General Louis II de la Tremoille

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_II_de_la_Tr%C3%A9moille

Louis II de la Trémoille (or La Trimouille) (29 September 1460 – 24 February 1525) was a French general. He was born in Thouars to a prominent noble family of Poitou. He served under three kings: Charles VIII, Louis XII, and Francis I. He was killed in combat at the Battle of Pavia.

Titles During the course of his career, he earned the titles Vicomte de Thouars, Prince de Talmond, Comte de Guînes et de Bénon, Baron de Sully, de Craon, de Montagu, de Mauléon et de l'Ile-Bouchard, Seigneur des Iles de Ré, de Rochefort et de Marans, and Premier Chambellan du Roi.

Military career

He commanded an army that attempted to secure Brittany for the French crown after internal revolts had weakened Francis II, Duke of Brittany during the so-called "Mad War" (La Guerre Folle). His decisive victory at the Battle of Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier on 27 July 1488 ended effective Breton independence.

He took part in several battles in the Italian Wars, notably the inconclusive Battle of Fornovo (1495) and the victorious Battle of Agnadello (1509). He suffered a severe defeat at the Battle of Novara, in which his 10,000-strong army was ambushed by 13,000 Swiss mercenaries.

He later went on to secure a French victory at the Battle of Marignano (1515), but he perished at the Battle of Pavia on 24 February 1525, where he died of a wound inflicted by an arquebus. His death occurred during the climax of the battle when the French were surprised by 1500 Spanish arquebusiers. La Trémoille and other high-ranking Frenchmen fought their way towards their king, Francis I, in order to protect him. La Trémoille fell from his horse, shot through the heart.

Marriage On 7 April 1517, he married 16 year-old Louise Borgia, Duchess of Valentinois, the only legitimate child of Cesare Borgia, Duke of Valentinois by his French wife Charlotte of Albret. The marriage was childless. Five years after La Trémoille's death she married Philippe de Bourbon, Seigneur de Bourbon-Busset, by whom she had issue. He remarried to Gabrielle de Bourbon.

Memory Rue de La Trémoille, in the VIIIe arrondissement of Paris, is named after him.

Louis II de la Trémoille

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Louis II de la Trémoille or La Trimouille (September 29, 1460 – 1525), was a late medieval/early renaissance French general. He served under three kings: Charles VIII, Louis XII, and Francis I.

[edit] Titles

During the course of his career, he earned the titles Vicomte de Thouars, Prince de Talmond, Comte de Guînes et de Bénon, Baron de Sully, de Craon, de Montagu, de Mauléon et de l'Ile-Bouchard, Seigneur des Iles de Ré, de Rochefort et de Marans, and Premier Chambellan du Roi.

[edit] Biography

He was born in Thouars to a prominent noble family of Poitou.

He commanded an army that attempted to secure Brittany for the French crown after internal revolts has weakened Francis II, Duke of Brittany during the so-called "Mad War" (La Guerre Folle). His decisive victory at the Battle of Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier on July 27, 1488 ended effective Breton independence.

He took part in several battles in the Italian Wars, notably the inconclusive Battle of Fornovo (1495) and the victorious Battle of Agnadello (1509). He suffered a severe defeat at the Battle of Novara, in which his 10,000-strong army was ambushed by 13,000 Swiss mercenaries.

He later went on to secure a French victory at the Battle of Marignano (1515), but he perished at the Battle of Pavia (1525), where he died of a wound inflicted by an arquebus. His death occurred during the climax of the battle when the French were surprised by 1500 Spanish arquebusiers. La Trémoille and other high-ranking Frenchmen fought their way towards their king, Francis I, in order to protect him. La Trémoille fell from his horse, shot through the heart.

