against the French, and "she took a letter out of her purse wherein the tidings were written concerning the bruit and common rumour of the truce between the King of Aragon and the French King, and brake the said letter, casting it on the ground saying these words, 'Let the universal bruit and vulgar opinion give place to the truth.'"[ [125]
Ferdinand was furious at the English attitude, for he felt his golden goose had passed out of his hand, and he was not calmed by the news of the victory at Brest and the burning of the French ships. He raked up all the old grievances against the marriage of Mary and Charles, pointed by the fact that Charles was now riper in years, and would soon be of age. In May the dreaded league between France and Venice was known at Valladolid, and it weighed greatly on his stomach that the shrewd turn he had hoped to play France was likely to recoil on his own head, for Maximilian and Henry were sure to remain allied. He was right, but it was touch and go with Maximilian. The Emperor said roundly to Wingfield, who came up with him at Augsburg, that if France were to regain Milan he would have enough to do there without actually invading France, though Louis were "the most worthy vitupere of any prince living." However, a couple of days later, in Augsburg Cathedral, after mass sung by his own chapel with exquisite organs, with his hand on the Gospels and Canon he swore to the treaty with Henry.[ [126] There seemed some chance of his holding to his oath this time, for his words appeared "to pass more roundly than they were wont to do." Alas for hopes! Two days had hardly passed [17th May 1513] ere a wind from the south veered him round. The Venetians and the French were allied, and he told Wingfield that had he been advertised of these news he would never have sworn, and now it was as impossible for him to send an army to France as it was for a man who had promised to run a furlong to do so if he broke his leg. But he said he would do his best to run out the remainder on a stilt. Poor Wingfield! "The French," he groaned, "are so subtle that they can blind and corrupt the whole world."[ [127] Margaret, however, was steadfast and impervious to French corruption, and said she felt herself safe from France behind English arrows,[ [128] but the French party in her council left few stones unturned in their efforts to avert war. Charles' Spanish secretary was sent secretly into France to try and break the treaty of marriage between Mary and the prince, and to practise a negotiation between Louis XII. and the Emperor.[ [129] Louis said that Margaret and Lord Berghes had assisted the English against the opinion of the council, and he kept for them a pensée. It took the familiar form of Gueldres at this moment. Ferdinand, said spies at Blois, was called a traitor in France, and so he was, for at Malines he posed as Henry's friend, and rated Margaret for not giving him adequate assistance. He begged her to ask the King of England to use his counsel, and promised to assent to anything that would advance the amity with England, and also re-assented to the marriage treaty. "A very wise prince," said Margaret, "in whose subtle understanding is comprised many profound matters: his mind and intent are good."[ [130]
The defeat of the French at Novarro set all Rome daily expectant to hear of their extermination by the English in Picardy, while experts in Germany shook their heads over such a possibility.[ [131] They said that the advantage lost last year in Guienne would not be easily recovered. Wingfield expressed the English feeling of confidence when he wrote "but such is God and better which only is the head of your enterprise, and hath given the noble courage and hardiness to elect of yourself the cost, travell and jeopardy, to attain the honour and glory that must needs follow."[ [132]
CHAPTER III
A CAMPAIGN AND A COURTSHIP
THE musters of the mercenaries had been fixed for Dunkirk on May 20, and the captain of the vanguard, the Earl of Shrewsbury, was to be at Calais on the 16th,[ [133] but, as is so often the case, paper plans drawn by able clerks did not develop rapidly into accomplished facts, and by the 19th nothing was ready.[ [134] What a muddle it all reads, and the marvel is that any men were ever shipped at all! First all the shipping had to be pressed or borrowed, and the hoys had to be hired in the Low Countries or along the English coast and towed to the embarking or loading ports. Then the victuallers had to be loaded in the Thames and at Sandwich, and brought round to the ports where were the hoys or ships. There was hardly a man in England but was pressed for the King's service and wore his coat; the very carters of Kent and Sussex sported the white and green as they cracked their whips by their horses' sides on their way to Sandwich, while all the able-bodied men south of Trent were on their way to Dover or Southampton with journey money in their pockets and the King's coat on their backs. As company after company arrived they had to be housed till transport was found for them, and for two days' journey inland round Southampton the country was swarming with men waiting to be embarked.[ [135] Fox, bishop of Winchester, was worrying through with the business of transport there; Lord Mountjoy had been sent in a hurry to superintend the Cinque Ports,[ [136] and the victuallers, while Wolsey, the King's almoner, was worn to a shadow[ [137] in London in the endeavour to deliver into life his admirably sketched plans for organization. Human nature is not passive pen and ink, and then as now what is called the English lower middle class was absolutely undisciplined. If you doubt it, think of the Biscay performance in 1512, and more recent muddles since. Waste, leakage and unpunctuality were the opening notes of the proceedings, but it is only fair to add that during the whole campaign there was no lack of wholesome victual and in consequence no epidemic. Fox, appalled at the sight of the undisciplined army of brewers, bakers, coopers, smiths, horsekeepers, millers, etc., invading the port, and overwhelmed at the thought of the oxen from Lincoln and Holland, the ling, the cod, bacon, beer, biscuit, to say nothing of the tankards, platters, and cauldrons needed to feed the host, longed for the arrival of Charles Brandon and Lord Howard.[ [138] But Sir Charles was court-bound having just been made Lord Lisle by his adoring King, and Lord Howard, admiral of the Fleet in the room of his late brother, whose gallant death a month ago at Brest had retrieved the honour of the English nation, was wind-bound at Plymouth, and could do nothing either by way of scouring the narrow seas to ensure the safe passage of the hoys and men, or in assisting to bring order out of chaos. He was waiting impatiently for the next wind to bring him round to the Wight, refused all leave to his men and raised a gallows at the water-edge as a grim gloss upon his order.[ [139] The victuallers' ships had not come from Sandwich and transport from the west was wind-bound with the fleet, but Fox muddled on, sure that once Howard came with Lord Lisle things would hum to the right tune. They evidently did, and Henry himself came down privately with Lisle to see the vanguard's departure.[ [140] Lisle's large retinue went with it, chaplains, fifers, Blind Dick the minstrel and all, but Brandon himself remained behind to cross with the King on a hypothetical June 15.
