The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Volume III Part 28

[17] Guicciardini, Istoria, tom., v. lib. 10, p. 208.--Bembo, Istoria Viniziana, tom. ii. lib. 12.--Mariana, Hist. de Espana, tom. ii. lib. 30, cap. 5, 14.--Peter Martyr, Opus Epist., epist. 483.

Vettori, it seems, gave credence to the same suggestion. "Spagna ha sempre amato a.s.sai questo suo Vicere, e per errore che abbia fatto non l'ha gustigato, ma piu presto fatto piu grande, e si pu pensare, come molti dicono, che _sia suo figlio, e che abbia in pensiero lasciarlo Re di Napoli_." Machiavelli, Opere, let. di 16 Maggio, 1514.

According to Aleson, the king would have appointed Navarro to the post of commander-in-chief, had not his low birth disqualified him for it in the eyes of the allies. Annales de Navarra, tom. v. lib. 35, cap. 12.

[18] Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap. 230, 231.--Guicciardini, Istoria, tom. v. lib. 10, pp. 260-272.--Giovio, Vita Leonis X., apud Vitae Ill.u.s.t. Virorum, lib. 2, pp. 37, 38.--Memoires de Bayard, chap. 48.-- Fleurange, Memoires, chap. 26-28.

[19] Ariosto introduces the b.l.o.o.d.y rout of Ravenna among the visions of Melissa; in which the courtly prophetess (or rather poet) predicts the glories of the house of Este.

"Nuoteranno i destrier fino alla pancia Nel sangue uman per tutta la campagna; Ch' a seppellire il popol verra inanco Tedesco, Ispano, Greco, Italo, e Franco."

Orlando Furioso, canto 3, st. 55.

[20] Brantome, Vies des Hommes Ill.u.s.tres, disc. 6.--Guicciardini, Istoria, tom. v. lib. 10, pp. 290-305.--Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap. 231, 233.--Memoires de Bayard, chap. 54.--Du Bellay, Memoires, apud Pet.i.tot, Collection des Memoires, tom. xvii. p. 234.--Fleurange, Memoires, chap.

29, 30.--Bembo, Istoria Viniziana, tom. ii. lib. 12.

Machiavelli does justice to the gallantry of this valiant corps, whose conduct on this occasion furnishes him with a pertinent ill.u.s.tration, in estimating the comparative value of the Spanish, or rather Roman arms, and the German. Opere, tom. iv., Arte della Guerra, lib. 2, p. 67.

[21] Memoires de Bayard, chap. 54.--Guicciardini, Istoria, tom. v. lib.

10, pp. 306-309.--Peter Martyr, epist. 483.--Brantome, Vies des Hommes Ill.u.s.tres, disc. 24.

The best, that is, the most perspicuous and animated description of the fight of Ravenna, among contemporary writers, will be found in Guicciardini (ubi supra); among the modern, in Sismondi, (Republiques Italiennes, tom. xiv. chap. 109,) an author, who has the rare merit of combining profound philosophical a.n.a.lysis with the superficial and picturesque graces of narrative.

[22] "Le foudre de l'Italie." (Gaillard, Rivalite, tom. iv. p. 391.)-- light authority, I acknowledge, even for a _sobriquet_.

[23] One example may suffice, occurring in the war of the League, in 1510.

When Vicenza was taken by the Imperialists, a number of the inhabitants, amounting to one, or, according to some accounts, six thousand, took refuge in a neighboring grotto, with their wives and children, comprehending many of the princ.i.p.al families of the place. A French officer, detecting their retreat, caused a heap of f.a.ggots to be piled up at the mouth of the cavern and set on fire. Out of the whole number of fugitives only one escaped with life; and the blackened and convulsed appearance of the bodies showed too plainly the cruel agonies of suffocation. (Memoires de Bayard, chap. 40.--Bembo, Istoria Viniziana, tom. ii. lib. 10.) Bayard executed two of the authors of this diabolical act on the spot. But the "chevalier sans reproche" was an exception to, rather than an example of, the prevalent spirit of the age.

[24] Guicciardini, Istoria, tom. v. lib. 10, pp. 310-312, 322, 323.-- Chronica del Gran Capitan, lib. 3, cap. 7.--Mariana, Hist. de Espana, tom.

ii. lib. 30, cap. 9.--Giovio, Vita Magni Gonsalvi, lib. 3, p. 288.-- Carbajal, a.n.a.les, MS., ano 1512.--See also Lettera di Vettori, Maggio 16, 1514, apud Machiavelli, Opere.

