Henry VIII Part 7

This episode threw into the shade the main purpose of Suffolk's emba.s.sy to France. It was to renew the treaty concluded the year before, and apparently also the discussions for war upon Spain.

Francis was ready enough to confirm the treaty, particularly as it left him free to pursue his designs on Milan. With a similar object he made terms with the Archduke Charles, who this year a.s.sumed the government of the Netherlands, but was completely under the control of Chievres, a Frenchman by birth and sympathy, who signed his letters to Francis "your humble servant and va.s.sal".[204] Charles bound himself to marry Louis XII.'s daughter Renee, and to give his grandfather Ferdinand no aid unless he restored Navarre to Jean d'Albret. Thus safeguarded from attack on his rear, Francis set out for Milan. The Swiss had locked all the pa.s.ses they thought practicable; but the French generals, guided by chamois hunters and overcoming almost insuperable obstacles, transported their artillery over the Alps (p. 086) near Embrun; and on 13th September, at Marignano, the great "Battle of the Giants" laid the whole of Northern Italy at the French King's feet. At Bologna he met Leo X., whose lifelong endeavour was to be found on both sides at once, or at least on the side of the bigger battalions; the Pope recognised Francis's claim to Milan, while Francis undertook to support the Medici in Florence, and to countenance Leo's project for securing the Duchy of Urbino to his nephew Lorenzo.

[Footnote 204: _Sp. Cal_., ii., 246.]

Henry watched with ill-concealed jealousy his rival's victorious progress; his envy was personal, as well as political. "Francis,"

wrote the Bishop of Worcester in describing the interview between the French King and the Pope at Bologna, "is tall in stature, broad-shouldered, oval and handsome in face, very slender in the legs and much inclined to corpulence."[205] His appearance was the subject of critical inquiry by Henry himself. On May Day, 1515, Pasqualigo[206]

was summoned to Greenwich by the King, whom he found dressed in green, "shoes and all," and mounted on a bay Frieslander sent him by the Marquis of Mantua; his guard were also dressed in green and armed with bows and arrows for the usual May Day sports. They breakfasted in green bowers some distance from the palace. "His Majesty," continues Pasqualigo, "came into our arbor, and addressing me in French, said: 'Talk with me awhile. The King of France, is he as tall as I am?' I told him there was but little difference. He continued, 'Is he as stout?' I said he was not; and he then inquired, 'What sort of legs has he?' I replied 'Spare'. Whereupon he opened the front of his (p. 087) doublet, and placing his hand on his thigh, said: 'Look here; and I also have a good calf to my leg'. He then told me he was very fond of this King of France, and that on more than three occasions he was very near him with his army, but that he would never allow himself to be seen, and always retreated, which His Majesty attributed to deference for King Louis, who did not choose an engagement to take place." After dinner, by way of showing his prowess, Henry "armed himself _cap-a-pie_ and ran thirty courses, capsizing his opponent, horse and all". Two months later, he said to Giustinian: "I am aware that King Louis, although my brother-in-law, was a bad man. I know not what this youth may be; he is, however, a Frenchman, nor can I say how far you should trust him;"[207] and Giustinian says he at once perceived the great rivalry for glory between the two young kings.

[Footnote 205: _L. and P._, ii., 1281.]

[Footnote 206: _Ibid._, ii., 411; Giustinian, _Desp._, i., 90; _Ven. Cal._, ii., 624.]

[Footnote 207: _Ven. Cal_., ii., 652]

Henry now complained that Francis had concealed his Italian enterprise from him, that he was ill-treating English subjects, and interfering with matters in Scotland. The last was his real and chief ground for resentment. Francis had no great belief that Henry would keep the peace, and resist the temptation to attack him, if a suitable opportunity were to arise. So he had sent the Duke of Albany to provide Henry with an absorbing disturbance in Scotland. Since the death of James IV. at Flodden, English influence had, in Margaret's hands, been largely increased. Henry took upon himself to demand a voice in Scotland's internal affairs. He claimed the t.i.tle of "Protector of Scotland"; and wrote to the Pope asking him to (p. 088) appoint no Scottish bishops without his consent, and to reduce the Archbishopric of St. Andrews to its ancient dependence on York.[208]

Many urged him to complete the conquest of Scotland, but this apparently he refused on the ground that his own sister was really its ruler and his own infant nephew its king. Margaret, however, as an Englishwoman, was hated in Scotland, and she destroyed much of her influence by marrying the Earl of Angus. So the Scots clamoured for Albany, who had long been resident at the French Court and was heir to the Scottish throne, should James IV.'s issue fail. His appearance was the utter discomfiture of the party of England; Margaret was besieged in Stirling and ultimately forced to give up her children to Albany's keeping, and seek safety in flight to her brother's dominions.[209]

[Footnote 208: _L. and P._, i., 4483, 4502; ii., 654.]

