Henry VIII, Part Two

Henry VIII made Scottish blood boil when he claimed to be the overlord of Scotland. When England went to war with France, Scotland was forced by the Auld Alliance (her mutual defense pact with France) to attack England from the north. Relations between Scotland and England were (and continue to be) tenuous at the best of times, and Henry’s pompous rhetoric didn’t incline James IV of Scotland to seek a peaceful solution to the present difficulties. The Scottish king declared war on her long-time nemesis, and Pope Leo X – in cahoots with England against France – threatened James with ecclesiastical censure if he didn’t relent in breaking the last Scottish peace treaty with England. Rather than budge, James stepped up his game: he sent Scottish ships to bolster Louis XII’s French navy. James was excommunicated for increasing the hostilities, but he was unfazed; a war was on, and he had an ace in his deck: the Great Michael, one of the largest oceangoing vessels ever built.

The Scottish Great Michael 

The four-masted Great Michael was named after the Archangel of the Bible, and it displaced one thousand tons, carried twenty-four guns on the broadside, one basilisk forward and two aft, and thirty smaller guns. Her oaken walls were ten feet thick, and she had a complement three hundred sailors, one hundred twenty gunners, and close to a thousand soldiers. The Great Michael was originally commissioned to support a Scottish crusade against the Ottoman Empire to reclaim Palestine for Christendom; a ship as mighty as the Great Michael would be needed to offset Ottoman dominance in the Mediterranean. These plans changed when their commitments in the Auld Alliance forced their hand in a renewed ‘crusade’ against England. The Great Michael – along with the Margaret and James – were tasked with raiding English shipping before saddling up with the French navy. The commander of the squadron, James Hamilton, the 1st Earl of Arran, decided on easier pickings in Ireland. After plucking good loot in the western isles, the Scottish convoy ignored English shipping and sailed straight for their French compatriots. 

Back in the British Isles, James was planning a land invasion of northern England. Henry was besieging Therouanne when a Scottish herald delivered a letter from the Scottish king. James implored Henry to back off from attacking France, which was a blatant violation of their previous treaty. Meeting the herald in his tent, Henry declared that James had no right to summon him; furthermore, he ought to be England’s ally rather than enemy, since James was married to Henry’s sister Margaret. He added, ‘And now, for a conclusion, recommend me to your master and tell him if he be so hardy to invade my realm or cause to enter one foot of my ground, I shall make him as weary of his part as ever was a man that began any such business!’ Henry’s ego, bolstered by his recent victory at the skirmish of the Spurs, seethed in his response – but, as it were, if Scotland invaded, it would be left to his Regent, Queen Catherine, to deal with the threat. He’d set up a northern English army in case of any such eventuality, and he trusted the defense of England to their skills. Henry, for his part, wouldn’t dare leave French soil and jeopardize his lofty ambition of seizing the French crown.

an array of late medieval/early modern artillery

James used vengeance for the murder of a Warden of the Scottish East March who’d been killed by John ‘The Bastard’ Heron in 1508 as pretext for his invasion of England, and he gathered an army of thirty thousand men supplemented with artillery. His ‘artillery train,’ pulled by borrowed oxen, included five ‘modern’ cannons from Edinburgh Castle as well as twelve ‘vintage’ culverins. King James IV, flanked by the standards of St. Margaret and St. Andrew, spearheaded the invasion. England wasn’t unprepared: Henry had engineered an army with artillery in northern England to counter any such hostile movements, and James – according to a sense of outdated-but-not-yet-extinguished chivalry – gave the English a month’s heads-up of his planned invasion, giving the English time to dig out the banner of Saint Cuthbert from Durham Cathedral (the banner had been carried by the English in victories against the Scots in 1138 and 1346, and the soldiers considered it a good luck talisman). The Earl of Surrey, receiving news of the Scottish march, bolstered the defenses by assembling more troops and joining those already staged in the north. When Queen Catherine heard about the invasion, she ordered Thomas Lovell to raise an army in the Midland counties and instructed him to reinforce Surrey’s forces. 

