From the moment the Emperor came into the camp on August 12, to visit the trenches, things began to march. The evening before Ross Herald had brought the defiance of the King of Scots, and for all reply from Henry had got, "Let him do it in God's name!" for the Scottish march was well guarded. Two days afterwards Henry, anxious in spite of his impatient bravado, was très joyeux at the news sent by the Swiss that they were on the point of entering France. 'Twas a good answer to Ross, and increased the ardour of the captains for the assault of Therouenne. Maximilian was averse to the attempt, but Henry and his council had set their hearts on it, saying they could hardly raise the siege without loss of prestige,[ [161] and every man said in his heart, Remember Guyenne. A few days before Captain de Fonterailles had managed to throw men into the town, and at last the Emperor gave way and, preparatory to the assault, ordered the camp to be moved across the stream towards Guingate. This was hardly accomplished at dawn, when the alarm was given that the French were approaching.[ [162] It was a convoy of provisions and they sent forward a large company to draw off the English, as they had done once before. The accounts of the battle are as usual confusing. It would seem from the French account that having thrown in the victuals they were returning in careless disorder, hawking in the fields, their leaders riding without helmets on small horses and mules, when the English fell on them from an ambuscade. The English account says Henry followed the French all day and then attacked.[ [163] What probably happened was that the Emperor who refused to have his standard spread, saying he was the servant of the King and St George, "with 2000 men kept them at bay until 4 P.M.,"[ [164] by which time Henry having turned their position at a place called Bomye[ [165] (the camp was Guingate), attacked them unexpectedly, utterly routed them, and took many prisoners of great price. This was on Tuesday, August 16. Henry was mad with joy, especially at the number and quality of the prisoners to whom he gave good greeting on their arrival at camp. Louis d'Orléans, Duc de Longueville and Marquis de Rothelin, was the most important, and him Henry clad in a gown of cloth of gold, and on going to table caused him to be served with water for his hands and to dine with him. The Duke said, "Sir, I will not." The King rejoined, "you are my prisoner and must do so," and displayed great graciousness.[ [166] After Longueville came in importance M. de Boissi, nephew of the late Cardinal of Rouen, who was taken but concealed against the laws of honour by Lord Walham, son of Lord Berghes, for use in treating with Gueldres.[ [167] Prisoners of condition were expected to pay 4000 ducats, but the King always reduced it to 2000 saying to the captor, "I'll pay the rest." A common soldier was worth 20 ducats, and if he had this on him he was merely stripped and set at liberty,[ [168] but in spite of all Henry's care there were the usual quarrels between Almains and English over their captures. All the more important prisoners were sent to Aire on the way to England, and Katharine was rather upset at having to provide lodgings for Longueville in the midst of her preparations to meet the Scots. She sent him to the Tower till she had more leisure.[ [169]
The battle of the Spurs decided the fate of Therouenne, and on the 22nd Pontdormi, captain of the garrison, demanded a parley, at which terms of surrender were agreed on with the Earl of Shrewsbury, and on St Bartholomew's Eve, August 23, the garrison marched out through the camp in the sight of the Emperor and Henry, with banners flying, helmets on their heads and lances on their thighs, 4000 as fine soldiers as any prince would wish to have,[ [170] having prudently destroyed their guns before leaving. Next day, St Bartholomew's, their majesties entered the city. Maximilian effaced himself with his usual politic good-nature, and Henry rode through the gates unlocked by the Earl of Shrewsbury, a veritable St George clad in gilt and graven armour, his coat of silver damask and white satin, his horse's trappings the same, with red crosses. Close behind him came Lord Lisle also in silver and white, and after him "a goodly company of estates, men-at-arms, henchmen all richly apparelled" in green velvet and cloth of silver. At the gate he was met by Maximilian, dressed in black velvet with only six henchmen as sombrely clad, who came as a private person (though the town was claimed as Burgundian) and together they entered the city. The streets were filled with people and along the way to the Cathedral, where again the Emperor yielded the place of honour, they pressed about Henry crying, "Welcome, most merciful King." After an anthem to Our Lady and another to St George sung in the King's Chapel of the Cathedral, the procession returned to the gates where their majesties separated, Maximilian returning to Aire and Henry to his camp. In spite of Henry's promise to treat the inhabitants as his own subjects, the city was claimed by the Burgundians and handed over to them. They destroyed it with fire, and then Henry set 800 labourers to blow up and pull down the fortifications so that one stone did not rest on another, and only the Cathedral remained. From Aire Maximilian retired to Lille, leaving Henry at Guinegate, for he made war with ceremony, and the spirit of the middle ages lingered in his camp, so that by the law of arms, "for in case any man should bid battle for the besieging and getting of any city or town, then the winner to give battle and to abide for certain days,"[ [171] he was compelled to remain on the field awaiting the pleasure of the enemy. But though he remained a week at Guingate the French did not seek him out, and he followed the Emperor to Lille.