[Footnote 209: It was said by the Scots Estates that she had forfeited her claim to their custody by her marriage with Angus (_ibid._, ii., 1011).]

Technically, Francis had not broken his treaty with England, but he had scarcely acted the part of a friend; and if Henry could retaliate without breaking the peace, he would eagerly seize any opportunity that offered. The alliance with Ferdinand and Maximilian was renewed, and a new Holy League formed under Leo's auspices. But Leo soon afterwards made his peace at Bologna with France. Charles was under French influence, and Henry's council and people were not prepared for war. So he refused, says Giustinian, Ferdinand's invitations to join in an invasion of France. He did so from no love of Francis, and it was probably Wolsey's ingenuity which suggested the not very scrupulous means of gratifying Henry's wish for revenge. Maximilian was (p. 089) still pursuing his endless quarrel with Venice; and the seizure of Milan by the French and Venetian allies was a severe blow to Maximilian himself, to the Swiss, and to their protege, Sforza. Wolsey now sought to animate them all for an attempt to recover the duchy, and Sforza promised him 10,000 ducats a year from the date of his restoration. There was nothing but the spirit of his treaty with France to prevent Henry spending his money as he thought fit; and it was determined to hire 20,000 Swiss mercenaries to serve under the Emperor in order to conquer Milan and revenge Marignano.[210] The negotiation was one of great delicacy; not only was secrecy absolutely essential, but the money must be carefully kept out of Maximilian's reach. "Whenever," wrote Pace, "the King's money pa.s.sed where the Emperor was, he would always get some portion of it by force or false promises of rest.i.tution."[211] The accusation was justified by Maximilian's order to Margaret, his daughter, to seize Henry's treasure as soon as he heard it was on the way to the Swiss.[212] "The Emperor," said Julius II., "is light and inconstant, always begging for other men's money, which he wastes in hunting the chamois."[213]

[Footnote 210: _L. and P._, ii., 1065.]

[Footnote 211: _Ibid._, ii., 1817.]

[Footnote 212: _Ibid._, ii., 1231.]

[Footnote 213: _Ibid._, ii., 1877.]

The envoy selected for this difficult mission was Richard Pace, scholar and author, and friend of Erasmus and More. He had been in Bainbridge's service at Rome, was then transferred to that of Wolsey and Henry, and as the King's secretary, was afterwards thought to be treading too close on the Cardinal's heels. He set out in October, and arrived in Zurich just in time to prevent the Swiss from coming (p. 090) to terms with Francis. Before winter had ended the plans for invasion were settled. Maximilian came down with the snows from the mountains in March; on the 23rd he crossed the Adda;[214] on the 25th he was within nine miles of Milan, and almost in sight of the army of France.

On the 26th he turned and fled without striking a blow. Back he went over the Adda, over the Oglio, up into Tyrol, leaving the French and Venetians in secure possession of Northern Italy. A year later they had recovered for Venice the last of the places of which it had been robbed by the League of Cambrai.

[Footnote 214: _L. and P._, ii., 1697, 1699, 1721, 1729, 1736, 1754, 1831, 2011, 2034, 2114.]

Maximilian retreated, said Pace, voluntarily and shamefully, and was now so degraded that it signified little whether he was a friend or an enemy.[215] The cause of his ignominious flight still remains a mystery; countless excuses were made by Maximilian and his friends. He had heard that France and England had come to terms; 6,000 of the Swiss infantry deserted to the French on the eve of the battle.

Ladislaus of Hungary had died, leaving him guardian of his son, and he must go to arrange matters there. He had no money to pay his troops.

The last has an appearance of verisimilitude. Money was at the bottom of all his difficulties, and drove him to the most ignominious shifts.

