Meetings between Renaissance Monarchs

Direct Diplomacy in the Late Middle Ages

Throughout the Middle Ages, most international discussions and negotiations were carried out through the intercession of ad hoc ambassadors, delegations composed specifically for the circumstances. Encounters between sovereign leaders was nonetheless an essential component of European diplomacy. Royals regularly met on the border between their nations or met on each other’s territory in order to carry out negotiations, ratify a peace treaty or conclude the arrangements for a marriage between their dynasties. 

Such summit meetings grew more rare in the 15^th century. Partly because diplomacy underwent some changes, such as the arranging of major international meetings involving participants from across Europe: ecumenical gatherings like the Councils of Constance (1414-1418) and Florence (1431-1449), congresses, like the Congress of Arras (1434), and projected imperial Diets in preparation for the crusade in the 1450s. From the middle of the century, the appearance of a resident ambassador also had an impact on relations between the powerful.

In addition, the conflicts of the era (the Hundred Years’ War, the War between the Armagnacs and the Burgundians, the War of the Roses) gave rise to a climate of distrust that was hardly conducive to royal encounters. One of them did in fact go particularly badly: in 1419, the dauphin (the future Charles VII) had John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, assassinated at a meeting on the Bridge of Montereau. 

The shock that that event caused in western European courts contributed to both the increasing scarcity of face-to-face meetings between monarchs and to heightened security measures when they did take place. Fifty-six years later, in 1475, when the French King Louis XI met with King Edward IV of England on another bridge, in Picquigny, the two sovereigns spoke to each other through “a strong wooden trellis, as one might see in a lion cage.” Philippe de Commynes, a contemporary historian who chronicled the event, referred to the precedent set in Montereau to justify those precautions.

The Resumption of Summit Meetings during the Italian Wars

At the turn of the 16^th century, the frequency of encounters between monarchs increased, culminating in the 1520s and the 1530s; the meetings were in the diplomatic spotlight more than ever before. Coinciding with the Italian Wars (1494-1559), which pushed some sovereigns to leave their nation in order to lead their armies on the Italian peninsula or to negotiate with their peers, those few decades of resurgence lasted until the early 1540s. 

So it came to pass that Emperor Charles V met with King Henry VIII of England three times (twice in 1520 and once in 1522), King Francis I of France three times also (1525, 1538 and 1539-1540) and Popes Clement VII and Paul III several times each (respectively 1529-1530 and 1532-1533, and 1536, 1538, 1541 and 1543). As for Francis I, he met with Henry VIII twice (1520, 1532) and spoke in person with no fewer than three popes: Leo X (1515), Clement VII (1533) and Paul III (1538). 

Alongside those time-honored bilateral meetings, other types of encounters were aimed at resolving the conflict between France and the Holy Roman Empire that was rattling Europe at the time. In 1529, Charles V’s aunt, Margaret of Austria, and Francis I’s mother, Louise of Savoy, met in Cambrai to negotiate an end to the hostilities: their encounter led to the Treaty of Cambrai, also known as La Paix des Dames (“The Ladies’ Peace”). Nine years later, when fighting had broken out again, Pope Paul III went to Nice for a trilateral meeting with the King of France and the Holy Roman Emperor to try to get them to make peace. Although both Charles V and Francis I were present in Nice, they refused to meet, forcing the pope to shuttle between the two, to no avail. 

In that period of mingling of individuals, ideas and information from across Europe – engendered by the Italian Wars and accentuated by the spread of the printing press – political communication began to develop on a larger scale. It shone a spotlight on encounters between sovereigns. Like other ceremonial events involving royals (weddings, funerals, coronations, etc.), those encounters were organized in such a way as to flaunt monarchs’ wealth and power.

The most famous of those encounters brought Francis I and Henry VIII to camp in the Field of the Cloth of Gold in 1520. Some 9,000 courtiers from the courts of France and England attended two weeks of jousting, pageantry and festivities at a luxurious, temporary campsite set up in the Pale of Calais. While those numbers are surely exceptional, other royal encounters during the Renaissance were nonetheless highly watched events. They tended to take place in urban centers, bringing sovereigns together along entourages of hundreds of people. In addition to the thousands of spectators attending the summit, many more read or heard various narratives of the events that circulated as printed pamphlets and newsletters, among other methods.

In sharp contrast to certain 15^th-century meetings – which tended to take place in a war context and far from urban areas, and to involve plenty of weapons and heavy security measures – Renaissance encounters had a more curial, public dimension. To the extent that one can legitimately wonder if they should really be considered the same practice from one century to the next, or if a diplomatic task had been turned into a spectacle or ceremony that settled for ratifying and ritualizing an alliance that had been negotiated and agreed to beforehand. 

The Long Eclipse of the Ancien Régime

From the mid-16^th century, with the end of the Italian Wars, the religious schism caused by the Reformation, and the establishment of courts in capital cities or permanent residences, a page was turned in the history of diplomacy. The generation of sovereigns that followed Francis I, Henry VIII and Charles V was less intent on being in each other’s physical presence. Leading monarchs withdrew from the field of direct negotiation, and that withdrawal lasted until the 19^th century. After the final face-to-face meeting between Francis I and Henry VIII, in Boulogne sur Mer in 1532, it would be another 311 years – until Louis-Philippe organized a reception for Queen Victoria, in 1843 – before the reigning English and French monarchs would meet once again. 

Encounters between royals did not entirely cease during the modern era, but as a rule, they no longer involved the most powerful among them. When they did take place, the Ancien Régime meetings were the result of exceptional circumstances, involving royals in exile or traveling incognito; or else a clear inequality in rank divided the protagonists. That disinterest was due essentially to deep-seated changes affecting the notion of power. Monarchs became unwilling to take the risk of having a treaty they had negotiated and concluded directly amongst themselves prove to be ineffective and to wind up being broken. What’s more, absolutism could no longer abide by two rulers of Europe being in each other’s presence: those meetings briefly led to the coexistence of what was becoming more and more unthinkable: two supreme authorities together in one place, two suns in one sky.