The History of England, Volume III Henry VIII Affairs of Scotland and campaign in France
by David Hume
Early this year the king sent a fleet and army to invade Scotland. The fleet consisted of near two hundred vessels, and carried on board ten thousand men. Dudley lord Lisle commanded the sea-forces; the earl of Hertford the land. The troops were disembarked near Leith; and after dispersing a small body which opposed them, they took the town without resistance, and then marched to Edinburgh. The gates were soon beaten down (for little or no resistance was made); and the English first pillaged, and then set fire to the city. The regent and cardinal were not prepared to oppose so great a force, and they fled to Stirling. Hertford marched eastward; and being joined by a new body under Evers, warden of the east marches, he laid waste the whole country, burned and destroyed Haddington and Dunbar, then retreated into England; having lost only forty men in the whole expedition. The earl of Arran collected some forces; but finding that the English were already departed, he turned them against Lenox, who was justly suspected of a correspondence with the enemy. That nobleman, after making some resistance, was obliged to fly into England; where Henry settled a pension on him, and even gave him his niece, lady Margaret Douglas, in marriage. In return, Lenox stipulated conditions, by which, had he been able to execute them, he must have reduced his country to total servitude.q
Henry’s policy was blamed in this sudden and violent incursion; by which he inflamed the passions of the Scots, without subduing their spirit; and it was commonly said, that he did too much, if he intended to solicit an alliance, and too little, if he meant a conquest.r But the reason of his recalling the troops so soon, was his eagerness to carry on a projected enterprize against France, in which he intended to employ the whole force of his kingdom. He had concerted a plan with the emperor, which threatened the total ruin of that monarchy, and must, as a necessary consequence, have involved the ruin of England. These two princes had agreed to invade France with forces amounting to above a hundred thousand men: Henry engaged to set out from Calais: Charles from the Low-countries: They were to enter on no siege; but leaving all the frontier towns behind them, to march directly to Paris, where they were to join their forces, and thence to proceed to the entire conquest of the kingdom. Francis could not oppose, to these formidable preparations, much above forty thousand men.
[14th July.] Henry, having appointed the queen regent during his absence, passed over to Calais with thirty thousand men, accompanied by the dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk, Fitzalan earl of Arundel, Vere earl of Oxford, the earl of Surrey, Paulet lord St. John, lord Ferrers of Chartley, lord Mountjoy, lord Grey of Wilton, Sir Anthony Brown, Sir Francis Bryan, and the most flourishing nobility and gentry of his kingdom. The English army was soon joined by the count de Buren, admiral of Flanders, with ten thousand foot, and four thousand horse; and the whole composed an army, which nothing on that frontier was able to resist. The chief force of the French armies was drawn to the side of Champagne, in order to oppose the Imperialists.
The emperor, with an army of near sixty thousand men, had taken the field much earlier than Henry; and not to lose time, while he waited for the arrival of his confederate, he sat down before Luxembourg, which was surrendered to him: He thence proceeded to Commercy on the Meuse, which he took: Ligny met with the same fate: He next laid siege to St. Disier on the Marne, which, though a weak place, made a brave resistance, under the count of Sancerre, the governor, and the siege was protracted beyond expectation.
The emperor was employed before this town at the time the English forces were assembled in Picardy. Henry, either tempted by the defenceless condition of the French frontier, or thinking that the emperor had first broken his engagement, by forming sieges, or, perhaps, foreseeing at last the dangerous consequences of entirely subduing the French power, instead of marching forward to Paris, sat down before Montreuil and Boulogne. The duke of Norfolk commanded the army before Montreuil: The king himself that before Boulogne. Vervin was governor of the latter place, and under him Philip Corse, a brave old soldier, who encouraged the garrison to defend themselves to the last extremity against the English. [14th Sept.] He was killed during the course of the siege, and the town was immediately surrendered to Henry by the cowardice of Vervin; who was afterwards beheaded for this dishonourable capitulation.
During the course of this siege, Charles had taken St. Disier; and finding the season much advanced, he began to hearken to a treaty of peace with France, since all his schemes for subduing that kingdom were likely to prove abortive. In order to have a pretence for deserting his ally, he sent a messenger to the English camp, requiring Henry immediately to fulfil his engagements, and to meet him with his army before Paris. Henry replied, that he was too far engaged in the siege of Boulogne to raise it with honour, and that the emperor himself had first broken the concert by besieging St. Disier. This answer served Charles as a sufficient reason for concluding a peace with Francis, at Crepy, where no mention was made of England.[18th Sept.] He stipulated to give Flanders as a dowry to his daughter, whom he agreed to marry to the duke of Orleans, Francis’s second son; and Francis, in return, withdrew his troops from Piedmont and Savoy, and renounced all claim to Milan, Naples, and other territories in Italy. This peace, so advantageous to Francis, was procured, partly by the decisive victory obtained in the beginning of the campaign by the count of Anguyen over the Imperialists at Cerisolles in Piedmont, partly by the emperor’s great desire to turn his arms against the protestant princes in Germany. Charles ordered his troops to separate from the English in Picardy; [30th Sept.] and Henry, finding himself obliged to raise the siege of Montreuil, returned into England. This campaign served, to the populace, as matter of great triumph; but all men of sense concluded, that the king had, as in all his former military enterprizes, made, at a great expence, an acquisition, which was of no importance.