He had served as a private in Henry's army for 100 crowns a day. His councillors robbed him; on one occasion he had not money to pay for his dinner;[216] on another he sent down to Pace, who was ill in bed, and extorted a loan by force. He had apparently seized 30,000 (p. 091) crowns of Henry's pay for the Swiss;[217] the Fuggers, Welzers and Frescobaldi, were also accused of failing to keep their engagements, and only the first month's pay had been received by the Swiss when they reached Milan. On the Emperor's retreat the wretched Pace was seized by the Swiss and kept in prison as security for the remainder.[218]

His task had been rendered all the more difficult by the folly of Wingfield, amba.s.sador at Maximilian's Court, who, said Pace, "took the Emperor for a G.o.d and believed that all his deeds and thoughts proceeded _ex Spiritu Sancto_".[219] There was no love lost between them; the lively Pace nicknamed his colleague "Summer shall be green,"

in illusion perhaps to Wingfield's unending plat.i.tudes, or to his limitless belief in the Emperor's integrity and wisdom.[220] Wingfield opened Pace's letters and discovered the gibe, which he parried by avowing that he had never known the time when summer was not green.[221] On another occasion he forged Pace's signature, with a view of obtaining funds for Maximilian;[222] and he had the hardihood to protest against Pace's appointment as Henry's secretary. At last his conduct brought down a stinging rebuke from Henry;[223] but the King's long-suffering was not yet exhausted, and Wingfield continued as amba.s.sador to the Emperors Court.

[Footnote 215: _Ibid._, ii., 1877.]

[Footnote 216: _Ibid._, ii., 2152, 1892, 1896, 2034, 2035.]

[Footnote 217: _L. and P._, ii., 1231, 1792, 1854.]

[Footnote 218: _Ibid._, ii., 1877.]

[Footnote 219: _Ibid._, ii., 1817.]

[Footnote 220: _Ibid._, ii., 1566, 1567.]

[Footnote 221: _Ibid._, ii., 1775.]

[Footnote 222: _Ibid._, ii., 1813.]

[Footnote 223: _Ibid._, ii., 2177.]

The failure of the Milan expedition taught Wolsey and Henry a bitter but salutary lesson. It was their first attempt to intervene in a sphere of action so distant from English sh.o.r.es and so remote (p. 092) from English interests as the affairs of Italian States. Complaints in England were loud against the waste of money; the sagacious Tunstall wrote that he did not see why Henry should bind himself to maintain other men's causes.[224] All the grandees, wrote Giustinian, were opposed to Wolsey's policy, and its adoption was followed by what Giustinian called a change of ministry in England.[225] Warham relinquished the burdens of the Chancellorship which he had long unwillingly borne; Fox sought to atone for twenty-eight years' neglect of his diocese by spending in it the rest of his days.[226] Wolsey succeeded Warham as Chancellor, and Ruthal, who "sang treble to Wolsey's ba.s.s,"[227] became Lord Privy Seal in place of Fox. Suffolk was out of favour, and the neglect of his and Fox's advice was, according to the Venetian, resented by the people, who murmured against the taxes which Wolsey's intervention in foreign affairs involved.

[Footnote 224: _L. and P._, ii., 2270.]

[Footnote 225: _Ibid._, ii., 1814, 2487, 2500.]

[Footnote 226: _Ven. Cal._, ii., 750, 798, 801; _L.

and P._, ii., 2183.]

[Footnote 227: _L. and P._, ii., 2205.]

But Wolsey still hoped that bribes would keep Maximilian faithful to England and induce him to counteract the French influences with which his grandson Charles was surrounded. Ferdinand had died in January, 1516,[228] having, said the English envoy at his Court, wilfully shortened his life by hunting and hawking in all weathers, and following the advice of his falconers rather than that of his physicians.

Charles thus succeeded to Castile, Aragon and Naples;[229] but (p. 093) Naples was seriously threatened by the failure of Maximilian's expedition and the omnipotence of Francis in Italy. "The Pope is French," wrote an English diplomatist, "and everything from Rome to Calais."[230] To save Naples, Charles, in July, 1516, entered into the humiliating Treaty of Noyon with France.[231] He bound himself to marry Francis's infant daughter, Charlotte, to do justice to Jean d'Albret in the matter of Navarre, and to surrender Naples, Navarre, and Artois, if he failed to keep his engagement. Such a treaty was not likely to stand; but, for the time, it was a great feather in Francis's cap, and a further step towards the isolation of England. It was the work of Charles's Gallicised ministry, and Maximilian professed the utmost disgust at their doings. He was eager to come down to the Netherlands with a view to breaking the Treaty of Noyon and removing his grandson's advisers, but of course he must have money from England to pay his expenses. The money accordingly came from the apparently bottomless English purse;[232] and in January, 1517, the Emperor marched down to the Netherlands, breathing, in his despatches to Henry, threatenings and slaughter against Charles's misleaders. His descent on Flanders eclipsed his march on Milan. "Mon fils," he said to Charles, "vous allez tromper les Francais, et moi, je vais tromper les Anglais."[233] So far from breaking the Treaty of Noyon, he (p. 094) joined it himself, and at Brussels solemnly swore to observe its provisions. He probably thought he had touched the bottom of Henry's purse, and that it was time to dip into Francis's. Seventy-five thousand crowns was his price for betraying Henry.[234]

[Footnote 228: On 23rd Jan. (_L. and P._, ii., 1541, 1610). Brewer in his introduction to vol. ii.

of the _L. and P._ says "in February".]

