15, 1404, he agreed to hold the city as a fief of France.
Few of the details of history are more involved, perplexed, or dependent on the revelations of unpublished archives than the delicate intrigues of France for the possession of Pisa. AMediterraneanMediterraneanseaport, a link in the precious chain that ran (Marseilles, Genoa, Pisa, Naples) from Provence to Sicily, she was an invaluable supporter of the Angevines in the south; and holding the passes of the Apennines, she was scarcely less necessary to Orleans in Lombardy, glad indeed of an ally among the Tuscan republics, so irreconcilably inimical to the Visconti. But, as we have already seen, the plans of Orleans were liable to suffer from the counter plans of France; and as at Genoa in 1395 so it was at Pisa in 1404.
The great Visconti died in September, 1402; and in the same year Marshal Boucicaut was sent as Governor to Genoa. Boucicaut was an enemy of Milan,[118]ahater of the Turk, a man who saw in the Visconti the secret allies of the Sultan, a man who had been a captive at Nicopolis. A pure, devoted, honourable spirit, yet officious, yet impatient:—a restless hero working persistently in a nervous and unquiet fashion the thing that he believed to be the Will of God—Boucicaut is a figure as unusual among the factions and intrigues of fifteenth-century history as Gordon among the small surroundings of to-day. The Marshal was sent to Genoa because that jealous and unaccountable people (“qui n’aime pas qu’on aille leur desbauscher leurs femmes”) would no longer endure his predecessor. They found in him the man they had prayed to have, a sterner master. Boucicaut was as rigid as he was simple: a man soon deceived, but swift and inflexible in the punishment of treachery. His immaculate life, his proved authority, his skill in regulating and organizing commercial traffic, gave him a great position in Northern Italy, made him the man of men there, the central figure, even as before him had been Giangaleazzo Visconti. For one reason, these two men, so unlike in every detail, were alike in the great fact that they were thinkers, men with a mission, inspired by an idea that ruled their lives and to which they subordinated every consideration. The Duke of Milan dreamed of a great United Italian Confederation, of which he should be the head, and of which the Pope should be merely the ornament and crown: his dream was the dream of theEmperor Napoleon III. Boucicaut, a crusader by nature and tradition, above all things a religious spirit, dreamed of ending the Schism, of gaining state after state to the adherence of the true Pope at Avignon, and,pari passu, of extending the dominions of his lord the King of France. The ambition of Boucicaut was all spiritual loyalty and feudal devotion; the ambition of Visconti, stained with crimes, was directed only to self-aggrandizement: different stars were theirs, shining from different poles. But the men who see a star and follow where it leads them, though they go as far apart as Hell and Heaven, have more in common than the mere human bond which ties them to the obscure multitude of their fellows, swaying hither and thither, devoid of purpose, will, or way.
Almost the first act of Boucicaut at Genoa was to write to Florence inviting her to assist him in capturing from the young Visconti (the Serpent-brood) one of the finest cities between Milan and Piedmont. The Florentines shared to the full the distrust of Boucicaut for the children of him whom they had called “the self-dubbed Count of Virtues (Vertus), the veritable Count of Vice.” And they consented to the enterprise, but yet did not pursue it. For, at that moment, they had other work to hand. There was another Visconti than the Lords of Milan and Padua whom they must subdue. They were laying siege to Pisa“e chi la tiene”: her master Gabriel’ Maria Visconti.
At the same moment, as we know, Orleans beyond the Alps was mysteriously advancing southwards; his aim, no less than that of the Florentines, thereduction of Pisa. For through his wife, Valentine Visconti,[119]he had, as he considered, a prior claim on Pisa, and indeed on all possessions of the dead Duke not included in the heritage of the two legitimate sons. Gabriel’ Maria, the bastard, supported only by his mother, besieged by the Florentine allies of France, threatened by his brother-in-law the puissant brother of the King of France,—what hope had he? None indeed, save in the disquiet which the news of Orleans’ coming might inspire among his neighbours. For was it only on Pisa intent that so great a lord was advancing on Lombardy? At this moment the young Visconti of Milan were at open war with Boucicaut, and had declared their intention to drive him out of Genoa and to obtain for themselves the rich province of which the French had baulked their father. Did Orleans also remember with rancour that disappointment of ten years ago? Did he intend to join his brothers-in-law of Milan, take Genoa first and Pisa afterwards? It might be; and yet it were difficult to be at once the ally of the Milanese Visconti, and the usurper of their half-brother’s possessions. Was it possible that the King’s brother intended to unite his army to that of the King’s lieutenant, defeat the young Visconti before Genoa, drive them from Lombardy as well as out of Pisa, and make for himself a great territory (Milan, Asti, Pisa) alongside of the French protectorate of Genoa? Boucicaut was an ancient and intimate companion of the Duke of Orleans; it was rumoured that Orleans had frequent interviews with Pope Benedictat Beaucaire; it was possible that the three had come to an understanding.
And Orleans marched south. And Florence assailed Pisa. So late as April 17, 1404,[120]the Florentines believed that by diplomacy, if not by force, they might secure their prey. But in the end of February or the beginning of March the Duke of Orleans turned northin high dudgeon, indignantly marching on Paris. And in April it was commonly known that, on the 4th of that month, Messer Gabriel’ Maria Visconti had been acknowledged a vassal of the Crown of France; he was“homme du Roy”and the King’s men henceforth would support him in Pisa.
Great was the wrath of Orleans, loud the remonstrance of Florence. Orleans had scarcely arrived in Paris before the King transferred to him all the Royal rights to Pisa (as I have already shown the reader in the chapter on Valentine Visconti), and formally disowned the conduct of Boucicaut, forbidding him in future to put any obstacle in the path of his brother. Censured at home, Boucicaut was not less fervently condemned by his allies in Italy. The Signory of Florence addressed a most indignant letter to him,[121]accusing him of a dishonest action in seizing from the King’s faithful allies the prey they had hunted solong, now, in their very grasp, to be wrested from them by a friend.“Questa non era honesta cosa.”The Florentines could easily have reduced Pisa, but against the fief of France, their ally, they could do nothing. They withdrew from the siege, protesting and with many murmurs.
What indeed was the motive of Boucicaut? The Florentines with some reason suspected an unseen hand pulling the strings that worked this sudden action;“pensiamo che questo sia proceduto da altri, con velati colori.”But what man save the King, who disowned the business, was strong enough to dare to oppose the will of Orleans? Was Burgundy jealous of those Italian prospects of his rival which freed him from his neighbourhood at home? Or was it possible that the Antipope Benedict, ill-contented with Orleans after their interview at Beaucaire, had privately summoned Boucicaut“ce bon Chrestien”to hold Pisa in the King’s name and not in the name of his too powerful guardian? Mysteries! It is as likely, perhaps more likely, that Boucicaut, ever hot-headed, wilful, and officious, asked no permission save his own to accept this new vassal for the King of France. His brain was fired by the thought of converting Pisa to the true obedience; and he feared that she would fall to heretic Florence ere Orleans could pass the Alps.
