The expedition was a melancholy failure. The English troops and their commander were alike inexperienced in war; Ferdinand would not move against Guienne, urging with some plausibility that the securing of Navarre was a needful preliminary; the soldiers wanted beer and had to put up with Spanish wines; finally they insisted on returning to England, and Dorset had to put the best face he could on a very awkward situation. Officially it was announced that the withdrawal was made with Ferdinand's approval.
So far, the European anticipations of England's incapacity had been duly fulfilled. A military fiasco had accompanied an innocence of diplomatic guile which looked promising to the Continental rulers. But the promise was to be disappointed.
[Sidenote: Rise of Wolsey]
Henry VII. had avoided war and had been his own foreign minister; when he died, he left to form his son's Council some capable subordinates like Fox the Bishop of Winchester, but no one experienced in the responsibilities of control. Among the noble houses, the Howards were shortly to display at least a fair share of military capacity. But it was to a minister of at best middle-class origin, a rising ecclesiastic who had, however, hitherto held no office of the first rank, that England was to owe a surprisingly rapid promotion to European equality with the first-class Powers.
With that skill in selecting; invaluable servants which distinguished his entire career, Henry VIII. by the time he was one-and-twenty had already discovered in Thomas Wolsey the man on whose native genius and unlimited power of application he could place complete reliance.
Wolsey had been employed on diplomatic missions by the old King; whose methods he had gauged and whose policy he had assimilated, but only as a basis for far-reaching developments. He was brought into the Royal Council by Fox, partly no doubt in the hope that he would counteract the influence of Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, and others of the nobles who were martially inclined and imbued with a time-honoured hostility to France. It was no long time before he outshone his patron, who, however, had rightly judged his tendencies. Wolsey was no friend to war, and had no hostility to France, for the plain reason that he preferred diplomatic to military methods, and was quite as well pleased to advance English interests by alliance with France as by alliances against her if he saw his way to profit thereby. It is probable enough that he would have avoided the war with France if he had had the power; since he had not, he devoted his energies to making the war itself as successful as possible.
[Sidenote: 1513 The French war]
The arrangements for the Guienne expedition had not unnaturally been singularly defective. Wolsey devoted himself with untiring zeal to the organisation of a new expedition in the following spring. Nothing was left to chance over which it was possible for one man's energy to exercise supervision. The first outcome was a naval engagement off Brest on 25th April, wherein the English admiral, Sir Edward Howard, restored at least the English reputation for valour, falling—overwhelmed by numbers—on the deck of the French flag-ship which he had boarded almost single-handed. The French fleet was much larger than that of the English, and the attack on it which he led was a desperate enterprise in which his ships were beaten off; but those who had jeered at the failure in Guienne were silenced, and Henry was enabled to land his troops undisturbed at Calais at the end of June. Both the King and Wolsey were with the army, and proceeded to lay siege, on 1st August, to Terouenne, which was partially re-victualled by the bold dash of a relief party of horsemen through the besieger's lines. Here the besiegers were shortly joined by a contingent under Maximilian (who professed himself a mere volunteer under the English King). The advancing French array was put to complete rout in the "battle of the Spurs"—the consequence of a sudden panic—and on August 22nd Terouenne surrendered. Tournai followed suit a month later.
In the meantime, events of moment had been taking place on the Scottish border.
[Sidenote: Scotland 1499-1513]