A DISCOURSE

TOUCHING

A MATCH PROPOUNDED BY THE SAVOYAN

BETWEEN

THE LADY ELIZABETH AND THE PRINCE OF PIEDMONT.

To obey the commandment of my lord the prince, I have sent you my opinion of the match lately desired by the duke of Savoy, and propounded by his own ambassador, between the lady Elizabeth, his majesty's eldest and only surviving daughter, and the prince of Piedmont; with an overture (as I have heard) of a cross inarriage between the most excellent and hopeful prince of Wales and the eldest daughter of the said duke.

Now as by the first, to wit, by the match with the lady Elizabeth, the duke's son, of a Spanish race, may in the future (if it should please God to lay such a heavy burden upon us) become king of England; so by the second, though the Savoyan had no heirs male, yet would it not be easy for a king of England to recover the right of those principalities, all France being interjacent. For one of the most renowned kings, and the most valiant, that ever France had, spent more in the obtaining and defence of that part of Savoy and Piedmont, which fell unto him by Louisa his mother, heir to her brother Philibert, than both those petty provinces could be valued to be worth. And if those of the house of Austria and of Spain thought it a matter so exceeding perilous for a French king to possess that barren diadem; much more will the French esteem it dangerous for them, that a king of England should inherit it. The reason why, I need not tell you. But we will leave these

considerations to their far-off possibilities; and in the meantime take it for granted, that marriages between foreign princes, for the most part, are but politic: for wheresoever they employ their own affections, judging by persons presented, and not by pictures representing, they commonly make choice of their own subjects. Now this policy in marriages hath either respect to the enlarging of dominion and uniting of kingdoms, dukedoms, and other principalities; as by a marriage the duchy of a Bretagne, and other seigniories in France, were annexed to that crown; by a b marriage the Netherlands became subject to the princes of Austria, and Castile to Arragon, and Portugal to Castile, &c. or to the ending of some great war, and the establishing of peace; as when Ferdinand of Arragon married the lady Germaine of Foix; when king Francis the First married queen Eleanor; Philip the Second the lady Elizabeth of France, and Philibert Emanuel, duke of Savoy, the lady Margaret, sister to king Henry the Second of France: or, lastly, it hath respect to the combination and league against some other king, or estate, powerful and suspected.

Now for the first, I think his majesty holds nothing more impossible, nor any thing less profitable, than the inheritance of Savoy: for as long as there is a king of France, or a king of Spain, they will never (if their powers fail them not) endure the uniting of Savoy and Piedmont to an absolute monarchy powerful in itself. It was a long war, a cruel and costly one, made for the defence of the duchy of Milan, and to keep it a duchy apart from the Imperial, Spanish, and French. For the second, to wit, the establishing a peace after a long war, as there never was any effect without a cause; so to those things that never had beginning, there never was any man that took care to give end or conclusion.

For the third, namely, a combination against some powerful or suspected enemy, I know no Christian prince so powerful as the king of Great Britain; and, out of doubt,

a Charles VIII.

emperor.

b Mary of Burgundy to the archduke, son to the

the estate of Savoy cannot be changed by any alliance, for it hath ever depended, and must ever depend, either upon France or Spain. And for the strengthening our king, or the levy of an army in those parts, either against France or Spain, the least of the cantons of Switzers, or the meanest of the German princes, may be of far more use to the king's majesty, than the duke of Savoy can be. Certainly, that Savoy cannot but depend on Spain, it is manifest enough; for thus the case stands between those princes: the duke hath yet living four sons: he had five, but the eldest was poisoned in Spain, because the king bound himself to give the duchy of Milan to the first and eldest son borne by his daughter.

The second is now prince of Piedmont, called don Philibert; lives with the duke his father, but of less hope by far than don Philip his brother was.

His third son, don Victorio Amadeo, knight of Malta, is the great commander of St. John's in Spain, worth one hundred thousand crowns a year, and withal general of all the king of Spain's galleys; a place of great honour and profit.

The fourth son is a cardinal, and hath the one half of the profit of the archbishopric of Toledo, and is promised the whole after the death of the now bishop; an estate worth three hundred thousand crowns a year.