[25] Dumont, Corps Diplomatique, tom. iv. p. 137.

He had become a party to it as early as November 17, of the preceding year; he deferred its publication, however, until he had received the last instalment of a subsidy, that Louis XII. was to pay him for the maintenance of peace. (Rymer, Foedera, tom. xiii. pp. 311-323.--Sismondi, Hist. des Francais, tom. xv. p. 385.) Even the chivalrous Harry the Eighth could not escape the trickish spirit of the age.

[26] Guicciardini, Istoria, tom. v. lib. 10, p. 320.

[27] Memoires de Bayard, chap. 55.--Fleurange, Memoires, chap. 31.-- Ferreras, Hist. d'Espagne, tom. viii. pp. 380, 381.--Guicciardini, Istoria, tom. v. lib. 10, pp. 335, 336.--Zurita, a.n.a.les, tom. vi; lib. 10, cap, 20.

[28] Zurita, a.n.a.les, tom. vi. lib. 10, cap. 44-48.--Guicciardini, Istoria, tom. vi. lib. 11, p. 52.

Martyr reports a conversation that he had with the Venetian minister in Spain, touching this business. Opus Epist., epist. 520.

[29] Dumont, Corps Diplomatique, tom. iv. part. 1, no. 86.

[30] Guicciardini, Istoria, tom. vi. lib. 11, pp. 101-138.--Peter Martyr, Opus Epist., epist. 523.--Mariana, Hist. de Espana, tom. ii. lib. 30, cap.

21.--Fleurange, Memoires, chap. 36, 37.--Also an original letter of King Ferdinand to Archbishop Deza, apud Bernaldez, Reyes Catolicos, MS., cap.

242.

Alviano died a little more than a year after this defeat, at sixty years of age. He was so much beloved by the soldiery, that they refused to be separated from his remains, which were borne at the head of the army for some weeks after his death. They were finally laid in the church of St.

Stephen in Venice; and the senate, with more grat.i.tude than is usually conceded to republics, settled an honorable pension on his family.

[31] Daru, Hist. de Venise, tom. iii. pp. 615, 616.

CHAPTER XXIII.

CONQUEST OF NAVARRE.

1512-1513.

Sovereigns of Navarre.--Ferdinand Demands a Pa.s.sage.--Invasion and Conquest of Navarre.--Treaty of Orthes.--Ferdinand Settles his Conquests.

--His Conduct Examined.--Gross Abuse of the Victory.

While the Spaniards were thus winning barren laurels on the fields of Italy, King Ferdinand was making a most important acquisition of territory nearer home. The reader has already been made acquainted with the manner in which the b.l.o.o.d.y sceptre of Navarre pa.s.sed from the hands of Eleanor, Ferdinand's sister, after a reign of a few brief days, into those of her grandson Phoebus. A fatal destiny hung over the house of Foix; and the latter prince lived to enjoy his crown only four years, when he was succeeded by his sister Catharine.

It was not to be supposed, that Ferdinand and Isabella, so attentive to enlarge their empire to the full extent of the geographical limits which nature seemed to have a.s.signed it, would lose the opportunity now presented of incorporating into it the hitherto independent kingdom of Navarre, by the marriage of their own heir with its sovereign. All their efforts, however, were frustrated by the queen mother Magdaleine, sister of Louis the Eleventh, who, sacrificing the interests of the nation to her prejudices, evaded the proposed match, under various pretexts, and in the end effected a union between her daughter and a French n.o.ble, Jean d'Albret, heir to considerable estates in the neighborhood of Navarre.

This was a most fatal error. The independence of Navarre had hitherto been maintained less through its own strength, than the weakness of its neighbors. But, now that the petty states around her had been absorbed into two great and powerful monarchies, it was not to be expected, that so feeble a barrier would be longer respected, or that it would not be swept away in the first collision of those formidable forces. But, although the independence of the kingdom must be lost, the princes of Navarre might yet maintain their station by a union with, the reigning family of France or Spain. By the present connection with a mere private individual they lost both the one and the other. [1]