Gabriel’ Maria Visconti and his mother were ill at their ease in Pisa. He, an elegant, faithless, persuasiveTiranetto(as the Tuscans called him), was often atthe Court of Boucicaut, making various negotiations, among others handing over the Tower and Fort of Leghorn to France.[122]Boucicaut was in high spirits notwithstanding his half disgrace; he had persuaded the Genoese to accept the authority of Benedict XII., “the greatest deed,” writes his biographer, “that has been done in Italy these 200 years.” He hoped soon to convert Leghorn and Pisa; and, in time, to induce Italy to renounce the heinous Italian Antipope.
Suddenly his hold over Pisa ominously slackened.
The Pisans cared little for Pope or Antipope; they were fanatic for liberty. They detested Agnese Mantegazza and her bastard with a Tuscan hatred for the Visconti, treacherous alike to God and man. One day in 1405, while Messer Gabriel’ Maria was absent in Genoa, some Florentine soldiers made a raid on Pisa. The citizens, not without reason, suspected their tyrant of selling them to the Florentines,—old neighbours and rivals yet more odious than the Milanese. They rose as one man fighting for death or liberty inthe streets. No sooner had they driven back the Florentines than they rushed on the Fortress, surging through the narrow corridors, till, in the heart of the palace, they came on Madonna Agnese. A man raised his harquebuss and shot her through the heart. Her son was absent in Genoa. For the moment the Pisans were quit of the Visconti.
The news of the revolt of Pisa flew swiftly to Genoa. The bereaved Tiranetto dispossessed and orphaned, repaired to Boucicaut as to the Lieutenant of his liege-lord, the King of France, asking aid because, as the Chronicle reminds us,“seigneur doibt au besoing secourir son vassal qui le requiert à son aide.”
Boucicaut was dismayed at this first result of his new acquisition. To reduce Pisa by arms would be a ruinous affair. The Marshal comforted as best he could the vassal of his master, and promised to go and reason with the rebels. Forth, therefore, he went from Genoa to a very beautiful place called Porto Venere, in the neighbourhood of Pisa. There a deputation of the insurgents awaited him, and for a long while he harangued them as to the virtues of the dead Madonna Agnese and the merits of the kind and amiable young man whom they had banished.
The Pisans listened respectfully while“moult leur dict de belles paroles,”but when the sermon was over they replied that never should Messer Gabriel’ be their lord again, rather would every man of them be hewn in pieces; but, they went on to say, the Marshal Boucicaut himself should be welcomed and honoured by all the citizens of Pisa, if he would accepther as his fief. “Never,” cried the Marshal, “could I draw such a profit from a friend’s misfortune” (“car ce n’est mie l’usaige des François d’user de tels tours”). And he fell again to praising Messer Gabriel’, but all in vain, for the last word of the Pisans was that, if the Marshal himself would not accept the city for his own, then they prayed him to meet them at Leghorn another day, and there they would give themselves directly to the King of France, accepting a French governor for their waiter, even as the Genoese had done ten years before.
Boucicaut went home, sore perplexed between his duty to his liege and his duty to his vassal. He had gone to Porto Venere to plead the cause of Gabriel’ Maria: and he had supplanted the young man, as it seemed. On the other hand, since it was clear that the Pisans would never re-admit their Tiranetto, and since the city was the fief of France, how could he honourably forbid them to give themselves entirely to their lawful suzerain? And the vision grew in him of a great Mediterranean State, French, supporting French interests in the East—a terror to the Saracens and the men of Barbary, a lamp of Christendom, faithful to the True Obedience, reclaimed for ever from the heresy of the Elect of Rome.
Arrived in Genoa he sent for Messer Gabriel’, and told him the case;“de quoy feult moult dolent Messire Gabriel,”who doubtless wished that he had sent to Porto Venere, a spokesman less eloquent and less engaging. But Boucicaut persuaded him that since he could not hope to leave the city for himself, ’twas better to entrust it to the King of France—who wouldrecompense so generous a vassal with lands as good elsewhere—than to let it fall into the power of an enemy or a neighbour. Gabriel’ Maria agreed—as he must perforce agree—and Boucicaut set out again to meet the rebels at Leghorn.
But the Pisans had never meant to give themselves another master. To gain time, they had played with Boucicaut and had flattered his weak side. They said that on second thoughts they preferred that, before they gave themselves to the King of France, the men of Messer Gabriel’, who were still in the strong places of Pisa, should be expelled the city, and a garrison of French and Genoese sent thither in their stead. The request appeared the less unreasonable as Gabriel’ Maria was himself the King’s vassal, and the Pisans might suspect that their mutual suzerain would only confirm the power of the rejectedTiranetto. Boucicaut agreed, returned to Genoa, and arranged for the exchange of garrisons.
This done the Pisans sent to say the Fortress needed revictualling. Boucicaut, eager to ingratiate his new subjects, despatched his nephew, some gentlemen of his household, with many gentlemen and citizens of Genoa; and a great galley heaped with provisions. The ship sailed down the coast and up the Arno into Pisa; at the quay the embassy descended. They were immediately overpowered by an ambush of Pisans, who seized upon the welcome cargo of the ship, and carried off the crew and the passengers into a dark and villainous prison, using their sufferings as a means to extract higher ransom from the King’s Lieutenant.
Thus amply provisioned at Boucicaut’s expense, thePisans began to feel secure of liberty. They sent to Florence, offering her four of their castles if she would help them to regain Leghorn, where at the moment Boucicaut and Gabriel’ Maria were esconced, and to revenge themselves on both these men. But the Florentines returned a dilatory answer, for they were, in truth, pursuing a more fruitful negotiation.
Florence in 1405 was in the very hey-day of her wool trade, but she had no outlet for her tides of commerce, no port from which to ship her goods to Provence or to Barbary. It was not four Pisan castles, but Pisa herself and the mouth of the Arno that she required. At the same time that the Pisans proposed their bargain to the Florentine Ten, that august body had received an ambassador from Gabriel’ Maria Visconti offering to sell them not only Pisa, but also the frontier castles of Sarzana and Librafatto, which, from the fastnesses of the Apennines, guard the plain in which Pisa and Florence lie. It was worth a great price to secure not only a port, but a fortified frontier in case of an invasion from the north. Florence remembered her ancient terrors when she had lain almost at the mercy of the Duke of Milan. She agreed to pay Messer Gabriel’ the sum of four hundred thousand florins for his rights over his revolted signory. They stipulated, however, that Boucicaut must be acquainted with the transaction, and give it his sanction, otherwise no bargain.
