Except in the brief season when the swarming cod filled the
seines of the fishermen, it yielded no wealth, not even in slaves, for
the fierce and shy natives would be almost uncatchable and quite
impossible to tame.
Francis of Angouleme, the brilliant, reckless and extravagant young
French King, was hard pushed to get money for his own Court, and was
not interested in expeditions whose only result might be glory. He
jested over the threatening Spanish dominion as he did over everything
else. Italian dukedoms were overrun by troops from France, Spain,
Austria and Switzerland, and Francis welcomed Italian artists,
architects and poets to his capital. When the plague attacked Paris he
removed to one of the royal chateaux in the country or paid visits to
great noblemen like his cousin Charles de Bourbon. It was in 1522 at
Moulins, the splendid country estate of the Duc de Bourbon, that the
monarch met a captain of whom he had heard a great deal--all of it
gratifying. He had in mind a new enterprise for this Verrazzano.
During the last seven or eight years Verrazzano, like many other
captains, had been engaged in the peculiar kind of expedition dubbed
piracy or privateering according to the person speaking. France and
Spain were neither exactly at peace nor openly at war.
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