Henry and Maximilian had dined, and drank, and amused each other like brothers, and Maximilian had fallen in love with Mary's picture and said he would like to have her for himself[ [172] now that he was again in the marriage market. He had also dangled the imperial crown before Henry's eyes so that the King not only dreamed of entering Paris in triumph, but saw himself Emperor of Germany. But Maximilian was not there for a picnic only, and he and Wolsey had also come to understand each other. In fact Maximilian for the moment "was taken for another man than he was before thought,"[ [173] and the negotiations for the near marriage of Mary and Charles went on satisfactorily. Margaret offered to come and join the conference at Aire, but the Emperor's servants were more satisfied with her room than her presence for they could rule him more easily without her, so she sent Lord Berghes to represent her and to know the Emperor's pleasure when she should meet the King.[ [174] The Spanish agents were hovering about, and Margaret desired to prevent Henry's resentment coming to open rupture with Ferdinand, so she wrote sharp letters to her father telling him not to whet the edge of Henry's anger, and to Henry's agent she said that she was satisfied that all the default lay with the Spaniards "but she is always of opinion that your grace should dissemble and cherish them if any other way cannot be found."[ [175] So sharp were her letters that Maximilian said if she wrote like that again he would take the government out of her hands.[ [176] By September 5, the preliminaries were satisfactorily arranged; a treaty of alliance had been signed by Maximilian, Henry and Ferdinand; Maximilian had been paid in full for his services under St George[ [177]; and Henry set out for Lille where he was to meet Margaret. On the 11th the town rising like an island out of the marsh[ [178] was reached. The English encamped at a short distance from it, and when things were in order thither came the Lord Ravenstein "which after his humble reverence done, showed the King that the young Prince of Castile, Charles, and the Lady Margaret, governess of the said Prince, most heartily desired him for his pastime after his long travail to come and repose in his town of Lille and to see his brother the prince and the ladies of the court of Burgundy, saying that it became not ladies to visit him in his martial camp which to them was terrible." Indeed Margaret told her father that nothing would induce her to "troter et aller visiter les camps pour le plaisir."[ [179] The King "gentelly" accepted the invitation, and "mounted on a courser his apparel and barde were cloth of silver of small quadrant cuttes traversed and edged with cut cloth of gold, the border set full of red roses, his arms fresh and set with jewels," he set out accompanied by the faithful Lisle and followed by Sir Harry Guildford and the henchmen. They were convoyed by Ravenstein and many noblemen. About a mile out of the town they met the burgesses of Lille who presented Henry with the keys of the town, which Henry graciously returned saying he trusted them no less than his own subjects. After this came the nobles of Flanders, Brabant, Holland and Hainault to salute him, and further on Count Frederic of the Palatinate. In fact such a crowd was on the road that it was a wonder any were left in the town, girls offered crowns and sceptres and garlands, while outlaws and malefactors with white wands in their hands besought pardon. At last through the throng the gates were reached, where stood the captain of the town with the well-appointed garrison, and the procession headed by Henry's sword and mace-bearers pressed through the narrow street of the city set, though it was broad day, on each side with burning torches, so that there was scarce room for the riders to pass to the palace. Gay tapestries hung from the houses and at frequent intervals there were divers goodly pageants of the histories of the Old and New Testaments and of the poets. At the door of the Gothic palace built by Jean Sans Peur were waiting the Emperor, Lady Margaret and the Prince of Castile, "who humbly saluted him, and then for reverence of the Emperor the King caused his sword to be put up and his maces to be laid down, and then the King and all other nobles lodged and feasted."[ [180]
But their travail was not yet ended, for the city of Tournay was to be reduced to submission. The Tournois were a double-faced folk, the nobles were for Burgundy, the merchants and people for France, and the city had not made submission on the death of Charles the Bold but had claimed freedom under French protection. They had been thick with the French while assuring Burgundy of their loyalty, and now they were to take their punishment at the hands of Burgundy's magnificent ally. On the 15th, after the Lille meeting, when Henry and his favourite captured Margaret's heart, the English camp was pitched under the walls of Tournay, a city whose beauty "no one can conceive who has not seen it,"[ [181] what with its bridges over the Schalde, its water-mills, its splendid buildings. From out its three miles circumference rose ninety towers and it was second only to Paris in population. Guns were sent by water from Lille, to batter down its stone towers and iron gates, and the Emperor ordered his to come from Malines, and Taylor, whose diary for this whole journey is invaluable, makes no mention of Henry's being mock ones, as the legend runs. Contemporary chronicles are also silent on what would have become a world-known jest, and the wooden guns in the Tower must have some other origin. It may be true that the Tournois were terrified at the sight of the artillery, and yielded, but certainly not before the city had been much battered, and Lisle had rushed and