The Scots took a string of lightly-defended English castles on their jubilant march south. At Ford Castle, the Scottish leaders parleyed with the English; neither were willing to turn tail and run, so they began planning an official Day and Time to decide the course of the campaign by feat of arms. As they were working to pin things down, the Earl of Surrey moved his forces north of the Scots, cutting off their retreat; the Scots had to move their camp two miles to Branxton Hill, where their route of retreat wouldn’t be jeopardized. The armies closed in on each other, and Surrey sent a messenger to James to inquire about his readiness to play; James answered that they’d start the game at noon. 

an artist's rendering of soldiers from both sides of Flodden

An hour before the allotted time, English soldiers and artillery crossed the nearby Twizel Bridge to get into position. James, ever chivalric, decried suggestions of firing his artillery against the vulnerable English trotting across the bridge. The Scots, divided into five formations atop Branxton Hill, allowed the English – divided into two ‘battles’ with two wings – to form up on the water-logged, marshy plain below. James patiently allowed the English to make themselves good and ready, and then he ordered the Scottish host to begin descending the hill – and thus abandoning a prime defensive position. The English, seeing the Scots marching their way, began moving across the plain to meet them. 

The Scottish host descends towards the English on the plain

Most of the Scottish soldiers, numbering around thirty thousand, carried pikes (basically long spears) into battle; the English, numbering a little less at twenty-six thousand, wielded bills (a polearm with a hooked blade at the end). As the armies marched towards each other, the artillery from both sides opened fire. Because the Scottish artillery was situated atop Branxton Hill, their shots flew over the heads of the incoming English; the English artillery, parked on the plain, was able to scour the hill with plunging fire – and they made a mess of the Scottish advance. Though English longbowmen fired into the enemy soldiers coming down the hill, by this point armor had evolved so that most arrows were deflected or neutered; only a well-placed shot could kill or maim. The advanced armor, however, stood no match against artillery fire, and the English cannonballs gouged the hillside in washes of blood and body parts. The Scottish, seeing their shots shooting over their enemies’ heads, and suffering the attrition of artillery fire amid their ranks, grew concerned – and concern is never a boost in battle. 

a vicious contest between Scottish pikes and English bills

When the two sides met at the base of the hill, the English had the edge – and they continued to have the edge, due in no small part to the fact that their bills were far more lethal in the melee than the Scottish pikes. The pikes – described by a contemporary as ‘keen and sharp spears five yards long’ – didn’t fare well in the hilly terrain. The pike’s lethality came by creating an organized ‘hedge’ or wall of spear-points against the enemy, not unlike the phalanx of the ancient world. When pikemen presented a united front, only the bravest and luckiest soldiers could get through them. At Flodden, however, the Scots had become ragged in their descent down the hill, and the artillery fire had thinned their ranks and broken their cohesion. As the two sides came together, the English with their bill-hooks had the distinct advantage; those pikemen who were able to get a hedge of spears up were dismayed when the bills’ hooked blades were used to knock the pikes aside or to even tear them from the hands of their wielders. 

The first Scottish soldiers, led by high-ranking Scottish earls, were quickly repulsed and slain. As the two sides melded into one, the artillery fire slackened: the Scottish cannon weren’t hitting anything regardless, and the English didn’t want to throw metal into their own ranks. The English chronicler Edward Hall describes the vicious hand-to-hand fighting at the foot of the hill, saying that it ‘was cruel, none spared other, and the King himself fought valiantly.’ The King he refers to, of course, was James IV, as Henry VIII was across the Channel in France; and though James fought valiantly, he couldn’t steal victory from the jaws of defeat, and those very jaws closed around him. James was fatally wounded by an English arrow and the strike of a bill, and he died within a spear’s length of the Earl of Surrey. At James IV’s death, the meager Scottish resistance broke. Because no clear lines of retreat had been marked out, and because most of the Scottish officers were dead or dying on the field, the retreat devolved into a rout, and many were slain by marauding English cavalry. The Scottish artillery was abandoned, the gunners fleeing for their lives, so the English claimed the cannon and culverins as their own. The Bishop of Durham, laying eyes upon the booty, claimed a group of culverins called the ‘seven sisters’ were the finest artillery pieces he’d ever seen. The army treasurer counted seventeen captured guns worth 1700 marks. Defeating the Scots and slaying their king was a good ending, but the booty made it all the more worth celebrating. The Scots, of course, weren’t celebrating; the council of Scotland sent a hurried plea for help to Denmark, where the Scottish ambassador was asked how such a crushing defeat happened. 

