Durants' S o C
Vol. VI The REFORMATION
pgs. 491 - 496
Francis 1 and the Reformation in France.
1515 - 1559
He was born under a tree in Cognac on September 12, 1494. His grandfather was Charles of Orleans, the poet; perhaps song and the love of beauty were in his blood. His father was Charles of Valois and Orleans, count of Angouleme, who died, after many adulteries in the third year of Francis’ life. His mother was Louise of Savoy, a woman of beauty, ability, and ambition, with a taste for wealth and power. Widowed at seventeen, she refused the hand of Henry VII of England, and devoted herself -- barring some liaisons -- to making her son king of France. She did not mourn when Anne of Brittany, second wife of Louis XII, had a stillborn son, leaving Francis heir to the throne. Louis sadly made Francis Duke of Valois, and appointed tutors to instruct him in the art of royalty. Louise and his sister Marguerite mothered him to idolatry, and prepared him to be a ladies’ king. He was handsome, gay, courteous, brave; he met dangers like a Roland or an Amadis; when a wild boar, escaping from its cage, sought to frolic in his princely court, it was Francis who, while others fled, faced the beast and slew it splendidly.
At the age of twelve (1506) he was betrothed to Claude of France, the seven year old daughter of Louis XII. At fourteen Francis was bidden leave his mother and join Louis at Chinon. At twenty he married Claude. She was stout and dull, lame and fertile and good; she gave him children in 1515, 1516, 1518, 1520, 1522, 1523, and died in 1524. Meanwhile he became King. (Jan.1 1515). Everybody was happy, above all his mother, to whom he gave the Duchies of Angouleme and Anjou, the Barony of Amboise,. But he was generous to others too. -- to nobles artists, poets, pages, mistresses. France rejoiced, and placed high hopes in him, as England in those years in Henry VIII, and the Empire in Charles V; and Francis, even more than Leo X, was resolved to enjoy his throne..
What was he really, this Arthur plus Lancelot? Physically he would have been magnificent, had not his nose been more so; irreverent contemporaries called him “ le roi grand nez.” He was six feet tall, broad shouldered, agile, strong, he could run, jump, wrestle, fence with the best; he could wield a two-handed sword or a heavy lance. Brantome, whose ‘Dames Galantes’ cannot be taken as history, wrote therein that “King Francis loved greatly and too much; for being young and free, he embraced now one, now another, with indifference... from which he took the “grande verole “ that shortened his days. The king’s mother was reported to have said “He was punished where he had sinned.” His intellectual ability did not equal his charm of character. He had little Latin and no Greek, but he astonished many men by the variety and accuracy of his knowledge in agriculture, hunting, geography, military science, literature, and art; and he enjoyed philosophy when it did not interfere with love or war. He was too reckless and impetuous to be a great commander, too fascinated by appearances to get to essences, too amiably influenced by favourites and mistresses to chose the best available generals and ministers, too open and frank to be a competent diplomat. Louis XII, who admired him as “ a fine young gallant,” saw with foreboding the lavish hedonism of his successor. “All our work is useless,” he said; “this great boy will spoil everything.”
France was now enjoying the prosperity engendered by a bountiful soil, a skilful and thrifty people, and a beneficent reign. The population was some 16,000,000, compared with 3,000,000 in England and 7,000,000 in Spain. Paris, with 300,000 was the largest city in Europe. The social structure was semi-feudal: nearly all the peasants owned the land they tilled, but usually they held it in fief-- and owed dues or services -- to seigneurs and chevalies whose function was to organise agriculture and provide military protection to their locality and nation. Inflation, caused by the repeated debasement of coinages and the mining or import of precious metals, eased the traditional money dues, and enabled peasants to buy land cheaply from the land rich, money poor nobility; hence a rural prosperity that kept the Frenchy peasant happy and Catholic while the German Bauer was making economic and religious revolution. French energy drew from the soil the best corn and wine in Europe; cattle grew fat and multiplied; milk, butter and cheese were on every table; chickens and other fowl were in almost every yard; and the peasant accepted the odour of his pigsty as one of the blessed fragrances of life.