The fifth, don Thomaso, with whom the mother the lady Catharine of Austria died, a prince of fifteen years of age; and hath also a pension out of Spain, but hath not yet acquired any particular title.

Hereby it is easy to judge, whether the duke of Savoy, by the power of Savoy, will abandon all these pensions and preferments, and enter into a war with the king of Spain for the duchy of Milan, or for the quarrel of any other prince; seeing Milan itself, when it was a duchy apart, was ever a principality of greater force than Savoy and Piedmont. Shall we then hope, that he will offend the king of Spain in respect of England? Certainly it were madness so to do. Milan is too near him; and so are both Spain RALEGH, MISC. WORKS.

and Naples; and England too far off. They are ever like to be neighbours; England never like to be. Again; that he will ever be used against the French for the English, it is very improbable: he hath been too well beaten for that fault; I mean for joining himself against the French, though not for us. For that he is a prince of no strength, if the king of France draw his sword against him, Francis I. hath resolved us; who, in despite of all the assistance of Charles V. when he returned victorious out of Africa, and notwithstanding the great armies which the said emperor employed in the duke's defence; and notwithstanding his forcible invading of Picardy, thereby to drain the French out of Piedmont ; and notwithstanding (ere yet the war had ended) that king Henry VIII. of England did also invade France with a most puissant army; yet did Francis I. by the earl of St. Paul, take from him his duchy of Savoy in a short time, and by other his commanders possess Turin, the chief city of Piedmont, with the greatest part of all that principality; and held both the one and the other from the year 1538 to the year 1544; when with a daughter of France, or rather out of commiseration, it was restored.

This is true; and it is all the good our king of England can expect from Savoy, that he must either abandon his son-in-law, if either France or Spain oppress him, which were too great a dishonour; or he must enter into a war for his defence, which were too great a charge. And his majesty doth well know, that while the league stands between him and the Low Countries, that he is invincible by them, and they by him; and that all other petty combinations will be rather chargeable than profitable.

And if any man shall tell the king, that by having the duke of Savoy at his devotion, he may offend France whenever he pleaseth; his majesty may look into the exploits of Henry VIII., and what flowers and fruit that war of his in France brought forth. For king Henry VIII. had not only a duke of Savoy, but a duke of Bourbon, a king of Arragon, and an emperor the most ambitious and undertaking prince that Germany hath seen for many ages: he had

also the Low Countries, Flanders, Hainault, and Artois, to join with him, and he with them, against the French: but let us see what he brought to pass.

In the year 1512, Ferdinand of Arragon persuaded Henry VIII. to send an army of English into Biscay, and by the way of Bayonne to invade Guienne; by the countenance of whose forces, and while the English affronted the French in those parts, Ferdinand conquered the kingdom of Navarre, deferring his assistance of king Henry VIII. till the next year; and so the English returned with a great deal of loss, and more dishonour.

In the year 1513 king Henry did not only set out a fleet of ships of war against the French, and gave the emperor one hundred thousand ducats towards the levying an army to invade Burgundy; but the king landed in France with 40,000 foot and 5000 men at arms, and was persuaded by the emperor to besiege Terouenne, a town of as much use to the English, as if it had been seated in Arabia. Neither did he gain any foot of ground else by the emperor's assistance; neither could he succour or relieve that city without an army of equal strength to that by which it was won; to wit, an army consisting of 40,000 foot and 5000 barbed horse.

In the year 1515 he again paid divers regiments of Switzers against king Francis (because the said king sent the duke of Albany into Scotland) for the protection of king James V., king Henry's own nephew, and his majesty's grandfather.

In the year 1522 he renewed the war against Francis I. and entered into league against him with the emperor, the pope, the duke of Milan, and the Florentines; and after the English army had in vain besieged Hesdin, and set fire on Dourlans, dispeopled and abandoned unto them, they privately hasted homeward; and in exchange for a great deal of treasure and time spent, they returned again loaden with nothing but poverty and diseases.

In the year 1523 he invaded France with the like success, by the duke of Suffolk; took certain small towns to