occupied one of the gates, carrying away as trophies two of the images from its niches[ [182]; but it is much more probable that the news of Flodden Field, brought by Rougecroix on the 16th, in Katharine's exultant letters, was the true cause. All was rejoicing in the English camp. Mass was celebrated in the state pavilion of purple and gold, and the Te Deum sung for the victory. The bishop of St Asaph preached, and one can imagine the gist of the sermon, for if the Queen attributed the victories of the English armies wholly to Henry's piety what argument would a Tudor bishop be likely to follow! Henry and Brandon rode off to Lille to carry the news to Margaret, and the King sat in her lodging singing and playing the cyther and the flute, and then danced with her ladies and drew the bow with her gentlemen. His spirits were so high that all the way back he raced and played with his escort.[ [183] A few days later came John Glyn with the pathetic confirmation of the death of James IV.—his plaid embroidered with the arms of Scotland, now all bloody. And Katharine with feminine ferocity wrote, "in this your Grace shall see how I can keep my promise, sending you for your banners a king's coat."[ [184] Henry was exultant, St George had indeed granted his servant victories! And next day the keys of Tournay were handed over. Thus a second time within a month the King made a triumphal entry into a captured town, and on Sunday, September 25, the Council of the city met him, again clad as St George, at the Porte Ste. Fontaine, "their horses and mules having the English arms painted on paper before them." The King there passed under a canopy of gold and silk prepared by the inhabitants in great haste, and carried by the principal burgesses, and thence along the high street St. Jacques, the citizens all bearing wax torches, and down the rue Notre Dame to the Cathedral, "where he saluted God and St Mary,"[ [185] and then, as he stood under his banner in the church he made many knights. He went to his lodging to the sound of bells, for every one in the city was rung, and to shouts of "vive le roi."[ [186] Henry exacted 50,000 crowns from the city as fine, and cleared the surrounding bailliage of the French, who went away so fast that they could not be pursued.[ [187]
FROM THE WINDOW IN THE CHAPEL OF THE VIRGIN IN THE CHURCH OF BROU (ABOUT 1528)
On the following day, Monday, the Emperor and the Lady Margaret, with a splendid suite of ladies in chariots and gentlemen on horseback, came into the city by torchlight, and negotiations for the marriage were reopened in earnest. Henry and Lisle had both been as eager to see Margaret as she to see them. The day after the battle of the Spurs her maître d'hôtel Philippe de Brégilles, whom she had sent to the camp at Therouenne, had written to her: "Madame, le roi ce soir a fort pressé l'Empereur de vous haster de venir, toutefois devant votre arrivée je vous dirai aucunes choses que le roi m'a dit desquelles me députe de vous écrire. Madame, le Grand-Ecuyer, milord Lyle, est venu à moi me prier que de lui vousise faire ses très humbles recommandations et que de bon cœur désirrait de vous faire service. Je croy que savez assez que c'est le second roi, et me semble que ne serait que bon de lui écrire une bonne lettre, car c'est lui qui fait et deffait."[ [188] No doubt the "bonne lettre" was written, and Margaret, having seen Lisle at Lille and approved, came to Tournay with the idea in her mind of using Brandon, "cet opiniâtre," who did and undid all, to further her plans for the reduction of Gueldres and the protection of the Burgundian frontiers against France by English means. If she had approved at Lille, on further acquaintance both Henry and Brandon pleased her immensely; Henry because of the irresistible charm of his youthful frankness, courtesy and good-nature, "entirely good and thinketh no evil,"[ [189] and Lisle "because of the virtue and grace of his person, the which me seemed that I had not much seen gentleman to approach it; also considering the desire he always showed me that he had to do me service." Her task seemed an easy one, and while Wolsey and Fox debated with Berghes and Hans Reynner the terms of the marriage treaty, she was flirting diplomatically with Lord Lisle, and beguiling the King, who even promised to settle the succession on his sister in case of his having no heirs of his body. But before the time came for her departure from Tournay, probably before the coming of Prince Charles on October 10, she was conscious that feelings other than political had been brought into play. The fact was that neither Henry nor Brandon had ever met a young woman who made her own life and governed others, and they misinterpreted Margaret's evident pleasure in Lisle's society and her courteous treatment of him as proceeding not from cool diplomacy but from her interest in the man. "I have always forced me to do him all honour and pleasure," she said, "the which to me seemed to be well agreeable unto the King, his good master." This certainly was Margaret's first attitude, but force seems later to have passed into desire. The change from the ceremonious tranquillity of the Court at Malines, with its environment of old regrets, to the stirring atmosphere of the youthful Court with its insular unconventionality, made Margaret no doubt feel young again, and as she flirted with Lisle, the idea of a match between the two was mooted, either by the King or favourite. She must have looked most attractive, with her fair hair, brown eyes and clear colour, her face lighting up in conversation, and her gay laugh. Margaret knew neither English nor Flemish, and the Earl knew, or pretended to know, no French, her usual tongue, but evidently a few Flemish words, so that the King was "trwchman," or interpreter, and