Forrás / Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_II_de_La_Tremouille ______________________________________________

Louis II of Tremoille or the discovery of Italy (1480-1525) Historical study and edition of correspondence. THROUGH LAURENT VISSIÈRE

Introduction Louis II de La Trémoille (1460-1525) alone represents an era, that of a conquering France, still chivalrous and already modern. In the service of Charles VIII, Louis XII and François I er, for almost fifty years, he occupied without any interruption or eclipse a leading role in the court and the armies. We have chosen to privilege here our relations with Italy. Indeed, he was one of the main characters of the first Italian Wars, from the Voyage of Naples (1494-1495) to the Battle of Pavia, where, aged sixty-four, he died of an arquebus . It is interesting to understand what types of relationships he establishes with the princes and cities of the Peninsula. Were they only military and diplomatic, or can we speak of cultural exchanges The question moreover takes on its full meaning with the reign of Louis XII (1498-1515), which historiography tends to neglect, since the year 1500, implicitly, serves as a hinge between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance . However during the first years of the XVI Ecentury, the French domination on a large part of Italy appeared solid and durable, and this period of transition offers a particular interest from the point of view of the exchanges between the two countries. One can therefore wonder what role La Trémoille played there, taking into account the different facets of his personality; a close adviser to the king and warlord, he was also a great lord, sensitive to the pleasures and fashions of a caste that transcended political borders (hunting, arts and letters, etc.). Was he an exceptional man, a hero as brilliant as Gaston de Foix or Bayard Or should we see in his character a French aristocrat perfectly representative of a milieu and an era? job,

Sources Under the symbol 1 AP, the National Archives keep the La Trémoille chartrier, also known as the Thouars chartrier. This prodigious collection, but the classification of which remains very uncertain, contains at the same time series of correspondence, land, financial and judicial documents and some accounts of the hotel de Louis de La Trémoille. We thus manage to partially reconstruct the route of La Trémoille in Italy and get an idea of its correspondents. This chartrier, however rich he was, nevertheless suffered a lot; and the Italian archives make up for some of its shortcomings. As it was impossible to visit all the archives of the Peninsula, we have privileged the cities of central and northern Italy with which La Trémoille has attested relations: Milan, Rome, Florence and Pisa, and finally Mantua and Ferrara. The most important funds come from Mantua, because the Archivio Gonzaga keeps both the letters received and the responses, in copialettere registers . Finally, some letters from La Trémoille's correspondence to Anne de Montmorency come from the French collection of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. In total, three hundred and forty letters and documents make up the corpus published in this work. FIRST PART REPRESENTATION

First chapter Iconic Like any great lord of the late Middle Ages, La Trémoille felt a vital need to make himself known and recognized in the various spheres of his activities, whether it was at home, in his fields, or with the king, at court and , of course, at war. It was thus part of a complex framework of representations and signs, which struck his contemporaries, both in France and in Italy, and which it is interesting to reproduce here. The emblematic, which constitutes the first sphere of representation, comprises a subtle mixture of acquired elements and original creations. Among the elements inherited are the name, first name, titles and coat of arms. Already attested in the XI th century in its' The Trimoille "(that is to say trembled in the French West), the name evolved in the late Middle Ages in" La Tremoille ", pronounced "La Trémouille". Louis II de la Trémoille was named after his father, but it seems that the name of the family elders to XV th and XVI thcenturies to be compared with that of the king or the dolphin of France: the son of Louis II, Charles, has Charles VIII for godfather; and his grandson, François, is sponsored by François d'Angoulême. The shield of Trémoille (gold chevron gules, accompanied by three eaglets Azure, beaked-endowed and reds) varied throughout the XV th century; and Louis II quartered it with 2, Thouars, and 3, Craon. This composition seems to have a political value, because Louis thus affirmed his grip on the city of Thouars, the new "capital" of the family, and his political filiation with his uncle Georges de La Trémoille, lord of Craon, the minister of Louis XI . In a second circle of representation intervenes the individuality of the character who, while proving his membership of a class, seeks at the same time to distinguish himself from it. We can note different elements: the number, the mottos, the curse word, the nicknames ... Thus the number, G and L entwined which recalled the union of Louis and Gabrielle de Bourbon, seems to have been a recurring decorative motif in all the castle of Thouars. According to Paolo Giovio, La Trémoille had adopted the motto of a wheel accompanied by the austere formula: "Without any sense out of the rut". But La Trémoille used other currencies, which one could call currencies of circumstances. We thus see on his large equestrian seal: " Omnis qui zelum habet militie: exeat post me ” ; another Latin motto, attested by the texts, " Ardet in hostes ", could be related to the standard he wore at the time of the reconquest of the Milanese in 1500: a bloody sword, a torch and a whip. Louis II was nicknamed "the Knight without reproach", but to this very noble nickname was added another, more curious: "La Vraye-corps-Dieu", according to his favorite swear word, an expression which seems to have marked his contemporaries.