Still the most friendly relations subsisted between the Catholic king and his niece during the lifetime of Isabella. The sovereigns a.s.sisted her in taking possession of her turbulent dominions, as well as in allaying the deadly feuds of the Beaumonts and Agramonts, with which they were rent asunder. They supported her with their arms in resisting her uncle Jean, viscount of Narbonne, who claimed the crown on the groundless pretext of its being limited to male heirs. [2] The alliance with Spain was drawn still closer by the avowed purpose of Louis the Twelfth to support his nephew, Gaston de Foix, in the claims of his deceased father. [3] The death of the young hero, however, at Ravenna, wholly changed the relations and feelings of the two countries. Navarre had nothing immediately to fear from France. She felt distrust of Spain on more than one account, especially for the protection afforded the Beaumontese exiles, at the head of whom was the young count of Lerin, Ferdinand's nephew. [4]

France, too, standing alone, and at bay against the rest of Europe, found the alliance of the little state of Navarre of importance to her, especially at the present juncture, when the project of an expedition against Guienne, by the combined armies of Spain and England, naturally made Louis the Twelfth desirous to secure the good-will of a prince, who might be said to wear the keys of the Pyrenees as the king of Sardinia did those of the Alps, at his girdle. With these amicable dispositions, the king and queen of Navarre despatched their plenipotentiaries to Blois, early in May, soon after the battle of Ravenna, with full powers to conclude a treaty of alliance and confederation with the French government. [5]

In the mean time, June 8th, an English squadron arrived at Pa.s.sage, in Guipuscoa, having ten thousand men on board under Thomas Grey, marquis of Dorset, [6] in order to cooperate with King Ferdinand's army in the descent on Guienne. This latter force, consisting of two thousand five hundred horse, light and heavy, six thousand foot, and twenty pieces of artillery, was placed under Don Fadrique de Toledo, the old duke of Alva, grandfather of the general, who wrote his name in indelible characters of blood in the Netherlands, under Philip the Second. [7] Before making any movement, however, Ferdinand, who knew the equivocal dispositions of the Navarrese sovereigns, determined to secure himself from the annoyance which their strong position enabled them to give him on whatever route he adopted. He accordingly sent to request a free pa.s.sage through their dominions, with the demand, moreover, that they should intrust six of their princ.i.p.al fortresses to such Navarrese as he should name, as a guarantee for their neutrality during the expedition. He accompanied this modest proposal with the alternative, that the sovereigns should become parties to the Holy League, engaging in that case to restore certain places in his possession, which they claimed, and pledging the whole strength of the confederacy to protect them against any hostile attempts of France. [8]

The situation of these unfortunate princes was in the highest degree embarra.s.sing. The neutrality they had so long and sedulously maintained was now to be abandoned; and their choice, whichever party they espoused, must compromise their possessions on one or the other side of the Pyrenees, in exchange for an ally, whose friends.h.i.+p had proved by repeated experience quite as disastrous as his enmity. In this dilemma they sent amba.s.sadors into Castile, to obtain some modification of the terms, or at least to protract negotiations till some definitive arrangement should be made with Louis the Twelfth. [9]

On the 17th of July, their plenipotentiaries signed a treaty with that monarch at Blois, by which France and Navarre mutually agreed to defend each other, in case of attack, against all enemies whatever. By another provision, obviously directed against Spain, it was stipulated, that neither nation should allow a pa.s.sage to the enemies of the other through its dominions. And, by a third, Navarre pledged herself to declare war on the English now a.s.sembled in Guipuscoa, and all those co-operating with them. [10]

Through a singular accident, Ferdinand was made acquainted with the princ.i.p.al articles of this treaty before its signature. [11] His army had remained inactive in its quarters around Victoria, ever since the landing of the English. He now saw the hopelessness of further negotiation, and, determining to antic.i.p.ate the stroke prepared for him, commanded his general to invade without delay, and occupy Navarre.

The duke of Alva crossed the borders on the 21st of July, proclaiming that no harm should be offered to those who voluntarily submitted. On the 23d, he arrived before Pampelona. King John, who all the while he had been thus dallying with the lion, had made no provision for defence, had already abandoned his capital, leaving it to make the best terms it could for itself. On the following day, the city, having first obtained a.s.surance of respect for all its franchises and immunities, surrendered; "a circ.u.mstance," devoutly exclaims King Ferdinand, "in which we truly discern the hand of our blessed Lord, whose miraculous interposition has been visible through all this enterprise, undertaken for the weal of the church, and the extirpation of the accursed schism." [12]

The royal exile, in the mean while, had retreated to Lumbier, where he solicited the a.s.sistance of the duke of Longueville, then encamped on the northern frontier for the defence of Bayonne. The French commander, however, stood too much in awe of the English, still lying in Guipuscoa, to weaken himself by a detachment into Navarre; and the unfortunate monarch, unsupported, either by his own subjects or his new ally, was compelled to cross the mountains, and take refuge with his family in France. [13]

