While the latter was preparing his expedition to Algiers the king of France sent to demand satisfaction for the murder of his ambassador to the Porte, Evince's, who was assassinated, if not by the orders, at least with the connivance of the Marquis del niece the governor of Milan. On the ground of this outrage war was again declared (1542), but the king of England and the l'rotestant princes remained firm to the emperor. The subsequent operations in Roumanian, Flanders, and Piedmont., produced no event. of importance until the battle of Cerisoles (April 11, 1544), in which the French were completely victorious. On the other hand, Charles advanced into Champague with a large and well-appointed army, and Henry VIII. besieged Boulogne. On the 11th September 1544, a peace was concluded at Crespi, which the emperor consented to, principally from fear of the Turk and from the increasing strength of the Protestants. Francis did his utmost to animate these two parties; but in 1547, on the last day of March, the death of the French king relieved his opponeut from many of the apprehensions which he had entertained.
In reviewing the position of Francis during his whole struggle with the emperor, we are struck with the enormous force against which he had to contend. France, in his reign, sustained the same character in which she appeared again in the following century. As in the time of the thirty years' war, she, a Catholic power, aided the Protestant cause ; so in the early part of the 16th century, when the danger was the more imminent, from the whole strength being concentrated in the hands of Charles V., the Freuch king was the only efficient hindrance to the universal monarchy of the house of Austria. It was Francis I. who favoured the revolt of Geneva from the Duke of Savoy, and enabled that city to found an independence which was afterwards to become one of the main props of the reformed faith. While however be fostered religious rebellion in Germany, he proved his orthodoxy in Paris by the utmost cruelty to the heretics. The gallant manner in which he struggled against his formidable rival, and grappled with him again and again after the heaviest blows, excites our sympathy in his favour : his personal courage was undoubted, and his generosity ou the two occasions in which Charles put himself in his power, more chivalrous than his conduct with reference to the treaty of Madrid. "If it was perjury,
every Frenchman was his accomplice." This conduct has indeed been defended by French writers; but the hard nature of the con ditions cannot justify an open and deliberate oath, accompanied by a secret protest as its antidote. Francis is said to have requested knighthood from the sword of Bayard, and his usual mode of affirming what he said was—"Foi de Gentilhomme." In his family Francis was far from happy : by his first wife Claude of France, daughter of Louis XII., he hal three sons and four daughters ; his eldest, the Dauphin, was said to have been poisoned by his cup-bearer, Monte cuculi : whether such was the fact is very doubtful, aud there is certainly no reason to suppose that the crime was instigated by Charles V. The second son succeeded to the throne by the title of Henry II. His second wife, Eleanor of Portugal, bore him no children. Ilia private life is not entitled to much praise. Madame de Chateau briaud, sister of Lautrec, the Duchesse d'Etampes, and la belle Fdroni6re, were successively his mistresses : to vengeance ou the part of the husband of the last be is said to have owed his death. In his reign ladies for the first time became coustant attendants at the French court, and the foundation was laid for those profligate manners so fully developed in the succeeding reigns.
As the patron of art and literature, Francis I. ranks deservedly high. He reigned at the moment when sounder learning and higher principles of art were spreading from Italy to the rest of Europe. Budd, Lascaris, Erasmus, the Stephens, and Marot, were enabled to boast of his countenance to letters : be is well known as the patron of Primaticcio and Cellini; while a greater man than either, Leonardo da Vinci, is said to have died in his arms.
(Robertson, Charles V.; Pere Hieloire de France ; Bayle, Dictiannaire; Biographic Univereelle ; Leopold Ranks, (seschichte der Pd pate.)