When the persuasive Gabriel’ Maria broke the news to his host, at first the Marshal“qui toujours y avoit la dent,”emphatically refused to consent to the alienationof a Royal fief; he even sent to Pisa to acquaint the rebels with the designs of their ex-tyrant, hoping by this means to induce them to declare themselves the subjects of the King. But the Pisans went on shouting“Libertà.”Meanwhile Gabriel’ Maria and the Florentines set the matter before the Marshal in another light. For Messer Gabriel’—a clever person—advised the Florentines to become vassals to the Crown of France for the fief of Pisa. The Florentines fell in with the suggestion, which carried visible weight with the Boucicaut. And the Marshal was left to consider the matter.
The Florentines asked Leghorn as well as Pisa, but Boucicaut was obstinate in his hold on the nearer port. He could not yield Leghorn without grave prejudice to Genoa. But Pisa was his only in name. Could he not keep Leghorn, the substance, and as the price of Pisa, the shadow, exact the fealty of the Florentines to France and to the true Pope? Illuminated by this bright idea Boucicaut proposed the following terms to Florence:
1. The Florentines shall have Pisa and all its lands except the Castle of Leghorn; but they must swear not to interfere with the carrying trade of Genoa, nor to make traffic by sea in any other ships than those of Genoa.
2. A month after the reduction of Pisa the Florentines must declare their adhesion to Pope Benedict XIII., and charge themselves with the conversion of Pisa.
3. If, six months after the said reduction of Pisa, the Elect of Rome still persist in his error, the Florentines,the French, and the Genoese shall all make war on him together.[123]
4. That the ratification of King and Council shall be asked for this agreement.
The Florentines agreed, and messengers were despatched to France, where there was great joy in Council at thus receiving two Signories for one. The King confirmed the agreement (it is said) by letters-patent, which were sent to Genoa and Florence. The Ten paid certain sums (as we learn from a later letter), to Gabriel’ Maria, and other moneys to Boucicaut; and then in earnest the Florentines resumed the siege of Pisa.
Famine fought with them and pestilence; yet valiant Pisa proved irreductible. Month after month sped on in fruitless heroism, and a year after the resumption of the siege the Florentines were still indefatigably attacking, the Pisans heroically defending. Then the beleaguered city sent by privy ways a messenger to Ladislas, King of Naples, offering herself to him if he would defend her. The King promised, but did nothing.
After a month or so the Pisans smuggled out a second messenger, this time to France, who offered thecity to the Duke of Burgundy on the same terms. Mindful of the agreement of last year which assigned Pisa to Florence, Burgundy hesitated; and, perceiving his perplexity, the Pisan envoys“qui assez sçavoient le tour de leur baston,”addressed themselves to certain of the Councillors of Orleans, and promised the city to him; whereupon the said Councillors induced Orleans and Burgundy, enemies as they were, to go hand in hand to the poor bewildered King and beseech him to grant them leave to accept the homage of Pisa. Charles, doubtless, was not quite in his right mind. The deed granting Pisa to Burgundy and Orleans[124]is signed “For the King” by the Count of Tancarville and other princes. An ancient dependence upon Burgundy, a blind affection for Orleans (“rien n’eut refusé à son frère”), united with hisperplexed and feeble memory, to obliterate the treaty of last year. The King forgot his new vassals, forgot the Pope, the schemes of Boucicaut, the money that had been paid him by the Florentines on account of the agreement. He granted Pisa to Burgundy and Orleans, who wrote to the Florentines that they must raise the siege at once, and sent to Boucicaut bidding him assist the Pisans.
The previous difficulties of Boucicaut had been as nothing compared to this dilemma. How could he refuse his service to the King, his lord and suzerain? How, on the other hand, could he break his plighted word? The vassal and the man of honour struggled together in his breast; and from that long and cruel duel the man of honour emerged triumphant. So Boucicaut refused to desert his Florentine allies, refused to assist the Royal fief of Pisa.
As the Florentines pressed closer and closer round the beleaguered city, the Pisans for the third time contrived to smuggle out a messenger who was to make his way as best he could to Asti (the city of Orleans), and thence to France to beseech the King to send a messenger and reinforcements.[125]But the Pisan envoy was discovered in the Florentine camp, and Capponi, the General, drowned him in the sea.
So that when the news of his interception came to Paris, it was too late for aught but indignation. “The Florentine merchants had to suffer for it,” says Corio; and Desjardins (in his introduction to the Tuscan Statipassers), expresses his astonishment at the obstacles laid in the way of Florentine trade by MarshalBoucicaut that year. For human nature is not consistent, and though Boucicaut had indignantly refused to desert his allies of Florence, none the less he was wrath at their success, which meant the injury of France.
For on the 10th of October, 1406,[126]a Florentine army marched into Pisa, garrisoned the citadels, established their government, and marched back with many hostages to Florence. Pisa was honourably lost to France.[127]Pisa was lost, and great was the sting and smart of it. Railing and bitter names flung at Boucicaut, detention of the Florentine Ambassadors byOrleans,Orleans,[128]wrath of the King himself, were eachand all wholly unavailing. Florence was the King’s ally and too great a power to be rashly assailed; and Florence was firm in Pisa.
Had Orleans lived, he might indeed have undertaken an expedition into Italy. But in the middle of his disappointment he was murdered as we know. Messer Gabriel’ Maria went to Milan, where he lived half a captive,[129]half a traitor for some while; and then took refuge again in Genoa. But in the year 1409 being detected by Boucicaut in a plot of singular treachery against the French, he was ruthlesslybeheaded. Three years later, in 1412, after Gabriele’s death that plot succeeded. Boucicaut and the French were expelled from Genoa; and the wars of Burgundy and Armagnac, the woes of Agincourt and the long invasion of the English, for thirty years diverted the French from their endeavours to colonize beyond the Alps.
The Florentine conquest was the beginning of ninety years of slavery for Pisa—a terrible slavery, heavy with exaggerated imports, bitter with the tolerated plunder of private Florentines, humiliating with continual espionage. Ruin fell upon the lovely city; and as the waters of the sea crept slowly back over the reclaimed Maremma, they sapped the foundations of her fairest palaces. Malaria and decay went hand in hand along the streets; though round the ruined town, the only whole thing there, the strong forts of Florence, proclaimed the wealth and power of the oppressor. It was not that the Florentines were avaricious; they spent abundantly and lavishly on fortifications and garrisons for their soldiers; on a university in Pisa for their sons; and they paid the most imaginative of living Florentine painters to put his frescoes on the walls of the Pisan Campo Santo. But they spent their money in the Master’s way, declaring and sustaining the glory of Florence rather than alleviating the miseries of Pisa. And the Pisans themselves were unable either to supply the omissions of Florence, or to direct and advise a more efficient expenditure. They had descendedinto a nation of poor artizans, for all their ancient trades were now forbidden to them. Florence had secured the first place for her own manufactures, by absolutely prohibiting the wool-weaving, silk-spinning, ship-building, in which the Pisans had for so many centuries excelled. Moreover no Pisan might barter merchandise by land or sea. Restricted to the commonest handicrafts, they lost the resource of wealth; deprived of public office, denied the most ordinary civil rights, they sank into a mute and long-enduring slavery, secretly nourishing a spark of flame in their rebellious hearts.
