Henry VIII.

by A. F. Pollard

Such reasoning, he thought, would appeal to the pious and unsophisticated Henry. To other sovereigns he used arguments more suited to their experience of his diplomacy. He told Maximilian[114] that his main desire was to serve the Emperor's interests, to put a curb on the Italians, and to frustrate their design of driving himself, Louis and Maximilian across the Alps. But the most monumental falsehood he reserved for the Pope; his ambassador at the Papal Court was to assure Julius that he had failed in his efforts to concert with Henry a joint invasion of France, that Henry was not in earnest over the war and that he had actually made a truce[115] with France. This had enabled Louis to pour fresh troops into Italy, and compelled him, Ferdinand, to consult his own interests and make peace! Two days later he was complaining to Louis that Henry refused to join in the truce.[116] To punish Henry for his refusal he was willing to aid Louis against him, but he would prefer to settle the differences between the French and the English kings by a still more treacherous expedient. Julius was to be induced to give a written promise that, if the points at issue were submitted to his arbitration, he would pronounce no verdict till it had been secretly sanctioned by Ferdinand and Louis. This promise obtained, Louis was publicly to appeal to the Pope; Henry's devotion to the Church would prevent his refusing the Supreme Pontiff's mediation; if he did, ecclesiastical censures could be invoked against him.[117] Such was the plot Ferdinand was hatching for the benefit of his daughter's husband. The Catholic King had ever deceit in his heart and the name of God on his lips. He was accused by a rival of having cheated him twice; the charge was repeated to Ferdinand. "He lies," he broke out, "I cheated him three times." He was faithful to one principle only, self-aggrandisement by fair means or foul. His favourite scheme was a kingdom in Northern Italy; but in the way of its realisation his own overreaching ambition placed an insuperable bar. Italy had been excluded from his truce with France to leave him free to pursue that design;[118] but in July, 1512, the Italians already suspected his motives, and a papal legate declared that they no more wished to see Milan Spanish than French.[119] In the following November, Spanish troops in the pay and alliance of Venice drove the French out of Brescia. By the terms of the Holy League, it should have been restored to its owner, the Venetian Republic. Ferdinand kept it himself; it was to form the nucleus of his North Italian dominion. Venice at once took alarm and made a compact with France which kept the Spaniards at bay until after Ferdinand's death.[120] The friendship between Venice and France severed that between France and the Emperor; and, in 1513, the war went on with a rearrangement of partners, Henry and Maximilian on one side,[121] against France and Venice on the other, with Ferdinand secretly trying to trick them all.

For many months Henry knew not, or refused to credit, his father-in-law's perfidy. To outward appearance, the Spanish King was as eager as ever for the war in Guienne. He was urging Henry to levy 6,000 Germans to serve for that purpose in conjunction with Spanish forces; and, in April, Carroz, in ignorance of his master's real intentions, signed on his behalf a treaty for the joint invasion of France.[122] This forced the Catholic King to reveal his hand. He refused his ratification;[123] now he declared the conquest of Guienne to be a task of such magnitude that preparations must be complete before April, a date already past; and he recommended Henry to come into the truce with Louis, the existence of which he had now to confess. Henry had not yet fathomed the depths; he even appealed to Ferdinand's feelings and pathetically besought him, as a good father, not to forsake him entirely.[124] But in vain; his father-in-law deserted him at his sorest hour of need. To make peace was out of the question. England's honour had suffered a stain that must at all costs be removed. No king with an atom of spirit would let the dawn of his reign be clouded by such an admission of failure. Wolsey was there to stiffen his temper in case of need; with him it was almost a matter of life and death to retrieve the disaster. His credit was pledged in the war. In their moments of anger under the Spanish sun, the English commanders had loudly imputed to Wolsey the origin of the war and the cause of all the mischief.[125] Surrey, for whose banishment from Court the new favourite had expressed to Fox a wish, and other "great men" at home, repeated the charge.[126] Had Wolsey failed to bring honour with peace, his name would not have been numbered among the greatest of England's statesmen.