The ambassador blamed the late James IV for dislodging from a prime defensive position atop the hill to attack the English on marshy ground; lesser blame, but blame nonetheless, was given to Scottish inexperience (not, he made clear, English valor). The ambassador also noted, rather wisely, that James made a tragic blunder in following the chivalric medieval notion of putting leading officers in the front line; the English, in line with evolving Renaissance tactics, held their leaders back from the fray so as to better orchestrate the battle. The loss of so many Scottish officers resulted in the panicked retreat turning into a disorganized rout. The Scottish ambassador recognized that the tactics of war were changing as technology advanced, and the Battle of Flodden (or, as some call it, Branxton Hill) serves as a sort of ‘transitional piece’ between medieval and early modern warfare in the British Isles. Because the Scots and English fought in brutal hand-to-hand combat with medieval weapons, Flodden has been called the last great medieval battle in the British Isles; this was the last time that bill and pike would meet as equals on the field of battle. In 1515 Francis I of France defeated the infamous (and, according to some, invincible) Scottish pikemen at the Battle of Marignano by using a combination of heavy cavalry and artillery. The days of medieval warfare were truly drawing to a close.

Henry VIII, Part One

Henry VIII in his later years

Henry VIII stands monolithic in English history, towering high above his father in historical memory. The distance of history tends to skew our understanding of the past, and though Henry seems to loom larger-than-life, far beyond his father’s shadow, in truth Henry reached such heights only by standing on his father’s shoulders. Henry VIII was seventeen years old when he took the reins from his late father, and he sat on a throne that was his because of his father’s brilliance and labor. The new king inherited an England tailored toward his indulgences, whereas his father seized the throne in a country eager to swallow him whole. Henry’s father had secured England and enabled her to prosper after the disastrous Wars of the Roses, and it’s doubtful that the new king could’ve survived the climate in which his father thrived. Simply put, Henry’s father was made of sterner stuff: he had reunified and rebuilt England in the wake of civil war and, simultaneously, resurrected her prominence in western European affairs. Gone were the days when cutthroats and rebels lurked behind every hedge; thanks to Henry VII, these were the days of banquets, jousting, and the luxury of fine tastes. This was the perfect atmosphere for Henry VIII, and it was this atmosphere that enabled the egotistical yet conscience-stricken churchman-turned-king to lead a reunified England into a very different sort of revolt.

Henry VIII reigned from 1509 to 1547, and his death led to the succession of his only son Edward (crowned Edward VI). Henry’s reign saw the beginning of the English Renaissance and the beginning of the English Reformation (which, in true irony, found its genesis with Henry’s attempts to escape his marital bond to Catherine of Aragon). While Henry is remembered for spearheading the English Reformation and the establishment of the English Church, most remember him for his litany of wives. His many marriages weren’t due to royal lust; as king he could have (and was even expected to have!) mistresses. Fulfilling lust, despite his religious upbringings and heavy-handed conscience, was never an issue. The issue was this: a monarch’s legitimacy was reinforced by having male heirs who could take the throne when he passed; when a king didn’t have a male heir to take the reins when the time came, the result could be political mutiny and civil unrest – and people didn’t like this. The vast majority of the English populace wanted to ‘live and let live,’ and it was easiest to do this when a clear royal succession was in place. While some of Henry’s marriages have been presented as pursuits towards political alliances or ‘true love,’ the foundational undercurrent was Henry’s search for a healthy male heir who could help legitimize his reign and pave the way for the future of the Tudor dynasty. In the constant ‘shifting of fortunes’ faced by Henry’s wives, two marriages ended in annulment, two ended in natural deaths, and two were beheaded under charges of adultery and treason. The ultimate goal – a male heir – was realized, but it was short-lived. Each of Henry’s three surviving children – Edward, Mary, and Elizabeth – would have a turn as England’s monarch, and they (along with their father and grandfather) would encapsulate the Tudor dynasty. 

Henry’s marital escapades have become synonymous with his name, evidenced by a mnemonic device to remember his wives’ names (‘Arrogant Boys Seem Clever, Howard Particularly’), a mnemonic for their fates (‘Divorced, Beheaded, Died; Divorced, Beheaded, Survived’), and two popular elementary rhymes:

King Henry VIII,

to six wives he was wedded.