Pisa was the Ireland of Florence, captive and yet unvanquished. Ever ready to revolt, never for an hour forgetful of her antique superiority. By means of the many exiles that Florence expelled from home, she kept continually in touch with the enemies of Florence. Men expelled for private crimes—the meanest of the Pisans—turned patriots in exile and dedicated the best of their souls to the service of an unhappy country. The Florentines, prosperous and successful, were divided among themselves into half-a-dozen different factions; and patriotism for them meant largely a pious self-satisfaction dashed with party principles. But the magic of an unfortunate glory, the pathos that hangs over the place of one’s birth when it has once been great and is fallen into ruin—this personal and omnipotent sentiment inspired every rank and every kind of Pisan. There was none of them that would have shrunk from any heroism, or (as it seemed to the Florentines) from any treachery, in order to reinstate his country in her ancient grandeur.
It was with Venice and with Milan that the Pisans held especial practice. It mattered little to them that at heart these two powers were deadly enemies; that ever since the death of Filippo Maria Visconti the Venetians had been plotting with Orleans to destroy the house of Sforza; that Lodovico il Moro left no chance unchallenged to limit the pretensions of his Adriatic rival. The Pisans were of neither party; their one political tenet was hatred of their conquerors, and (as a little later they declared) of the two, they preferred the Devil to the Florentines.
Such patience as theirs, ceaselessly labouring underground, never wearied, militant but not aggressive, does not fail to meet an opportunity. At last a favourable chance was offered to the Pisans. The King of France who in 1483 had disregarded the invitation of the Venetians, accepted, ten years later, the persuasions of Lodovico of Milan; and in the autumn of 1494, the armies of Charles VIII. poured into Italy.
It had been the custom of the Florentines, in times of war and danger, to call the heads of every Pisan household into Florence, as hostages for the good behaviour of their families and fellow citizens.
But in the autumn of 1494, Piero de’ Medici who forgot everything, who had forgotten to garrison his frontier, forgot to call the Pisan hostages to Florence, although the French were steadily advancing on Tuscany and the Pisans eager to rebel. Every Pisan household was intact at home on that memorable 30th of October when, in the snowy camp of the French outside Sarzana, Piero de’ Medici handed tothe King of France the keys of the Tuscan fortresses. It was of course provided that Charles should restore the cities to the Florentines on his return from Naples: but many things might happen in those troublous times that would outweigh the value of an oath. In the advent of King Charles, the Pisans found the opportunity, so long, so patiently, so ardently desired; and the French army and the hope of liberty entered the unhappy city hand in hand.
It was the 8th of November, and a Sunday evening towards sunset, when the army of Charles VIII. arrived in Pisa. The slanting rays of the autumn sun lit up a brilliant spectacle, bathed in the soft aërial richness of the miraculously warm St. Martin’s summer which, in 1494, succeeded to the rigours of the earlier months. Tired with their march across the wintry Apennines, the foreign soldiers found in Pisa a city full of friends. Tables were laid in the streets where all might sup on wine and meat and enjoy the hospitality of the city. Under foot the branches of pine and boughs of autumn roses exhaled their fresh aroma; and the ruined walls of the cracked and damp-stained palaces were hidden by the great squares of pale-crimson silk, gold brocade, and Turkey carpets that were hung from every window.
Along these altered streets, embellished for the festival, a train of priests, in stole and chasuble, carrying their holiest relics, went out to meet theKing. But this, the arranged and official feature of his reception, faded, on the event, into absolute unimportance. All took place at first as had been designed. The great motley travel-stained crowd of the French army came trampling down the boughs of pine and roses; the priests met the soldiers; and finally the King came riding on his great black horse, Savoy, under the blue-silk canopy sustained by the nobles of Pisa: but when the people caught sight of this little young man, with the large head, bright eyes, thin legs, high shoulders, and quaint amiable air of elfin ugliness, then they forgot the dignity of an official reception. This was the King of France! This was the all-potent power which, at different moments of history had stretched its invited and benevolent ægis over Asti, Genoa, Savona, nay, even over Naples and haughty Florence, to shelter them from the cruelty of a tyrannic neighbour. But instead of the dread magnificent symbolic monarch they had expected to behold, lo, a benevolent, rather grotesque little youth, with the most shining and enthusiastic eyes, a kind ugly face, engaging rather timid manners, and a total lack of that anti-human splendour which these enslaved republicans had expected in a king. A great wave of love, of anticipated gratitude swept through the hearts of all these people: he was, he must be, their hero, their deliverer. It was with tears of passion streaming down their cheeks that men, women, even little children, rushed into the ranks of the astonished soldiery, seeing round each weather-beaten face the shimmer of an aureole, pressing, hurrying, thronging towards the King—crying all togetherin their sobbing voices“Libertate, Libertate!”while such as could master a word or two of French, stammered in their soft lisping Pisan accent, an appeal in the language of his distant country:“Liberté, liberté, cher Sire!”There was no affectation in this outburst of enthusiasm, nay, almost of idolatry. Any man who was stronger than Florence was a possible hero to the Pisans. The great motley army of Charles proved his force, and in the rugged amiable faces of master and of men the Pisans recognized the faculty of sympathy.
The Pisans had been to some extent prepared to find this virtue in the French by the correspondence of the Pisan exiles with Lodovico of Milan, whose trump-card was to secure if possible the liberation of Pisa by the French, and then, after their return to France, to offer himself as protector to the abandoned city. This plan was so well-contrived that, if only the first impulse were given, the machine must go on of itself; for the Pisans would certainly accept their liberty, if the French could be moved to grant it them; and, equally certainly, the French, after their return to France, could not afford to hold Pisa against not only Florence, but Milan, Venice, Genoa, and Lucca, who would none of them submit to hand a Mediterranean port to Charles. Lodovico was convinced that the Pisans would prefer the untried yoke of Milan to the hated bonds of Florence. The great thing was to give the first impulse.
