Cassell's History of England, Vol. 2 (of 8) / From the Wars of the Roses to the Great Rebellion

by Anonymous

GEORGE NOBLE OF HENRY VIII.

The position of the King of France was, at this crisis, becoming more and more critical. His kingdom was environed with perils, and menaced with ruin, which could only be averted by singular courage and address. Against him was arrayed a most formidable confederacy of the Pope, the emperor, the King of England, and the various states of Italy. He had not a single ally, except the King of Scotland, a minor, and without authority. The internal condition of France was extremely discouraging. The wars of Francis in Italy and at home, his gay life and expensive pleasures, with his extravagant grants to his favourites, had exhausted his treasury, and involved him in grave embarrassment. The troops were ill-paid, and, as is usual in such cases, became disorderly and infested the highways, plundered the peasantry, and filled the whole kingdom with alarm and discontent. The Court partook of the licence and distraction of the nation; it was rent by faction, and the most dangerous secret conspiracy was at work in it. This was the doing of the Duke of Bourbon, Constable of France, who had been wronged in a lawsuit with the king.

Charles V. and Henry of England thereupon entered into a secret treaty with the disaffected prince to betray his sovereign and his native country. The transaction was a disgraceful one to all parties concerned. In Bourbon, notwithstanding his grievous wrongs, it was a base as well as an impolitic deed; in Henry and Charles, it was one destructive of the security of the throne, and of every principle of honour which should guide the counsels of kings. Henry felt the vileness of the proceeding, but endeavoured to justify it as a fair retaliation, for that Francis had tampered with his Irish subject, the Earl of Desmond.

DOUBLE SOVEREIGN OF HENRY VIII.

The Lord of Beaurain had been employed as the secret agent of the emperor; and Sir John Russell—this being one of the first public notices of the Russells in history—as that of Henry. A private treaty was concluded, of which the substance was as follows:—The emperor and the King of England were to invade France simultaneously, the one in the north, the other in the south, while Bourbon himself was to excite a rebellion in the heart of the kingdom, supported by all the connections of his family, whom he calculated at 200 knights and gentlemen, with their retainers. The attempt was to be made the moment Francis had crossed the Alps; and when the conquest of France was complete, Bourbon, in addition to his appanage of the Bourbonnais and Auvergne, was to receive Provence and Dauphiné, which together were to constitute a kingdom for him. He was, moreover, to receive the hand of the emperor's sister, Eleanor, Queen-Dowager of Portugal. The emperor was to have, as his share of the spoil, Languedoc, Burgundy, Champagne, and Picardy, and Henry VIII. the rest of France.

Such was the traitorous scheme which was now opened up to the astonished gaze of Francis. Had he crossed the Alps before he received the intelligence, it might have been fatal. He had received some dark hints of mischief to be apprehended from Bourbon previously; and on his way south, he had suddenly presented himself at the duke's castle, and called upon him to accompany the expedition to Italy; but the duke made it appear that the state of his health rendered that impossible. Francis, not by any means satisfied, set a strict but secret guard upon his castle, and proceeded to Lyons; but there the news reached him that the pretended sick man had managed to escape in disguise, and was on his way, through the intricacies of the mountains of Auvergne and Dauphiné, to join the emperor's army in Italy.

POUND SOVEREIGN OF HENRY VIII.

The Powers of England and the Netherlands appeared, in pursuance of the secret treaty with Bourbon, on the soil of France about the same time. The Duke of Suffolk, Charles Brandon, the commander of the English army, landed at Calais on the 24th of August, and, joining to his troops those collected from the garrisons of Calais, Ham, and Guines, found himself at the head of 13,000 men. He marched on the 19th of September, and the next day fell in with the Imperial troops from the Netherlands, under Van Buren. The allies now amounted to 20,000; but instead of marching to join the Imperial forces coming from Germany, they remained under the walls of St. Omer, debating whether they should do this or invest Boulogne. After having wasted a precious month, they decided to leave Boulogne, and endeavour to form a junction with the Germans. But they had now allowed Francis ample time to thwart all their objects. He had sent a strong detachment, under the Duke of Guise, to throw themselves in the way of the Germans; whilst the Dukes of Vendôme and Tremouille kept a sharp watch over the movements of the allied army. Suffolk and Van Buren traversed Artois and Picardy, crossed the Somme and the Oise, and alarmed Paris by pitching their tents near Laon, within twenty miles of the capital. They had stopped by the way to invest Bray, Montdidier, and some other small places, and now confidently expected the arrival of the German army.