One died, one survived,

two divorced, two beheaded.

and…

Boleyn and Howard lost their heads,

Anne of Cleves he would not bed,

Jane Seymour gave him a son – but died before the week was done,

Aragon he did divorce,

which just left Catherine Parr, of course!

a young Catherine of Aragon

Henry’s older brother Arthur had been groomed for the throne, so (per custom at the time) Henry was groomed towards a career in the church with the promise that he’d be given large estates and titles whereas Arthur would ascend the throne. Henry received the finest education from the finest private tutors in theology, music, sports, arts, and languages. He was adept at music, and he wrote a song called ‘Pastime with Good Company’ that would be popular throughout Renaissance Europe. Henry was witty, charismatic, and athletic; he loved gambling and jousting, hunting and dancing, and he would become known for throwing extravagant tournaments and banquets. At his prime he towered over his contemporaries, standing six feet tall. When his older brother died of the so-called ‘sweating sickness’ in 1502, Henry became heir apparent. The newfound promise of the crown ballooned his already-enlarged ego; he became convinced of his innate majesty and coupled it with a joyous yet stubborn character. 

Henry VII had been wrangling with Spain over what to do with Catherine following Arthur’s premature death, but soon after the late king was put to rest, the seventeen-year-old Henry declared he would marry Catherine. The wrangling thus came to naught, and the Spaniards were forced to make do with whatever came down the pipeline. Henry and the twenty-three-year-old Catherine were married in early June 1509 in a low-key ceremony (strange, given Henry’s burgeoning penchant for the grandiose); on the 23rd of that same month, Henry led his new wife from the Tower of London to Westminster Abbey, and they were crowned King and Queen. Unlike the quaint wedding, the coronation after-party was a balls-to-the-wall banquet in Westminster Hall, and Catherine wrote to her father that she and Henry were spending their time ‘in continuous festival.’ 

But the festivities wouldn’t last. Henry moved fast, arresting two of his late father’s most unpopular ministers, charging them with treason, and executing them in 1510. To garner goodwill from the public, he took some of the money they’d acquired and distributed it to the populace. The initial reaction was joy: Henry VII had fallen ‘low in the polls’ because of his financial measures, such as heavy-handed fines and fees, but these measures had helped England rise from the ashes of the Wars of the Roses to find solid footing once again. The initial happiness at Henry’s maneuverings faded as people realized that the government needed the money to keep things running smoothly, and such smooth operations were in their favor. In addition to (temporarily) overturning some of his father’s financial measures, Henry VIII took a more lenient line with the House of York. Henry VII had imprisoned a number of Yorkists, viewing them as rivals and potential upstarts in the wake of the civil wars, but the new king pardoned and released many of them. Other Yorkists, however, whom Henry’s councilors didn’t trust, remained imprisoned, and Edmund de la Pole would be beheaded in 1513. 

Now that Henry was king, he aimed to tower over his father. While Henry VII had stabilized England, Henry VIII would conquer France! He dreamed of making Henry V look like an amateur by conquering the whole of France and spreading English rule deep into the European continent. Henry’s swollen ego and sense of inbred superiority made the success of such an adventure a sure thing, and time was of the essence: France, allied with the Holy Roman Empire and the papacy in the League of Cambrai, was embroiled in fighting on the Italian peninsula in an attempt to sack Venice. Henry’s father had made peace with France, choosing economic virility against military glory, and Henry’s first act was to lull the French king, Louis XII, into a false sense of security. 

Against the advice of many of his councilors, Henry renewed his father’s peace with King Louis XII of France. Henry wagered that so long as France and the Holy Roman Empire were allied, war against England’s long-time rival was a foolish move. It wasn’t long, however, before Henry switched sides: when the League of Cambrai fell apart in 1510, the major players were no longer allied. Pope Julius II turned against his former ally by creating an anti-French Holy League in the autumn of 1511, and Henry joined hands with King Ferdinand of Spain and allied with the papacy. The gears of war were grinding yet again, and Henry and Ferdinand planned a joint attack to recover French Aquitaine for England. Because France’s efforts were focused east in Italy, the monarchs hoped that they could take advantage of France’s weakened western sectors and begin chewing away at the French fabric. War was officially declared in April 1512, but the Anglo-Spanish attack failed, straining the alliance. The Holy League fared better in the east, where they managed to push the French out of Italy. Henry, having failed to gain victory by the sword, turned to diplomacy, and he made two smashing successes: he convinced the Holy Roman Empire, formerly allied with France but now no longer entwined by the laws of the ill-fated League of Cambrai, to join the anti-French Holy League; he also secured the promised title of ‘Most Christian King of France’ from Pope Julius II. It’s reasonable that the Pope promised to crown Henry with this title in Paris if Louis XII could be ousted.

