Battle of Pavia 24 February 1525 – Long read

The Battle of Pavia 24 February 1525

Five hundred years ago the two most powerful monarchs in Europe, Francis I, king of France, and Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, King of Spain and southern Italy, Duke of Burgundy, and ruler of the Habsburg lands in central Europe, were at war. Given the extent of Charles’s inherited territories on the borders of France their hostility was not surprising. It had been made worse in 1519 when the younger Charles had been elected Holy Roman Emperor on the death of Maximilian I, his paternal grandfather, in preference to Francis. It was this long-standing rivalry that Henry VIII and his advisers, Cardinal Wolsey and later Thomas Cromwell, attempted to use to his own advantage by forming alliances with one side or the other, though with very limited success. By 1521 war had broken out between Francis and Charles and by early 1525 it had come to a head in northern Italy.

Their predecessors had fought in Italy since the 1490s. Renaissance Italy was ripe for foreign exploitation. It was weakened by the mutual hostility of the many rival states - the republic of Venice, with its maritime empire, the duchy of Milan, the republic of Florence, the Papal States and the kingdom of Naples, as well as smaller city states such as Savoy, Genoa, Siena and Ferrara. Using dubious ancestral claims to Naples and Milan, the major powers sought to take advantage of the rich picking available. In Naples the French had lost out to Ferdinand of Aragon, Charles’ maternal grandfather from whom he inherited the kingdom, but conflict continued elsewhere. By the second decade of the 16th century the Florentine, Niccolo Machiavelli, regarded Italy as ‘leaderless, lawless, crushed, despoiled, torn, over-run’.

‘He wants Milan and so do I’

On his accession in 1515 Francis was determined to avenge past French defeats and win military glory. He invaded northern Italy, capturing Milan. Control of the city soon became a major source of friction with the new Emperor. Francis’ view of his rival was that ‘he is young and has no practical experience of war’. He was therefore surprised by the aggressive approach adopted by Charles when war started. As Charles commented: ‘My cousin Francis and I are in complete accord; he wants Milan and so do I’. He recognised the strategic importance of the city, which providing him with a route from Spain, through Italy, to his northern lands – the so-called ‘Spanish road’.

Late in 1521 the French were driven out of Milan. An attempt to retake the city in 1523 failed, but then an invasion of Provence the following year by Charles, Duke of Bourbon, commanding an Imperial army, was repulsed. Bourbon, the former Constable of France, had fallen out with Francis. The emperor had tempted him to fight their common enemy with promises of land and a marriage to Charles’ sister, Eleanor.

Bourbon’s withdrawal from Provence opened the way for a French advance into Italy. In October 1524 a French army of 40,000, led by the king, crossed the Alps and advanced on Milan. The Imperial commander in Italy, Charles de Lannoy, faced by a much larger force, withdrew to Lodi. Meanwhile Bourbon travelled to southern Germany and approached the experienced Landsknecht (German mercenary) commander, Georg von Frundsberg, to raise fresh troops for his cause. Francis, having secured Milan, moved on to besiege Pavia, held for the emperor by about 9,000 troops under the command of Antonio de Leyva.

The French looked to be in a position to dominate northern Italy and by the end of the year Venice, Siena, Lucca and, most importantly, the new pope, Clement VII of the Medici family, came to terms with Francis. Henry VIII, Charles V’s ally since the Treaty of Windsor signed in June 1522 when Charles was visiting England, also sent ambassadors to start negotiations with the French. Meanwhile Charles, now in Spain, was downcast but not yet willing to capitulate. In jottings to help clarify his thoughts he wrote that he had always wished for peace but ‘it cannot be had without the enemy’s consent’. He complained that he had no funds to expand his armies or even pay his existing ones. He believed that his allies, particularly Henry VIII, had not helped him ‘even to the extent of his obligations’ and that they had ‘forsaken me in my evil hour’.

