The Four Princes who Ruled Europe in the early 16th Century

Transcript

In 1521 four men dominated Europe. They were all in their twenties: King Henry VIII of England, born 1491, King Francois I of France, born 1494, Suleiman the Magnificent, Ottoman Sultan, born that same year, 1494 and the youngest of them, Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Spain, Sicily, Naples and Sardinia, lord of the Netherlands, duke of Austria and Count of Tyrol.

How the world had changed. In the days of Charles’ predecessor, the emperor Maximilian, European politics was a impenetrable maze of alliances and enmities involving roughly a dozen mid-sized powers trying to get a leg up on each other.

Now we are down to four guys, dancing a political Ceilidh, all elegantly dressed, swiftly moving and swapping partners at every turn.

In this episode we are going to look at the first rounds of Gay Gordons and Dashing White Sergeants up to the point where Charles V gets a lock on Francois I at the Battle of Pavia in 1525

Let’s start with a set of character sketches of these four princes who will be our constant companions as we dissect the first half of the 16^th century.

The Four Famous Monarchs

The first striking thing is that all four of them count amongst the most recognizable monarchs of European history, not just because of their historical significance, but also due to the ubiquity of their imagery. Henry VIII is haunting classrooms in England to this day, to the point that many claim historical education here is just Harry and Hitler. Francois I is amongst France’s most celebrated kings, maybe alongside Henri IV, as much for his castles as for his mistresses. Suleiman the Magnificent is subject to an unending series of costume dramas, occasionally with not so subtle nationalist overtones. And finally, our man Charles V lives on as either the pinnacle of Habsburg glory or as the small minded opponent of the Reformation.

All four men were in their 20s when Charles V was elected and crowned Holy Roman Emperor. Physically they were quite different. Henry VIII and Francois I were both giants by the standards of the time, standing in at 6 feet 2 inches or 188cm. Both were exceedingly vain, constantly competing with each other on looks, sporting achievements and of course ostentatious display of wealth. Henry VIII was by most accounts the better looking one of the two, “the handsomest potentate I ever saw” as the Venetian ambassador wrote. Whilst Francois laboured under an impressively large nose. Suleiman the Magnificent too was a tall man, though not quite as tall as the other two. He was slender and fine featured, with a thoughtful penetrating gaze.

Charles V was the shortest and by far the ugliest of the four, at least when looking at the various portraits of him. Though remember that the Habsburgs had already begun their weird tradition of asking court artists to make them look as degenerate and as deformed as possible. No, not a joke. The Habsburg chin and the constantly open mouth had become a sign of nobility and superiority so that it was exaggerated in most portraits. Newly appointed ambassadors regularly wrote back home that the emperor was much better looking in real life than his portraits suggested.

The Legitimacy Problem

Looks aren’t everything of course. These four men had a lot more in common than their appearance suggests.

All four of them had something to prove. Their position was not as stable and grounded in centuries of legitimacy as their predecessors had been.

Henry VIII was probably the most fragile. His family, the Tudors had emerged as kings from the War of the Roses spilling more Plantagenet blood than ever ran in their veins. A few generations ago they had been unremarkable Welsh squires and now they sat on a throne that had seen the use of hot pokers and starvation as means to transfer power.

But Francois I was not that far behind. He had been the fourth cousin once removed of his predecessor Louis XII. Though the French crown has gone through the male line in an unbroken sequence since Hugh Capet and would continue to do so all the way to Louis XVI, but that wasn’t something anyone could have known. These were profoundly uncertain times when dynasties rose and fell like AI rabbits on a trampoline.

Suleiman should have been the most settled of the four. He was the only surviving son of a hero father and the direct heir of a dynasty that had built his empire over the last 200 years. But Ottoman rulers always lived uneasy lives. Their elites and their standing armies were used to continuous expansion. Rulers who failed to run successful campaigns could be met by unfortunate accidents, as Suleiman’s grandfather Bayezid II had been.

And of course, our man Charles V, had acquired his impressive list of titles through a combination of extraordinary dynastic luck and decades of wars, wars he had not participated in himself. Most of his subjects had never seen him before, and judging by recent events in Spain, once they had seen him, did not like him very much.

Bottom line was that every one of them was in dire need of some glory and success. Combine that with youth, vanity and rivalry and you get a heady cocktail that could easily erupt in a massive pan-European war.

