Rivalry with Charles V

Nineteen years old, secretive, cool-headed, and a clever politician, the Emperor had his mind set on a universal monarchy. His chief obstacle was the King of France. A mortal hatred emerged from this rivalry, leading to 27 years of savage warfare, interrupted by truces that were invariably violated. In 1520, on the Field of Cloth of Gold near Calais, where both displayed unprecedented magnificence, Francis vainly sought an alliance with Henry VIII.

Hostilities between Charles V and France began in 1521 in the north and in the Pyrenees, while the two brothers of the King’s mistress were losing Milan. The soldiers remained unpaid, and the army was disintegrating. The King, unconcerned, arose late, paid little attention to his council, and gave orders without seeing that they were carried out. Money disappeared into thin air. A few paymasters were hanged, though in vain.

In 1523 the King demanded the return to the French state, according to law, of the vast provinces that the great feudal duke Charles de Bourbon thought he had inherited from his wife. Incensed, Bourbon turned traitor and joined the Emperor’s service, claiming that the French, weary of the prodigality of their sovereign, would rise up on an appeal from him. Commanding the imperial army, he invaded Provence, was driven back near Marseille, and withdrew toward Italy. Francis I was pursuing him when he learned of the death of his wife Claude, at the age of 24, exhausted from seven pregnancies. The death of his second daughter followed soon after. Meanwhile, the English and the Germans were advancing in the north. In vain, his mother begged him to return: “Our good angel has abandoned us. Your horoscope forecasts disaster!” At the Battle of Pavia in 1525, defeated and wounded, he was taken prisoner. “Madame, to inform you of the rest of my misfortune, I have nothing left to me save my honour and my life.”

As the price for the King’s freedom, the Emperor demanded one-third of France, the renunciation of France’s claim to Italy, and restitution to Bourbon of his fiefs, with the addition of Provence. “I am resolved to endure prison for as long as God wills rather than accept terms injurious to my kingdom!” replied the King.

Imprisoned in a dismal tower in Madrid, the recluse composed melancholy poems, songs, and letters to his subjects, heartrending in their humility and their tender nobility. The mortifying defeat, the dangerous situation of his country, and the confinement aggravated his habitual migraines, the consequence of old wounds and of newly contracted syphilis. When he was struck down by an abscess in his head, his people, loyal in bad fortune as in good, prayed for him. The Archbishop of Tournon said a mass at his bedside, in the presence of his sister Marguerite, who had hastened to Madrid.

Decline and death

Although Francis finally recovered, he did not cease to suffer. His personality changed. Sudden reversals of mood, excesses of severity and clemency, inconsistencies in his statesmanship and in his personal behaviour marked him; his mind sometimes wandered.

The Emperor persisted in his exorbitant claims. Resigned to die in prison, the King abdicated in favour of his eldest son. France judged this abdication to be the worst possible move. The Dauphin was too young; the country was lost without its leader. No matter what the cost, he would have to return home. The French ambassadors, with nominal cooperation by the King, concluded the harsh Treaty of Madrid. He signed it in January 1526, declaring that the word and signature of an imprisoned knight were valueless and that it was beyond his power to dismember his kingdom. Still bedridden, he was betrothed by proxy to Eleonora, widow of the King of Portugal and sister of his jailer. The wedding was to seal the reconciliation of the two rulers and was to follow execution of the treaty. As a last condition, Francis had to deliver his two eldest sons, seven and eight years old, as hostages.

The surrendered provinces refused to divorce themselves from France. The Emperor, furious with the perjured King, held the children prisoner for four years. His army plundered Italy and captured Pope Clement VII. Francis could not openly engage in the war that was again flaring up everywhere against Charles V. Doomed to disavow his promises to his secret allies, he fled from their envoys, either going on hunting trips from forest to forest or travelling around the country, building fairylike castles that he occupied only fleetingly and founding the free and secular Collège de France. Anne, duchesse d’Étampes, “the most beautiful of learned ladies, and the most learned of beautiful ladies,” replaced Madame de Châteaubriant, more as a companion than mistress.

Their raging hatred impelled Charles and Francis to challenge each other to a duel, which was, however, prevented. During one of the King’s relapses, his mother reached an agreement with Margaret of Austria, the Emperor’s aunt, to stop this deadly struggle. The ensuing Treaty of Cambrai softened that of Madrid. In order to get his children back, Francis had to abandon his allies, give up Italy, and pay 2,000,000 gold crowns. His foolish expenditures had emptied the treasury, and the ransom was collected only with difficulty. Finally, however, the little princes were able to attend their father’s political marriage to Eleonora in 1530.

In 1531 the King’s mother succumbed to the plague. Marguerite, having married the King of Navarre, lived at some distance. The King, grown tragically old, in 1533 presided over the marriage of his second son, Henry, to Catherine de Médicis, the niece of Clement VII.

When religious strife broke out in France, the King—tolerant, an epicurean, an admirer of the Dutch Humanist Erasmus, and patron of the great satirist Rabelais, as well as a reader of Philipp Melanchthon, the Reformer—tried to moderate the growing fanaticism. Both his sister and his mistress supported the Reformation, whereas his ministers were zealous Catholics. But the Reformers were considered republicans, and the burnings at the stake began. For five years he delayed the extermination of the Waldensian sect, only signing the order without reading it when on his deathbed.

The war with Charles V was resumed in 1536. Bereavements within the family came in quick succession. The Dauphin died at the age of 18—poisoned by Charles V, it was believed. The third son, the most dearly loved, died of the plague. One of Francis’ last diplomatic achievements was an alliance with the Turks against the Emperor.

Henry VIII, by turns friend or enemy, died in January 1547. Francis, younger by two years, still had time to found the port of Le Hâvre, to send Jacques Cartier to Canada, to reform the judicial system, and to decree the use of French in all legal documents.

Wasting away with fever, dying, he wandered from castle to castle, carried on a litter. Finally, on March 31, 1547, the knight-king died. Notwithstanding the personal afflictions of the last 20 years of his life, Francis was to his countrymen and to the succeeding generation le grand roi François.