The war with Scotland, meanwhile, was conducted feebly, and with various success. Sir Ralph Evers, now lord Evers, and Sir Bryan Latoun, made an inroad into that kingdom; and having laid waste the counties of Tiviotdale and the Merse, they proceeded to the abbey of Coldingham, which they took possession of, and fortified. The governor assembled an army of eight thousand men, in order to dislodge them from this post; but he had no sooner opened his batteries before the place, than a sudden panic seized him; he left the army, and fled to Dunbar. He complained of the mutiny of his troops, and pretended apprehensions lest they should deliver him into the hands of the English: But his own unwarlike spirit was generally believed to have been the motive of this dishonourable flight. The Scottish army upon the departure of their general, fell into confusion; and had not Angus, with a few of his retainers, brought off the cannon, and protected their rear, the English might have gained great advantages over them. Evers, elated with this success, boasted to Henry, that he had conquered all Scotland to the Forth; and he claimed a reward for this important service. The duke of Norfolk, who knew with what difficulty such acquisitions would be maintained against a warlike enemy, advised the king to grant him, as his reward, the conquests of which he boasted so highly. The next inroad made by the English, shewed the vanity of Evers’s hopes. This general led about five thousand men into Tiviotdale, [1545.] and was employed in ravaging that country; when intelligence was brought him, that some Scottish forces appeared near the abbey of Melross. Angus had roused the governor to more activity; and a proclamation being issued for assembling the troops of the neighbouring counties, a considerable body had repaired thither to oppose the enemy. Norman Lesly, son of the earl of Rothes, had also joined the army with some voluntiers from Fife; and he inspired courage into the whole, as well by this accession of force, as by his personal bravery and intrepidity. In order to bring their troops to the necessity of a steady defence, the Scottish leaders ordered all their cavalry to dismount; and they resolved to wait, on some high grounds near Ancram, the assault of the English. [17th Feb.] The English, whose past successes had taught them too much to despise the enemy, thought, when they saw the Scottish horses led off the field, that the whole army was retiring; and they hastened to attack them. The Scots received them in good order; and being favoured by the advantage of the ground, as well as by the surprize of the English, who expected no resistance, they soon put them to flight, and pursued them with considerable slaughter. Evers and Latoun were both killed, and above a thousand men were made prisoners. In order to support the Scots in this war, Francis, some time after, sent over a body of auxiliaries, to the number of three thousand five hundred men, under the command of Montgomery, lord of Lorges.s Reinforced by these succours, the governor assembled an army of fifteen thousand men at Haddington, and marched thence to ravage the east borders of England. He laid all waste wherever he came; and having met with no considerable resistance, he retired into his own country, and disbanded his army. The earl of Hertford, in revenge, committed ravages on the middle and west marches, and the war on both sides was signalized rather by the ills inflicted on the enemy, than by any considerable advantage gained by either party.
The war likewise between France and England was not distinguished this year by any memorable event. Francis had equipped a fleet of above two hundred sail, besides gallies; and having embarked some land-forces on board, he sent them to make a descent in England.t They sailed to the Isle of Wight, where they found the English fleet lying at anchor in St. Helen’s. It consisted not of above a hundred sail; and the admiral thought it most advisable to remain in that road, in hopes of drawing the French into the narrow channels and the rocks, which were unknown to them. The two fleets cannonaded each other for two days; and except the sinking of the Mary Rose, one of the largest ships of the English fleet, the damage on both sides was inconsiderable.
Francis’s chief intention, in equipping so great a fleet, was to prevent the English from throwing succours into Boulogne, which he resolved to besiege; and for that purpose, he ordered a fort to be built, by which he intended to block up the harbour. After a considerable loss of time and money, the fort was found so ill constructed, that he was obliged to abandon it; and though he had assembled, on that frontier, an army of near forty thousand men, he was not able to effect any considerable enterprize. Henry, in order to defend his possessions in France, had levied fourteen thousand Germans; who, having marched to Fleurines in the bishopric of Liege, found that they could advance no farther. The emperor would not allow them a passage through his dominions: They received intelligence of a superior army on the side of France ready to intercept them. Want of occupation and of pay soon produced a mutiny among them: And having seized the English commissaries as a security for arrears, they retreated into their own country. There seems to have been some want of foresight in this expensive armament.