On June 13 the vanguard, "all picked men armed with corselets, bracelets, sallets and gorgets and over their armour a coat of white and green, the King's colours,"[ [141] set out for the object of attack, the town of Therouenne. This frontier fortress, so important that it was called "La chambre du Roy"[ [142] barred the way to the attack of the towns on the Somme, for the French had retired into the towns and castles and meant to wear out the invaders by a prolonged series of sieges. Louis XII. was at Amiens and the French army was under the command of the Duke of Bourbon and the Duke of Angoulême, while the army of Picardy, which was in force at Boulogne and Montreuil, was under the Sieur de Piennes. Five miles a day was an average march for the English army, but it was not till twelve days after their departure from Calais that Bluemantle summoned the town. "Verily, my lord, it was a stronghold; the ditches on the outside were so deep that a man walking and looking into them feared for falling to come nigh to the banks; gaily wooded upon the banks and bushed with quick-set every corner, and wide walls and other full of great bulwarks, and beside the walls in the inside mightily fortified with great trenches, many bulwarks made with timber and earth, and in certain places of the said trenches sundry deep pits for to have made fumigations, to the intent that men upon the assaulting of the same should have been poisoned and stopped."[ [143] Thus it was described by an eloquent Welshman, and before this stronghold the English vanguard sat themselves down, awaiting the main ordinance which was to come with the King. They could not secure their line of communication with the Calais Pale, and on the 27th they tasted French tactics when the garrisons from Boulogne and Montreuil cut in near Ardres, and carried off 100 wagons of victuals escorted by 500 men. Two hundred green and white coats lay on the field, but the only dead French things were twenty horses.[ [144] The Flemish governor of Bethune gave the English a poor character; they made "but easy their skultwachis" and the Welshmen amongst them did great hurt to the Prince's subjects.[ [145]
On June 30, the day after a terrible storm which wrecked the shipping and ruined much victual, the watchmen on the Tour du Guet at Calais saw the King's fleet approaching before the north wind, a sight such as Neptune had never seen before, and at once there was such a firing of guns from ships and walls and ringing of bells from the towers that "you would have thought the world was coming to an end." From the deck of his beloved Mary Rose, the fastest sailer in the fleet, Henry passed by the Lanternegate through the streets of Calais in procession, headed by the bishops and priests, to the church of St. Nicholas to give thanks for his safe crossing, and returned to his lodging at the Staple to give the unpopular order for the burning of "little Whitesand," whose villagers had the day before plundered an English ship driven ashore in the storm. The soldiers were ashamed to do the work.[ [146] For the next three weeks Henry amused himself well at Calais, practising archery with his guard and beating them all, holding revels and receiving embassies from Flanders, the Duke of Brunswick and the Emperor. Maximilian suggested that as conquest was their object, they should cut into the heart of the matter at once, and Henry should meet him at Rheims, to be there sacred King of France,[ [147] a suggestion which did not appear as absurd to Henry "King of France" as it does to us. But Henry had come out to fight, and now with his army swelled by 8000 German mercenaries, "who did not respect churches," the host set out led by Maximilian's guides in leisurely disorder, all along the line the baggage, drawn by English horses, muddled with the ordnance and its Flemish mares. The first night in camp it simply poured and the tents were hardly protection, but Henry was up all night, no doubt boyishly pleased at tasting at last the hardships of real war, and rode about the camp at three in the morning to visit the watch and comfort them with a "Well, comrades, a bad beginning means a good ending, God willing." The low-lying country drained by broad ditches which served the folk as water-ways, was deep in mud, and the tracks were almost impassable. One of the guns called the "twelve apostles," cast in Flanders, was lost in a pond and the Frenchmen hanging invisible on the flank of the army, cut to pieces the party sent back to extricate it. De Piennes now threw himself across the King's line of march, and next morning Henry in person drew up the army in a fog so dense that nothing could be seen. When it cleared away there were the French, who challenged any Englishman to single combat, and many encounters took place, "a pleasant sight if a man's skin had not been in hazard." Afterwards the engagement became general, and the Welsh put the French to flight, and yet another apostle fell into the enemy's hands.