Henry's temper required no spur. Tudors never flinched in the face of danger, and nothing could have made Henry so resolved to go on as Ferdinand's desertion and advice to desist. He was prepared to avenge his army in person. There were to be no expeditions to distant shores; there was to be war in the Channel, where Englishmen were at home on the sea; and Calais was to be the base of an invasion of France over soil worn by the tramp of English troops. In March, 1513, Henry, to whom the navy was a weapon, a plaything, a passion, watched his fleet sail down the Thames; its further progress was told him in letters from its gallant admiral, Sir Edmund Howard, who had been strictly charged to inform the King of the minutest details in the behaviour of every one of the ships.[127] Never had such a display of naval force left the English shores; twenty-four ships ranging downwards from the 1,600 tons of the Henry Imperial, bore nearly 5,000 marines and 3,000 mariners.[128] The French dared not venture out, while Howard swept the Channel, and sought them in their ports. Brest was blockaded. A squadron of Mediterranean galleys coming to its relief anchored in the shallow water off Conquêt. Howard determined to cut them out; he grappled and boarded their admiral's galley. The grappling was cut away, his boat swept out in the tide, and Howard, left unsupported, was thrust overboard by the Frenchmen's pikes.[129] His death was regarded as a national disaster, but he had retrieved England's reputation for foolhardy valour.

Meanwhile, Henry's army was gathering at Calais.[130] On 30th June, at 7 p.m., the King himself landed. Before his departure, the unfortunate Edmund de la Pole, Earl of Suffolk, was brought to the block for an alleged correspondence with his brother in Louis' service, but really because rumours were rife of Louis' intention to proclaim the White Rose as King of England.[131] On 21st July, Henry left Calais to join his army, which had already advanced into French territory. Heavy rains impeded its march and added to its discomfort. Henry, we are told, did not put off his clothes, but rode round the camp at three in the morning, cheering his men with the remark, "Well, comrades, now that we have suffered in the beginning, fortune promises us better things, God willing".[132] Near Ardres some German mercenaries, of whom there were 8,000 with Henry's forces, pillaged the church; Henry promptly had three of them hanged. On 1st August the army sat down before Thérouanne; on the 10th, the Emperor arrived to serve as a private at a hundred crowns a day under the English banners. Three days later a large French force arrived at Guinegate to raise the siege; a panic seized it, and the bloodless rout that followed was named the Battle of Spurs. Louis d'Orléans, Duc de Longueville, the famous Chevalier Bayard, and others of the noblest blood in France, were among the captives.[133] Ten days after this defeat Thérouanne surrendered; and on the 24th Henry made his triumphal entry into the first town captured by English arms since the days of Jeanne Darc. On the 26th he removed to Guinegate, where he remained a week, "according," says a curious document, "to the laws of arms, for in case any man would bid battle for the besieging and getting of any city or town, then the winner (has) to give battle, and to abide the same certain days".[134] No challenge was forthcoming, and on 15th September Henry besieged Tournay, then said to be the richest city north of Paris. During the progress of the siege the Lady Margaret of Savoy, the Regent of the Netherlands, joined her father, the Emperor, and Henry, at Lille. They discussed plans for renewing the war next year and for the marriage of Charles and Mary. To please the Lady Margaret and to exhibit his skill Henry played the gitteron, the lute and the cornet, and danced and jousted before her.[135] He "excelled every one as much in agility in breaking spears as in nobleness of stature". Within a week Tournay fell; on 13th October Henry commenced his return, and on the 21st he re-embarked at Calais.

