A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 4Guizot, François
History
A Popular History of France from the Earliest Times, Volume 4
Guizot, François
France -- History
could answer: and he gave the second command in this army to George of
Freundsberg, an old captain of lanzknechts and commandant of the
emperor’s guard, the same who, three years before, on seeing Luther
boldly enter Worms, said to him, with a slap on the shoulder, “Little
monk, this is a daring step thou art going to take! Nor I, nor any
captain of us, ever did the like. If thy cause is good, and if thou have
faith in thy cause, forward! little monk, in God’s name forward!” With
such comrades about him, Bourbon re-entered Milaness at the head of
twelve or thirteen thousand fighting men, three months after having left
it, alone and moneyless. His rivals about the person of Charles V.,
Lannoy, Viceroy of Naples, and the Marquis of Pescara, could not help
admiring him, and he regained in the imperial camp an ascendency which
had but lately been very much shaken.
He found the fresh campaign begun in earnest. Francis I.’s veteran
generals, Marshals La Tremoille and Chabannes, had advised him to pursue
without pause the beaten and disorganized imperial army, which was in
such plight that there was placarded on the statue of Pasquin at Rome,
“Lost--an army--in the mountains of Genoa; if anybody knows what has
become of it, let him come forward and say: he shall be well rewarded.”
If the King of France, it was said, drove back northward and forced into
the Venetian dominions the remnants of this army, the Spaniards would not
be able to hold their own in Milaness, and would have to retire within
the kingdom of Naples. But Admiral Bonnivet, “whose counsel the king
made use of more than of any other,” says Du Bellay, pressed Francis I.
to make himself master, before everything, of the principal strong places
in Lombardy, especially of Pavia, the second city in the duchy of Milan.
Francis followed this counsel, and on the 26th of August, 1524, twenty
days after setting out from Aix in Provence, he appeared with his army in
front of Pavia. On learning this resolution, Pescara joyously exclaimed,
“We were vanquished; a little while and we shall be vanquishers.” Pavia
had for governor a Spanish veteran, Antony de Leyva, who had
distinguished himself at the battle of Ravenna, in 1512, by his vigilance
and indomitable tenacity: and he held out for nearly four months, first
against assaults, and then against investment by the French army.
Francis I. and his generals occasionally proceeded during this siege to
severities condemned by the laws and usages of war. A small Spanish
garrison had obstinately defended a tower situated at the entrance of a
stone bridge which led from an island on the Ticino into Pavia. Marshal
de Montmorency at last carried the tower, and had all the defenders
hanged “for having dared,” he said, “to offer resistance to an army of
the king’s in such a pigeon-hole.” Antony de Leyva had the bridge
forthwith broken down, and De Montmorency was stopped on the borders of
the Ticino.
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