Great Harry

by Erickson, Carolly, 1943-

  By the twenty-ninth, only three days after he arrived in Boulogne, the heavy English siege guns had done a good deal of damage to the castle, and Henry was confident that the town would soon be his. When Chapuys appeared in the English camp to talk with the king—a painful errand for the old ambassador, for his gout crippled him and he had to be carried everywhere in a sedan chair—Henry was already looking ahead to his next conquests.

  As soon as Boulogne and Montreuil fell, he confided to Chapuys, he intended to order his army forward at once, further into French territory, and he meant to lead the men himself. He had heard a rumor that Montreuil had already been taken, he added; even if the rumor proved false it was undoubtedly prophetic. "I never found the king so joyous and so light-hearted as when my colleague and I saw him," Chapuys wrote. "Even if he had had positive news of the taking of those two towns by his men, I doubt whether he would have been in such buoyant spirits."^

  In fact Henry was gloating. He seemed near to gaining his objectives, while his ally Charles V was making little headway toward his. Charles and his army had been unsuccessfully besieging St. Didier since the beginning of July, hampered by French ambushes and fearful of a large-scale counterattack. Bad weather impeded siege maneuvers. "We have had so much rain and such cloudy days," an English diplomat wrote from the imperial camp, "that we can scant see the sun once a day to look by our dials what it is o'clock."^ The emperor himself rode out about midnight one night with a picked force, intending to engage the enemy, but returned frustrated. His spies had reported that French reinforcements would be attempting to enter the town in the dead of night, but none

  were found. Overall the imperial forces were achieving so little that Charles became fearful that Henry might desert him and treat with the French for peace.

  Francis had indeed written to Henry offering peace terms, but had

  received a brusque and negative reply, full of knightly indignation. In his

  letter Francis implied that he, Henry, had been the one to make peace

  overtures, the king wrote back. Francis ought to realize that he would

  never betray his ally the emperor by making peace on his own. The

  suggestion "greatly touched his honor," Henry wrote, which, ^'having

  always guarded inviolably to this present, he would never consent in his

  old age that it should be anyway distained."^

  j Nothing pleased Henry more than an opportunity to prove his good

  I faith. Here on the field of honor, with the single focus of a great enterprise

  J in progress, he was in his element. It was, to him at least, a simpler,

  chivalrous world, free of the murky ambiguities of statecraft, its ethical

  bounds refreshingly clear. Here he could gain unequivocal victories and

  win undisputed esteem. Here he could pursue once again knightly ideals

  I cherished since boyhood, in all their anachronistic innocence.

  Physically and mentally, he flourished. There were no dark moods, no savage violence, only courtesy to friends and chivalrous gestures toward the enemy. Chapuys was amazed at Henry's vitality and stamina. He was not only in excellent health, but working much harder than anyone would have expected. Edward Seymour pronounced him to be "merry and in as good health as I have seen his Grace at any time this seven year."^^ He rose at daybreak and was active until evening, supervising the laborers, checking on incoming supplies and ordering others, observing the conduct and morale of the soldiers.

  He sent to Antwerp for two thousand arquebuses (two hundred arrived, many of them antiquated models lacking firelocks that had to be lit with matches), eighty-five wagonloads of powder, and twenty-two hundred pikes of ash wood with iron heads; two hundred of these, intended perhaps for the royal guard, were gilded and trimmed with velvet. ^^ He consulted with the Italian artist and engineer he had engaged to design the siege works, Girolamo da Treviso, becoming more and more mistrustful of the latter's expertise. Treviso was well-intentioned and enthusiastic, but his ideas were more the product of abstract theorizing than proven success. In the opinion of the seasoned campaigner and privy councilor John Russell the Italian was plainly "inexperienced in sieges"; when Norfolk heard him recommend sending laborers armed with mattocks to seize an entrenched wooden outwork of Montreuil Castle he remarked dourly that Treviso "spake not as a man very skillful in such things."^^ Henry, who had become disgusted with his Portuguese engineer at Guines and equally dissatisfied with a German, Stefan von Haschenperg, whom he had brought to conduct the works at Carlisle, looked with skepticism on Treviso and where possible made his own decisions.