Thérouanne, the Battle of Spurs, and Tournay were not the only, or the most striking, successes in this year of war. In July, Catherine, whom Henry had left as Regent in England, wrote that she was "horribly busy with making standards, banners, and badges"[136] for the army in the North; for war with France had brought, as usual, the Scots upon the English backs. James IV., though Henry's brother-in-law, preferred to be the cat's paw of the King of France; and in August the Scots forces poured over the Border under the command of James himself. England was prepared; and on 9th September, "at Flodden hills," sang Skelton, "our bows and bills slew all the flower of their honour". James IV. was left a mutilated corpse upon the field of battle.[137] "He has paid," wrote Henry, "a heavier penalty for his perfidy than we would have wished." There was some justice in the charge. James was bound by treaty not to go to war with England; he had not even waited for the Pope's answer to his request for absolution from his oath; and his challenge to Henry, when he was in France and could not meet it, was not a knightly deed. Henry wrote to Leo for permission to bury the excommunicated Scottish King with royal honours in St. Paul's.[138] The permission was granted, but the interment did not take place. In Italy, Louis fared no better; at Novara, on 6th June, the Swiss infantry broke in pieces the grand army of France, drove the fragments across the Alps, and restored the Duchy of Milan to the native house of Sforza.

The results of the campaign of 1513 were a striking vindication of the refusal of Henry VIII. and Wolsey to rest under the stigma of their Spanish expedition of 1512. English prestige was not only restored, but raised higher than it had stood since the death of Henry V., whose "name," said Pasqualigo, a Venetian in London, "Henry VIII. would now renew". He styled him "our great King".[139] Peter Martyr, a resident at Ferdinand's Court, declared that the Spanish King was "afraid of the over-growing power of England".[140] Another Venetian in London reported that "were Henry ambitious of dominion like others, he would soon give law to the world". But, he added, "he is good and has a good council. His quarrel was a just one, he marched to free the Church, to obtain his own, and to liberate Italy from the French."[141] The pomp and parade of Henry's wars have, indeed, somewhat obscured the fundamentally pacific character of his reign. The correspondence of the time bears constant witness to the peaceful tendencies of Henry and his council. "I content myself," he once said to Giustinian, "with my own, I only wish to command my own subjects; but, on the other hand, I do not choose that any one shall have it in his power to command me."[142] On another occasion he said: "We want all potentates to content themselves with their own territories; we are content with this island of ours"; and Giustinian, after four years' residence at Henry's Court, gave it as his deliberate opinion to his Government, that Henry did not covet his neighbours' goods, was satisfied with his own dominions, and "extremely desirous of peace".[143] Ferdinand said, in 1513, that his pensions from France and a free hand in Scotland were all that Henry really desired;[144] and Carroz, his ambassador, reported that Henry's councillors did not like to be at war with any one.[145] Peace, they told Badoer, suited England better than war.[146]

But Henry's actions proclaimed louder than the words of himself or of others that he believed peace to be the first of English interests. He waged no wars on the continent except against France; and though he reigned thirty-eight years, his hostilities with France were compressed into as many months. The campaigns of 1512-13, Surrey's and Suffolk's inroads of 1522 and 1523, and Henry's invasion of 1544, represent the sum of his military operations outside Great Britain and Ireland. He acquired Tournay in 1513 and Boulogne in 1544, but the one was restored in five years for an indemnity, and the other was to be given back in eight for a similar consideration. These facts are in curious contrast with the high-sounding schemes of recovering the crown of France, which others were always suggesting to Henry, and which he, for merely conventional reasons, was in the habit of enunciating before going to war; and in view of the tenacity which Henry exhibited in other respects, and the readiness with which he relinquished his regal pretensions to France, it is difficult to believe that they were any real expression of settled policy. They were, indeed, impossible of achievement, and Henry saw the fact clearly enough.[147] Modern phenomena such as huge armies sweeping over Europe, and capitals from Berlin to Moscow, Paris to Madrid, falling before them, were quite beyond military science of the sixteenth century. Armies fought, as a rule, only in the five summer months; it was difficult enough to victual them for even that time; and lack of commissariat or transport crippled all the invasions of Scotland. Hertford sacked Edinburgh, but he went by sea. No other capital except Rome saw an invading army. Neither Henry nor Maximilian, Ferdinand nor Charles, ever penetrated more than a few miles into France, and French armies got no further into Spain, the Netherlands, or Germany. Machiavelli points out that the chief safeguard of France against the Spaniards was that the latter could not victual their army sufficiently to pass the Pyrenees.[148] If in Italy it was different, it was because Italy herself invited the invaders, and was mainly under foreign dominion. Henry knew that with the means at his disposal he could never conquer France; his claims to the crown were transparent conventions, and he was always ready for peace in return for the status quo and a money indemnity, with a town or so for security.