To this end the Duke of Milan, when he had quitted the French camp the previous Tuesday, had left behind him Galeazzo di San Severino, thebrilliant young husband of his natural daughter. Galeazzo had instructions to do his utmost in every way to induce the French to protect the Pisans in a rebellion against Florence. He did not waste so excellent an opportunity. No sooner were Charles and his nobles in the Medici palace and the uncouth French soldiers housed like sons and brothers in the homes of Pisa, than the adroit young San Severinesco called a private council of the chief Pisan nobles. He advised them, as a son of Milan, and as a friend and well-wisher of their own, to throw themselves at once and utterly upon the generosity of France. This was a tempting counsel; yet there were some, and among them the warlike Giulio della Rovere, Cardinal of Saint Peter ad Vincula, that were for patience. “What shall we do when France has left the city?” they asked of one another. “Milan will protect you!” cried Messer Galeazzo, with a burst of inspiring confidence.
The Pisans hesitated only for a moment. From Venice or from Milan they had always hoped to gain their liberty at last, or at the least a change of masters. France, backed by Milan, seemed the most desirable deliverer: the ancient suzerain of the city supported by its latest friend. It was difficult at that moment to imagine a stronger conjunction in Italy; for in 1494 Charles was spoken of as the second Charlemagne, and no one ventured to set a bound to the triumphs of Lodovico of Milan. “All that he desires,” the Venetian secretary was writing almost at this very time, “all that he desires, Fortune has conceded him, and all his plans come true.” ForFrance and Milan to protect Pisa against the rest of Italy in 1494, was as if Russia and a stronger Servia to-day were to join their forces to secure Bulgaria against the anger of the other Balkan States.
Venice for a brief moment had sunk into the shade. She, who had manœuvred so deeply to unseat Arragon and Sforza by the help of France, beheld, to her immense chagrin, Charles VIII. following her own suggestions as to the enterprise of Naples with Lodovico Sforza as his mentor and ally. Milan had taken the place of Venice in the French Council; Milan, which the French should have conquered as their earliest prey. “It is extraordinary how that man succeeds,” wrote Marin Sanuto. “Yet it may chance that he outwit himself at last. Please God, he come to a good end! But I for one do not believe it!”
At Pisa Lodovico registered a new success. It was in vain that Vincula (for the first time in his life, says Guicciardini, the author of quiet counsels) represented to the assembled nobles the danger of the step. They were beside themselves with the hope of liberty; and indeed, all the French agree in telling us that their condition was truly desperate. “Piteous, and lamentable,” says Desrey, and Commines, a staunch Florentine in principle, allows that they were handled as cruelly as slaves. To men in such a plight, and counselled by a person so important as San Severino, no risk appears too great to run that leaves a chance for liberty.
And so that very night the Pisans, still in their gala-dresses, but with torn hair, faces of mourning, clasped hands and streaming eyes, thronged into thecouncil-chamber of the astonished King. “It was lamentable,” writes aneye-witness, “to heareye-witness, “to hearthem tell the wrongs and grievances they endured.” It was as if, in the middle of their gala, one of them, with a significant irony, had raised the corner of the pale silk gala-hangings and had revealed the mouldering stone, the unsightly ruin underneath. As the Pisans exposed the real degradation of their slavery, the facile rash humanity of the French was touched to tears; and when Messer Simone Orlandi (an accomplished gentleman who could express himself in French) had finished his recital, it was not only the Pisans who, pale with indignation and with pity, turned to the King of France on the throne seated of Medici, and cried out to him,“Liberté, liberté, cher Sire!”
At this point an accomplished Legist, a Counsellor of the Parliament in Dauphiné, named Ribot, who also was a Master of Requests at Court, turned to the King and said: it was indeed a lamentable case, and that never, for sure, were any other men so hardly used as these. The King himself—touched to the heart, as were all these frank and simple Frenchmen, by the unsuspected misery beneath the gold brocades of this fantastic Italy, and not quite understanding (as Commines suggests) what it was the Pisans meant by this word Liberty—answered vaguely that he would be content they should enjoy it. This at least is the mild version of Commines, who was absent in Venice at the time; but Pierre Desrey, actually present at the scene, puts a stronger warrant in the mouth of Charles:“Il les assura de les conserver dans leurs franchises.”
That night the Florentines in Pisa—men in office, judges, merchants, and soldiers of the garrison—were driven at the sword’s point out of the rebellious city. The statue of Marzocco on the bridge was hurled in a thousand pieces into the muddy Arno; the standard of Florence was dragged and trampled in the mire; and bonfires until morning hailed the discomfiture of the King’s allies. On the morrow after noon Charles left the city. He had placed a garrison of three hundred French soldiers in the new citadel; he had appointed three commissioners to superintend affairs; but he had taken no steps to impose the least restraint of civil order upon this impassioned and suddenly enfranchised people. Fortunately the nobles of the town took the matter into their wiser hands. Twenty-four hours after the entry of the French, Pisa was a free Republic governed by a Gonfalonier, six Priors, and a Balia of Ten, with a new militia of its own, and, for the first time in eight and eighty years, a Pisan garrison in the ancient citadel.
If we ask, What right had the King of France to set at liberty the subjects of his allies, lent to him in his need as a temporary gage? we find the question difficult to answer. To statesmen like Commines or Briçonnet there was something shocking and dishonourable in the liberation of Pisa by the King, something that the tenderest palliation for generous youth and inexperience could not attempt tojustify.justify.On the other hand, to fresh enthusiastic spirits, such as Ligny or the King himself, there was a degree of inhumanity in leaving the Pisans to their obvious slavery which no code of political honour could extenuate.
These two parties, and these two counsels, marched with the King out of Pisa into Empoli, where he slept that Monday night—doubtless in the same bad inn that had so poorly housed the adventurous Medici just fifteen nights ago. When, on the Tuesday, the King arrived at Signa he heard that the city of Florence was in revolt. Florence and Pisa, unknown to one another, had each regained their liberty upon the selfsame day. For when the King of France came in sight of the group of domes and towers along the Arno, his young guest at Sarzana, so recently the lord of all this beauty, was escaping to Bologna across the mountains in disguise with a price upon his head.
Charles, the pupil of the Duke of Milan, was not well inclined to Florence; and he was not propitiated by the fact that Piero de’ Medici had been expelled the city on account of the great concessions he had made to France at the time of his fugitive visit to Sarzana. A month ago the King had declared that Piero alone was his enemy, and that the city was his friend; since the 30th of October he had changed his mind it was the pliant Medici who now appeared his friend, and his anger was against rebellious Florence.
Yet what had Florence done more audacious than that which Charles himself had sanctioned in the Pisans? Florence had expelled the Medici; Pisa theFlorentines, almost at the selfsame hour. But the fact that the Florentines condemned the loan of the fortresses hardened the heart of the King, conscious that by the liberation of the Pisans he had justified the greatest of their fears. This was, in fact, the direst harm with which an enemy could threaten Florence; and Charles had done it despite his name of friend. It was only natural that he should nourish a grievance against the ally whom he had injured; and when on the 17th of November the French entered Florence, it was remarked that the King rode through the streets, lance on thigh, with the bearing of an offended conqueror. His mind was as haughty as his mien, and he was prepared to claim from the Republic the independence of Pisa and the restoration of Piero to the chief place in the government.
