• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 771 0

allowed those involved with sedition and rebellion to make their peace with the government. Initially the English army had some success. On August 10, a French force advancing to raise the siege at Saint-Quentin was heavily routed. Although the English missed the battle, men under the earl of Pembroke took part in the capture of the city some weeks later. “Both sides fought most choicely,” wrote one Spanish officer, “and the English best of all.”7 The news was greeted in England with widespread celebrations.8 It looked to have been a successful end to the campaigning season, but the French were intent on quick revenge and believed that the winter would be the best time to attack the garrison at Calais, the last English territory in France, as the marshes would be frozen.

ON NEW YEAR’S DAY 1558, 27,000 French troops attacked Calais. On the third, Thomas, Lord Wentworth, now lord deputy of Calais, described the dire situation in a letter to Philip:

Sire: I have received your Majesty’s letter informing me that the French are moving against Calais. Indeed they have been camping before this town for three days. They have set their batteries in position, and have stormed the castle at the entrance to the port, and also the other castle on the road leading to France. Thus they have occupied all our territory, and nothing remains for them to do except to take this town. If it is lost, your Majesty knows what great facility it would give them to invade your territories of Flanders.9

By the seventh, the French had entered the castle and Wentworth surrendered. The diarist Henry Machyn recorded the loss:

The x day of January, heavy news came to England, and to London, that the Fre[nch had won] Calais, the which was the heaviest tidings to London and to England that ever was heard of, for like a traitor it was sold and d[elivered unto] them the [blank] day of January.10

The garrison was ill prepared and undermanned. French forces led by Francis, duke of Guise, had been able to take it by surprise by launching their attack in midwinter.11 The garrisons of Guisnes and Hammes held out until January 21, when forces under William, Lord Grey, short of ammunition and food, also surrendered. Just a few months after the victory at Saint-Quentin, the French had inflicted a catastrophic defeat on the English.

The recriminations began almost immediately. Lord Wentworth, it was claimed, was a heretic and had intrigued with others within and outside of Calais. Many Englishmen believed that Philip had done less than he could to assist the garrison, while the Spanish argued that the fortress had been lost through English incompetence. As the last remnant of the English claim to the continental monarchy, Calais had a highly symbolic value, arguably outweighing its economic and military importance. Calais had been captured by Edward III in 1347 and was the sole remnant of the Anglo-French empire that had endured from the Normans to the Wars of the Roses.

But neither the Council nor Parliament was prepared to sanction the granting of funds to send forces to recover Calais. “We feel compelled to urge you,” Philip wrote to the Privy Council, “to be swayed by no private interests or passions, but only by your care for the welfare of the kingdom, lest its reputation for power and greatness, earned the world over in former times, be lost now through your own neglect and indifference.”12 Yet it was less English pride than Habsburg strategic interests that dictated Philip’s concerns. As he wrote to Pole of the loss of Calais, “that sorrow was indeed unspeakable, for reasons which you may well imagine and because the event was an extremely grave one for these states.”13

CHAPTER 63

THE GRIEF OF THE MOST SERENE QUEEN

A war between your Highness [the Pope] and King Philip must produce the gravest danger and harm to the whole Christian Commonwealth … only Satan, could have sown the seeds of this dissension.1

—CARDINAL POLE TO POPE PAUL IV

BY DECLARING WAR ON FRANCE, IT WAS ALMOST INEVITABLE THAT England would be drawn into conflict with Henry