Margaret hints that his translations might have been warmer than the original warranted, "because of the love which he beareth him." One night—she herself relates the incident—at Tournay, after a banquet, a trwchman was needed. Brandon, on his knees before her playing with her hands, drew from her finger a ring she had long been accustomed to wear, and put it on his own. "Larron," she called him, laughing, and said she had not "thought the King had with him led thieves out of his country. This word larron he could not understand: wherefore I was constrained to ask how one said larron in Flemish. And afterwards I said to him in Flemish dieffe, and I prayed him many times to give it to me again, for that it was too much known." But Brandon kept his loot till next day, when Margaret spoke to Henry and said she would give one of the bracelets she always wore to have it back again, for it was too well known. So Lisle returned it and got the bracelet. Then Henry, either just before or after this incident, astonished her by asking whether she would stretch her goodwill towards Lisle to a promise of marriage, as was the fashion of the ladies of his country. It needed all Margaret's tact to answer graciously, for she said, "I knew well that it came to him of great love to speak so far forth as of marriage. And of another prince I had not so well taken it as of him, for I hold him all good and that he thinketh none evil, wherefore I have not willed to displeasure him." Therefore she answered vaguely at first that it was not the custom in this country, and that if she did it she would be dishonoured and held as a fool and light, also she feared her father. What, indeed, would the Weiss König have said had his daughter mated with a squire of England, a jerry-built viscount, after refusing its King! Still, now that Henry had shown his whole hand Margaret knew what tricks would fall to her, and had she not been éprise of Lisle, she would certainly in all prudence have drawn back and at least considered the situation. It is a comment on the personal quality of political relations that Margaret says she dared not say openly that she would have none of Lisle for a husband for fear of offending the King. So she temporized, and probably her more than sub-conscious reason was her growing attachment to the Grand-Ecuyer. There's not the shadow of a doubt that Margaret was taken with Brandon, but that she ever intended to marry is another matter. To Henry's vicarious wooing she says she answered that she herself was willing, but she durst not do so, and hinted that she would go away and "it would be to me too much displeasure to lose so good company." So "he passed the thing into his departing." But when the time for Margaret's return to Lille drew nigh, in her room late at night he returned to the charge, saying that he knew well "she would be pressed for to marry her, and that she was too young to abide as she was: and that the ladies of his country did remarry at fifty and three-score years." She sighed and said she had been too unhappy in husbands to marry again. Henry brushed this aside with, "I know well, Madame, and am sure that my fellow shall be to you a true servant, and that he is altogether yours, but we fear that ye shall not do likewise, for one shall force you to be again married: and that you shall not be found (save) out of the country at my return." So she gave what she says was an easily given promise not to marry till she saw him again, for she had made up her mind, "not again to put me where I have had so much unhappiness and misfortune," and Lisle swore on his part, standing with her hand in his, "to be true to her, to take no lady nor mistress, but to continue all his life her humble servant, which was enough honour for him."
By this time Wolsey and Fox had settled the treaties, and Prince Charles had arrived, "a boy of great promise,"[ [190] whose conversation delighted Henry. He only stayed two days, long enough to see how the land lay with his aunt for all her protestations of diplomatic pastime, and was present at a grand tournament held in the public place amid torrents of rain, where the King and Lisle challenged all comers and kept the barriers, and the King excelled all in agility as in person, and broke more spears than any other.
Two days later the army left Tournay, where the soldiers had remained too long in idleness, contracting very heavy expenses, and Henry went to Lille to sign his sister's marriage treaty. There Margaret was determined that her entertainment should not be ruined by the rain, and held her tournament in a large room raised above the ground many steps and paved with black stones like marble. The horses, to prevent their slipping and to deaden the noise of their hoofs, had their shoes covered with felt.[ [191] The tournament over, the lords and ladies danced, and Lisle renewed his suit to Margaret. Again he was on his knees before her, playing with her hands, and again he took possession of her diamond ring, but this time all Margaret's entreaties could not get it back, and Henry, when appealed to, failed to see her point that it was its notoriety and not its value that urged her. He carelessly promised her another better, and next day, before setting out, Brandon brought her "one fair point of diamonds and a table ruby and showed me that it was for the other ring: wherefore I durst no more speak of it, if not to beseech him that it should not be showed to any person." Brandon gave the promise, which was ill-kept, and went away with the ring and bracelet and troth renewed between them in the little ante-room the night before. Margaret had undertaken the education at her Court at Malines of his little daughter Anne,[ [192] whom he now left with her under the care of his cousin, William Sidney.