Francis I

King of France (r. 1515-1547)

• Born: September 12, 1494
• Birthplace: Cognac, France
• Died: March 31, 1547
• Place of death: Rambouillet, France

Francis I, France’s Renaissance monarch, increased the power of the Crown within France, led his country in a series of wars against the Habsburgs, created a glittering court, and helped to introduce the Italian Renaissance into France.

Early Life

When Francis was born to Charles d’Angoulěme and his young wife, Louise of Savoy, he was not expected to become king of France. Only after Charles VIII died childless three years later, making Francis’s cousin King Louis XII, did he become next in line to the throne. Indeed, not until Louis died in 1515 without having fathered a son was it absolutely certain that the twenty-year-old Francis would take the throne.

After the somber last years of his aged, weary predecessor, Francis on his accession represented youth, vigor, and enthusiasm to his subjects. He had developed into someone tall and athletic, with a lively and expressive, rather than handsome, face. His education in academics and statecraft had been haphazard at best, and his great passions were for the chase and for seduction, rather than for the sedentary arts of statesmanship. Throughout his reign, Francis maintained a court notorious for its elegance, gaiety, and erotic exuberance. Notwithstanding his sensual self-indulgence, this cheerful, gracious, and dashing young man would become one of France’s most respected sovereigns.

Life’s Work

The land to which Francis fell heir in 1515 was growing steadily in prosperity, population, and power. The ravages of the Hundred Years’ War were a rapidly fading memory, and the feudal dynasties that had checked the power of France’s kings for so long had mostly disappeared. The nobles were clamoring for the adventure, glory, and profits of conquest, and their young king was eager to oblige them. In July, 1515, Francis led an army into northern Italy, continuing Louis XII’s policy of seeking to control the wealthy duchy of Milan. In September, he won the greatest victory of his reign at the Battle of Marignano . Charging joyously at the head of his cavalry, Francis shattered the dreaded Swiss pikemen. This left him the master of Milan and the dominant power in northern Italy, a happy situation that would not last long. The deaths of Ferdinand II of Aragon in 1516 and of Emperor Maximilian I in 1519 made their grandson, Charles I of the house of Habsburg, ruler of Spain and its possessions in the New World, of Austria, of the Burgundian lands, and of much of Italy as well. When Charles was elected Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1519, France was virtually encircled by his power.

Francis spent much of the rest of his reign fighting with Charles, trying to maintain his own power in Italy and to prevent Charles from dominating all Europe. In 1525, Charles’s armies routed the French at the Battle of Pavia, and Francis learned the folly of a king trying to lead his troops in the field: He was captured, and Charles replaced him as the dominant power in Italy. Francis was forced to spend the next year as Charles’s prisoner in Spain, gaining his release only by agreeing to a humiliating treaty. Once free, Francis swiftly repudiated the treaty and resumed hostilities. In a series of punishing wars over the following two decades, joined at various times by Venice, England, the Papacy, Protestant German princes, and even to the horror of all Christendom the Turks, Francis struggled unsuccessfully to regain Milan and to break the Habsburg hold on Italy. This great contest, the rivalry between the house of Habsburg and the French crown, would continue to dominate European power politics until the eighteenth century.

Francis was able to mobilize his kingdom’s human and material resources in the service of his Italian ambitions to an extent that would have dazzled his predecessors. Many scholars, impressed by the obedience and support he commanded, have regarded him as a key figure in the development of France’s absolute monarchy . There are strong arguments in favor of this view. Public opinion and the most important French political theorists of the time, reacting against the civil wars and vulnerability to invasion that had bedeviled France in earlier centuries when the Crown was weak, were inclined to stress the absolute nature of the royal prerogative. Tracts such as Guillaume Budé’s De l’institution du prince (1547, wr. 1518) argued that the king’s power was limitless and that he was not bound to respect any rights of his subjects.