But the Florentines were no less resolute than Charles. Capponi made his famous threat, and the King, after ten days of vain parade of force, swore a solemn treaty with the Florentines upon the 25th of the month. By the terms of this convention it was arranged that Pisa and Leghorn were to be left in the hands of the King till his return from Naples, and then given back to Florence; the King was to decide between Genoa and Florence as to the final disposal of Sarzana and Pietro Santa; the King was to say no more till March concerning the restoration of the Medici, when the Signory, if he desired, would reconsider the matter, and meanwhile, by Royal request, the price was taken off the tyrants’ heads, and the wife and child of Piero were permitted to remain in Florence. The Signory agreed to pay the King, inthree terms, the sum of 120,000 ducats towards the expense of the campaign; but, for us, the most important proviso of this treaty (which the student may consult in the first volume of Desjardin’s“Négociations”) is one that secured a complete amnesty for Pisa. Moreover Florence promised, in favour of the King, to rule that city in the future with a more liberal and a gentler hand.
It was not three weeks since Charles had promised to maintain the Pisans in their liberty, and those unhappy patriots who could not penetrate (Commines declares that no Italian ever could) the shifting confusion of the Court, did not know, and would have little cared to understand, that Beaucaire and Ligny had held the balance yesterday, but Gannay, Gié, and Briçonnet to-day. The only consolation that they could have found in this unstability of favour was the chance that their advocates might soon again succeed to power, and as a fact they had made a great point in securing the sympathy of Ligny (the King’s cousin) and Piennes—two young gentlemen of the King’s own age who were his inseparable companions, wore armour like his own and the Royal colours. These two gallants counted on their side the Seneschal of Beaucaire, one of the King’s two especial counsellors. But the other, Briçonnet, supported the Florentine party. The elder and more diplomatic statesmen, such as, Gié, Gannay, and Commines, were all on the side of Florence.
Such was the position of the Court when, in the January of 1495, the Pisans sent to Rome, as a last desperate advocate of their extremity, a gentleman oftheir city, skilled in French, one Messer Burgundio Legolo, or Lolo as the slurring Pisan voices gave the name. The King received the ambassador graciously, but in the presence of the Florentine envoys; and the party of pity, and the party of honour (if so we may name the factions of Ligny and of Briçonnet) were both assembled when the Pisan advocate began to address the King:
“Now for nearly ninety years,”[130]began Burgundio Lolo, “the city of Pisa, once the greatest in Italy, once carrying her Empire into the recesses of the East, has suffered the yoke of an intolerable servitude. The cruel avarice of Florence has brought our city into so great a depth of desolation that her streets are almost empty of inhabitants, for the most of her citizens, unable to endure this grinding slavery, have gone into a voluntary exile abandoning their native land. Those that remain, incapable of plucking from their hearts the love of country, have indeed renounced all else that renders life endurable. The acerb and cruel exactions of foreign taxes, the insolent rapine of private Florentines, the injustice that forbids us by art or trade or public office to recruit our fallen fortunes, have left us an empty life, plundered of all enjoyment: nay, dangerous even and deadly, for the clayey marshes that our ancestors kept with exact and pious diligence, are now so little drained, so long neglected that the waters of Maremma sap our fairest palaces and our churches, our houses, our public buildings fall into ruins while the miasma of thosestagnant waters breeds a grievous fever in our midst. And where shall we turn to forget our misery and our dishonour? we, who are denied an outlet to our energy and our ambition? As we pass the void hours of our leisure in the ruined streets of our once glorious city, shall we not feel the pity of the ruin? shall we look unmoved upon the dishonoured remnant of the magnificence of our ancestors? Nay, since it is no shame to Pisa, after a long renown to be fallen in decay—because in all the eminence of this world there is inherent this fatality of corruption—were it not wiser, even for her conquerors, in musing on her ancient greatness to turn their hearts to pity, rather than to use so cruel an advantage over a city in whose decadence they should, in truth, behold the inevitable presage of their own?
“Alas, so cruel, so insatiable, so impious has been the Florentine dominion that, rather than return to that slavery, we would forfeit life itself. And now at last a hope—a dear hope of liberty—has dawned upon us; and we beseech you, O King of France, with tears—not only these few visible tears of mine, but, invisible and ample, the lamentations of all the distant city—here at your feet, O King, I beseech you to remember what justice, what piety, what clemency of a magnanimous prince would shine for ever round your name should you choose to be the Father and Deliverer of Pisa, rather than the Minister of the slavery of Florence.”
There was a little silence. In these accents men seemed to hear an echo of that natural law that lives immutable behind the convenience of nations—νομὶμαἄγραπτα κᾶσφαλὴ θεῶν. The King’s face glowed; and the enthusiasm of Ligny and Piennes was reflected in the demeanour of Beaucaire, a rash and low-born person moved by pity, moved by Pisan money also (if we are to believe Guicciardini), moved certainly by rivalry of Briçonnet. The other party waited somewhat anxiously for the Florentine ambassador to answer Lolo. Soderini, Bishop of Volterra, was a practical and eminent statesman, but on that excited audience his words fell without wings to reach their hearts.
Florence, he said, had bought Pisa with good money. She had been kinder than she need have been, for when the wilful Pisans yielded, half-dead with famine, she had brought more victuals than firearms to finish their subjection. She had the right to use her chattel as she would, and had she been a thousand times more harsh who should come between a man and his own? It was ridiculous to prate of the ancient grandeur of Pisa—God had made an end of that long before the Florentines, and she had been a poor bargain to Florence ever since the hour of her purchase.
So spoke the hard-headed Bishop of Volterra. But even as reported by a Florentine historian these arguments do not make any great effect; and it was quite clear, as he avows, that the Pisan advocate had made a far deeper impression on the King. And as, that very week, Briçonnet was sent to Florence upon a diplomatic mission, the party of Pisa remained triumphant in the camp where with (Commines in Venice and Briçonnet in Tuscany) Beaucaire and Ligny andPiennes held for the moment the whole of Royal favour.
Louis de Ligny-Luxembourg, Grand Chamberlain of France, cousin of the King through his Savoyard mother, was the son of that unfortunate Comte de St. Pol decapitated by Louis XI. He was not only one of the great nobles of France, but one of the first gentlemen in Europe, for his house was ancient and illustrious by descent and especially fortunate in marriage. Nevertheless the young man was poor; yet owing to his charming manners, his courage and adroitness, he was a most important factor not only in the Court of the King but in the Court of Orleans. The Count of Ligny, chivalrous, amorous, and pitiful, flits, for a brief moment, like the figure of Youth in an allegory—across the serious stage of the Italian wars; and his tragic childhood and his melancholy marriage seem to throw out with a brighter lustre the intrinsic brilliance of that scintillating presence.
