In The Siege of Novara; Pietro Bembo Recalls September 1495

Summer turned to fall and the siege at Novara wore on. This siege by the Italian allies was advancing, while the bulk of French troops remained near Asti, to the west of Novara. There had been a number of setbacks for the French through the summer. Naples was rocked by revolts, the Italian allies in battle near Fornovo had forced the French to remain south of the Po, the troops and galleys stationed at Genoa had been forced to flee there, and the siege on Louis the Duke of Orleans at Novara was faltering. Baggage trains had been seized, the troops had little left to eat but bad grain and water, and a mysterious disease - probably syphillis - had begun afflicting everyone.

It was a decisive moment. Would the French stay or would they at last leave? Years later, the official historian for Venice, Pietro Bembo, would carefully tell the tale of the Battle of Fornovo as a Venetian victory saving Italy from the advances and scourges of the powerful French. Allowed access to Venetian state archives, Bembo could detail the benefices made to those actors and their heirs, as rewards to those who made this victory possible. But afterwards, as the Duke of Orleans was stuck under siege at Novara and the King and his massive army awaiting to the west, Bembo could instead paint the French as weakened, and poorly provisioned, their courage cooled.

"Meanwhile the king entered Asti a week after the battle [near Fornovo, 6July] and there called a halt to his retreat, his army worn out not only from fear and the effort of the march, but also from a certain want of supplies. For while the French are of almost all mankind the readiest and bravest at engaging in close combat and joining battle, yet their spirit is surprisingly weak and yielding when it comes to enduring more protracted labors and tolerating hunger, and in a short while all that fierce and ardent courage grows faint and cool." [p. 155]

A few days later, Bembo continues, messages came out of the French camp. Sent far and wide, they announced that all 'Venetians, Milanes and Genoese' were expelled form France and all Lombard lands, or those held by the French King Charles VIII. When Ludovico Sforza of Milan took his troops and allies in order to besiege Novara that summer, Bembo tells us, it was the Venetians that 'almost always got the better of them in the skirmishes'. After the fixed plan was agreed on to besiege the town with Louis and his 8000 cavalry and footsoldiers in it, Bembo says, they

"... began to suffer from a dearth of grain and supplies, which they had not given thought to before the enemies' arrival. The king's cavalrymen were secretly sent to them with pack-animals carrying grain, but were often intercepted by [Bernardo] Contarini, and those that had come from the town to help the cavalry were frequently killed and routed along with them." [p. 157]

The King then sent out word to gather fresh French and Swiss troops. Bembo tells us that the king's wife wrote back saying there were no more men willing to go over the Alps. This stands in stark contrast with matters just a year before. This wife of Charles, Anne of Brittany, though all of eighteen years old, had previously been married to Maximillian King of the Romans. She was essentially captured by Charles in 1491 and then married when Charles took the city of Rennes in a battle with Max. As the legal inheritor of Brittany, and in this context, when she married Charles, she brought her own army with her. The literature surrounding her is rich and varies over the last 200 years.

Bembo also reports that a hundred Germans and a hundred Swiss both joined the Venetians then because the king could not pay them. This also serves as a reminder that there were still cadres of armed soldiers from various places, marching off again to still more places, as a result of these wars in Italy. All this for a better price.

"The Venetians then burnt down the outlying buildings and moved their siege artillery closer.... As each day passed, then, the besieged Frenchmen were increasingly hard pressed by their total lack of resources, to the extent that they were compelled to eat their own horses. Many of them died through eating flour or bran bread that had been spoiled, and by drinking water, which the French and Germans are quite unaccustomed to." [p.157]

 It became increasingly difficult for Louis inside Novara to communicate at all with the King who was just down the road. Messengers and middlemen were stopped, captured, killed. When Louis complained of him being misled and abandoned, and again about lack of resources that now could last only a few days more, Charles at last sued for peace.
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quotes and pagination from Bembo, Pietro: History of Venice; edited and translated by Robert W Ulery, Jr.; in english and latin, The I Tatti Renaissance Library; The President and Fellows of Harvard College, USA 2007