The Great Advisers – Wolsey, Duprat, Gattinara and Ibrahim Pascha

And if they had been left to their own devices, this is almost certainly what would have happened right from the start. The reason it did not and was at least initially somewhat restrained had a lot to do with the other thing they had in common – powerful prime ministers.

This being an English language podcast, I guess I do not need to spend a lot of time introducing Cardinal Wolsey. This son of a prosperous merchant had become first the almoner, aka finance minister of Henry VIII and rose to Lord Chancellor in 1515. Though Wolsey had gained the young king’s confidence when he supported a war with France against the opposition of the privy council, as Lord Chancellor his policy tended to be to refrain from military action in favor of diplomacy. In this period no party pursued a consistent strategy, but compared to others, English foreign policy under Wolsey had an inherent logic. England was the least powerful of the four realms, hence she could never wage a major war on her own, in particular not against France. The best England could hope for was to be the power that tipped the balance between in particular Habsburg and France. And by doing so, would avoid being attacked herself. Wolsey’s challenge was that Henry VIII dreamt of Agincourt as a way to assert his fragile hold on the country.

Whilst Wolsey is a household name, the advisers of Francois I have not made it into the history schoolbooks. Antoine Duprat had been the young king’s tutor and upon his ascension, Francois I made him Chancellor. Duprat became archbishop and cardinal for his services, even tried to become pope, very much like Wolsey. And he did have major influence over the king, in particular on matters of church and religion, but did not have as much influence on foreign policy as Wolsey.

In his first years, Charles V relied, as we have already heard, very heavily on his old preceptors, Adrian of Utrecht and William of Chièvres. They were however  replaced by Mercurino Arborio, the marchese of Gattinara. Gattinara, though Italian, had sought service in the Burgundian Netherlands under Margaret of Austria and in 1518 became grand chancellor of Burgundy for Charles V. From there he gradually took charge of the finances across Charles’ possessions. Where Chievre and Adrian had a Burgundian view of the world and took no interest in the imperial ambitions, Gattinara had a pan-European outlook. He believed Charles destiny was to consolidate Christian Europe against the Ottomans.

And finally, there was Suleiman the Magnificent’s Grand Vizier, Ibrahim Pascha. Ibrahim had been Suleiman’s closest friend from his adolescence. A slave in the imperial household, he had gained the confidence of the Sultan who put him into the most powerful position in the Ottoman Empire. Much has been said about the relationship between these two men. Many western historians believe that they were in a homosexual relationship, though I am not sure this matters much. They were definitely companions and friends, not master and slave.

What matters is that Ibrahim, Wolsey, Duprat and Gattinara were not born as a members of the elite and did not become powerful in their own right. Which is what is the new thing in the first half of the 16^th century. All these men derived their power solely from the ruler.

Sure, they are not the first to wield power on behalf of a king or emperor. But in the past these figures had been predominantly recruited amongst the highest nobility, the dukes of Orleans and Burgundy at the French court, John of Gaunt and his brothers in England, Rainald von Dassel and Balduin of Trier in the empire. Occasionally we find some who had risen from more modest beginnings, starting with pope Sylvester II.  But they all had their own powerbase, their own resources that they would often keep hold of after their sponsor had perished. Basically, they were vassals who gave their advice and support in exchange for their fiefs.

These new guys and their successors are a different breed. They are mainly from a modest background and serve at the pleasure of their ruler. They have no own power base. Their influence comes from their ability to operate the levers of the state. They had the skills and knowledge to extract taxes from the estates, they knew how to negotiate with bankers and mercenary captains, they organized the administration, sorted out infrastructure projects, appointed and supervised judges etc., etc., They were the product of this new thing, the early modern state. They had not existed before, because the administrative infrastructure they thrived in had not existed.

One more major step away from the Middle Ages into the modern world.

The Power Balance

Before we get into the fight for European hegemony between these four princes, one quick rundown of their financial and military resources.

No question, Suleiman the Magnificent was the most powerful by a country mile. His empire was the largest, the richest and the most tightly controlled: “My sublime commandment’, he wrote to the Governor of Egypt, ‘as inescapable and as binding as fate, is that rich and poor, town and country, subjects and payers of tribute – everyone must hasten to obey. If some of them are slow to do their duty, be they emirs or fakirs, do not hesitate to inflict on them the ultimate punishment.’

Christian kings and emperors may be powerful, but having counts and commoners killed for being late to fall on their knees was not something they could do.