the English cavalry charge at the Battle of the Spurs 1513

Henry had laid the necessary groundwork, and now was the time to go in for the kill. On 30 June 1513 he invaded France and defeated the French at the Battle of the Spurs, in which it’s estimated three thousand French soldiers were slain with little casualties among the English cavalry. Though the battle was minor – more of a skirmish, really – the English crown seized upon it and wove it into a tapestry of brilliant propaganda. The English took French-held Therouanne shortly afterwards and handed it over to Emperor Maximilian of the Holy Roman Empire, and then they seized the larger French city of Tournai. Things were going well for Henry in France, but his absence in England was noticed by his brother-in-law and long-time-enemy James IV of Scotland...

the year in books [XVII]

I've plowed through another slew of American Westerns. Ron Hansen's The Kid was a decent biography of Billy The Kid, though I only give it three stars because the sentence structure can be a bit choppy at times (it's a great book, I'm just not superbly fond of Hansen's style). Charles Portis' True Grit was a fantastic read, five stars all around, and I've added some of his other (non-western) works to my 2020 Reading Qeue. Charles O. Locke's The Hell Bent Kid is an oldie but a goldie, and the last three books are the first three in Loren D. Estleman's Page Murdock Series. They're short, never over two hundred pages, and each page is a delight. Estleman truly is one of the masters of the American Western, and I plan on plowing through the rest of his Page Murdock books next year.

the year in books [XVI]

This year I've logged just over thirty books on history. Though I love history, I've noticed my desire to read historical books has been waning. I'm not sure why that is? My love for fiction and nonfiction swings back and forth like a pendulum, and this year it's leaned heavily towards fiction. Walter Lord's A Night to Remember is the classic retelling of the R.M.S. Titanic disaster, and Erik Larson gives a similar treatment to the sinking of the Lusitania during World War One. Cecil Lewis' Sagittarius Rising is an excellent memoir of air combat during the First World War. The last three books revolve around the Second World War, and all three are memoirs. Interestingly, the first two - Eckhert's D-Day Through German Eyes and Faust's Tiger Tracks - are presented as memoirs but are likely fabricated; nevertheless, even skeptical historians praise them for their gritty authenticity and ability to capture, in spirit and prose and (at times) poetry, what combat was really like. Rozell's The Things Our Fathers Saw is a collection of first-hand memoirs from the Pacific Theater in World War Two. 

#nauticalstuff

the year in books [XV]

As of today, I stand at 125 books read for 2019 (I'm thus 25 shy of my 150-book Reading Challenge on GoodReads). Bernard Cornwell's War of the Wolf is his latest tale in his excellent Anglo-Saxon Series, and an excellent read. Jeff Shaara's Gone for Soldiers is a sort of 'prequel' to his and his father's Civil War series; this book takes place during the Mexican-American War in which many of the infamous Civil War generals got their first taste of combat. C.S. Forester's Mr. Midshipman Hornblower is a series of short stories that serve as a prequel to his infamous Hornblower Saga. It was decent, and Forester is the one who inspired Bernard Cornwell to start writing (but Cornwell, I believe, has surpassed Forester). Clive Cussler's Golden Buddha was decent, but it wasn't even written by Cussler (I have a great distaste for up-and-coming writers who leech onto famous authors to try and get a following). Brian Jacques' Redwall was a blast from the past, as I read it back in my Junior High days, and though Ashfall was decent, I had a hard time keeping up with it. 

the reformation: goal reached

This morning I weighed in at 160 pounds, which was the goal I set for myself last year. In lieu of reaching my goal, I shaved my beard (much to the wife's disappointment; but, damn, it's hot as hell having a beard in the summertime!). I chose 160 pounds for two reasons: (1) it's the weight my doctor said I should be at, and (b) if I lose anymore I end up looking a year younger with each pound lost. When Chloe saw my shaved face, she exclaimed, "You look like a teenager!" The beard really did help me look my age, so maybe I should've have been so gung-ho about shaving it? Aw, who cares. I feel like I can BREATHE again, and feeling the wind against my cheeks and chin is quite nice.

Having reached 160, I'm shifting back towards bulking. I've made large strides in weight-lifting, but I'm going to push myself even harder while increasing my caloric and protein intake. Hopefully the next update will see me with some bigger muscles. It's a slow process, but well worth it. Hell, this time last year I couldn't even begin to lift the weight I'm lifting, so I'm optimistic.