The battle ‘cannot be postponed for much longer’

All eyes were now on Pavia. The French siege had looked like succeeding in November when the walls were breached in several places by cannon fire. However de Leyva had prepared an earthen rampart protected by a ditch guarded by light artillery. He was thus able to repel the attackers and inflict substantial losses. By this stage the French army had been depleted. Francis had left a garrison of several thousand troops in Milan and 5,000 of his Swiss mercenaries had departed to defend their homelands. Then, against the advice of others, the king sent a further 6,000 soldiers south to help Pope Clement against Naples, hoping to draw Lannoy’s army away from the north to pursue them.

Lannoy, however, having failed to stop the French troops’ initial movement south, did not follow them. He returned to Lodi and was joined in January 1525 by Bourbon and Georg von Frundsberg who brought 12,000 landskneckts. Although it is difficult to estimate the size of sixteenth century armies given the contemporary exaggerations and miscalculations, it seems that both armies were now of a similar size, in the region of twenty-five thousand soldiers. King Francis had French cavalry and foot soldiers, added to by Swiss, German and Italian mercenaries. The Imperial army had a combination of Spanish and Italian regular troops, a large number of German landsknechts, and the 6,000 troops stationed inside Pavia. The French had more heavy and light cavalry as well as more cannons than their opponents. Unaware of the latest developments, Emperor Charles V knew that the coming battle ‘in which I shall either be victorious or wholly defeated, cannot be postponed for much longer’, but was not optimistic.

An effective surprise attack

Having advanced from Lodi towards Pavia, the Imperial army found the French in secure, entrenched, positions to the north of the city, most encamped inside the hunting park of Mirabello, surrounded by almost eight kilometres of walls. The Imperial commanders, Lannoy, Bourbon and Fernando d’Avalos, marquis of Pescara, knew that time was short before they ran out of money to pay their troops. The resultant desertions and mutinies would destroy their army as a fighting force. As a direct frontal assault on the French positions was most unlikely to succeed, they needed to tempt Francis’s army into the open and force a battle or, failing that, achieve some minor success before withdrawing. Francis declined to leave his defensive position and so the Imperial commanders agreed on a surprise attack into the park and sent a message to Leyva inside Pavia to be ready to sally out on a given signal.

Under cover of darkness during the night of 23rd/24th February engineers, followed by the main body of the Imperial army, moved through heavy rain from their position east of the town around the wall of the park to the northern end, away from the city. An artillery barrage of the French siege lines was maintained from their original position to help conceal these movements. The engineers managed to create breaches in the northern walls, through which large numbers of troops poured into the park. They had achieved some element of surprise and 3,000 Spanish and German infantry under Pescara managed to seize the fortified Mirabello House in the centre of the park.

The confusion of battle

It was already dawn and these first actions had taken longer than originally planned. As so often, the course of the battle did not follow the expectations of the generals. The early morning fog, the undulating parkland and the marshy ground along the Vernavola stream which flowed through the park, all had an impact, as well as the quick decisions of unit commanders taken in the heat of battle in light of their own position. The contemporary accounts of the battle contain discrepancies, but the main outlines are clear.

Once the alarm had been raised Francis immediately set off with his cavalry to meet the main body of the enemy, leaving his infantry to follow. The French also directed heavy cannon fire against the advancing Imperial troops. As they began to falter Francis, confident of success, ordered a full scale attack. The cavalry, with the king in the vanguard, were initially successful and broke through enemy lines. However this put them in danger from their own artillery which had to cease firing. Given the difficulty of moving the cannons quickly it was impossible to redeploy them to elsewhere on the battlefield before they were captured.

The French cavalry, and increasingly their infantry as they joined the battle, were now exposed to the deadly fire of groups of arquebusiers hidden by the uneven ground and numerous copses of the park, as well as from the Imperial troops who had earlier taken Mirabello House. The remaining Imperial foot soldiers, now safe from the French artillery, rallied and after heavy fighting got the better of their opponents, driving them from the battlefield. With the talented commander, Pescaro, now directing operations, the Imperial infantry added to the onslaught on the French cavalry. They were joined by Leyva’s troops, who on the given signal had attacked from the city, defeating the Swiss troops left in the siege lines.