Henry VIII, as we mentioned, was on the other end of the spectrum. By now England had lost all its possessions on the continent safe for a strip of land around calais.

Francois and Charles on the other hand were almost balanced. After the acquisition of Brittany and Burgundy, France has gained a shape that is recognisable to modern eyes. There was still a lot of territory that would be added later, namely in Lorraine and Alsace, but it was no longer the fragmented structure dominated by independent vassals it had been when the Hundred Years War had started. And Francois had taken the wealthy duchy of Milan from the Swiss in the battle of Marignano.

Charles was the by far most endowed with titles, Holy Roman Emperor, king of Castile and Argon, King of Sicily, Sardinia and Naples, Grand Duke of the Burgundian Netherlands and Archduke of Austria, Count of Tyrol and dozens and dozens of more titles. Plus his grandfathers, Maximilian and Ferdinand had created a network of close allies and satellite kingdoms that could be called upon in time of need, Portugal was one of them, as was the Jagiellonian empire, Hungary and Bohemia very close and Poland-Lithuania much looser. Within the Holy Empire the Wittelsbachs had been sucked kicking and screaming into the Habsburg slipstream.

So on paper Charles V wins. He has more lands, more titles and more allies. But that does not reflect the true balance of power. France was a very well organized state. The long wars against England and the subsequent Italian wars had resulted in a fairly efficient tax collection infrastructure. As we have seen these last dozen or so episodes, the kings of France had been infinitely more resourceful than Maximilian. Sure, Charles had Spain, Southern Italy and the Netherlands on top of Austria. But as things stood in 1521, the Burgundian Netherlands had refused to fund imperial adventures, Austria was utterly exhausted and Spain was in open revolt against Charles. And then there was the debt. The six million kindly passed down by Maximilian plus the new loans from Jakob Fugger to fund the imperial election.

The other big problem for Charles was that his empire was disjointed. There was no land connection between the three main blocks, Spain, Netherlands and Austria. There were two ways to remedy this. The first was to regain the lands Charles the Bold had lost, Burgundy and Lorraine. The other was the duchy of Milan. If these two could be captured, there would be a direct connection from Barcelona to Genoa and from there either through the allied duchy of Savoy to the Netherlands of through Milan to Tyrol and on to Austria proper. The only problem with this plan is that it would completely encircle France. There would then be Habsburg forces on every land border and hostile England on the other side of the Channel.

No points for Gryffindor if you can guess what the next 200-odd years of European politics is going to be about.  

The Treaty of London

If you were in the early 16^th century and took a step back and ask, what would be the most sensible political alliance at this point, the answer is pretty simple. Suleiman the Magnificent is the most powerful, most aggressive and after all, proponent of a different religion and culture. So, defending western europe against the encroachment by the Ottomans should be the best solution for everyone. A crusade led by Henry, Francois and Charles promises glory, legitimacy and wealth.

That is what Cardinal Wolsey tried to push for in 1518. His Treaty of London is an impressive feat of diplomacy. 20 monarchies, republics and principalities signed this agreement, including England, France, Spain, The Holy Roman Empire, Scotland, Denmark, Sweden, Hungary, Portugal, Venice, Urbino, Ferrara, Mantua, Cleves etc. , etc. even perennial troublemakers like the duke of Guelders and trading associations like the Hanseatic League joined. The whole enterprise received spiritual sanction when Pope Leo X blessed it from Rome.

The objective was nothing less than eternal peace. The signatories promised not to injure each other, to support each other in case any one of them was invaded by land or sea. Rebels are to be extradited and subjects were banned from taking service with the armies of others.

This early non-aggression pact had come in part out of the traditional papal call to keep peace so that Christendom could be better defended against an Ottoman invasion. But there was also  a broader cultural movement supported by luminaries like Erasmus and Thomas Moore demanding an end to the perennial bloodshed on behalf of noble glory hounds.

Did it work? Well, of course not. What did you think? Suddenly these men whose profession it was to fight would suddenly go over to knitting and Ikebana? Fat chance.

The Swedes and Danes were first out of the gate, resuming their efforts to bring the Kalmar Union to an end, which was achieved in 1523 with the election of Gustav Vasa as king of Sweden.