[Footnote 229: His mother Juana was rightfully Queen, but she was regarded as mad; she thought her husband, the Archduke Philip, might come to life again, and carried him about in a coffin with her wherever she went (_Ven. Cal._, ii., 564).]

[Footnote 230: _L. and P._, ii., 2930.]

[Footnote 231: _L. and P._, ii., 2303, 2327, 2387; _Ven. Cal._, ii., 769, 773.]

[Footnote 232: _L. and P._, ii., 2406, 2573, 2626, 2702.]

[Footnote 233: _Ibid._, ii., 2930.]

[Footnote 234: _L. and P._, ii., 2891.]

In conveying the news to Wolsey, Tunstall begged him to urge Henry "to refrain from his first pa.s.sions" and "to draw his foot out of the affair as gently as if he perceived it not, giving good words for good words which they yet give us, thinking our heads to be so gross that we perceive not their abuses".[235] Their persistent advances to Charles had, he thought, done them more harm than good; let the King shut his purse in time, and he would soon have Charles and the Emperor again at his feet.[236] Tunstall was ably seconded by Dr. William Knight, who thought it would be foolish for England to attempt to undo the Treaty of Noyon; it contained within itself the seeds of its own dissolution. Charles would not wait to marry Francis's daughter, and then the breach would come.[237] Henry and Wolsey had the good sense to act on this sound advice. Maximilian, Francis and Charles formed at Cambrai a fresh league for the part.i.tion of Italy,[238] but they were soon at enmity and too much involved with their own affairs to think of the conquest of others. Disaffection was rife in Spain, where a party wished Ferdinand, Charles's brother, to be King.[239] If Charles was to retain his Spanish kingdoms, he must visit them at once. He could not go unless England provided the means. His request for (p. 095) a loan was graciously accorded and his amba.s.sadors were treated with magnificent courtesy.[240] "One day," says Chieregati,[241] the papal envoy in England, "the King sent for these amba.s.sadors, and kept them to dine with him privately in his chamber with the Queen, a very unusual proceeding. After dinner he took to singing and playing on every musical instrument, and exhibited a part of his very excellent endowments. At length he commenced dancing," and, continues another narrator, "doing marvellous things, both in dancing and jumping, proving himself, as he is in truth, indefatigable." On another day there was "a most stately joust." Henry was magnificently attired in "cloth of silver with a raised pile, and wrought throughout with emblematic letters". When he had made the usual display in the lists, the Duke of Suffolk entered from the other end, with well-nigh equal array and pomp. He was accompanied by fourteen other jousters. "The King wanted to joust with all of them; but this was forbidden by the council, which, moreover, decided that each jouster was to run six courses and no more, so that the entertainment might be ended on that day.... The compet.i.tor a.s.signed to the King was the Duke of Suffolk; and they bore themselves so bravely that the spectators fancied themselves witnessing a joust between Hector and Achilles." "They tilted," says Sagudino, "eight courses, both shivering their lances at every time, to the great applause of the spectators." Chieregati continues: "On arriving in the lists the King presented himself before the Queen and the ladies, making a thousand jumps in the air, and (p. 096) after tiring one horse, he entered the tent and mounted another...

doing this constantly, and reappearing in the lists until the end of the jousts". Dinner was then served, amid a scene of unparalleled splendour, and Chieregati avers that the "guests remained at table for seven hours by the clock". The display of costume on the King's part was equally varied and gorgeous. On one occasion he wore "stiff brocade in the Hungarian fashion," on another, he "was dressed in white damask in the Turkish fashion, the above-mentioned robe all embroidered with roses, made of rubies and diamonds"; on a third, he "wore royal robes down to the ground, of gold brocade lined with ermine"; while "all the rest of the Court glittered with jewels and gold and silver, the pomp being unprecedented".

[Footnote 235: _Ibid._, ii., 2923, 2940.]

[Footnote 236: _Ibid._, ii., 2910.]