Chapter II A literary portrait The emblematic represents in different forms an ideal man: without reproach, and ideal: the man of a lineage, with his name and his coat of arms; the man of a function, evoked by the emblems of court and war. But behind the mask, there is still the man of flesh. The one that literary or artistic portraits deliver to us. We only know of a literary portrait of La Trémoille, by Grand Rhétoriqueur Jean Bouchet. This familiar of La Trémoille indeed wrote several texts in honor of his protectors, and in particular the Panégyric du Chevallier without reproach , published in 1527. In this fundamental text, Bouchet gives a physical and moral description of the young Louis, precious, despite the bombastic style of the rhetorician.

Chapter III Painted portraits and statuary Like the various emblems already studied, the portrait has a significant social and aulic function. The painter aims above all at an absolute resemblance between the portrait and its model; but at the same time, the work must affirm something more: a social status, a character. We have five figurines of La Trémoille that we can consider as authentic. The first is a very small portrait on wood, now kept at the Condé museum in Chantilly. The work is neither signed nor dated, but we generally agree on the name of Benedetto Ghirlandaio, Caden of Domenico. He worked in Auvergne, between 1485 and 1494, on behalf of Gilbert de Montpensier and his wife, Chiara Gonzaga. It is very likely that it was Gilbert himself who commissioned the portrait of his young brother-in-law around 1485. The second portrait consists of a miniature on vellum, of which we only have an old photograph. The work has an Italian or Italian flavor. La Trémoille seems already old (around forty-five),real stories and lives of famous men…(1584), André Thevet had an aged La Trémoille represented: the engraving seems to have been composed from the recumbent figure and from a pencil portrait now lost. Louis had indeed ordered a set of funeral monuments which adorned the crypt of the chapel of Thouars. These tombs, destroyed during the Revolution, are nevertheless known by the drawings from the Gaignières collection. We also have the past contract for their realization between La Trémoille and the sculptor Martin Claustre. Finally, the tapestry of the seat of Dijon, made around 1515, shows among the defenders of the city La Trémoille, who was then governor of Burgundy (Dijon, Museum of Fine Arts). Under the name of Gabrielle de Bourbon, Louis' first wife, we know a small court portrait, showing a young woman very richly dressed; the current location is unfortunately unknown. It is very tempting to relate this table to the one which was sent to La Trémoille shortly before his marriage, in 1484, and which Jean Bouchet claims to have seen. There is also a pencil from the Montmor collection at the Méjanes library in Aix-en-Provence which could represent her aged around thirty, but the identification is not certain. On the basis of a false identification of Gaignières, we have long taken for La Trémoille a bearded character of which we have two old portraits, a pencil and a table: according to the habit of this one, we are probably situated towards the late 1550s. Not only could he not be Louis II, but moreover, for reasons of age, he was probably not one of his descendants either. The Louvre also keeps an equestrian statuette, which would have been melted in Milan around 1510: we wanted to see La Trémoille there, because the rider's crest represents a kind of cogwheel, which recalls its motto. But this identification is of the highest fantasy and cannot be retained.