  Henry was skeptical too of his soldiers. Siege warfare made for idleness and boredom, and after some weeks of it he suspected his men

  were becoming soft. To test them—specifically, to "make sure of their good behavior in case of assault"—he devised a trial. He planned to have one of the explosive charges under the castle wall exploded prematurely, without warning, in order to observe the "temper and disposition" of the men in a sudden crisis.^^

  The outcome of this trial is not recorded, but whether because of his soldiers' temper or from other causes Henry lost a little of his buoyant optimism during July. By the middle of the month neither Boulogne nor Montreuil had fallen to the besiegers, while to the king's shame Charles V had seized two fortresses and taken fifteen hundred enemy prisoners. The news from Montreuil seemed to grow worse day by day. There were too few English troops to surround the town, too few even to stop up both of the town gates; men and supplies went in and out of one of the gates as the English watched helplessly from their entrenched position before the other.^^ Food was running low. On July 5 Norfolk wrote to Suffolk from Montreuil that there had been no beer in the camp for ten days. "Send us a dozen or twenty tun of good English beer, for us old fellows to drink," he pleaded, though he added that the soldiers bore their deprivation with surprisingly "little grudging."^^

  Every sort of hindrance and disruption marred the progress of English aims in France: inaccurate military information, insufficient supplies of food and equipment, incompetence and dishonesty. The unseasonable rains drowned the low grounds and spoiled grain that would have provided fodder for the horses and cattle. Greedy soldiers seized double and triple rations, and could not be disciplined. Crowds of hangers-on gathered in the camps, stealing food and drink and, when they had drunk their fill, brawling like madmen. "Ingraters" stole on a larger scale, boarding the supply ships from England as soon as they docked in the French ports and buying up their cargoes to resell to the royal purveyors at a profit. Worse still, there was fighting between the English and the German mercenaries hired to serve alongside them. Much of the violence went on out of sight of the officers, but some incidents came to their attention. Norfolk received word that one of the Germans struck an English soldier "with a boar spear in the throat, without any occasion given"; the culprit was shielded by his compatriots, and could not be found. ^®

  The rain, which at first had been dismissed as an untimely inconvenience, soon became an enmiring disruption in itself. The English tried to remind themselves that the almanacs forecast fair weather, but as the wet days dragged by they began to believe the prognostication they heard from the old women of the region: rain on July 3 meant rain for forty days thereafter. ^^

  On September 8 Henry dictated a letter to his wife Catherine, who was serving as regent in his absence. He apologized for not writing in his own hand, "but that we be so occupied, and have so much to do in foreseeing and caring for everything ourself, as we have almost no manner rest or leisure to do any other thing."*^ He thanked her for the venison she sent him, and informed her in some detail of the good progress of the

  bombardment of Boulogne. He expected the town would fall in two or three days, he said; but for a shortage of gunpowder it would already be in ruins. (By this time Henry had used up not only all powder originally provided for the siege, but all of another shipment from Flanders
and every bit from the reserve stores at Calais and Guines; on the day he wrote Catherine he was looking for more powder from England—"what may be spared out of castles and bulwarks within the survey of the Cinque Ports," and any that might be found in the ships on the Thames.*^)

  The outworks were already in English hands, and Henry's men were contending with the defenders "hand to hand" for the inner ramparts. Even more gratifying to Henry was the imminent arrival of a peace delegation from King Francis, made up of men of such high rank and status that they complimented his own honor considerably. (Chapuys found him "proud and vainglorious" on the subject.) Doubtless he hoped to be able to impress the French when they arrived, and to this end he stepped up the bombardment. At the bottom of the dictated letter Henry added a paragraph in his own hand. This day, he wrote, "we begin three batteries, and have three mines going, besides one which hath done his execution in shaking and tearing off one of their greatest bulwarks." Even as he wrote, he said, the castle dike had been stormed, and was "not like to be recovered by the Frenchmen again." "No more to you at this time, sweetheart," he concluded, "both for lack of time and great occupation of business, saving we pray you to give in our name our hearty blessings to all our children." After final greetings to Catherine's ladies and his councilors, he signed the letter "with the hand of your loving husband, Henry R.," and went back to his labors.

