Young Charles was already king of all Spain, and lord of the Burgundian heritage. He was also heir to the Austrian and other German possessions of Maximilian, who, like Ferdinand, had been his grandfather. For some time, Habsburg had followed Habsburg as emperor. There was no other of the princes of Germany strong enough territorially to bear the weight of empire, and Frederic of Saxony, capax imperii, had no mind for the undertaking. If Charles were elected he would wield enormous powers. The French king, ambitious, and dreading the further aggrandisement of a rival whose dominions were already so great, came forward as a candidate: his success would mean an accession of power to France even more dangerous to the European balance than that of Charles. Under these circumstances, it is not incredible that Henry really meant business in taking steps with a view to obtaining the Imperial crown for himself. At twenty-eight, he was quite young enough to believe that the thing was really practicable: and if practicable, it would be a magnificent fulfilment of his ambitions along the very lines on which Wolsey had directed them. It is not, however, credible that the Cardinal should have taken that view; whether the king was or was not merely playing with the idea, his minister must have known that it was chimerical. The agent, Richard Pace, very soon made it quite clear that it would be sheer waste of energy and money for Henry to enter seriously for the stakes, and Cuthbert Tunstal was careful to point out that in burdening himself with the responsibilities of the Empire, he would be losing for the sake of a shadow the solid substance of his power as King of England. Henry’s candidature was withdrawn, and no one was any the worse.
The episode, however, suggests certain conclusions. It is almost impossible to doubt that the idea of the candidature was Henry’s own; it is difficult to doubt that he did contemplate it seriously. It was consistent—in intention—with the conception of political predominance as a more substantial object of ambition than military laurels. It was of a grandiosity which appealed to the imagination, but not to the practical judgment of a far-sighted statesman. That Henry should have taken it up is entirely consistent with his character as we have conceived it. On the other hand, if he had been merely a monarch who allowed himself to be habitually managed, but broke out in occasional fits of obstinacy—as weak men do—he would have struggled to the last for that election. In fact, he did interfere with Wolsey the moment he thought he could better the minister’s plans, but when he saw he had made a mistake, but could retire without loss of dignity, he did so without losing his temper. Later in life he might have made himself unpleasant to somebody, under like conditions. That would have depended very much on how far he had set his heart on the particular object he found himself called upon to surrender. In the present case, Wolsey had ostensibly done everything possible to make the scheme succeed. He may never have attempted dissuasion, relying on the inherent impracticability of the whole thing to prevent any really awkward consequences. At any rate, Henry’s confidence was in no way diminished.
There was indeed little enough reason to be dissatisfied. Western Europe was in the hands of three young men, of whom the eldest, Henry, was twenty-eight, and the youngest, Charles, was not twenty. If Charles had the widest dominion, his task was also the most complicated. He could only pass to his Teutonic from his Spanish territories by sea; French territory was continuous. If Charles and Francis quarrelled, each would want the friendship of England: for her enmity to Charles would mean immense injury to the trade of Flanders, and her enmity to France would mean serious military embarrassments in the direction of Picardy. So for some time to come both were eagerly seeking an English alliance, while Wolsey’s skill was sufficiently tasked, but not over-tasked, to keep the pair of them in play; and to keep them at peace, since if they once went to war it might prove exceedingly difficult to avoid embroiling England.
In 1520 the competition between emperor and king for English favour—which both took to mean the Cardinal’s favour—was particularly lively, with the result that the great meeting at the Field of the Cloth of Gold took place, designed to signalise the enthusiastic amity of Henry and Francis. Wolsey, however, had manœuvred a less magnificent meeting in England, only just before, between Henry and the emperor; and no one could say that either of the rivals had really won a lead over the other. But it became increasingly difficult to prevent a collision between them, and a year later, when Wolsey was ostensibly making a great effort at the Conference of Calais to effect a reconciliation, he was in reality coming privately to terms with Charles. If England was to be dragged into a war, she would be on the Imperial side.
III
WAR
Why did England go to war with France, instead of resolutely holding aloof? The Cardinal cannot have seriously thought of the war as a means to the recovery of the French crown: nor can he have held it good for England that France should be crippled, and the Emperor magnified. If he went into the war of his own free will, if he urged it on Henry, it can only have been with the purely personal object of so binding Charles to him as to ensure his own election to the Papacy at the next vacancy. Yet at the time of the Calais Conference there was no immediate likelihood of the reigning Pope’s death; Wolsey was surely the last man to count on the gratitude of princes for past favours as an effective motive, and Charles had already shown a thorough appreciation of the doctrine that promises are made to be evaded. Moreover, so shrewd a man as the Cardinal would presumably have felt extremely doubtful whether the Papacy—with Charles master of Europe—would be much worth having. The only remaining suggestion is, that Wolsey foresaw great domestic troubles, and took the time-honoured course of trying to divert attention by plunging the country in war. The obvious objection to that is that there were no pressing signs of disturbance at all.
The mere fact that the war was a regular reversal of the methods Wolsey had hitherto followed, points to its having been undertaken against his judgment. But is it unreasonable to suppose that it was not against the king’s judgment? That Henry for the second time indicated the course which his minister was to follow, and the minister obeyed rather than resign? In those days, ministers did not resign, unless they were exceptional people with consciences, like Thomas More: and for Wolsey—whose political existence, if not his life, depended entirely on the king’s favour—to resign would have meant virtual suicide. On the other hand, there were influences which would affect Henry in favour of the war, intelligibly enough. To him, the conquest of France with the help of Charles may not have seemed absurd, and he was not ashamed to avow it as his object to Parliament, when asking for money. Apart from that, there was always a military party headed by men who felt themselves much more likely to achieve honour and fame on the battlefield than in the Cardinal’s ante-room: and if there was to be war at all, there was a sort of standing sentiment in favour of fighting the French. Lastly, the king was still on good terms with his wife, and his wife was a most determined advocate of her nephew’s interests. Henry was even now only just thirty, and the glamour of military achievement might still tempt him. It certainly seems the most reasonable conclusion that it was not Wolsey who dragged the king into war, but the king who forced war on Wolsey.
As a matter of fact, events proved that there was very little to be made out of the war. After eight years, Wolsey found himself compelled to call a Parliament again, in order to get money—whereas it had been his consistent policy to dispense with Parliament altogether. The war was at any rate not sufficiently unpopular to prevent the voting of a substantial subsidy; but as time passed, such favour as it had found with the public faded; the Cardinal did not venture, when more money was needed, to ask Parliament for it again, and when he tried to raise what was called an Amicable loan, the response was cold. The disaster of Francis at Pavia, though it suggested more talk about recovering the Crown of France, offered no opportunity for material advantage to Henry, and it very soon became evident that Charles was so much the master of Europe that his career would only be held in check by an Anglo-French alliance, which it became the Cardinal’s business to contract in 1527.