The Reign of Mary Tudor

by James Anthony Froude

The arrival of the army under Pembroke removed the immediate ground for alarm; and after the defeat of the French, the danger was supposed to be over altogether. The queen was frightened at the expenses which she was incurring, and again allowed the establishment to sink below the legitimate level. Lord Wentworth was left at Calais with not more than five hundred men. Grey had something more than a thousand at Guisnes, but a part only were English; the rest were Burgundians and Spaniards. More unfortunately also, a proclamation had forbidden the export of corn in England, from which Calais had not been excepted. Guisnes and Hammes depended for their supplies on Calais, and by the middle of the winter there was an actual scarcity of food.[618]

Up to the beginning of December, notwithstanding, there were no external symptoms to create uneasiness; military movements lay under the usual stagnation of winter, and except a few detachments on the frontiers of the Pale, who gave trouble by marauding excursions, the French appeared to be resting in profound repose. On the 1st of December, the governor of Guisnes reported an expedition for the destruction of one of their outlying parties, which had been accomplished with ominous cruelty.

"I advertised your grace," Lord Grey wrote to the queen, "how I purposed to make a journey to a church called Bushing, strongly fortified by the enemy, much annoying this your majesty's frontier. It may please your majesty, upon Monday last, at nine of the clock at night, having with me Mr. Aucher marshal of Calais, Mr. Alexander captain of Newnham Bridge, Sir Henry Palmer, my son,[619] and my cousin Louis Dives, with such horsemen and footmen as could be conveniently spared abroad in service, leaving your majesty's pieces in surety, I took my journey towards the said Bushing, and carried with me two cannon and a sacre, for that both the weather and the ways served well to the purpose, and next morning came hither before day. And having before our coming enclosed the said Bushing with two hundred footmen harquebuziers, I sent an officer to summon the same in the king's highness' and your majesty's name; whereunto the captain there, a man of good estimation, who the day before was sent there with twelve men by M. Senarpont, captain of Boulogne, answered that he was not minded to render, but would keep it with such men as he had, which were forty in number or thereabouts, even to the death; and further said, if their fortune was so to lose their lives, he knew that the king his master had more men alive to serve, with many other words of French bravery. Upon this answer, I caused the gunners to bring up their artillery to plank, and then shot off immediately ten or twelve times. But yet for all this they would not yield. At length, when the cannon had made an indifferent breach, the Frenchmen made signs to parley, and would gladly have rendered; but I again, weighing it not meet to abuse your majesty's service therein, and having Sir H. Palmer there hurt, and some others of my men, refused to receive them, and, according to the law of arms, put as many of them to the sword as could be gotten at the entry of the breach, and all the rest were blown up with the steeple at the rasing thereof, and so all slain."[620]

The law of arms forbade the defence of a fort not rationally defensible; but it was over hardly construed against a gallant gentleman. Grey was a fierce, stern man. It was Grey who hung the priests in Oxfordshire from their church towers. It was Grey who led the fiery charge upon the Scots at Musselburgh, and with a pike wound, which laid open cheek, tongue, and palate, he "pursued out the chase," till, choked by heat, dust, and his own blood, he was near falling under his horse's feet.[621]

Three weeks passed, and still the French had made no sign. On the 22nd an indistinct rumour came to Guisnes that danger was near. The frost had set in; the low damp ground was hard, the dykes were frozen; and in sending notice of the report to England, Grey said that Calais was unprovided with food; Guisnes contained a few droves of cattle brought in by forays over the frontier,[622] but no corn. On the 27th, the intelligence became more distinct and more alarming. The Duke of Guise was at Compiègne. A force of uncertain magnitude, but known to be large, had suddenly appeared at Abbeville. Something evidently was intended, and something on a scale which the English commanders felt ill prepared to encounter. In a hurried council of war held at Calais, it was resolved to make no attempt to meet the enemy in the field until the arrival of reinforcements, which were written for in pressing haste.[623]

But the foes with whom they had to deal knew their condition, and were as well aware as themselves that success depended on rapidity. Had the queen paid attention to Grey's despatch of the 22nd there was time to have trebled the garrison and thrown in supplies; but it was vague, and no notice was taken of it. The joint letter of Grey and Wentworth written on the 27th, was in London in two days, and there were ships at Portsmouth and in the Thames, which ought to have been ready for sea at a moment's warning. Orders were sent to prepare; the Earl of Rutland was commissioned to raise troops; and the queen, though without sending men, sent a courier with encouragements and promises. But when every moment was precious, a fatal slowness, and more fatal irresolution hung about the movements of the government. On the 29th Wentworth wrote again, that the French were certainly arming and might be looked for immediately. On the 31st, the queen, deceived probably by some emissary of Guise, replied, that "she had intelligence that no enterprise was intended against Calais or the Pale," and that she had therefore countermanded the reinforcements.[624]

The letter containing the death sentence, for it was nothing less, of English rule in Calais was crossed on the way by another from Grey, in which he informed the queen that there were thirty or forty vessels in the harbour at Hambletue, two fitted as floating batteries, the rest loaded with hurdles, ladders, and other materials for a siege. Four-and-twenty thousand men were in the camp above Boulogne; and their mark he knew to be Calais. For himself, he would defend his charge to the death; but help must be sent instantly, or it would be too late to be of use.

The afternoon of the same day, December 31, he added, in a postscript, that flying companies of the French were at that moment before Guisnes; part of the garrison had been out to skirmish, but had been driven in by numbers; the whole country was alive with troops.

The next morning (January 1, 1558) Wentworth reported to the same purpose, that, on the land side, Calais was then invested. The sea was still open, and the forts at the mouth of the harbour on the Rysbank were yet in his hands. Heavy siege cannon, however, were said to be on their way from Boulogne, and it was uncertain how long he could hold them.

The defences of Calais towards the land, though in bad repair, had been laid out with the best engineering skill of the time. The country was intersected with deep muddy ditches; the roads were causeways, and at the bridges were bulwarks and cannon. Guisnes, which was three miles from Calais, was connected with it by a line of small forts and "turnpikes." Hammes lay between the two, equidistant from both. Towards the sea the long line of low sandhills, rising in front of the harbour to the Rysbank, formed a natural pier; and on the Rysbank was the castle, which commanded the entrance and the town. The possession of the Rysbank was the possession of Calais.