Tensions between Francois and Charles

Over in Western Europe temperatures began to rise when Francois and Charles competed for the imperial title. On the surface this was resolved amicably. Francois did formally withdraw his candidacy before the election and sent a message congratulating Charles, saying he could not see anyone better for the role than his majesty. His ministers kept saying that all in it was a good thing that Francois did not win the empire since it would have dragged him into all sorts of unpleasant business. The king kept telling people that this was like when two men vie for the attention of a woman, not a matter over which to fall out.

I do not know about Francois’ life experiences, but I would question the latter statement and it seems – on further reflection – he did too. In February 1521 Francois granted the count Robert de la Marck a generous subsidy to “attack anyone, including the emperor”. Which he did, just, he attacked only the emperor. Francois also supported his vassal, the king of Navarre to try to recapture the parts of his principality on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees. And then of course, the inevitable duke of Gelders was reactivated once again.

Just in case Charles still struggled to get the message, Francois invited German mercenaries to come to his muster and concluded a secret treaty with pope Leo X to expel the Habsburgs from Naples.

Charles did however try to stay calm. After all, he was at the Diet of Worms, yes, the diet of Worms where Luther said his famous “Here I stand and I can do no Other”. Deciding on whether to go to war or not cannot have been easy with an outspoken monk about to blow up the Catholic religion.

And there is another issue that does not get much attention in the usual narrative. In the summer of 1521 Suleiman the Magnificent had invaded Hungary with an army of 200,000. Initially his military commanders were in two minds about where to go, straight down to Buda or take Belgrade first. In the end they opted for Belgrade.

Belgrade had been the great bulwark against the Ottomans for centuries. It was here that Janos Hunyadi had pushed back Mehmet the Conqueror in 1456. This valiant siege had been the last great victory against the Ottomans, the event that introduced the curfew bell that rang out across europe every evening warning of the dangers of a Turkish invasion.

This time was less heroic. Hungary, riven with infighting amongst the nobles, ruled by a 15-year old was a mere shadow of the kingdom of Matthias Hunyadi. Three weeks was as long as the defenders could hold out. The lower town succumbed to intense bombardment within days and when Turkish sappers had dug under a main defensive tower of the upper town they blew it up.

That was it. Of the 700 defenders very few survived. The Serbian inhabitants of the city were forcibly relocated to Istanbul where they lived in a place that is still called the Forest of Belgrade.

The road to Buda and ultimately to the gates of Vienna lay wide open. But it seems that nobody cared much. Francois kept sabre rattling, the German princes quoted Erasmus who had said the pope was worse than the Turk and back in Spain the embers of the suppressed rebellion were still smouldering.

Suleiman stopped here and turned on the Knights Hospitallers in Rhodes which kept him busy for the next few years. But he will be back.

The Build-up to War

Meanwhile the French proxies who had attacked in Navarra and in the Netherlands were easily repulsed. It was now up to Charles to decide what should happen next. Should he pretend that these had been separate events that had nothing to do with Francois and so keep the peace, or should he go for all-out war with France.

His old councillor, the lord of Chievres would have urged Charles to let things lie. The rebellion in Spain and the economic interests of the clothmakers in Flanders should take precedence. Peace was always preferable to war.

But the lord Chievres had died during the Diet of Worms. Many of the Habsburg delegation had caught some infectious disease brought on by the overcrowding of the city and whilst Charles recovered, Chievres did not.

His aunt Margaret and his old tutor Adrian of Utrecht also urged restraint. But none of them were around when Charles pondered his options. Who was around was Gattinara. And Gattinara presented his sovereign with a memorandum. Ten reasons for peace and 10 reasons for war. Charles had been trained to read every single document that went across his desk and read it all the way to the end. And it was at the end where he found the argument that led him to take the field. Quote:

Above all things, your Majesty must seek to acquire reputation, because up to now you have not engaged in any affair of state for which one can draw positive or negative conclusions., and the whole world has been waiting in the hope that you will be doing something worthy of such a powerful emperor, now you have such a fine opportunity” end quote. And then he adds that he has already raised an army, so the money is spent. We may as well use it then.

Before Charles gave the marching orders, he wanted to be sure of support from  his allies. In particular from the pope and Henry VIII. Ok., calling the pope an ally is a bit of a stretch. Leo X had swapped sides more often than Michelangelo his position when painting the Sistine chapel. This time it required the Spanish ambassador literally shouting into the pope’s face for Leo to ditch his secret deal with Francois about Naples and to sign an official treaty with Charles to attack Milan.