The duke of Alva lost no time in pressing his advantage; opening the way by a proclamation of the Catholic king, that it was intended only to hold possession of the country as security for the pacific disposition of its sovereigns, until the end of his present expedition against Guienne. From whatever cause, the Spanish general experienced so little resistance, that in less than a fortnight he overran and subdued nearly the whole of Upper Navarre. So short a time sufficed for the subversion of a monarchy, which, in defiance of storm and stratagem, had maintained its independence unimpaired, with a few brief exceptions, for seven centuries. [14]

On reviewing these extraordinary events, we are led to distrust the capacity and courage of a prince, who could so readily abandon his kingdom, without so much as firing a shot in its defence. John had shown, however, on more than one occasion, that he was dest.i.tute of neither. He was not, it must be confessed, of the temper best suited to the fierce and stirring times on which he was cast. He was of an amiable disposition, social and fond of pleasure, and so little jealous of his royal dignity, that he mixed freely in the dances and other entertainments of the humblest of his subjects. His greatest defect was the facility with which he reposed the cares of state on favorites, not always the most deserving.

His greatest merit was his love of letters. [15] Unfortunately, neither his merits nor defects were of a kind best adapted to extricate him from his present perilous situation, or enable him to cope with his wily and resolute adversary. For this, however, more commanding talents might well have failed. The period had arrived, when, in the regular progress of events, Navarre must yield up her independence to the two great nations on her borders; who, attracted by the strength of her natural position, and her political weakness, would be sure, now that their own domestic discords were healed, to claim each the moiety, which seemed naturally to fall within its own territorial limits. Particular events might accelerate or r.e.t.a.r.d this result, but it was not in the power of human genius to avert its final consummation.

King Ferdinand, who descried the storm now gathering on the side of France, resolved to meet it promptly, and commanded his general to cross the mountains, and occupy the districts of Lower Navarre. In this he expected the co-operation of the English. But he was disappointed. The marquis of Dorset alleged that the time consumed in the reduction of Navarre made it too late for the expedition against Guienne, which was now placed in a posture of defence. He loudly complained that his master had been duped by the Catholic king, who had used his ally to make conquests solely for himself; and, in spite of every remonstrance, he re-embarked his whole force, without waiting for orders; "a proceeding," says Ferdinand in one of his letters, "which touches me most deeply, from the stain it leaves on the honor of the most serene king my son-in-law, and the glory of the English nation, so distinguished in times past for high and chivalrous emprize." [16]

The duke of Alva, thus unsupported, was no match for the French under Longueville, strengthened, moreover, by the veteran corps returned from Italy, with the brave La Palice. Indeed, he narrowly escaped being hemmed in between the two armies, and only succeeded in antic.i.p.ating by a few hours the movements of La Palice, so as to make good his retreat through the pa.s.s of Roncesvalles, and throw himself into Pampelona. [17] Hither he was speedily followed by the French general, accompanied by Jean d'Albret.

On the 27th of November, the besiegers made a desperate though ineffectual a.s.sault on the city, which was repeated with equal ill fortune on the two following days. The beleaguering forces, in the mean time, were straitened for provisions; and at length, after a siege of some weeks, on learning the arrival of fresh reinforcements under the duke of Najara, [18] they broke up their encampment, and withdrew across the mountains; and with them faded the last ray of hope for the restoration of the unfortunate monarch of Navarre. [19]

On the 1st of April, in the following year, 1513, Ferdinand effected a truce with Louis the Twelfth, embracing their respective territories west of the Alps. It continued a year, and at its expiration was renewed for a similar time. [20] This arrangement, by which Louis sacrificed the interests of his ally the king of Navarre, gave Ferdinand ample time for settling and fortifying his new conquests; while it left the war open in a quarter, where he well knew, others were more interested than himself to prosecute it with vigor. The treaty must be allowed to be more defensible on the score of policy, than of good faith. [21] The allies loudly inveighed against the treachery of their confederate, who had so unscrupulously sacrificed the common interest, by relieving France from the powerful diversion he was engaged to make on her western borders. It is no justification of wrong, that similar wrongs have been committed by others; but those who commit them (and there was not one of the allies, who could escape the imputation, amid the political profligacy of the times,) certainly forfeit the privilege to complain. [22]