Great Harry Read online

News of King Henry's victories in France spread quickly, until stories of his bravery, his prowess in arms, his chivalrous treatment of his enemies and his glittering person could be heard in every tavern and marketplace. Men to whom the English king had been only a shadowy name now spoke familiarly of him, telling one another how he won the day at the Battle of the Spurs, how he walked fearlessly in the open at the siege of Toumai, heedless of danger, for hours at a time, how when his men hesitated to ford a swollen river he jumped off his horse and waded in, shaming the others into following him. Tales of his scrupulous chivalry were eagerly told. After taking Therouanne, it was said, he returned to Guinegate and awaited a challenge to do battle for the town, as the laws of arms required. He had shown the greatest courtesy to his French prisoners, allowing some to ransom themselves for a token payment and subsidizing the ransoms of others out of his own money. To the captured due de Longueville, a noble of the highest rank, he gave a gown of cloth of gold, forcing the duke, despite his objections, to dine at the royal table. And though Henry had shown himself a fearsome adversary, declaring through his Garter King of Arms to the citizens of Toumai that if they did not yield he would "put them and their city to sword, fire and blood," in fact he treated the conquered population magnanimously. There was little destruction, and no plundering; instead he turned the town into an arena for spectacular entertainments and pageantry, with torchlit processions and tournaments held in the open in the market square.

  Those who saw in Henry another Henry V were entirely satisfied. The resplendent English king had not only repeated many of his predecessor's feats but had done them at a younger age, and earlier in his reign. To be sure, he had not shown the generalship of the fifteenth-century ruler, nor had he actually won the French crown. But he did not have Henry V's stem and arrogant nature either, and his campaign had none of the bmtality of medieval combat. The behavior of Henry's soldiers had in fact been one of the minor wonders of the campaign. Sixteen hundred copies of "statutes of war" had been printed and distributed among them, statutes in which Henry's concem for virtue and good repute were unmistakable. The fighting men were enjoined against robbery, pillage

  89

  and sacrilege; they were not to bum houses, or to gamble (except with the king, who looked on gambling as a form of largesse and seemed to enrich everyone who played with him): they were not to "murmur or grudge against the king or the officers of his host."' Camp followers were outlawed, and all other women were to be treated with consideration. The soldiers were not even to enter, much less to raid or occupy, a house where a woman lay in childbed; the "marvellous fair, well fed and clean washen" girls of the region were to be left strictly alone. No such precautions could protect women against the incidental harms of war, however. During the siege of Therouanne the English artillery destroyed a large house, possibly a convent or a beguinage where lay women lived and worked in common, and when it fell, "many dozen fair young women" were killed.^

  Foreigners who passed through the English camp in France took back stories which augmented the king's reputation still further. They confirmed the unheard-of order and clean living observed by his soldiers, and recounted at length the scenes of splendor they had witnessed: the surrender of Therouanne, when the bedraggled townspeople filed out one by one, their possessions on their backs, through the ranks of English horse and foot ranged on either side of them, and later the razing of every wall and house until only the cathedral was left standing; Henry's triumphant entry into Lille, wearing his crown, a doublet of cloth of silver over his jeweled armor; the girls of Lille running out to offer him little crowns and scepters and garlands of flowers while the criminals of the town reached out to him with white rods in their hands begging for pardon; the elaborate jousting at Toumai in the pouring rain, with Henry taking the prize and riding round the circle acknowledging the cheers of the spectators in his wilted, ruined doublet of multicolored velvet.^

  Before he left for France Henry had been a crowned boy, a "youngling." Now English men and women spoke of him as "our great king," not just King Harry but Great Harry. Soon the entire world would talk of him, a Venetian envoy wrote. Already he had no equal among the kings of Christendom for gold, silver and soldiers.^ Who could say what glory his next campaign would bring?