Meanwhile Charles was also negotiating directly with Wolsey and Henry VIII. Despite the bromancing between Henry and Francois on the field of Cloth of Gold the year before, Henry VIII liked Charles better.

Now that the conflict between Charles and Francois had come out in the open, it was making up your mind time. Henry VIII was game, dreaming of a second Agincourt, Wolsey tried to block, wanting peace and prosperity. Charles offered to marry Henry VIII’s daughter Mary which added weight to the deal. Wolsey still blocked. Then Charles did the next bit of shouting, saying he could find other girls to marry, including some who were a bit older than five. That did the trick and by the end of 1521 England, the Pope and Charles had a pact to go after France in the new year.

The Campaign of 1522

After all this shouting and drama, the actual war was a much smoother affair. Much of the action took place in Italy where Milan fell almost immediately. The imperial forces, mainly Spanish and German mercenaries under the command of Prospero Colonna faced a French army made up of Swiss mercenaries. What followed was a rerun of Marignano. The Swiss were once again defeated by the superior firepower and co-ordination of the Landsknechte and Spaniards.

Charles V installed the last of the Sforzas, Francesco as duke in Milan. However, Francesco was under tight control of the Spanish military commanders in Milan, a mere puppet duke. When Genoa submitted to imperial forces shortly afterwards, Charles had acquired the first of the two key territories he needed to connect his disjointed empire.

Charles of Bourbon

Seeing the great success of his nephew Charles, king Henry VIII decided to scale up his efforts. He moved troops across the channel and began attacking French towns.

At this point the French king must have regretted his attempt at secret warfare against the emperor. He had lost Milan and an English army was rampaging across Northern France. What he urgently needed now was money.

And just at that moment a great opportunity came up. A relative of the Valois, Suzanne de Bourbon had died. The Bourbons were another cadet branch of the French royal family, going way back to Louis IX. Moreover, the family was exceedingly rich, in particular the branch of the Bourbons that this lady, Suzanna, was from. As it happened, the house of Bourbon had split into various branches and they had been in the process of consolidating. Which is why Suzanne de Bourbon married Charles de Bourbon, same surname, different branch.

Charles was a lot poorer than Suzanne, but made up for it by being dashing and a great military leader. Suzanne was sufficiently impressed by him and/or wanted to keep the wealth in the broader family, so her will sets out that all her lands and titles should go to her husband, Charles of Bourbon. So far, so normal.

But Francois and specifically his mother saw some legal loophole that allowed the crown to seize most of Suzanna’s inheritance. And that would provide the much needed funds to protect the kingdom from invasion.

As one can expect, Suzanna’s husband and heir, Charles of Bourbon was not happy about this, not happy at all. And from here things spiralled out of control. What was meant to be a quick snatch and run, turned into a massive crisis.

As mentioned, Charles of Bourbon was a direct descendant in the male line of king Louis XI, which was a long time ago, but not so much longer than Francois’ royal ancestor. He was what the French call, a prince of the blood. And he was a well-respected military commander who had fought at the battle of Marignano. A poisonous mixture for Francois, who was well aware of his fragile hold on the royal title.

Charles of Bourbon tried to reason with the king and his mother but at the same time started talking to the king’s enemies, Charles V and Henry VIII. A rebellion inside France, led by a prince of the blood was the thing that could turn a war with France into a rout. An near irresistible temptation.

So, the two Charles and Henry decided to embark on what they called, the Great Enterprise. A simultaneous invasion of France from Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and England supported by internal uprisings was to propel Henry VIII on to the French throne. Charles would gain  possession of Burgundy, Lorraine and all he was still missing to connect his empire. Bourbon would get his revenge and his inheritance. An age of peace and unity was right round the corner.

But the these negotiations did not remain secret enough and Francois ordered the arrest of Charles of Bourbon on September 11^th, 1523. By that time Bourbon had already crossed over into imperial territory.

The invasion began almost immediately. On September 19^th the duke of Suffolk marched towards Paris with 30,000 men. The count of Furstenberg took 10,000 men into Champagne. But Charles’s forces were held up. The emperor had by now returned to Spain to calm things down after the recent rebellions. He had learned some Spanish and he had also learned that he should place mainly Spaniards into key positions. Still it took a lot of effort to convince the Cortes to grant Charles the funds to go to war, by which time Henry’s grand campaign to acquire the French crown had run out of steam. His army was on its way back to Calais. The king of England had spent 2 million crowns on an adventure that had brought him exactly zippo. The rebellion that Charles of Bourbon had promised, had not materialised.