The fact that he had only achieved a small part of the conquest he professed to set out to accomplish was, therefore, no bar to negotiations for peace. There were many reasons for ending the war; the rapid diminution of his father's treasures; the accession to the papal throne of the pacific Leo in place of the warlike Julius; the absolution of Louis as a reward for renouncing the council of Pisa; the interruption of the trade with Venice; the attention required by Scotland now that her king was Henry's infant nephew; and lastly, his betrayal first by Ferdinand and now by the Emperor. In October, 1513, at Lille, a treaty had been drawn up binding Henry, Maximilian and Ferdinand to a combined invasion of France before the following June.[149] On 6th December, Ferdinand wrote to Henry to say he had signed the treaty. He pointed out the sacrifices he was making in so doing; he was induced to make them by considering that the war was to be waged in the interests of the Holy Church, of Maximilian, Henry, and Catherine, and by his wish and hope to live and die in friendship with the Emperor and the King of England. He thought, however, that to make sure of the assistance of God, the allies ought to bind themselves, if He gave them the victory, to undertake a general war on the infidel.[150] Ferdinand seems to have imagined that he could dupe the Almighty as easily as he hoped to cheat his allies, by a pledge which he never meant to fulfil. A fortnight after this despatch he ordered Carroz not to ratify the treaty he himself had already signed.[151] The reason was not far to seek. He was deluding himself with the hope, which Louis shrewdly encouraged, that the French King would, after his recent reverses, fall in with the Spaniard's Italian plans.[152] Louis might even, he thought, of his own accord cede Milan and Genoa, which would annihilate the French King's influence in Italy, and greatly facilitate the attack on Venice.

That design had occupied him throughout the summer, before Louis had become so amenable; then he was urging Maximilian that the Pope must be kept on their side and persuaded "not to forgive the great sins committed by the King of France"; for if he removed his ecclesiastical censures, Ferdinand and Maximilian "would be deprived of a plausible excuse for confiscating the territories they intended to conquer".[153] Providence was, as usual, to be bribed into assisting in the robbery of Venice by a promise to make war on the Turk. But now that Louis was prepared to give his daughter Renée in marriage to young Ferdinand and to endow the couple with Milan and Genoa and his claims on Naples, his sins might be forgiven. The two monarchs would not be justified in making war upon France in face of these offers. Venice remained a difficulty, for Louis was not likely to help to despoil his faithful ally; but Ferdinand had a suggestion. They could all make peace publicly guaranteeing the Republic's possessions, but Maximilian and he could make a "mental reservation" enabling them to partition Venice, when France could no longer prevent it.[154]

So on 13th March, 1514, Ferdinand renewed his truce with France, and Maximilian joined it soon after.[155] The old excuses about the reformation of the Church, his death-bed desire to make peace with his enemies, could scarcely be used again; so Ferdinand instructed his agent to say, if Henry asked for an explanation, that there was a secret conspiracy in Italy.[156] If he had said no more, it would have been literally true, for the conspiracy was his own; but he went on to relate that the conspiracy was being hatched by the Italians to drive him and the Emperor out of the peninsula. The two were alike in their treachery; both secretly entered the truce with France and broke their promise to Henry. Another engagement of longer standing was ruptured. Since 1508, Henry's sister Mary had been betrothed to Maximilian's grandson Charles. The marriage was to take place when Charles was fourteen; the pledge had been renewed at Lille, and the nuptials fixed not later than 15th May, 1514.[157] Charles wrote to Mary signing himself votre mari, while Mary was styled Princess of Castile, carried about a bad portrait of Charles,[158] and diplomatically sighed for his presence ten times a day. But winter wore on and turned to spring; no sign was forthcoming of Maximilian's intention to keep his grandson's engagement, and Charles was reported as having said that he wanted a wife and not a mother.[159] All Henry's inquiries were met by excuses; the Ides of May came and went, but they brought no wedding between Mary and Charles.