SECOND PART ACTION

First chapter The road to Naples (1494-1495) Like many French lords of his time. La Trémoille discovered Italy during the Voyage of Naples. He accompanied Charles VIII as a chamberlain, and does not seem to have had, at least at the start, a particular military function. But the king entrusted him with several embassies, a first from Emperor Maximilian (spring 1494), a second from Ludovic le More (September), and the last from Pope Alexander VI (December). The reports of the Italian ambassadors also show La Trémoille always very close to the king, and there is no doubt that he learned during this trip, which was studded with solemn entrances and various embassies, the basics of the political game of the Peninsula. On February 9, 1495, he himself led the assault on Monte San Giovanni, one of the fortresses on the Neapolitan border: a lightning victory that would open the kingdom to French troops. For almost three months (February-May). La Trémoille resided in Naples, sitting daily on the king's council. Then, before the formation of an Italian coalition, Charles VIII gave the signal for the return. La Trémoille, who had asked for no charge in the conquered kingdom, returned with the king, but he now played a leading role: it was thanks to his energy that the French made the Apennines pass to their artillery; it contributed to the victory of Fornoue (July 6, 1495), and it seems to have taken an important part in the negotiations which led to the peace of Vercelli (October 9). a lightning victory which would open the kingdom to French troops. For almost three months (February-May). La Trémoille resided in Naples, sitting daily on the king's council. Then, before the formation of an Italian coalition, Charles VIII gave the signal for the return. La Trémoille, who had asked for no charge in the conquered kingdom, returned with the king, but he now played a leading role: it was thanks to his energy that the French made the Apennines pass to their artillery; it contributed to the victory of Fornoue (July 6, 1495), and it seems to have taken an important part in the negotiations which led to the peace of Vercelli (October 9). a lightning victory which would open the kingdom to French troops. For almost three months (February-May). La Trémoille resided in Naples, sitting daily on the king's council. Then, before the formation of an Italian coalition, Charles VIII gave the signal for the return. La Trémoille, who had asked for no charge in the conquered kingdom, returned with the king, but he now played a leading role: it was thanks to his energy that the French made the Apennines pass to their artillery; it contributed to the victory of Fornoue (July 6, 1495), and it seems to have taken an important part in the negotiations which led to the peace of Vercelli (October 9). La Trémoille resided in Naples, sitting daily on the king's council. Then, before the formation of an Italian coalition, Charles VIII gave the signal for the return. La Trémoille, who had asked for no charge in the conquered kingdom, returned with the king, but he now played a leading role: it was thanks to his energy that the French made the Apennines pass to their artillery; it contributed to the victory of Fornoue (July 6, 1495), and it seems to have taken an important part in the negotiations which led to the peace of Vercelli (October 9). La Trémoille resided in Naples, sitting daily on the king's council. Then, before the formation of an Italian coalition, Charles VIII gave the signal for the return. La Trémoille, who had asked for no charge in the conquered kingdom, returned with the king, but he now played a leading role: it was thanks to his energy that the French made the Apennines pass to their artillery; it contributed to the victory of Fornoue (July 6, 1495), and it seems to have taken an important part in the negotiations which led to the peace of Vercelli (October 9). who had asked for no charge in the conquered kingdom, returned with the king, but he now played a leading role: it was thanks to his energy that the French made the Apennines pass to their artillery; it contributed to the victory of Fornoue (July 6, 1495), and it seems to have taken an important part in the negotiations which led to the peace of Vercelli (October 9). who had asked for no charge in the conquered kingdom, returned with the king, but he now played a leading role: it was thanks to his energy that the French made the Apennines pass to their artillery; it contributed to the victory of Fornoue (July 6, 1495), and it seems to have taken an important part in the negotiations which led to the peace of Vercelli (October 9).

Chapter II The beginnings of the Milanese adventure (1499) Louis XII did not hold rigor at La Trémoille for having defeated him at Saint-Aubin-du-Cormier ("it was not for a roy of France to avenge the wrongs done to a duke of Orleans"), and maintained in all his charges at court. La Trémoille had no part in the conquest of the Milanese, carried out in the summer of 1499, but he accompanied the king, as a courtier, on his triumphal journey to Lombardy (September-November). In Milan, he established new contacts with the Italian princes, and in particular the Marquis of Mantua, Gian Francesco Gonzaga.

'Chapter III The reconquest of Milan (1500)' In January 1500, Ludovic le More, with the support of Maximilien, undertook to reconquer his lost duchy. Louis XII then designated La Trémoille as his lieutenant-general in Milanese, and he crossed the mountains in March at the head of a powerful army. At the siege of Novara, he succeeds in defeating the Milanese army and in capturing Ludovic (April 10). Once the victory was acquired, it was necessary to reorganize the affairs of the duchy. While Cardinal d'Amboise took care of political matters in Milan, La Trémoille traveled through the Milanese and notably inspected the northern border, in order to put an end to the disorders caused by the bands of stray soldiers and to settle the problem of occupied Rellinzona by the Swiss. We are exceptionally well informed about all these events through the funds kept in the Thouars chart. In June. La Trémoille considered that he had fulfilled his mission and he returned to France, declining the offers of Louis XII, who proposed him to become viceroy or governor of the new province, and those of Florence who would have liked to hire him as condottiere in his war against Pisa.

