At the French Court nothing was talked of but the possibility of an English invasion: 25,000 men said spies, "prêts à monter en mer" and invade by Calais at any moment: and Louis was so irritable and depressed that the whole Court was profoundly discouraged,[ [77] for Aragon and England were like to be two prongs in the back of the country. True, Gueldres could be loosed again on Flanders and the Scots on England, but the adage then as now was true, and vicarious warfare was seldom satisfactory. The old weapon of supporting a pretender to the English throne, blunt, rusty, and out of date as it had so rapidly become, reappeared, and Richard de la Pole, Captain of Almains,[ [78] was styled and treated as King of England in France.[ [79] A lean, blackavised French priest with a crooked eyebrow, Louis' faithful spy,[ [80] carried the correspondence between Pole and his family, which eventually led to the execution of Earl Edmund in the Tower. The taking of Brescia by the Duke of Nemours [February 1512] cheered up the French Court, and by April, when the English King-at-arms arrived with Henry's defiance, "not in his coat but clad like a gentleman," the English scarce had almost become vieux jeu, and the country had regained its poise. Henry said he had no choice but to make war in aid of his allies, the Pope and Aragon, and Louis replied if that was all, he did it with little reason. Still, the French King hoped to keep Margaret and the Emperor out of the alliance, while the English agents in Flanders were working hard to bring them within it, and to keep them to the old amity. The Governess of the Netherlands had one idea all through, the crushing of Gueldres, whose thieving raids and besieging excursions kept the eastern border in a state of harried poverty. The duke claimed sovereign rights which Flanders did not recognize, and France had always found it paid to support him. In consequence of the dual suzerainty, Imperial and French, to the Burgundian provinces, there were always two parties in the Flemish Council, the French and the Burgundian, or, as it was now, the English. The Burgundian was Margaret's party, and she over-rode the opposition of the French sympathizers, but she could not prevent their clogging the execution of her purposes by secret intrigues with France. Louis gave up all hope of detaching her from the English. Maximilian, on the other hand, was, in his fickleness, surer game than his daughter, for though in June [1512] he dismissed the French ambassadors from Brussels, telling them that if they would not go when they could, they should not when they would,[ [81] in October he was practising with Louis at Cologne.
MAXIMILIAN, EMPEROR OF GERMANY
FROM THE PAINTING BY ALBRECHT DÜRER AT VIENNA
Between these months much happened to the unfortunate English ambassadors who were attempting to finish the negotiations begun with the Emperor in May. First Maximilian dismissed the French ambassadors. That looked hopeful. Then he refused to allow the gentlemen of Flanders to serve in Henry's army. Next he demanded 100,000 crowns of gold down on declaring war with France, and said that the Pope or Aragon would willingly give him as much. He knew his worth to the league! Then he departed suddenly, saying the whole business was safe in his daughter's hands. Now began endless delays. Margaret had no formal commission:[ [82] she did not think her father would be pleased to find himself in the same boat as the Venetians [the veriest abc of dealing with Maximilian]; and the real reason was that by means of Duke George of Saxony, Gueldres had proposed a truce with the Emperor which Margaret was willing to accept. So the Governor of Bresse and the Count de Berghes, both Margaret's adherents in the council, fought shy[ [83] of Sir Edward Ponynges and Sir Thomas Boleyn, and the stomach of the English was much diminished by waiting. Margaret, "a perfect friend to England," suggested, after a couple of months' waiting, that they should fee the Emperor's secretaries to keep her commission in his memory,[ [84] and a fortnight later she asked Sir Thomas if he would lay a wager on its soon coming. Gladly, said he, and they shook hands on it; a courser of Spain to an English hobby.[ [85] The Emperor's secretaries wanted to know the form the commission was to take. The English said the same as at Cambrai;[ [86] that is, full powers to treat, and no doubt Margaret wanted that too, for when it did come in restricted form, at the beginning of September (though it was dated August 2 at Cologne) for a whole day she was so cross that the ambassadors could not see her.[ [87] On September 4 they discussed the treaty, which was confined to Henry and Maximilian; Flanders was to be neutral. The English said the Imperial alliance alone was dear at 150,000 ducats, and Henry refused to treat save on the previous understanding, which included Flanders.