The town worker -- still chiefly a craftsman in his shop -- did not share in this prosperity. Inflation raised prices faster than wages, and protective tariffs and royal monopolies, as of salt, helped to keep the cost of living high. Discontented workers went on strike, but were nearly always defeated; and the law forbade workingmen to unite for economic purposes. Commerce moved leisurely along the bountiful rivers, but painfully along the poor roads, paying each lord a toll to pass through his domain. Lyons, where the trade of the Mediterranean ascending the Rhone, met the flow of goods from Switzerland and Germany, was second only to Paris in French industry and only to Antwerp as a centre of investment and finance.
From this economy Francis drew revenues to the limit of tolerance. The taille (cut) fell as a personal or property tax upon all but nobles and clergy; the clergy paid the king ecclesiastical tithes and grants, the nobles supplied and equipped the cavalry that was still the flamboyant mainstay of French arms. Taking a lesson from the popes, Francis sold -- and created to sell -- noble titles and political offices; in this way the nouveaux riches slowly formed (as in England ) a new aristocracy, and the lawyers, buying offices, established a powerful bureaucracy that -- sometimes over the head of the king -- administered the government of France.
The function of the nobles was twofold: to organize the army, and to serve the king at court. The court, consisting of the administrative heads, the leading nobles, their wives, and the family and favourites of the king, now became the head and front of France, the mirror of fashion, the mobile perpetual festival of royalty. At the summit of this whirl was the master of the King’s household, who organized the whole and patrolled the protocol; then the Chamberlain, who had charge of the royal bedchamber; then four Gentlemen of the Bedchamber or First lords in waiting, who were always at the King’s elbow to wait upon his desires; these men were changed every three months, to give other nobles a turn at this exhilarating intimacy; lest anyone be overlooked there were twenty to fifty-four Lords of the Bedchamber to serve the highest four; add twelve Pages of the bedchambers, and four Ushers of the Bedchamber, and the King’s sleeping quarters were adequately cared for. Twenty lords served as stewards of the King’s cuisine, managing a staff of forty-five men and twenty-five cupbearers. Some thirty ’enfants d’honneur’ -- boys of awesome pedigree -- functioned as royal pages, shining in silvered livery; and a host of secretaries multiplied the hand and memory of a King. A cardinal was Grand Chaplain of the royal chapel; a bishop was Master of the oratory or prayer service; and fifty diocesan bishops were allowed to grace the court and so augment their fame. Honorary positions as “grooms of the chamber” with pensions of 240 livres, were awarded for divers accomplishments, as to scholars like Bude and poets like Marot. We must not forget seven physicians, seven surgeons, four barbers, seven choristers, eight craftsmen, eight clerks of the kitchen, eight ushers for the audience chamber. Each of the King’s sons had his own attendants -- stewards, chancellors, tutors, pages, and servants. Each of the two Queens at court -- Claude and Marguerite -- had her retinue of fifteen or ten ladies in waiting, sixteen or eight maids of honour -- foilles demoiselles. All the potentates of Europe taxed their peoples to provide some minor mirroring of this Parisian fantasy.
The cost of all this perambulating glory was enormous. The treasury was always near bankruptcy, taxes were forever mounting, the bankers of Lyons were dragooned into risky royal loans. In 1523, perceiving that his expenditures were loosing sight of his revenues, the King promised to put a limit on his personal indulgences, “not including, however, the ordinary run of our little necessities and pleasures.” Now the government of France became bisexual. Francis ruled in apparent omnipotence, but he was so fond of women that he readily yielded to his mother, his sister, his mistress, even his wife. He must have loved Claude somewhat, to keep her so constantly pregnant. He had married her for reasons of state; he felt entitled to appreciate other women more artistically designed. The court followed the lead of the King in making a mannerly art of adultery. The clergy adjusted themselves after making the requisite objections. The people made no objections, but gratefully imitated the easy code of the court -- except one girl, who, we are told, deliberately marred her beauty to deflect the royal lechery.(1524).
The most influential woman at the court was the King’s mother. Very often her advice was good, and when she served as his regent the country fared better than at his own hands. But her covetousness drove the Duke of Bourbon to treason, and let a French army starve in Italy. Her son forgave her everything, grateful that she had made him a god.