To no-one’s surprise, when the next year, 1524, Charles told Henry that he now had the money and the soldiers, so would he like another go, Henry said nope.

So Charles went by himself. He put Bourbon in charge of an attack on Provence and ordered the governor of Naples and Sicily to garrison the duchy of Milan against a counterattack.

Charles of Bourbon did indeed get into Provence. He took Aix and  besieged Marseille. Still the campaign was a disaster. Francois had mustered a large army that chased Bourbon out of Provence. And by mid-October Francois himself led a force of 40,000 across the Alps to retake Lombardy.

The Battle of Pavia

Things suddenly looked quite dicey for our friend Charles. Henry VIII was no longer a friend, saying he would not spend any more blood and treasure on a liar, that was Charles, a harlot, aka Margaret of Austria, a child, young Ferdinand and a traitor, namely Charles of Bourbon. The Venetians were moving back into the French camp. The new pope, Adrian of Utrecht had just died, was a Medici, Clement VII and he, in a characteristical misjudgement, also swapped over to Francois. 

The imperial forces, about half the size of the French army could not hold Milan and retreated to nearby Pavia. This rather compact city had solid walls and the garrison of about 9,000 could hold out throughout November and December. In January 1525 a relief force of 15,000 Landsknechte under Georg von Frundsberg arrived. It was Charles’ brother Ferdinand who had recruited these. But the money for it had come from the source that would tip the contest in favour of Charles in the long run.

Hernán Cortés had conquered the Aztec empire in modern day Mexico. The loot was put on ships and arrived in Spain from 1519 onwards. In 1533 Pizarro took the empire of the Inka resulting in a further acceleration of gold and silver arriving and when they discovered the silver mountain of Potosi in 1545, the flow of precious metal went stratospheric. It was these first shipments that paid for Frundsberg’s men.

The battle itself was the usual combination of clever plans and cockups.

The French army had set up camp in the walled park of Mirabello, a Visconti Villa just outside town.  Their size had actually reduced since the start of the siege. Some 5,000 Swiss mercenaries had returned and the legendary Bande Nere of Giovanni de Medici had to retire after their leader was seriously injured.

Still the situation inside the city of Pavia was dire. Food was running low and pay was intermittent. At this point the commanders, namely Charles de Lannoy, Charles of Bourbon, Georg von Frundsberg and some others decide to undertake one last sortie. Less in the hope of breaking the siege but in the belief it could get them better terms for the surrender.

The idea was to break into the park of Mirabello during the night whilst burning their tents to create the impression they were retreating. They hoped to catch the French unawares and cause havoc.

As it happened, that is exactly what they did. In the darkness the French became disoriented and several contingents could pass by French forces engaged in fighting other units. The French commanders failed to consolidate their position and the battle became a set of skirmishes between different battalions. Some of it sounded a bit like point scoring, namely when the Landsknechte focused first on the remaining Swiss mercenaries and then on a rival German mercenary band.

But the real mistake was the king’s own. Once again a French monarch mistook chivalry for military tactic. He gathered his nobles and ran a classic cavalry charge, just as the knights of old had done. That is in itself a pretty stupid idea when the opposite side has put canon in place protected by pikemen. Running it with a couched lance as if it was a tournament, also not a great idea. But what made it even worse was that the valiant knights raced before the French artillery making it impossible for them to shoot. Those noblemen who survived the charge were then miles away from the rest of the army, making it impossible to protect their king.

After barely four hours of that chaos, two French officers in the retinue of Charles of Bourbon recognised the King of France, unhorsed and stripped of his armour. He surrendered to them uttering, “All that is left to me is my honour and my life”.

This battle shifted the European power balance decisively. From now on Charles, not Francois was the most powerful prince in Christendom. As Gattinara had promised, he had done “something worthy of such a powerful emperor”

 That is where we are going to leave him, basking in the glow of the greatest of victories, a success that his great-grandfather Charles the Bold may have dreamt of, but that had never been in the grasp of a Habsburg before.

Next week we will see what he does with this achievement…I hope you are going to join us again.

And let us all thank Steven C., Vasilisa, Christopher B., Bel L-W, Matthew L-G and Elliot J. who have signed up on historyofthegermans.com/support to keep this show going and going advertising free.