  There was no doubt in Henry's mind that he would go to war again, and soon. Even before he left France he assured Pope Leo that he would return as quickly as possible with a larger army, and resume his conquest of France."^ He thrived on challenge, and war was the most thorough and most unrelenting of challenges. Lesser men might pale or quake under the endless strains of campaigning, but Henry seemed to grow stronger, not weaker, as the weeks went by. The Milanese ambassador Paolo da Lodi reported how at Toumai, when he should have been resting from his exertions, Henry chose instead to join in the tilting. He ran course after course, striving to outdo the best of the jousters, Charles Brandon and the emperor's champion Guillaume de Guislain, until in the end "without flattery" the spectators had to admit that he had "done excellently and broken many lances." To the ambassador's astonishment, the king showed not the least sign of being winded or fatigued. "He was fresher

  after this awful exertion than before," he wrote. "I do not know how he can stand it."

  What made the effort all the more amazing was that Henry had had little if any sleep the night before. Days in the tiltyard and at the gambling table alternated with nights of banqueting, courtly flirtation and dancing—such dancing as no king had done in recent memory. From late evening until dawn Henry hopped and dipped and bowed, '^dancing magnificently in the French style," partnering Margaret of Savoy and each of her women in turn. "He does wonders and leaps like a stag," the incredulous Milanese wrote. He seemed never to tire, but went straight into the next day's round of arduous exercise, bright-eyed and ''wonderfully merry. "^

  Along with his tough, untiring physique Henry had a superabundance of nervous energy which urged him on from one diversion to another and which put a keen edge on his every movement. Idleness was foreign to him; "he is never still or quiet," da Lodi remarked. When no pastime presented itself he created one, usually turning for amusement to the people around him. With the courtiers he joked and teased and played matchmaker, promising to reward his favorites among the younger women with extravagant sums when they married. At least one of them held him to his promise afterward. One Etienette de la Baume sent Henry a letter reminding him that when he had flirted and bantered with her at Lille, calling her his page and "telling her many pretty things . . . about marriage and other things," he had also said he would give her ten thousand crowns when she took a husband. Her father had now found one for her; Henry must pay up.^ To his soldiers and captains the king was bellicose and full of boast. "He is as eager for war as a lion, and greatly desires to fight the French," da Lodi noted. But even as he spoke of battle the spirit of play would overtake him and he would rush out, leap on his horse and challenge his companions to a race. A foreigner staying in the English camp saw the king riding from the town one evening, surrounded by about twenty-five mounted attendants, racing and playing games and tricks with them, as carefree as any young squire with his companions.*

  It was this quality in Henry—this ability to cast aside the aloofness of monarchy and show the lively familiarity of a good companion—that won him affection as well as admiration. The towering magnificence of his person made him overwhelming. He was literally earthshaking; "when he moves," it was said, "the ground shakes under him."^ He was awash in splendor; to the ordinary folk of Flanders he must have seemed, as he did to the Venetian Bavarin, "a being descended from heaven."*^ But if he was godlike, he was a god made flesh, approachable and even eagerly friendly, and the weight of his presence was counteracted by the warmth of his camaraderie.

  "He is very popular with his own people," the Milanese envoy remarked, "and, indeed, with all, for his qualities." The nobles of Flanders flocked to see him, and many of the common people as well. They found him to
be "merry, handsome, well-spoken, popular and intelligent." They took note too of the "two obstinate men who governed

  everything" for the king, Charles Brandon and Thomas Wolsey. Brandon, Henry's hulking shadow, appeared to be a "second king" with the power to "do and undo" at will.*' Wolsey was slightly less conspicuous but equally indispensable, directing the provisioning, transport and communications of the army in the field. The king's subtler political and even domestic duties were left to Wolsey; it was he who remembered that Queen Katherine had entered the last months of her pregnancy and had begged for frequent letters, as she was without any other comfort in Henry's absence. When he neglected to write her Wolsey wrote for him, soothing her fears and assuring her quite inaccurately that the king was being careful "to avoid all manner dangers."*^ Katherine took heart. She was glad her husband was coming safely through his "dangerous passage"; she believed him to be invincible. "With his health and life nothing can come amiss to him," she wrote buoyantly, adding that she was now preoccupied with war herself, supervising the campaign against the Scots.

