[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":36},["ShallowReactive",2],{"hreflang:/en/zoom/p7ch4z2-1515-the-battle-of-marignano-and-the-reconquest-of-the-milanese":3,"zoom:p7ch4z2:en":7},{"fr":4,"en":5,"es":6},"/zoom/p7ch4z2-1515-bataille-de-marignan-et-reconquete-du-milanais","/en/zoom/p7ch4z2-1515-the-battle-of-marignano-and-the-reconquest-of-the-milanese","/es/zoom/p7ch4z2-1515-la-batalla-de-marignano-y-la-reconquista-del-milanesado",{"period":8,"chapter":26,"zoom":29},{"id":9,"title":10,"titleEn":10,"titleEs":11,"range":12,"rangeEn":12,"rangeEs":12,"covers":13},"p7","Renaissance","Renacimiento","1461 → 1610",[14,17,20,23],{"filename":15,"url":16},"British_-_Field_of_the_Cloth_of_Gold_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg","https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/British_-_Field_of_the_Cloth_of_Gold_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg?width=1600",{"filename":18,"url":19},"Marignan-1515-francois1er.jpg","https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/Marignan-1515-francois1er.jpg?width=1600",{"filename":21,"url":22},"ChateauDeChambord.jpg","https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/ChateauDeChambord.jpg?width=1600",{"filename":24,"url":25},"Henri_IV_Toschi_(format_original).jpg","https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:FilePath/Henri_IV_Toschi_(format_original).jpg?width=1600",{"id":27,"title":28},"p7ch4","Francis I: The Knight King and the French Renaissance (1515–1547)",{"id":30,"title":31,"chapterId":27,"html":32,"hasEn":33,"isFallback":34,"seoDescription":35},"p7ch4z2","1515: The Battle of Marignano and the Reconquest of the Milanese","\u003Cp>The Battle of Marignano (13–14 September 1515) was Francis I’s first great military victory and marked the opening of his reign with the reconquest of the Duchy of Milan.\u003C/p>\n\u003Chr>\n\u003Ch2>🗺️ Strategic Context\u003C/h2>\n\u003Cp>No sooner crowned, on 1 January 1515, than Francis I inherited a still-burning issue: the Milanese, lost by Louis XII in 1513, which the young king intended to retake within his first months on the throne, both to assert his authority and to revive the Italian policy launched twenty years earlier by Charles VIII. His legitimacy to claim the duchy rested on more than mere ambition: through his great-grandmother \u003Cstrong>Valentina Visconti\u003C/strong>, heiress of the Dukes of Milan, Francis held genuine dynastic rights to the city — a claim he sought less to invent than finally to enforce by arms, after the defeats suffered by his predecessors.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>In the spring of 1515, even before raising his troops, the king set about diplomatically neutralising his neighbours through a series of treaties, so that the opposition he ultimately faced was reduced essentially to the Duke of Milan \u003Cstrong>Maximilian Sforza\u003C/strong>, weakly supported by Pope Leo X and by Cardinal \u003Cstrong>Matthäus Schiner\u003C/strong>, architect of the alliance between the Swiss cantons and the papacy. Against this coalition, the French army mustered around forty thousand men, including twenty thousand Swiss mercenaries now in its service, against some twenty-five thousand combatants on the Milanese-Swiss side.\u003C/p>\n\u003Chr>\n\u003Ch2>⛰️ The Crossing of the Alps\u003C/h2>\n\u003Cp>In the spring of 1515, the army gathered at Grenoble: thirty thousand men and some sixty bronze cannon, a considerable train of artillery for the time. One problem remained: the Swiss held the usual Mont-Cenis route, via Susa, firmly in hand, and no one on the Milanese side imagined that Francis might take another path.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>This is where \u003Cstrong>Pedro Navarro\u003C/strong>, officer and military engineer, stepped in, proposing to move the army along a route far to the south, over the Vars and Larche passes, down into the Stura valley, in Piedmont. The undertaking demanded a considerable effort: the mountainside tracks had to be widened to allow the artillery through, an operation carried out with such speed that it alone produced the desired effect — when the French army emerged by surprise on the Italian side, the enemy simply had not had time to prepare.