All this time the English army, sent to Guienne to invade France according to the treaty of the Holy League of November 1511, had been idly kicking its heels and waiting for Ferdinand to co-operate for the recovery of the province. But Ferdinand did nothing, and the men, wearied with idleness and worn by lack of victuals in a disorderly camp, mutinied and returned home ingloriously in the Autumn[ [88]. In October, however, there came rumours from the Bishop of Liège,[ [89] the centre of French influence in the Low Countries, of the defeat of the French in the south, and Maximilian broke off negotiations with Louis and turned to the English, with the result that Gueldres broke again across the Maas, with "good effect, for the inhabitants were in a manner fast asleep and are now awake."[ [90] The Duke's French reinforcements had an encounter with the Liegéois, and Maximilian himself was nearly kidnapped on his way from Cologne by the Duke's men, disguised as Burgundians.[ [91] But news of the impotence of the English excursion into Guienne soon became public property, and their undisciplined and disgraceful retreat was the joke of Court and camp. Margaret was annoyed for two reasons: the first that Gueldres was very active and that French negotiations had been broken off, and the second that the rich English were but reeds to lean on. So when in October Henry refused to pay 50,000 crowns for entertaining the Swiss against the French,[ [92] and asked that the Emperor's subjects (in the Low Countries) should be prevented from serving the French, the President of Bresse replied that Maximilian had prevented one thousand Swiss from taking French service, "which answer was so colorably made that a man might savour the color of it all the chamber." Then my Lady Margaret spoke "with a qualm of a little melancholy about her stomach" [Ponynges' way of saying she was in a great rage], "if ye be disposed to delay it [the treaty] we shall defer it as well as you," saying besides, that "Englishmen had so long abstained from war that they lacked experience from disuse and it was reported that they were now weary of it." She wrote to her father in this mood and caused more delays,[ [93] and when the ambassadors remonstrated, she said openly to them, "Where had we been now if this confederation had been concluded between your master and us?"[ [94] All fair promises and sweet words, but no deeds, were to be found at Malines. From Scotland came the gibe that the English soldiers could not easily be induced to invade France or Gueldres after their Biscayan experience,[ [95] and though Henry declared that the return of the army was sanctioned by the King of Aragon and himself because of the constant rains in Guienne, and "the intolerable pains of the soldiers of our said army, which in the barren country had perseverantly lain in the fields,"[ [96] no one believed his report. The joke of the thing is, that, as a matter of fact, from September to January there reigned superb weather in Biscay that year.[ [97] Ferdinand said he believed that Henry had given secret orders for the return.[ [98] But the supreme insult came from Maximilian, who proposed that the command of the English army in France should be handed over to him while Henry remained in England. The Emperor counselled the King not to stir out of his country, but to keep the people in awe and bridle the Scots.[ [99] He would take command for 100,000 crowns. Nothing more was needed to increase Henry's war fever. He had a bull from Julius II.[ [100] granting indulgence to those who served in the holy war against France; his agents were already in Italy buying armour, for the Frescobaldi had made a corner of it in Milan;[ [101] in Zeeland, collecting ships for the passage, where they bid against the French;[ [102] in Flanders, buying horses and feeing men.[ [103] At home Wolsey was busy with military organization and his schemes for a more efficient commissariat and transport, while Henry and Admiral Howard, following the admiral's advice, "for no cost sparyng, let provision be maad: for it is a weel-spent peny that saveth the pownd,"[ [104] were working to bring the navy up to some sort of fighting standard. And into this busy Court, full of young men dreaming of loot and military glory, and enthusiastic old men like Sir Gilbert Talbot, who, having served Henry's father and grandfather, was now "minded so sore and purposed to have served the King's grace and in this journey, that I almost forgot God and set my heart on none other thing, but only how I might best serve his grace at this time,"[ [105] came Maximilian's proposal. Gueldres saved the situation. His activity, veiled by renewed offers of truce,[ [106] inclined Margaret to the English as a poor prop, but her only one, and many Flemish nobles offered their services to Henry.[ [107]
The final ruin to Henry's faith in his allies was to come very soon, and of it he was warned by John Stile from Valladolid. Ferdinand made a truce with the French for one year. It came about this way. The Emperor and the Pope, despairing of accommodation with the Swiss, had made a league together to the great displeasure of Aragon, who, oddly enough, in view of what followed, resented that any league should be made suddenly without his consent or England's. He also feared that such league would cause the Venetians to adjoin themselves to the French, and of a likelihood with the Turks, so that Louis would be stronger than ever. Anne of Brittany, the French Queen, was anxious for a Cisalpine peace, and as a means to this end wanted to ignore English rights and marry the Princess Renée to Charles of Castile, with the duchy of Brittany as dowry.[ [108] Ferdinand told Stile a fisher's tale[ [109] about his having dispatched the Provincial of the Grey Friars to England by way of France to be Queen Katharine's confessor, and that on his way he had been taken prisoner and carried to Blois, and that Anne had had him released and sent him back to Spain, carrying a letter of peace to the Queen of Aragon. All which tale was but nutshells, for the return of the Provincial with the letter was preached in open pulpit by a friar of his own order, who admonished the people to pray for peace. Ferdinand grasped at the proposed truce as a moment in which to gain strength to carry out his original plan for the complete isolation of France and the annexation of Navarre. So in devious pursuit of this plan, on March 16, 1513, new articles to the treaty with Aragon were signed in London, and Henry was again bled, and at Malines the Aragonese ambassador attempted to rid the Flemish council of Chièvres and the French party and replace them with people more agreeable to his master,[ [110] while at Valladolid John Stile was told positively that the truce between France and Aragon was accomplished.[ [111] All fair writing and slack deeds in Spain also, "for the Spaniards," said Stile, "are by nature so hasty and envious to all strangers that they despise every man."