  The good news pleased Catherine, who was nearly as busy with the business of government as Henry was with the business of war. It fell to her (through the royal lieutenant of the north and the Privy Council) to make certain the Scots did not rekindle war on the northern border, and to coordinate the shipment of needed supplies to France. A few weeks earlier she had gotten word of the capture of a Scots ship carrying letters toward France. In sending on the more important of the letters to Henry she wrote that their capture was clearly ordained by God to show the "crafty dealing and juggling" of the Scots, and to further Henry's righteous struggle on the battlefield. Her own letters to him are filled with her immediate concerns and occurrences at court, but there were personal passages too. She missed Henry very much, she was impatient for his letters, indeed she could not endure to be separated from him were it not in a good cause, Catherine wrote. "God, the knower of secrets, can judge these words not to be only written with ink, but most truly impressed in the heart," she added, signing herself "your Majesty's humble obedient loving wife and servant" Catherine the queen.^°

  On September 11, the day the first member of the French delegation, the bishop of Arras, arrived at camp before Boulogne, Henry mounted his final assault. The English hurled themselves through openings in the breached walls, and there was much bloodshed on both sides. The chief attack, though, was to come from an elaborate mining operation directed

  by Girolamo da Treviso. With one vast explosion the castle was to be destroyed, and Henry made certain that he and his companions were at a good vantage point when the order to fire the mines was given. There was a deafening blast. The castle walls cracked and heaved, and great gaps appeared as heavy blocks of stone and mortar fell on the heads of the fighting men. The impact sent stones flying everywhere, and when the dust settled many of the besiegers lay dead, among them the unfortunate Treviso. 2^

  Though the castle was badly damaged the walls still held, and the defenders turned back the assault. Henry was mortified at first, but to his great relief the next day the French commander opened negotiations to deliver the town, and two days later the formal surrender took place. Some two thousand of the townspeople of Boulogne filed out of the town gates and past the watching English soldiers, taking the road toward Montreuil, their scrawny horses pulling carts piled high with their possessions. Following them came the soldiers of the garrison, whole and wounded, walking five abreast, to the number of another two thousand and more. The town had been undermanned, and its defenders short of gunpowder; Chapuys gave it as his opinion that, had they been adequately supplied, the English losses would have been much higher.^^

  Henry rode in triumph as a conqueror through the gates of Boulogne on September 18. It was a sentimental entry, which must have brought back memories of his formal entry into Toumai, and later into Lille, as a young man. His treasured objective had been won. He had taken the town he said was more important to him than Paris—more important than ten Parises, as he put it later.^^ He called Boulogne *'our daughter," and referred to himself proudly as "The King's Highness of Bolloign," and as he rode through the rubble-strewn streets trumpeters standing precariously on the broken walls saluted him with a royal fanfare.

  During the next ten days he made himself familiar with every tower and wall of the town—from the inside. Having destroyed much of the place while it was in French hands, he now faced the challenge of rebuilding it into a strong English fortress. He planned the reconstruction of the works, ordering a high defensive mound built on the ruins of a church and appointing a master mason, master carpenter, chief smith and surveyor of the works to carry out his instructions. There was much civilian rebuilding to be done as well, as nearly every structure in the town had been damaged or destroyed in the final bombardment. In addition, there were a great many survivors of the siege, most of them "aged, sick, and hurt persons" who had to be cared for in some fashion.

  Harsh news came while the king was savoring his triumph: Charles V had made peace with the French. Without consulting his English ally he had come to terms the very day Henry entered Boulogne, leaving the English to fight on alone as best they could.

