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Page 8
He is made to say that he writes this letter for the particular
purpose of communicating to his father and their friends in
Florence, the news, which had reached Lyons, of the arrival of
Verrazzano from his wonderful and successful voyage of discovery,
and that he had advised his parent of all other matters touching his
own interests, by another conveyance. It might be supposed and
indeed reasonably expected in a letter thus expressly devoted to
Verrazzano, that some circumstance, personal or otherwise, connected
with the navigator or the voyage, or some incident of his discovery,
besides what was contained in the enclosed letter, such as must have
reached Lyons, with the news of the return of the expedition, would
have been mentioned, especially, as it would all have been
interesting to Florentines. But nothing of the kind is related.
Nothing appears in the letter in regard to the expedition that is
not found in the Verrazzano letter. [Footnote: Mr. Greene, in his
life of Verrazzano, remarks that it appears from Carli's letter,
that the Indian boy whom Verrazzano is stated to have carried away,
arrived safely in France; but that is not so. What is said in that
letter is, that Verrazzano does not mention IN HIS LETTER what he
had brought home, except this boy.] What is stated in reference to
the previous life of Verrazzano, must have been as well known to
Carli's father as to himself, if it were true, and is therefore
unnecessarily introduced, and the same may be said of the facts
stated in regard to Brunelleschi's starting on the voyage with
Verrazzano and afterwards turning back. The particular description
of Dagaghiano and Rustichi, both of Florence, the one as a man of
experience and the other as a student of cosmography, was equally
superfluous in speaking of them to his father. These portions of the
letter look like flimsy artifices to give the main story the
appearance of truth. They may or may not have been true, and it is
not inconsistent with an intention to deceive in regard to the
voyage that they should have been either the one or the other. A
single allusion, however, is made to the critical condition of
affairs in France and the stirring scenes which were being enacted
on either side of the city of Lyons at the moment the letter bears
date. It is the mention of the expected arrival of the king at Lyons
within three or four days. It is not stated for what purpose he was
coming, but the fact was that Francis had taken the field in person
to repel the Spanish invasion in the south of France, and was then
on his way to that portion of his kingdom, by way of Lyons, where he
arrived a few days afterwards. The reference to this march of the
king fixes beyond all question the date of the letter, as really
intended for the 4th of August, 1524.
The movements of Francis at this crisis become important in view of
the possibility of the publication in any form of the Verrazzano
letter at Lyons, at the last mentioned date, or of the possession of
a copy of it there as claimed by Carli in his letter. The army of
the emperor, under Pescara and Bourbon, crossed the Alps and entered
Provence early in July, and before the date of the Verrazzano
letter. [Footnote: Letter of Bourbon. Dyer's Europe, 442.] The
intention to do so was known by Francis some time previously. He
wrote on the 28th of June from Amboise, near Tours, to the
Provencaux that he would march immediately to their relief;
[Footnote: Sismondi, xvi. 216, 217.] and on the 2d of July he
announced in a letter to his parliament: "I am going to Lyons to
prevent the enemy from entering the kingdom, and I can assure you
that Charles de Bourbon is not yet in France." [Footnote: Gaillard,
Histoire de Francois Premier, tom. III, 172 (Paris, 1769).] He had
left his residence at Blois and his capital, and was thus actually
engaged in collecting his forces together, on the 8th of July, when
the Verrazzano letter is dated. He did not reach Lyons until after
the 4th of August, as is correctly stated in the Carli letter.
[Footnote: Letter of Moncada in Doc. ined. para la Hist. de Espana.
tom. XXIV, 403, and Letters of Pace to Wolsey in State Papers of the
reign of Henry VIII, vol. IV, Part I, 589, 606.]
The author of the Carli letter, whether the person he pretends to
have been or not, asserts that news of the arrival of Verrazzano at
Dieppe on his return from his voyage of discovery had reached Lyons,
and that the navigator himself was expected soon to be in that city
for the purpose of conferring with its merchants on the subject of
the new countries which he had discovered, and had described in a
letter to the king, a copy of which letter was enclosed. He thus
explicitly declares not only that news of the discovery had reached
Lyons, but that the letter to the king was known to the merchants at
that place, and that a copy of it was then actually in his
possession and sent with his own. The result of the expedition was,
therefore, notorious, and the letter had attained general publicity
at Lyons, without the presence there of either Francis or
Verrazzano.
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