Chapter IV A troubled Italy (1501-1502) By a perverse effect of the alliance of Louis XII and Alexander VI, the French victory in Italy had favored the excessive ambition of César Borgia. The latter sought to carve out an empire in central Italy, and the king's allies called France for help. In the summer of 1502, the whole court moved to Italy. La Trémoille was responsible for leading an expedition against the Borgia; but Caesar, distraught, came to find Louis XII and succeeded, against all odds, in convincing him of his good intentions. The expedition was short.

'Chapter V A Lost Expedition (1503)' In May 1503, the French army which had been fighting for two years in the kingdom of Naples was defeated by the Spaniards of Gonzalve de Cordoue. Louis XII hastened to send aid, under the leadership of his best general, Louis de La Trémoille. But on July 13, while he was holding a war council in Parma, La Trémoille was struck down by an attack of fever, probably suffering from malaria, and almost died from it. Thanks to reports from the Italians, we know his daily health bulletin, and even the words he spoke during his nights of delirium. The king eventually entrusted the management of operations to the Marquis of Mantua. But meanwhile Alexander VI was dead (August 18), and Louis XII ordered his troops to go to Rome to ensure the "freedom of the cardinals", that is to say, to favor the election of Cardinal d'Amboise. La Trémoille, a little recovered, joined the army in the suburbs of Rome, but in September, decidedly too ill, he returned to France in small stages, while the expedition ended in a new disaster.

Chapter VI New battles in northern Italy (1507-1512) Italy was only one facet of La Trémoille's field of action: he had been admiral of Brittany and Guyenne since 1502, he became governor of Burgundy in 1506. He does not seem to have participated in the Genoa expedition in 1507, but his son Charles distinguished himself there. On the other hand, in 1509, the two men accompanied Louis XII in his expedition against Venice and fought valiantly at Agnadel. In the summer of 1512, the French lost the Milanese. La Trémoille left for Switzerland to renegotiate an alliance, which ultimately proved impossible.

Chapter VII A long autumn (1513-1525) After the failed negotiations, Louis XII sent a new French army to Lombardy with La Trémoille and Trivulce. But when they had started to invest Novara, where Duke Massimiliano Sforza had been locked up, the French were surprised by a nocturnal attack by the Swiss infantry (June 6, 1513). We had to retreat without glory. La Trémoille then had to defend Dijon, which the Swiss were besieging, and he succeeded in negotiating their departure for an exorbitant sum (September 13). Louis XII died before he could take his revenge, but François I erused the preparations of his predecessor to attack the Milanese again, where he defeated the Swiss at Marignan. This battle was a disaster for Louis de La Trémoille who lost his only son there. He had built his entire career on the service of the king, and his son died precisely when he could have gone out of business, showered with honors. This perhaps explains why La Trémoille continued to serve, despite its age. In 1516 he was still in Italy, and played a role in the negotiations for the Bologna Concordat. But in the years that followed, he never returned to the Peninsula; he stayed at length in his government of Burgundy, fought in Picardy and Artois in the years 1521-1523, In 1524, before the invasion of Provence, François I er recalled him and he participated in the counter-offensive. In the footsteps of Constable Bourbon, the French army crossed the Alps and invaded the Milanese: while the king was investing Pavia, La Trémoille received the government of Milan (October 1524), where he tried with great difficulty to restore the order. Beginning of February 1525, François I errecalled all its captains in anticipation of the decisive combat. On the 24th, against the advice of his old advisers, including La Trémoille, he launched the disastrous battle, where at the end of a charge as heroic as it was useless, he was going to be taken prisoner, while the chivalry of France was mowed down by the fire of Spanish arquebusiers. La Trémoille died there.