He was, say the French chroniclers,“prince gentil vaillant, adroit et généreux,”a pattern for nobles and the beloved of ladies. Guicciardini, looking from another point of view, calls him juvenile, inexperienced, and light. To quote a final authority, Commines briefly gives the reason for our dwelling on him: “Above all others,” says he, “this young gentleman especially favoured the Pisans’ cause.”
Ligny had ever been a politician of Orleans’ party, that earlier faction so long stimulated by intriguing Venice, which aimed not only at the conquest ofNaples, but also at securing Milan. With these two great possessions at either end of Italy, it was clear that Pisa would make an excellent half-way house. Pity for the Pisans was probably the essential motor of Ligny’s action, yet there is no doubt he desired to further the policy of Orleans. And before the winter was over, Ligny’s marriage gave him a personal interest in the game.
In the early spring of 1495, Charles VIII. had arrived in Naples. With that fatal lack of policy which was destined to frustrate a more than mortal triumph, he began to lavish the possessions of the Neapolitan aristocracy upon his favourites and countrymen. A wiser King would have conciliated the native barons and wedded their interest to his own, so that when he came to leave the country he should leave behind him a whole nobility of viceroys. But Charles only thought of rewarding his favourites of the hour. The daughter of the Prince of Altamura, the last of her house, the heiress of immense possessions, was reserved for Ligny.
Madonna Lionora was a young princess of more than common interest, the last Altamura in the direct line, the last of that race which claimed to be descended from the Three Kings of the East. It was easy to make the Count of Ligny virtually the Prince of Altamura by marrying him to this young girl. This was done, but Ligny was barely seven days the bridegroom of his lovely Mage when the King, alarmed at the preparations of the League, determined to march northwards. Ligny of course went with him, leaving his bride behind him in a convent. And on the long roadnorthwards the desire to be near his young wife and his new possessions gave a keener zest to the scheme of a Central Italian French dependency of which Ligny himself should be made the governor. When the army reached Siena, though the city was a fief of the Holy Roman Empire, and therefore implicated in the Anti-Gallic league, none the less the Republic declared for France, demanding Ligny for her governor. The young man left a garrison there under Gaucher de Tinteville, and went with the King, hoping to pursue a like policy in Pisa.
The King had not yet decided whether he would halt in Pisa or in Florence. On the eve of Corpus Christi, Wednesday, the 17th of June, the French reached Poggibonsi where the roads divide. Here they halted for a day to keep the festival, and here the King was met by no less a personage than Savonarola, accompanied by fifty notables of Florence. This at the moment must have appeared terribly against the plans of Ligny, for if there was a man in Italy whom the French regarded with a curious, half-superstitious respect, it was this authoritative friar, with the harsh sweetness in his voice, the saturnine head, the asper and loving expression in his painful smile, who, as one authorized of heaven, had foretold their advent before they were persuaded to the step.
Poggibonsi, as I have said, is the last considerable town before the ways divide that lead to Pisa and to Florence. At such a cross-road was also the mind of Charles. Which turning should he take? “Keep your vows, restore the cities, respect Florence, lest ye incur the awful judgment of God, whose name, unlessye keep your oath, ye took in vain upon the altar of St. John in Florence!” So thundered Savonarola; and there were many things in favour of this plan; firstly, the strong personal influence of the prophetic Ferrarese; secondly, the fact that Charles was sore in need of ready money, and hoped to borrow it in Florence; thirdly, at Poggibonsi he had heard that war was begun, that Orleans was in Novara, and, therefore, he himself and his handful of troops in desperate need of the Florentine army. A little persuasion and no doubt the King would have gone to Florence; but Savonarola scorned to persuade, he menaced. The city, he said, was armed to the teeth; she would receive the King rather as a prodigal than a conqueror. If he wished to conciliate her, let him keep his word; then, but only then, she would shower her benefits upon the elect of God.
This accent was not so moving to the King as the entreaties of Burgundio Lolo. Pisa, as Charles knew very well, would receive him as a hero and a deliverer—but Pisa had neither men nor money.
In these uncertainties two days went by; the King alternately assuring Savonarola that he would keep his word to Florence, and protesting that he had not the heart to break that earlier promise given to the Pisans. Out of this hobble there was no way except by broken vows and treachery. It was a delicate question for a chivalrous prince, nourished, like Charles, on Amadis and Arthur: for to keep faith with the Pisans would be to ruin his ally; and to keep faith with Florence to hand over to slavery a people who had solemnly placed themselves under his protection. Nor werethe political advantages quite easy to decide. Florence, of course, offered men and money sorely needed; but Pisa offered an asylum in case of reverses further north, or in case the Florentines should prove as faithless as the rest of the Italians. For Pisa was not merely a friendly city, but a city actually in the hands of France. This was certainly an argument—“nevertheless,” says Guicciardini, “I doubt if anything so logical could influence the King. Much more potent with such as he were the tears, and entreaties of the Pisans.” Those tears, invisible and ample as the waters of life, Burgundio Lolo had quoted to the King at Rome; and after all these months the memory of the Pisan advocate pleaded successfully against the actual influence of Savonarola.
At last a straw decided the unsteady balance. At a village called Campana, or Cassino, near to Florence, the King heard of a cruel raid committed by the Florentines upon the Pisan town of Pontevalle. There had been French soldiers in the fort; but when the French archers came up to the rescue they found the little place untenanted save by dying men, wheeling birds of prey, and corpses. The King was furious against the Florentines; yet it was with the lightness of heart that follows the taking of a difficult decision that he set his back against the town,“et gaiement s’en alla dedans Pise.”
History is not decided by oratory. The eloquence of Lolo, the menaces of the Friar, had conspired with amomentary distress and anger, to lodge the French in Pisa. It still remained to see what Charles would do. The first move promised little; in order to guard against a second surrender to the impulse of the moment Charles sent a messenger to Florence, and promised to speak the final word, only when he should have arrived in Lucca.
But if history is in fact decided by Necessity—that grim and resolute Anankê who cuts the most different characters to her pattern, making of a Louis XI., and a Henry V., so individual as princes, no more, when once the coronation day is over, than able continuers of the policy she imposes; if Necessity and the slow evolution of ideas control the individual, and leave him scarce more independent than the nail, which moves indeed, but only moves to follow the control of the attracting magnet; yet it is not merely by the unbroken sequence of Law that the world progresses. Comets and cataclysms, plagues and earthquakes, and in the moral world, sudden, fierce contagions of enthusiasm or ecstasy interrupt and modify their course.