  "Silent and pensive," Henry hastily revised his plans in the light of the emperor's defection. With Boulogne in order, its restoration under way, he marched to Montreuil, which was still in enemy hands, and mustered the men under Norfolk's command to see how they fared. It was a dismal

  spectacle. Inside the town the starving French, having eaten all the larger four-footed beasts, including their horses, were now "glad to eat of a cat well larded and call it dainty meat." Outside, in the besiegers' camp, the shortage was nearly as severe. The countryside for twelve miles around had been denuded; every ear of com and blade of grass had vanished. The horses were dying, and at least twenty men died each day of disease.^'^ There was no choice but to lift the siege and retreat, though Henry feared to seem dishonored. To his bitter regret the costly siege engines, portable mills and brewhouses had to be burned to keep them from the enemy.

  It was the last distasteful act of a frustrating campaign. There would be no further assaults, no further prizes. The fall rains had set in— distinguishable from the summer rains only in their tempestuous violence—and the campaigning season was at an end. Henry delayed his departure until the English had, miraculously, retreated safely from -Montreuil. Then on the last day of September he embarked for home, I concerned for the disesteem the retreat had brought him yet "quite buoyant and joyful" overall. He left Boulogne in the hands of his commanders Norfolk and Suffolk, instructing them to guard it well.

  There was one last obstacle to be surmounted. Plague raged at all the Channel ports, and in London; after much planning and advice from the queen and Privy Council an itinerary was mapped "by which his Majesty might, most safely for sickness and most commodiously for his travel, return within the realm."^^ Late on the evening of September 30 the King's Highness of Boulogne was back in England, "to the great rejoicing of all his loving subjects."

  The wrinkles in my brow,

  The furrowes in my face

  Say, Limping age will lodge him now

  Where youth must geve him place

  Once he was back in England the battlefield vitality that had so reinvigorated Henry waned, and he began once again to be weighed down by his heavy, unresponding flesh. Chapuys thought him "much broken" since his return, and the king himself said early in 1545 that he had felt *'ten times better" in France than he had since.^

  Now and then he displayed a sort of mental calcification—an almost obsessive narrowing of mind that was not precisely senility but was very much t
he product of advancing age. When talking with ambassadors he had less and less tolerance for ''interpretations"—a term he used repeatedly, and by which he meant the deceitful rationalizations of those who were against him. He would only speak of straightforward, unambiguous things: of honor and dishonor, honesty and dishonesty, candor and guile. In his last years he dwelt with pathetic redundancy on his own high-minded virtues and the malignant faults of others, on his fidelity to his friends despite their betrayals, on his chivalry and others' churlishness. These were none other than the high-minded ethics that had brought Henry esteem in his young manhood, yet where before they had been the heartfelt ideals of youth they were now the platitudes of a spent old man, whose long and bloody rule spoke eloquently against his claims to virtue.

  It was as if, in order to comprehend men and events, he had to reduce them to moral absolutes; the everyday middle ground of ambivalent motivations and nuanced meanings was becoming intolerable to him. And as he struggled to reduce all to light and dark, good and evil his sharp anger returned. In the midst of discussions with his councilors and foreign envoys his temper would flare, and a torrent of recriminations would put an end to all conversation. His advisers were forced to make apologies for him (sometimes, as Chapuys reported, '*in a joking, semi-shamefaced fashion") even as they feared his wrath; he alone ruled, but as always he could be swayed, and his anger could be turned to advantage by an adroit councilor who approached him at the right moment.

  The challenges to the realm increased rather than diminished after Henry returned from France. England and France remained at war, with the French attempting to recover all that they had lost in recent months. Within days of the king's departure they attacked Boulogne—left all but

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  undefended by Norfolk, who withdrew his troops to Calais contrary to Henry's last command—and fell on the small English garrison in Basse Boulogne on the night of October 9. Many of the English, including women and noncombatants, were slaughtered as they slept, and the town that had symbolized victory now became a watchword for defeat. The English defenders of the high town, though, held it against the attackers and were still resisting a French siege the following spring.