THIRD PART RELATIONSHIPS

First chapter Louis II of Tremoille and the Marquis of Mantua Thanks to the exceptional archives of Mantua, we manage to restore almost all of the correspondence of Gian Francesco Gonzaga and Louis de La Trémoille, during the few years of their relationship (1495 and 1499-1503). This correspondence constitutes half of our corpus. In fact, the two men were related: Chiara, the Marquis' sister, had married in 1481 Gilbert de Montpensier, who would soon become Louis II's brother-in-law. The Montpensier court in Aigueperse was undoubtedly one of the first to host Italian Renaissance art in France. Gilbert was one of the "specialists" of Italian politics on the council of Charles VIII, and it is no coincidence that he was appointed viceroy of Naples in 1495. He was also the privileged correspondent of the Marquis of Mantua at the court of France. After his death in 1496, La Trémoille appeared to the Marquis as his closest and most powerful relative in France, and this no doubt explains that, as early as 1499, he began to court him. This strategy paid off, because in 1500, after the Milanese had been reconquered, La Trémoille personally protected the Marquis, whose woeful policy had exposed the king's anger. The correspondence of the Marquis and La Trémoille allows us to approach fairly closely the reports of a great French lord and an Italian prince at the beginning of the reign of Louis XII. The first problem that arises is that of language: on both sides, we need bilingual secretaries capable of translating letters and conversations. Among the Mantuan ambassadors, the most curious is a certain Jamet de Nesson, a Frenchman who belongs to the line of poets Nesson d'Aigueperse, and who pursues an active policy at the court of France. The Marquis and La Trémoille exchange all kinds of gifts, in particular hunting animals, dogs or hawks. But we realize that La Trémoille was not insensitive to the question of the arts. In 1502, the marquis offered him a painting by Mantegna,Saint Sébastien d'Aigueperse, today at the Louvre Museum, and an order from Cardinal d'Amboise in 1499. Nevertheless, the friendship of the two men does not seem to have survived the disastrous expedition of 1503. Machiavellian politics and the The Marquis's incessant about-face could hardly agree with the austere moral of service that La Trémoille followed flawlessly until death.

Chapter II Relations with the papacy The piety of La Trémoille is beyond doubt. But he does not seem to have had any particular respect for the papacy, perceived as a temporal state similar to the others. On several occasions, he entered the States of the Church without great care: in December 1494, Charles VIII commissioned him to mark the accommodation of the French army in Rome; in December 1515 Francis first gave him a similar mission in Bologna; and in September 1524, he obtained the passage of an army through Avignon. La Trémoille also supported the ecclesiastical career of his brother Jean, Archbishop of Auch, and endeavored in particular to help him obtain a cardinal's hat. Julius II finally granted it to him in 1507, but John died in Milan while going to seek it.

Chapter III Louise de Valentinois After the death of Gabrielle de Bourbon, in November 1516, La Trémoille sought to remarry and he set his sights on the very young Louise of Valentinois, daughter of the late César Borgia and granddaughter of Alexander VI. One of the richest parties in France. He hastened the marriage as much as it was celebrated in April 1517. The great difference in age of the two spouses seems to have caused scandal, as evidenced by the correspondence of the Italian ambassadors. This marriage related La Trémoille to large Italian families, notably the Estes, but Louise seems to have been in fact of essentially French culture.

Conclusion The La Trémoilles paid a heavy price for the Italian dreams of the kings of France: Jean died of illness in Milan; Charles fell to Marignan and Louis II to Pavia. Louis had had early contacts with Italian culture, notably through the court of Aigueperse. But his relations with Italy then faded, undoubtedly because of his first defeat in Novara (1513) and the death of his son in Marignan (1515). La Trémoille no longer sought to return to Italy. In 1524, he had simply respond to the injunctions of François I er , who needed all his captains. And La Trémoille went to the end of the rut. But it seems that this last period saw its gradual closure to Italian influences. Because Italy had cost him too much. And in this sense, it was undoubtedly really exceptional, since it went against the evolution of French aulic culture. Even her marriage to Louise de Valentinois, who was semi-Italian, however, was not an opportunity to reconnect with the powers of the Peninsula. Italy was part of its past.

Laurent Vissiere, "Louis II de la Trémoille ou la découverte de l'Italie (1480-1525)"