  From a purely military standpoint Henry's war had been little more than a costly chivalric adventure. In taking Therouanne and Toumai Henry had damaged French interests but had brought little direct benefit to England. The emperor Maximilian, who had taken Therouanne nearly thirty-five years earlier and then lost it, had the most to gain from the campaign; taking the two fortress towns out of French hands not only made the borders of the empire more secure but temporarily distracted the French from fighting the imperial armies in Italy. Even the English had to admit that Henry was neglecting his own advantage; one English ambassador compared him to the heroic Athenian King Codrus, who was so preoccupied with the welfare of his neighbors and friends that he forgot to look out for himself.*^

  Henry could not even take full credit for the success of his undertaking. There had been imperial and Swiss troops engaged as well, and they had won victories in Burgundy as the English were taking the first of their prizes. (Ferdinand too gave every appearance of joining in the war, sending messengers to his son-in-law declaring his intention to assist him as soon as a new treaty was signed, meanwhile arranging for the signing to be delayed until the campaigning season was past.*^) Critics disparaged the fall of Toumai to the English as a hollow victory. To be sure, the town was fortified, and occupied by the French, but it was encircled by the neutral Netherlands territories of Prince Charles and had no garrison; the English had faced only feeble citizen resistance, and could not have won the town more easily.

  If only they had known it, these same critics could have charged the king quite accurately with impoverishing his kingdom. Slightly less than a million pounds had been spent on military preparations and on the campaign itself. When all was over the treasure in jewels and plate that had been Henry VII's legacy to his son was spent. One of the last things the king did before leaving for France had been to secure the jewel house in the Tower, ordering a new brick wall, stronger bars and windows, new doors set in secured with "hanglocks" and keys. By the time he returned there was little left to guard.'^

  I

  GREAT HARRY 93

  In a way, Henry had missed the main campaign entirely. For if the Battle of the Spurs had won the admiration of contemporaries the English victory over the Scots at Flodden inspired their awe, eclipsing every other event of the summer. It was a great victory. The Scots king had sold all his plate and gold chains to buy ordnance, and brought up seven huge guns—the "Seven Sisters"—against the English. His nobles stood by him in the field in full strength, and many churchmen too, excusing their collaboration in slaughter by arguing that they only set off the guns that did the killing, they did not kill with their own hands. Thomas Howard, the doughty, septuagenarian earl of Surrey, led the English. The battle went on for three hours, and when it was over the Scots king and his clerics lay dead on the field, plundered by the Northumberland folk who drove off their hundreds of horses and by the armorers who swarmed over their corpses and sold their armor. ^^

  Queen Katherine had been on her way north with a large army when the news of Flodden reached her. Probably she expected to lead her men into battle, bearing her child, if need be, in the military camp the way her mother had borne her three decades earlier. According to one account Katherine harangued the captains "in imitation of her mother Isabella," telling them "to be ready to defend their territory, that the lord smiled upon those who stood in defense of their own, and that they should remember that English courage excelled that of all other nations."^^

  Katherine sent the news of Flodden to Henry with as much pride as if she had won the battle singlehandedly, though she was careful to attribute both this and the successes in France to her husband's piety. She had shown no less prowess than he, she wrote. Her infantry had defeated the mounted, heavily armed Scots. The valor of her knights, especially Surrey, and of an unnamed "English lady" who captured three Scottish horsemen unaided, was without parallel.^^ And if he had taken captive a duke, her men had killed a king. To prove it Katherine sent him James' plaid tunic bearing the royal arms of Scotland, torn and stained with his lifeblood.

  They cast on their gownes of grene, And tooke theyr bowes each one; And they away to the greene forrest A shooting forth are gone.

