FRANCIS THE FIRST.*
LITERARY SPECTATOR.
THESE volumes are respectably executed: the writer has a competent knowledge of his subject, and has arranged his narrative in an inter-
esting form. At the same time, they are conducted upon a plan which does not render their utility very obvious : we see nothing in them which might not be found in an equally popular form in half-a-dozen other very accessible books. They are a page out of the history of Europe ; they might form a portion of any history of France ; their contents are to be found in all the histories of those times. When viewed according to the plan of the author, this may not be an objec- tion; but according to our notion of what is conveyed under the title of "Life and Times," something much more novel and much more in- teresting was to be expected. ''Such a work ought to set the age in movement before the reader—not by narratives of negotiations broken and renewed, of intrigues of rival kings, of expeditions into hostile ter- ritories ; but by a complete picture of the manners and morals of the times, as shown in descriptions of personal anecdotes, of traits of cha- racter, of remarkable achievements, of marked and salient principles of action. The sovereign whose name the epoch bears should be the centre and starting-point of all such illustrated speculations, but he should be no more : the most brilliant light should be thrown on him, but that light should be diffused over all the scenes which it is desired to exhibit. The great historical events of the time should be col- lected in masses, and many of them might be wholly thrown into the shade. •
No epoch was ever better adapted to this kind of illustration than the reign of FRANCIS the First. The genial character of that monarch, the vicissitudes of his fortune, the abundance of great men in his times, the vast events of the Reformation, the introduction and spread of lite- rature in France, with a thousand other curious points which might he mentioned, render it a most enviable subject for a writer capable of treating it in a masterly manner. The author, by forestalling the title, may perhaps prevent another from undertaking a task which is cer- tainly not yet performed. Nevertheless, we owe some gratitude to him for leading us pleasantly through even the public fields of history in those truly remarkable times. It is a period of which we shall never tire, for it is full of instruction ; and though the author has, as we have said, treated the matter too much as an annalist, it is not seldom that he goes a little out of his way to pluck a flower from the contemporary memoirs or the stores of tradition and MSS. What lie has done in this way, would lead us to regret that he has not done much more. As it is, we should call his work, " a View of the Principal Wars of
Europe during the reigns of Louis the Twelfth and Francis the First, chiefly with reference to France." It is of war and peace, and the machinations which lead to them and the results which follow from them, that the writer treats. We hear nothing of the people : we scarcely see the principal characters individually, and never learn any thine. of their interior. And yet, what admirable materials these times
affbi-d ! Virtue and vice were never cast in more striking forms : all that is generous and noble is set off with the most dexterous cunning, the most unprincipled dishonesty, the most reckless cruelty. This was the period at which, perhaps, the animal man flourished in greater vigour than at any other epoch of time. Prowess, skill in arms, force, courage, chivalrous devotion of person, fidelity and perseverance, were met with in masses : not less marked were the other properties of the mere animal—the slyness of the fox was found side by side with the fierceness and bravery- of the lion: the " gift of cowardice" too was not rare. 'When an individual followed the propensities of his nature or the direction of his education, he appears to have been restrained by no respect for public opinion, by no moral sanction, and even religion had no practical effixts. Hence all the black crimes of the period—its un- blushing- breaches of faith, its base hypocrisy, and deliberate falsehood. It would be a delightful task to illustrate the condition and progress of morality in these times, by the history and anecdotes of the lives of those great men who showed by their prominency the direction and strength of the stream. What subjects of reflection are excited by even the very names of BAYARD, of GASTON de Foix, of PESCARA, of BOURBON the banished Duke, of GONSALVO the Great Captain, of PALICE, of D'ARs ; of the three rival kings, FRANCIS, CHARLES, and our HENRY the Eighth _ ; of the churchmen, WOLSEY, BORGIA, and his uncle, of LEO the Tenth, and the MEDICI ; and then again of LUTHER, his converts and his enemies ; and a multitude of others whose mere names would fill an article ! The women were not the least rem.irkable personages of those times : few ever played a more important part than the mother of FRANCIS the First, the Duchess d'ANoouneme ; few characters are more interesting than that of ANNE of Brittany, or the virtuous Queen her daughter, CLAUDE, the wife of FRANCIS. In his time, women began to be introduced at court ; it was the dawn of manners and politeness, as well as the com- mencement of conspicuous vice. The Countess of CHATEAUBRIANT and DIANA of Poictiers were the moral ancestresses of the MAINTE- NONS and POMPADOURS of later times.
If an author were intent upon turning the narrative of the history of such a period as this to account, it would not be by detailing the pretexts of war or the miserable motives of peace, nor even the pro- gress of hostilities, the pride and circumstance of military movement : he would show the futility of all this pother as regards the only legi- timate object of government, the welfare of the people ; and might ridicule, with no small effect, the paltry jobbing of territories among these princely traffickers, the chopping and changing of sisters and daughters, and the political contracts of gray hairs and infancy, which * The Life and Tines of Francis the First, Wag of France. 2 vols, London, 1829. these royal wiseacres, in spite of the continual inefficiency of such bonds, persevered to the last in effecting, in the vain hope of coun- teracting the dictates of self-interest, or supposed self-interest. There only wanted an illegitimate imitation of this farce to com- plete the absurdity. A spectacle of greater folly was perhaps never exhibited in this very foolish world, than the incessant wars of the European princes of the middle ages, with the view of main;- taining some disputed right to this or that province ; the people all the while considering it a matter of importance by whom they were fleeced, and generally so far deluded as to join in the lamen- tation, or swell the triumph of victory, on the part of some over- fed, overbearing, tax-collector and payer of mercenaries, who chose to insist upon some fifth cousinship or distant marriage with one who had a prescriptive right tol flay them at his leisure. How stu- pendously absurd to see FRANCIS perpetually involving himself, and what is worse, his country, in quarrels for the Milanese—a province he had no business with, and which he could never keep when he got it, and had he been able to keep it, could never govern it! How many noble and ignoble lives were lost for this useless province—to him useless in all sober senses ! how many trucking of wives and daughters for this object! what treasure was spent, what bravery wasted, what happiness and comfort utterly destroyed ! And yet this FRANCIS was one of the best of his metier.
But to turn from what the author of these goodly volumes might have done, to that which he has done. He has pursued the thread of FRANCIS'S reign, from his birth to his death, with regular exactness. His manner of treating the subject is not brilliant, neither is it dull : perhaps the author may be complimented on a fair and equable histo- rical style; sometimes it even mounts to vivacity and spirit. If we were to point out the parts in which he has excelled, we should pro-
bably fix upon the episode of the history of the Duke of BOURBON;
after which the description of the fatal day of Pavia would have place. It is not by morsels, however, that the writer can be judged ; he pro- ceeds on too large a scale to leave us any separate passages of great interest ; he must be read through before we can appreciate the effect of his work.
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