Driven by a momentary resentment, a gust of pity and remembrance, into Pisa, Charles was no sooner in the city than the King resumed his empire over the Man. He sent, as I have said, an embassy to Florence, reassuring as best he could the potent and wealthy city, putting off his answer, and asking meanwhile for an instalment of money and three hundred lances. The Florentines sent no money and only eighty lances, and Charles perceived that the least extra strain would break the slender thread thatstill bound her to the French. Henceforth he steeled his royal heart against impolitic pity. It was in vain that he looked on the statue of himself upon the bridge, embellished in sculpture, resolute, heroic, Saviour of the City, trampling underfoot the Lion of Florence and the Viper of Milan. It was in vain, that, at the entrance of the army, the little children of Pisa dressed in white satin sown withfleur-de-lisrushed to the gates to meet the soldiers, crying in their high, sweet, confident voices,“Viva Francia!”It was in vain that, in the early morning, as the King returned from the intenerating Sacrament of the Mass, he met in the streets the fairest ladies of the town, barefoot, dishevelled, dressed like slaves in coarse mourning garments, who dropped before him on their knees, sighing and wailing for liberty.
The most that Charles could do was to defer, to temporize, to vacillate; he could not be brought to pledge himself to more. He, with a remnant of his army, was alone in an inimical country, subject at any moment to encounter the forces of Venice, Milan, Spain, the Emperor and the Pope; meanwhile Florence was his one efficient friend. Florence to him had been a leal and honest ally; dare he desert her? ought he to repay her sacrifice with ruin? And yet this faithful Florence had behaved to Pisa in a fashion cruel and anti-human beyond words. And Pisa also had trusted him; Pisa was tenderly his friend. Could he fling the wounded hare which had taken refuge under his royal mantle to the fierce eyes and gaping jaws of the hound which served him?
The question wrung the conscience of the man.But, for the King, the matter was easily decided. His first duty was to his country and his troops; Florence could help him to reach the forces of Orleans in safety and with some degree of glory; but Pisa could furnish no active aid at all.
Meanwhile, the army had become fired with entirely different convictions. Suddenly King Charles, the adored conqueror, the second Charlemagne, the unlettered and ugly little captain whose soldiers’ devotion so amazed the Milanese, beheld himself in the midst of his troops almost without authority. The army, like one man, rose and spoke on behalf of the Pisans.
Insulated in this shelter of Pisa, with the offended Florentines continually harassing his outposts, with in front the fastnesses of the Apennines, and (God alone knew where) the five-toothed Trap of the League into which his little force must fall—in this terrible complication Charles beheld himself menaced by no less than the mutiny of his own army. And for what? Not on account of the light head and imprudent heart that had brought this handful of soldiers to fight such fearful odds. This rebellion was inspired purely by the pity inspired by men whose situation was certainly less hazardous than the peril of their indignant champions.
But all day long the army surged in front of the palace clamouring “Liberty! liberty!” in more virile voices than the Pisans’. The army infected the Court; and one day, when the King sat playing draughts alone with M. de Piennes, forty or fifty gentlemen of the Royal household with their partisansforced their way into his chamber and declaimed the woes of Pisa. Charles was indignant, and spoke so roughly, that they took their persuasions and menaces elsewhere. Even the poor archers, says Commines, moved by pity for the tears and lamentations of the Pisans, threatened those whom they believed persuaded the King to keep his oath at Florence. A private archer menaced Briçonnet; others used rude language to Marshal de Gié; and for three nights President Gannay durst not sleep in his lodgings. The Frenchmen infected the Swiss; and these ferocious giants, who a few days later should massacre man, woman, and child at Pontremoli, proved themselves as passionate in their apology for liberty. “Do you want money?” cried young Sallezart their paymaster. “Is it mere money that leads you to this infamy? Take rather our collars, our buckles, and our silver ornaments; stop our wages and spend the sum of our arrears. We will pay you as well as Florence! only set the Pisans free!”
In front of such enthusiasm Charles dared not avow a contrary decision. It was in vain that Briçonnet and his party urged instant fidelity to Florence. It was useless for Commines to observe that keeping faith with Florence did not preclude a sentiment of tenderest concern for Pisa, though after all, as the excellent diplomat observed, “Divers cities in Italy that be in subjection are as evil-entreated as she”—Sie ist nicht die Erste. Charles would promise nothing to Pisa, nothing definite; but also he would make no vows to Florence. He knew that the task before his little army was of the sternest and of theseverest, physically impossible to discouraged and disaffected troops. Therefore he wrote to the Florentines saying that he would give his answer, not at Lucca, but at Asti; and while, in his heart, as we shall see, he meant to make the best of terms for Pisa, and then restore her to the Florentines, he left for the nonce, a French garrison in the city, three hundred picked men, difficultly spared, under the governorship of Robert de Balzac Seigneur d’Entragues. Thus, by a judicious temporizing, Charles hoped to untie the Gordian knot. By turning his back on the difficulty he thought he had suppressed it. And yet, were these three hundred men left behind in Pisa, likely to become more obedient to an absent monarch? Was Entragues, a man of Orleans’ household, Ligny’s candidate, likely to carry out the views of Commines or of Briçonnet against the avowed policy of his master and his patron? Charles, it may be supposed, did not ask himself these questions. He bestowed on Entragues, not merely the governorship of Pisa, but the command of the frontier castles, and, without further hesitation, left the town.
Robert de Balzac, Seigneur d’Entragues, was, says Commines, a very ill-conditioned fellow. But a similar opinion has been entertained by many historians for the most successful of their political opponents. Robert de Balzac was the son of Jean d’Entragues and his wife the sister of the famous Comte de Dammartin. Robert was a very young man when the accession of Louis XI. brought about the disgrace and exile of his all-powerful uncle. Every student ofhistory is familiar with the legend of that great disgrace: how the estates of the unhappy minister were divided among the favourites at Court; how his wife with her suckling child was left destitute and hunted out of all her castles; how forsaken by all her friends, she wandered like an excommunicated woman along the lanes of Dammartin begging for her bread, until a poor day-labourer, Anthoine Le Fort, took the abandoned Countess to his hovel and sheltered her and her baby, eighteen months old, the starving little godson of the Duke of Bourbon. Jeanne was still in the peasant’s hut; her husband had fled for his life to Germany; when, as a last effort, Robert de Balzac, the Count’s nephew, was sent to Court to plead his cause. It was no light task to undertake. Men had been banished or odiously imprisoned for entreating the pardon of Dammartin, and many well-meaning friends would have dissuaded the young man. But he went his way, arriving at Court about the end of 1466, and pleaded so well that, after several audiences, the King recalled his uncle and placed him high in favour.
Such was the man—about forty years of age, rhetorical, impulsive, brave, generous, and audacious whom the King had left in command at Pisa.