  When the two Venetian envoys Giustiniani and Pasqualigo arrived at Greenwich to celebrate May Day of 1515 with the king and his court they were met by a smiling Queen Katherine. She was richly dressed in the style of Spain and mounted on a white horse, and was attended by a number of footmen and twenty-five waiting maids whose gold-trimmed gowns and pure white palfreys were nearly as splendid as her own. The secretary of the Venetian embassy, Niccolo Sagudino, observed later that the ''sumptuous appearance" of her women made Katherine seem rather plain, but her manner was cheerful and gracious as she rode alongside the ambassadors the mile or so to Shooter's Hill, and she took pleasure in the first of the sights they came across—a triumphal car, or float, drawn by griffins with human faces and filled with singers and musicians. A little farther on the king came riding toward the company on a prancing bay Frieslander. His appearance, though traditional on May Day, was arresting: he was dressed entirely in Lincoln green velvet, from his cap to his shoes, and as soon as he came in sight of the foreigners he made the bay bound and leap as he approached them, "performing such feats," Pasqualigo wrote, "that I fancied myself looking at Mars."' With Henry accompanying them the group then rode to the top of the hill, where they came upon two hundred or more archers of the royal guard, dressed all in green like the king and carrying bows and arrows. At their head was one who called himself Robin Hood, with Maid Marian by his side. (Which of Henry's courtiers impersonated Robin Hood is unclear, but the part of Maid Marian was taken by one "Mr. Villiers." who wore a woman's frontlet and red kirtle and covered his head with a kerchief.)

  With the king's permission, Robin Hood signaled his men to shoot their arrows all at once. The arrowheads were made to whistle as they flew through the air; with several hundred shot at once the noise was "strange and great," and pleased the king. Then Robin invited all the nobles present to "come into the greenwood, and see how the outlaws live," and Henry turned to Katherine and her women and asked "if they durst adventure to go into the wood with so many outlaws." "If it pleased him," Katherine answered, "she was content," and at that the trumpets

  94

  sounded and the green-clad archers led the \a to where a banquet chamber had been created in the midst of the wood, made of boughs and branches and covered with flowers and sweet herbs. Songbirds had been loosed within it. and long tables were laid for a feast.

  "Sir." Robin Hood told the king, "outlaws' breakfast is venison, and therefore >ou must be content with such fare as we use." Henry and Katherine sat down to eat, and the others joined them, served with venison and w ine b the archers and serenaded b> flute and organ music and songs sung to the lute.

  As the banquet progressed Henr> came oer to Pasqualigo and addressed
him familiarly in French.

  "Talk with me awhile!" he said good-naturedly. The ambassador had recenth been at the French court, where Henr 's old enem Louis 11 had died and a new, young king—Francis I—had come to the throne. Courtiers were comparing the handsome, athletic Francis very favorably to his brother monarch of England; he was younger, and if anything even more avid for the hunt, the joust and the battlefield. Henr wanted to assure himself that his pre-eminence in personal magnificence among the European soereigns had not been challenged.

  "The king of France." he asked Pasqualigo. "is he as tall as 1 am?"

  The ambassador answered tactfulh that there was little difference in their heights.

  "Is he as stout?"

  Again the ambassador replied that Francis' girth was less than Henr> s.

  The king grew more insistent. "What sort of legs has he'!^" Here the ambassador ambiguously conceded Henry's advantage, calling Francis* legs "spare." At this. Henry tore open his doublet to expose his tight-fitting hose and slapped his thigh. "Look here!" he asserted. "I also have a good calf to my leg!"

  Henry talked expansively on. assuring Pasqualigo that he was "ver>' fond" of Francis and that he regretted not having seen him when he was campaigning in France two years earlier. He had come very close to encountering him three times. Henr>- added, but Francis "never would allow himself to be seen, and always retreated." Having insulted his rival's courage the king went on to tell the Venetian the entire story of his campaign in detail, leaving out nothing that pertained to his glory, before rejoining Katherine and the others.-

  In comparing the two sovereigns in Henry's presence Pasqualigo spoke with guarded tact. When writing to the Venetian Signory, however, he allowed his sincere admiration for Henr> free rein. "His majesty is the handsomest potentate I ever set eyes on." he stated simply. He is "above the usual height, with an extremely fine calf to his leg. his complexion very fair and bright, with auburn hair combed straight and short, in the French fashion, and a round face so ver>