Ferdinand did not succeed in ousting the French party at Malines, and it continued to grumble at the English in Zeeland, where it said they only made war on the Flemish and were so dull that they let French vessels pass unchallenged.[ [112] Lord Chièvres, the head of it, made tremendous capital out of a carack belonging to one Andreas Scarella, the Sta Maria de Loretto,[ [113] which had been sold in Zeeland to the French, but the English got wind of the transaction and lifted her, cargo and all. The council said this interference was grossly impertinent, and were hot and intemperate over the matter, and not at all repentant for their "seditious" ways in favouring the French King, which made it impossible to conserve their ports and havens as Henry would have liked. They said they could do that well enough for themselves without troubling the English. Henry had laid an embargo on all trade between the Low Countries and France, and he now offered if this matter were dropped to allow them to resume their trade under "letters testimonials," English captains to have the right of search.[ [114] However, in spite of the strength of the French party, on March 16 Maximilian, with a final haggle over the rate of exchange, signed the treaty with Henry, who steadily refused to have any Swiss in his pay, saying that his army was so powerful that he hoped to lead it to Paris, "especially our father of Aragon making war against our said enemy." Next month, April, Henry knew of his father-in-law's perfidy,[ [115] but he passed the time in Spanish fashion, and went the length of forcing Ferdinand's ambassador to sign the treaty of the Holy League, concluded at Malines on April 5,[ [116] by which the Pope was to invade Dauphiny; the Emperor, the trans-Alpine provinces; Henry, Picardy, Normandy and Aquitane; Ferdinand, Béarne and Languedoc. Luis Carroz swore to it publicly in St Paul's on April 25,[ [117] and then wrote to Spain that in spite of Ferdinand's secret orders he had been forced to do so for fear of the consequences of refusal.[ [118]
As was to be expected, the Emperor, who quivered to every wind, again wavered at news of this Franco-Spanish truce. The news had reached him spiced (by Ferdinand) with the lie that Henry was privy to it, and though Wingfield indignantly told him that Henry was not "so light or of so little resolution to arm him at all pieces and then call for a pillow,"[ [119] he said that if Henry entered the truce he would also. However, in the end, stiffened by resentment and by the English attitude, he definitely ordered his subjects in the Low Countries to serve Henry, and the Count de Ligny and others took service.
All this time the English had been skirmishing with the French in the Calais Pale[ [120] and the Welshmen of the garrison had done some damage. Sampson Norton, the head of the arsenal, had been taken prisoner, and the French party at Malines tried to prevent his exchange.[ [121] The English fleet had been exercising in the channel in March, a brave show, and now letter packets need not be dropped overboard to save them from French hands.[ [122] In April the organization of the land forces was approaching something like order, and the fleet was sailing along the coast of Brittany, which Howard hoped to make a desert for many a year, looking for the enemy. Never was such a navy seen, and Préjan and his French fleet dare not hove in sight, so the gallant admiral went to find them and his death. But if French ships were not in evidence in the channel, French agents were thick in Flanders. The Count de Ligny was balked in raising troops for England by a "lord bearing a French order,"[ [123] who warned the towns against him as a favourer of the English, and Louis told the Ghentois they would rue any help they gave. Sir Robert Wingfield, carrying the treaty from Brussels to the Emperor at Trier for ratification, found that "French crowns fly far,"[ [124] and twice on his journey he barely escaped ambuscades. The second one was laid by the son of Robert de la Marck, who a week before had taken four Englishmen to his father's castle at Hesdin. The Franco-Spanish truce was soon common property, and Margaret had an anxious moment, but she was relieved when the English ambassadors told her of the noble deeds at sea of their countrymen