Without question, Francis himself subscribed wholly to Budé’s views. Throughout his reign, he showed little inclination to let any considerations of customs or rights, no matter how venerable, interfere with the accomplishment of his desires. As he was energetic, charming, intelligent, and determined enough to win the respect and support of most of the politically active population of his kingdom, Francis was generally successful. He was able to absorb into the royal domain the vast holdings of Charles, duke of Bourbon, after Bourbon betrayed him in 1523. Francis also reformed and centralized the fiscal administration of the Crown, and he significantly increased the control of the central government over its provincial officials. He was able repeatedly to bulldoze his way past objections to his policies and edicts voiced by the Parlement de Paris, ignoring its traditional function as a check on the legal absolutism of French kings.

Francis’s most important struggles with the Parlement concerned religion. In 1516, fresh from his great victory at Marignano, he negotiated the Concordat of Bologna with the pope. This agreement restored the Papacy’s right to tax the French church, in exchange for confirming and extending Francis’s power over appointments to high church offices in France. The Parlement’s genuine outrage over this double blow to the independence of the French church was contemptuously rejected by Francis, who forced the body to register the Concordat in 1518. The Parlement was equally distressed by Francis’s reluctance to persecute religious dissidents, particularly the adherents of the new Protestant ideas that began seeping into France as early as 1519. Again, however, their remonstrances went unheeded by the king. Not until the mid-1530’s, when Francis himself became concerned about the increasing radicalism of the reformers, did he inaugurate systematic persecution. By this time, though, the new ideas had become too strong to be dislodged without a protracted, agonizing struggle.

Francis was obviously a far stronger king, more securely in control of his government and his kingdom, than any of his predecessors. That does not, however, mean that his power was absolute. Francis’s subjects, particularly the nobles and the wealthy bourgeoisie, continued to possess independent military and political strength that Francis was forced to respect. That can be seen most clearly in the field of finance. Even though Francis’s extravagance and his endless wars left him chronically in need of funds, he did not dare to raise taxes enough to meet his needs. He knew too well that his subjects could still rebel against him if he pushed his prerogative too far, infringing on what they considered to be their own traditional rights. That was shown in 1542, when an attempt to impose new taxes in the southwest of France provoked a serious armed rebellion.

For the most part, therefore, Francis had no choice but to raise the money he needed by a series of expedients that inevitably undermined royal power in the long run. He sold public offices and titles of nobility, he sold royal lands, and he borrowed. Thus, he bequeathed to his son and heir, Henry II, a number of officials who could neither be fired nor relied on, shrunken revenues from the royal domain, and a discouraging mound of debts. Clearly Francis’s absolutism did not include unlimited power to tap the wealth of his subjects.

In addition, though the Parlement and other institutions had been cowed into obedience by Francis, once his strong hand was removed from the scene, they lost little time in reasserting themselves under his successors. Francis as an individual was popular and respected enough to get most of what he wanted done, but his reign does not appear to have left the monarchy as an ongoing institution significantly stronger than it had been before.

Francis is more admired today for his role as a generous and discriminating patron of culture than for his political or military policies. Throughout his life, Francis maintained a lively interest in intellectual and artistic pursuits, particularly after his early campaigns in Italy exposed him to the Humanism of the Renaissance there. Back in France, he established lectureships in classical Latin and Greek, in Hebrew, and in mathematics, which would ultimately evolve into the Collège de France. He was an avid amasser of both books and manuscripts, and his collections would form the nucleus of the Bibliothèque Nationale, the French national library.

Francis’s generosity toward artists attracted Leonardo da Vinci , Benvenuto Cellini, Andrea del Sarto, and other Italian masters to France, helping to establish the Renaissance style there. Many of their works, including Leonardo’s Mona Lisa, have remained among the treasures of France ever since Francis’s reign; indeed, Francis’s extensive collection of paintings and other artworks have become the nucleus of the collection of the Louvre.

