Italian War of 1521–1526

By 1518, the peace that had prevailed in Europe after the Battle of Marignano was beginning to crumble. The major powers (France, England, Spain, and the Holy Roman Empire) were outwardly friendly, pledging by the Treaty of London to come to the aid of any of the signatories that was attacked and to combine against any nation that broke the peace. They were divided, however, on the question of the Imperial succession. The Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I, intending for a Habsburg to succeed him, began to campaign on behalf of Charles I of Spain, while Francis I of France put himself forward as an alternate candidate. At the same time, the Papacy and the Holy Roman Empire were forced to deal with the rising influence of Martin Luther, who found support among some Imperial nobles, while Francis was faced with Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, who interposed himself into the quarrels of the continent in an attempt to increase both England's influence and his own.

Maximilian's death in 1519 brought the Imperial election to the forefront of European politics. Pope Leo X, threatened by the presence of Spanish troops 64 kilometres (40 mi) from the Vatican, supported the French candidacy. The prince-electors themselves, with the exception of Frederick of Saxony, who refused to countenance the campaigning, promised their support to either of the candidates at once. Before his death, Maximilian had already promised sums of 500,000 florins to the Electors in exchange for their votes, but Francis offered up to three million, and Charles retaliated by borrowing vast sums from the Fugger banking family. The final outcome, however, was not determined by the exorbitant bribes, which included Leo promising to make the Archbishop of Mainz his permanent legate. The general outrage of the populace at the idea of a French emperor gave the Electors pause, and when Charles put an army in the field near Frankfurt, where they were meeting, the Electors obligingly voted for him.[4] He was crowned Holy Roman Emperor on 23 October 1520, by which point he already controlled both the Spanish crown and the hereditary Burgundian lands in the Low Countries.

Wolsey, hoping to increase Henry VIII's influence on the continent, offered the services of England as a mediator for the various disputes between Francis and Charles. Henry and Francis staged an extravagant meeting at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. Immediately afterwards, Wolsey entertained Charles in Calais. Following the meetings, Wolsey, concerned mainly with improving his own stature in preparation for the next papal conclave, proceeded to stage a hollow arbitration conference at Calais, which lasted until April 1522, and which had no practical effect.

Jean Clouet, Francis I (c.1527). Prevented from becoming Holy Roman Emperor, Francis pushed Europe into war.

In December, the French began to plan for war. Francis did not wish to openly attack Charles because Henry had announced his intention to intervene against the first party to break the tenuous peace. Instead, he turned to more covert support for simultaneous incursions into German and Spanish territory. One attack would be made on the Meuse River, under the leadership of Robert de la Marck, whilst a French-Navarrese army would advance through Navarre after reconquering St-Jean-Pied-de-Port.[5] The expedition was nominally led by the 18-year-old Navarrese king Henry d'Albret, whose kingdom had been invaded by Ferdinand II of Aragon in 1512, but the army was effectively commanded by André de Foix and funded and equipped by the French.[6] The French plans proved to be flawed, as the intervention of Henry of Nassau drove back the Meuse offensive; and although de Foix was initially successful in seizing Pamplona, he was driven from Navarre after being defeated at the Battle of Esquiroz on 30 June 1521.[7]

Charles was meanwhile preoccupied with the issue of Luther, whom he confronted at the Diet of Worms in March 1521. The Emperor viewed Catholicism as a natural way of binding the diverse principalities of the Holy Roman Empire to him. Since Pope Leo X, for his part, was unwilling to tolerate such open defiance of his own authority, he and the Emperor were forced to support one another against Luther, who was now backed by Frederick of Saxony and the German knight Franz von Sickingen. On 25 May 1521, Charles and Cardinal Girolamo Aleandro, the Papal nuncio, proclaimed the Edict of Worms against Luther. Simultaneously, the Emperor promised the Pope the restoration of Parma and Piacenza to the Medici and of Milan to the Sforza. Leo, needing the Imperial mandate for his campaign against what he viewed as a dangerous heresy, promised to assist in expelling the French from Lombardy, leaving Francis with only the Republic of Venice for an ally.

In June, Imperial armies under Henry of Nassau invaded the north of France, razing the cities of Ardres and Mouzon and besieging Tournai. They were delayed by the dogged resistance of the French, led by Pierre Terrail, Seigneur de Bayard, and Anne de Montmorency, during the siege of Mezieres, which gave Francis time to gather an army to confront the attack.[6] On 22 October 1521, Francis encountered the main Imperial army, which was commanded by Charles V himself, near Valenciennes. Despite the urging of Charles de Bourbon, Francis hesitated to attack, which allowed Charles time to retreat.^{[which Charles?]} When the French were finally ready to advance, the start of heavy rains prevented an effective pursuit and the Imperial forces were able to escape without a battle. Shortly afterwards, French-Navarrese troops under Bonnivet and Claude of Lorraine seized the key city of Fuenterrabia, at the mouth of the river Bidasoa on the Franco-Spanish border, following a protracted series of maneuvers, providing the French with an advantageous foothold in northern Spain that would remain in their hands for the next two years.

Battles in Lombardy (1521–1525). The engagements at Bicocca, the Sesia, and Pavia are labeled.