[ [148] Not till August 1, was the royal camp pitched before Therouenne, and what a camp! "Peter Corse, merchant of Florens" did his best with his 578 men at 6d. a day to make it notable with canvas, blue buckram, whited Normandy cloth, Brussels' saye, green saye and red saye, with signs and fringes and ribbons. The King's retinue had forty-six halls or tents varying from 24 × 12 ft. to 15 × 15 ft., each flying its sign of the Red Rose, the Red Rose and White, the Flower de Lyce, the Moon, the Red, the Blue, the Green, the White, the Gold, and the Black Shield, and so on. Sir Thomas Windham, the Treasurer, flew the Annewe of Gold, the Yellow Face was kept for strange ambassadors, while in the Chalice the chaplains sang mass openly for the host, and there was one provided with beds "for the surgeons to dress men."[ [149] The King's own lodging was a veritable canvas house, the different rooms connected by passages 10 ft. wide. "The King, for himself, had a house of timber with a chimney of iron, for his other lodgings he had great and goodly tents of blue water-work garnished with yellow and white, divers rooms within the same for all offices necessary; on the top of the pavilions stood the King's beasts holding fanes, as the Lion, the Dragon, the Greyhound, the Antelope, the Dun Cow; within, all the lodging was painted full of suns rising."[ [150] Little doubt Queen Katharine had insisted on the wooden sleeping house (and with surprising thriftiness the hut used in the Court revels was sent over), for her letters attest her almost maternal anxiety for his health and life, with these "nothing can come amiss to him."[ [151] The field was gay with banners, ensigns and flags of every description: every gentleman from knight to earl flew his own, but the weather was very foul, and it rained night and day, and everything gorgeous was ruined.
The ordnance was planted as soon as it lumbered in from the muddy ways, bombards, apostles, curtews, culverins, Nurembergs, lizards, minions and port-guns, and the houses inside the town were "very sore beaten with guns, and such importunate and continual shot made with guns into the same, that no person might stir in the streets."[ [152] The besieged were not idle, however, and not a day passed without victims in the English camp to a certain turf-covered rampart on the walls, where were the most deadly guns, and daily the garrison sallied forth and did damage, and messengers covered by the sally even rode through the English camp and away. The French light horse, stradiots and others, hovered round the camp cutting off stragglers, attacking convoys, and never coming to a decisive engagement, nor exposing themselves unnecessarily. They had opportunity to exercise their tactics for the camp, ruled by "deux opiniâtres," Lisle and Wolsey, who were as new to the business as Henry himself, was badly kept, and the soldiers were so mad against the French, and so eager that they often ventured too hardily.[ [153] Henry was the keenest of the whole army, too keen for his wife's peace of mind, and Wolsey had to write and reassure her.[ [154]
Since Henry's arrival the Emperor had been at Oudenarde, but at last feeling sure that the English King was wasting both time and treasure at Therouenne for lack of expert advice,[ [155] and moreover to justify his wages, after a farewell supper with the Archduchess at Sotenghien, he set out for Aire, while the Lady Margaret by easy stages made for St Omer with her whole council, who were scared to death at this near approach to the field.[ [156] Henry rode to Aire to meet Maximilian on August 10, eager for his first sight of l'ami. It poured torrents, and the interview was short.[ [157] The contrast must have been striking between the rather shabby looking man of medium height clad in black velvet, white-faced, wide-nosed, grey-bearded, a frank shrewd glance and amiable manner,[ [158] but with an indescribable carriage of dignity which marked him above all; and the auburn-haired, blue-eyed, ruddy young giant towering above him, clad no doubt in his favourite cloth of gold, and boyishly frank in his greeting. Everyone seems to have felt the charm of Henry's bluff unsuspicious manner, and Maximilian was no exception, "for during the whole journey the Emperor showed the greatest condescension, declaring publicly that he came to be of use to the King of England, and calling the King at one time his son, at another his King, and at another his brother."[ [159] Maximilian had a well developed dramatic sense, and he enjoyed playing the part of hired captain and chief military adviser to the splendid young King whose magnificence and extravagance, only equalled by his naïve inexperience, impressed the frugal and penniless Emperor. So "the King's highness and the Emperor be together and have every other's counsel with the most amiable loving wise that can be thought."[ [160]