François Ier (1494-1547) became king of France on the death of Louis XII (1515). He was immensely popular with his nobility because of his energetic participation in the Italian wars. Early successes like that of Marignano (1515) gave way, however, to the defeat of Pavia (1525), which led to the king's imprisonment in Madrid and to the establishment of Spanish hegemony in Italy. François's pursuit of dynastic aims in Italy shows that he was still, in many ways, a medieval monarch; but his dogged compaigns against the encircling power of the emperor Charles V showed him to be very much aware of the importance of power politics. He shocked Europe by signing an alliance with the Turks and infuriated Catholic opinion at home by supporting the German Protestants.
Although a sincere Catholic, he tolerated moderate reform in France until the Affaire des Placards, which convinced him that Lutheranism was fundamentally seditious [see Reformation]. His earlier, more tolerant attitude was born of a desire to establish France's reputation as a centre for the New Learning, which often went hand-in-hand with Evangelical leanings of the kind associated with his sister, Marguerite de Navarre. It bore more permanent fruit in the Collège Royal (later Collège de France) and in his handsome library, which was to become the basis of the Bibliothèque Nationale. François was also aware of the prestige to be obtained as a patron of the visual arts. He succeeded in luring the ageing Leonardo da Vinci to France and, for a time, the more ebullient Cellini. His name is more particularly associated, however, with the rebuilt Palace of Fontainebleau, which he had decorated in the Mannerist style by Il Rosso and Primaticcio. His achievements will outlast the image of the philanderer-king presented by Hugo's Le Roi s'amuse.
[James Supple]