By November, the French situation had deteriorated considerably. Charles, Henry VIII, and the Pope signed an alliance against Francis on 28 November.[8] Odet de Foix, Vicomte de Lautrec, the French governor of Milan, was tasked with resisting the Imperial and Papal forces; he was outmatched by Prospero Colonna, however, and by late November had been forced out of Milan and had retreated to a ring of towns around the river Adda.[9] There, Lautrec was reinforced by the arrival of fresh Swiss mercenaries; but, having no money available to pay them, he gave in to their demands to engage the Imperial forces immediately.[10]

On 27 April 1522, Lautrec attacked Colonna's combined Imperial and Papal army near Milan at the Battle of Bicocca. Lautrec had planned to use his superiority in artillery to his advantage, but the Swiss, impatient to engage the enemy, masked his guns and charged against the entrenched Spanish arquebusiers. In the resulting melee, the Swiss were badly mauled by the Spanish under Fernando d'Avalos, Marquess of Pescara, and by a force of landsknechts commanded by Georg Frundsberg. Their morale broken, the Swiss returned to their cantons; Lautrec, left with too few troops to continue the campaign, abandoned Lombardy.[11] Colonna and d'Avalos, left unopposed, proceeded to besiege Genoa, capturing the city on 30 May.[12]

Lautrec's defeat brought England openly into the conflict. In late May 1522, the English ambassador presented Francis with an ultimatum enumerating accusations against France, notably that of supporting the Duke of Albany in Scotland, all of which were denied by the king. Henry VIII and Charles signed the Treaty of Windsor on 16 June 1522. The treaty outlined a joint English-Imperial attack against France, with each party providing at least 40,000 men. Charles agreed to compensate England for the pensions that would be lost because of conflict with France and to pay the past debts that would be forfeit; to seal the alliance, he also agreed to marry Henry's only daughter, Mary. In July, the English attacked Brittany and Picardy from Calais. Francis was unable to raise funds to sustain significant resistance, and the English army burned and looted the countryside.

Bernard Gaillot's painting of Charles III, Duke of Bourbon (1835).

Francis tried a variety of methods to raise money, but concentrated on a lawsuit against Charles III, Duke of Bourbon. Charles had received the majority of his holdings through his marriage to Suzanne, Duchess of Bourbon, who had died shortly before the start of the war. Louise of Savoy, Suzanne's sister and the king's mother, insisted that the territories in question should pass to her because of her closer kinship to the deceased. Francis was confident that seizing the disputed lands would improve his own financial position sufficiently to continue the war and began to confiscate portions of them in Louise's name. Bourbon, angered by this treatment and increasingly isolated at court, began to make overtures to Charles V to betray the French king.[13]

By 1523, the French situation had entirely collapsed. The death of Doge Antonio Grimani brought Andrea Gritti, a veteran of the War of the League of Cambrai, to power in Venice. He quickly began negotiations with the Emperor and on 29 July concluded the Treaty of Worms, which removed the Republic from the war.[14] Bourbon continued his scheming with Charles, offering to begin a rebellion against Francis in exchange for money and German troops. When Francis, who was aware of the plot, summoned him to Lyon in October, he feigned illness and fled to the Imperial city of Besançon. Enraged, Francis ordered the execution of as many of Bourbon's associates as he could capture, but the Duke himself, having rejected a final offer of reconciliation, openly entered the Emperor's service.

Charles then invaded southern France over the Pyrenees. Lautrec successfully defended Bayonne against the Spanish, but Charles was able to recapture Fuenterrabia in February 1524.[15] On 18 September 1523, meanwhile, a massive English army under the Duke of Suffolk advanced into French territory from Calais in conjunction with a Flemish-Imperial force. The French, stretched thin by the Imperial attack, were unable to resist, and Suffolk soon advanced past the Somme, devastating the countryside in his wake and stopping only 80 kilometres (50 mi) from Paris. When Charles failed to support the English offensive, however, Suffolk—unwilling to risk an attack on the French capital—turned away from Paris on 30 October, returning to Calais by mid-December.[16]

Francis now turned his attention to Lombardy. In October 1523, a French army of 18,000 under Bonnivet advanced through the Piedmont to Novara, where it was joined by a similarly sized force of Swiss mercenaries. Prospero Colonna, who had only 9,000 men to oppose the French advance, retreated to Milan.[17] Bonnivet, however, overestimated the size of the Imperial army and moved into winter quarters rather than attacking the city; and the Imperial commanders were able to summon 15,000 landsknechts and a large force under Bourbon's command by 28 December, when Charles de Lannoy replaced the dying Colonna.[18] Many of the Swiss now abandoned the French army, and Bonnivet began his withdrawal. The French defeat at the Battle of the Sesia, where Bayard was killed while commanding the French rearguard, again demonstrated the power of massed arquebusiers against more traditional troops; the French army then retreated over the Alps in disarray.[19]

D'Avalos and Bourbon crossed the Alps with nearly 11,000 men and invaded Provence in early July 1524.[20] Sweeping through most of the smaller towns unopposed, Bourbon entered the provincial capital of Aix-en-Provence on 9 August 1524, taking the title of Count of Provence and pledging his allegiance to Henry VIII in return for the latter's support against Francis.[21] By mid-August, Bourbon and d'Avalos had besieged Marseille, the only stronghold in Provence that remained in French hands. Their assaults on the city failed, however, and when the French army commanded by Francis himself arrived at Avignon at the end of September 1524, they were forced to retreat back to Italy.[22]

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Media related to Italian Wars at Wikimedia Commons

• Black, Jeremy (2006). War in European History, 1494–1660. Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books. ISBN 978-16123-4-327-3.
• Setton, Kenneth Meyer (1984). The Papacy and the Levant, (1204-1571). 3: The Sixteenth Century. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society. ISBN 978-08716-9-161-3.