Francis’s interest in the arts can also be seen today in the numerous châteaus that he built or modified, again spreading Renaissance styles into France. Among the most notable are those of Chambord, Blois, and Fontainebleau. At these and similar palaces, Francis did much to introduce a still-coarse and turbulent French nobility to a more elegant, sophisticated, and graceful way of life. His reign significantly improved the manners, if not the morals, of the French elite.

Significance

Francis I is best remembered for his charm, the refinement and elegance that he brought to the French court, and for his numerous love affairs and gallant dalliances. As a king, he was popular and successful, though not a reformer or innovator of great significance. While it is an exaggeration to regard him as an absolute monarch or even as a major architect of the absolute monarchy of the late seventeenth century, he made the power of the Crown felt in France to an unprecedented extent during his reign. As a statesman, his wars against Charles V, even though unsuccessful, did keep France independent and established it even more firmly as one of the great powers of Europe. As a patron of culture, he is largely responsible for spreading the styles and standards of the Italian Renaissance into France, raising the level of civilization there and endowing his kingdom with many lasting treasures.

Bibliography

Hackett, Francis. Francis the First. 1935. Reprint. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968. A highly readable, romantic popular biography, but dated and not always judicious in its conclusions.

Knecht, R. J. Francis I. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1982. This study will remain the standard English-language biography of Francis for some time to come. Thoroughly researched, elegantly written, and soundly argued, it is a splendid example of modern scholarship. Its 431 pages of text intelligently cover all aspects of Francis’s reign and are supplemented by an extensive bibliography. A detailed index increases the usefulness of the work.

Knecht, R. J. Francis I and Absolute Monarchy. London: Historical Association, 1969. This brief pamphlet argues cogently in favor of regarding Francis as an absolute monarch. It is basically a response to the work of J. Russell Major.

Knecht, R. J. French Renaissance Monarchy: Francis I and Henry II. 2d ed. New York: Longman, 1996. A detailed survey of the first half of the sixteenth century by the leading English language scholar of Francis I. Extends and builds on the two works listed earlier. Includes map, bibliographic references, and index.

McNeil, David O. Guillaume Budé and Humanism in the Reign of Francis I. Geneva: Librairie Droz, 1975. Concentrates on religious and intellectual developments during Francis’s reign, centering on the life and works of Budé. McNeil also discusses Budé’s significant role in the politics of the times. Contains a comprehensive bibliography on the subject.

Major, J. Russell. Representative Institutions in Renaissance France, 1421-1559. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1960. Reprint. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1983. This controversial, seminal volume by a great scholar argues that the absolutism of Francis and other sixteenth century French kings has been much exaggerated. Should be read in conjunction with the works by Knecht.

Merriman, Marcus. The Rough Wooings: Mary Queen of Scots, 1542-1551. East Linton, East Lothian, Scotland: Tuckwell, 2000. Study of Mary’s efforts to preserve Scottish autonomy, and of Francis I and Henry II’s roles in establishing and exerting French control over the Scots.

Richardson, Glenn. Renaissance Monarchy: The Reigns of Henry VIII, Francis I, and Charles V. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Comparison of Francis to two other monarchs who helped define Renaissance government and culture. Focuses on their careers as warriors, governors, and patrons. Includes maps, bibliographic references, and index.

Salmon, J. H. M. Society in Crisis: France in the Sixteenth Century. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1975. Though the bulk of this book deals with the religious conflicts of the second half of the century, the opening chapters contain a serious analysis of all aspects of the France of Francis. Economic and social structures, the institutions of government, and cultural developments, rather than narrative political history, are emphasized. A detailed index, an extensive bibliography, genealogical charts, and a glossary of French terms.

Seward, Desmond. Prince of the Renaissance: The Golden Life of François I. New York: Macmillan, 1973. A beautifully illustrated and lively, though brief and rather superficial, popular biography. Very thorough on Francis’s patronage of the arts but tends to exaggerate his role in shaping French culture. The work must also be used with caution on diplomacy and government, as Seward tends to let his flair for the colorful and the dramatic get the best of his judgment. Slim bibliography and few notes.