\u003C/p>\n\u003Chr>\n\u003Ch2>⚔️ The Battle of Marignano (13–14 September 1515)\u003C/h2>\n\u003Cp>On 8 September, at Gallarate, part of the Swiss army briefly considered entering French service; Cardinal Schiner managed to bring these dissenters back into his camp and advanced with them as far as the village of Melegnano — Marignano — sixteen kilometres from Milan. The clash took place on 13 and 14 September, and the battle long hung in the balance: French artillery, formidably effective against Swiss infantry, eventually tipped the scales, aided by the arrival of Venetian reinforcements, while on both sides raged that hand-to-hand violence contemporaries were already calling the \u003Cem>furia francese\u003C/em>.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>It is from that night of 13 to 14 September that, some decades later, one of the most famous — and most misleading — tales of the reign was born. From 1525 onward, several authors recounted that Francis I, exhausted by the fighting, had himself knighted on the battlefield by \u003Cstrong>Bayard\u003C/strong> himself. The story is beautiful; it is also, very probably, a legend. Historians today see in it a construction after the fact, intended to erase the memory that it was in reality the Constable of Bourbon who had knighted Francis I at his coronation — a memory that became terribly awkward after 1523, when that same constable went over to Charles V’s side and came to be seen, in everyone’s eyes, as the architect of the disaster at Pavia. Substituting, in collective memory, the name of Bayard — who died a hero in 1524 — for that of the future traitor, while offering the king, then a prisoner in Spain after Pavia, the reassuring image of the perfect knight: the legend, in short, served two propaganda purposes at once.\u003C/p>\n\u003Chr>\n\u003Ch2>🏆 Consequences of the Victory\u003C/h2>\n\u003Cp>The victory brought Francis I immediate renown and allowed him to quickly gain control of Lombardy — a success all the more resounding for coming within the first months of the reign. It was followed, the next year, by a series of treaties that shaped European relations for decades: on \u003Cstrong>13 August 1516\u003C/strong>, the Treaty of Noyon, signed with the young King of Spain Charles I — the future Charles V — confirmed Francis I’s possession of the Milanese and restored Navarre to Henri d’Albret, while promising the hand of Louise of France, the king’s eldest daughter then barely a year old, to Charles, with the rights to the kingdom of Naples as dowry — a dynastic project rendered void by the little princess’s premature death, before her third birthday. On \u003Cstrong>29 November 1516\u003C/strong>, the perpetual peace of Fribourg, signed with the Swiss cantons, remained in force until 1798. And on \u003Cstrong>18 August 1516\u003C/strong>, the Concordat of Bologna, negotiated by Chancellor Antoine Duprat, governed relations between the crown and the papacy until the French Revolution: henceforth it was the king who appointed bishops, archbishops and cardinals, the pope merely confirming his choices.\u003C/p>\n\u003Cp>Marignano thus falls squarely in line with the expeditions of Charles VIII and Louis XII, but with a preparation — diplomatic as much as military — that his predecessors had not always managed to achieve. And the episode of the knighting by Bayard reminds us, if need be, that the memory of a battle is built not only on the battlefield itself, but also, long afterward, in the tales that power chooses to keep of it.\u003C/p>\n\u003Chr>\n\u003Ch2>🧠 Key Takeaways\u003C/h2>\n\u003Cul>\n\u003Cli>\u003Cstrong>Dynastic rights\u003C/strong>: through Valentina Visconti, great-grandmother of Francis I\u003C/li>\n\u003Cli>\u003Cstrong>Innovative crossing of the Alps\u003C/strong>: the Vars and Larche passes, thanks to the engineer Pedro Navarro\u003C/li>\n\u003Cli>\u003Cstrong>13–14 September 1515\u003C/strong>: the Battle of Marignano, a decisive victory won through artillery\u003C/li>\n\u003Cli>\u003Cstrong>The Bayard myth\u003C/strong>: the king’s knighting on the battlefield is a legend constructed after the fact\u003C/li>\n\u003Cli>\u003Cstrong>29 November 1516\u003C/strong>: perpetual peace of Fribourg with the Swiss, in force until 1798\u003C/li>\n\u003Cli>\u003Cstrong>13 August 1516\u003C/strong>: Treaty of Noyon, recognition of possession of the Milanese\u003C/li>\n\u003Cli>\u003Cstrong>18 August 1516\u003C/strong>: Concordat of Bologna, royal control over ecclesiastical appointments\u003C/li>\n\u003Cli>A founding victory, which gave the reign its immediate international prestige\u003C/li>\n\u003C/ul>\n\u003Chr>\n\u003Cp>\u003Cstrong>Next zoom\u003C/strong>: The rivalry with Charles V and the imperial election of 1519.\u003C/p>\n",true,false,"The Battle of Marignano (13–14 September 1515) was Francis I’s first great military victory and marked the opening of his reign with the reconquest of the",1786625737934]