Spain 1474-1598 by Jocelyn Hunt

Author:Jocelyn Hunt [Hunt, Jocelyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Europe, Spain & Portugal
ISBN: 9781136759086
Google: f1zDr1KVRvMC
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-11-02T16:11:58+00:00

ANALYSIS (1): WHY DID THE HABSBURG–VALOIS STRUGGLE CONTINUE FOR SO LONG?

Any dispute with many causes may be expected to endure for a long time, and the disagreements between Spain and France were already serious before either Charles I or Francis I came to the throne. These disputes were made worse by the personal antipathy between the two men. Francis I had hoped to be Holy Roman Emperor, and was bitter when Charles’ bribes and promises proved more effective than his own. His capture at Pavia was a deep humiliation for the French King; his failure to keep his promises forced Charles, in accordance with the diplomatic conventions of the day, to mistreat the two young French princes, sent as hostages in their father’s place. When a French courtier visited the princes in 1529, he described their accommodation as

very dark, without any carpet or decoration save a straw mattress, in the which chamber my Lords were seated on small stone stools beneath a window, barred inside and out … and with walls eight or ten feet thick, the said window so high that scarcely could my said Lords have air or the pleasure of daylight.

He was also appalled at the shabbiness of their clothes, and at the fact that three years of captivity had caused them to lose their French.3 It was not surprising that when the Dauphin Francis died in 1536, the hardships of his captivity were blamed for having weakened his health; nor was it surprising that his brother, as Henry II, King of France, should prove relentless in his loathing of Charles. Peace would not be achieved until both Charles and Francis I were dead.

Because the war had many causes it was fought in many different areas, and thus attempts to achieve peace in one area were likely to fail because of conflicts arising in others. Italy had been the key focus for the earlier wars of Ferdinand; and fighting between Charles and Francis continued over Milan and Naples. Indeed, since many of the mercenaries employed by both sides were Italian, it is not surprising that the war there should be hard fought. But, at the same time, the Spanish possession of the Netherlands widened the theatre of war, with the towns on the eastern border of France being fought over again and again. Francis and his advisers saw the possession of towns such as Cambrai and Tournai to be essential for the maintenance of French security; Charles regarded them as a part of his patrimony. Given, in addition, that the French were reluctant to accept the permanent loss of the Pyrenean provinces, there would always be a new focal point for conflict in one area as soon as the fighting died down in another.

France made this repeated renewal of war more likely by its willingness to become involved in what otherwise may have been seen as Charles’ own imperial problems. French support for the Schmalkaldic League undoubtedly extended hostility into the 1540s, as did the Turkish naval base at Toulon.

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