‘All I have left to me is my honour and my life’

King Francis suffered the humiliation of seeing his army destroyed around him but fought on until his horse was shot and he was trapped beneath it. He surrendered to Lannoy, along with other generals, Robert de la Mark, seigneur de Flourance, and Anne de Montmorency, Marshal of France. By mid-morning the battle was over. Thousands of the French fell on the battlefield or were drowned in the River Ticino attempting to escape.

The loss of life among the French nobility was immense, comparable with Agincourt over 100 years before. Among the dead were the senior commanders Guillaume Gouffier seigneur de Bonnivet, Louis II Le Tremoille, the newly appointed governor of Milan, as well as Francois de Lorraine and (much to the delight of Henry VIII) Richard de la Pole, the exiled Duke of Suffolk and the last Yorkist claimant to the throne of England, who commanded mercenary troops. Recognising the scale of his defeat Francis wrote that only his honour and his life remained.

How had this victory come about? The initial plan of a surprise attack developed by the Imperial commanders, for which Pescara is often credited, played its part. This made it much more difficult for Francis to co-ordinate the different units of his army. The Imperial army had many more arquebusiers than the French and their use against the French cavalry was particularly effective. However it was not just the weapon itself but their unusual deployment, in small groups scattered over the battlefield taking advantage of the terrain. Thus they could bring their firepower to bear where it could do most damage, especially when the French cavalry were slowed by the marshy ground, and also move out of danger when necessary. Francis’s impetuosity in immediately charging the advancing Imperial army without due regard to the early morning conditions and the fact that it prevented his artillery inflicting maximum damage on his enemy also played a part in the French defeat.

How to achieve a lasting peace?

It took over two weeks for news of the victory, achieved on the emperor’s twenty-fifth birthday, to reach Spain. Charles is reported to have at first turned pale, going silently to his room. After months of inner turmoil he found release in prayer. Only then did he ask for more details of the battle. He forbade noisy rejoicing, such as bells and fireworks, and instead ordered prayers of thanksgiving, saying that ‘It is fitting to celebrate victories over infidels, but not those won against Christians’.

The victory of Charles’s army at Pavia and the capture of Francis might be thought to have settled the question of superiority in Italy. For a while that seemed to be the case. Francis was taken to Spain where he remained until a peace treaty had been agreed. However, securing a lasting peace was to prove even more difficult than winning a military victory. Charles would have little to do with his royal prisoner, only meeting him twice, first when Francis was seriously ill and again just before his release. For months Francis, in turn, refused many of the terms demanded by Charles, especially the return of Burgundy, taken by the French in 1477. Charles was given much conflicting advice on to what extent he could trust the French king and whether to win Francis over by generosity or to impose the most severe terms.

However by late 1525 captivity was proving too much for the French king, even given the relative freedoms allowed as a result of his status. He agreed to the Treaty of Madrid, signed on 14th January 1526, seemingly giving in to most of Charles’s demands. In return he would marry Charles’s sister, Eleanor, and his two eldest sons, Francis and Henry, aged eight and seven respectively, were to be sent to Spain and remain there until Francis had fulfilled all that he had promised. But Charles had been deceived. On his release in March 1526 Francis immediately argued that the treaty had been obtained by coercion and was therefore invalid. He formed a new alliance with all those who believed that Charles had become too powerful and war was resumed. In the words of Charles’s biographer, Geoffrey Parker, Charles had ‘snatched defeat from the jaws of victory’.

It was to be another three years before further victories finally established Charles’s hegemony in Italy. During that time Rome suffered greatly when sacked by imperial troops in 1527 and Francis’s sons remained imprisoned in Spain. The younger, Henry, eventually became Francis’s successor in 1547 and his experiences meant that he was rarely on good terms with his father and that he continued French hostility towards the emperor, ensuring that Europe endured more years of war. A glorious victory had not just failed to bring about peace but its consequences continued to be felt for decades.