The King's Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of Thomas Wolsey (Pimlico) (20 page)

The year 1518 had not begun well. This was partly for a reason quite outside Wolsey’s control. Ever since the midsummer of the previous year a ‘new malady’ had made its presence felt. It derived its name, the ‘sweating sickness’ from the heavy sweating that accompanied it, resulting in complete dehydration. It lasted usually for no more than four or five hours and never more than twenty-four, by which time the sufferer was either dead or on the way to a full recovery.
¹
While Wolsey survived four attacks in one month,
²
Henry rushed from one improvised residence to another, often accompanied by as few as half a dozen people, in a desperate effort to
escape the contagion. He succeeded, but some about him, including Lord Clinton and Lord Grey, succumbed.
³
Hall suggests that in some towns over half the inhabitants died – probably an exaggeration, for there is no other evidence for any dramatic fall in population, but indicative perhaps of the panic that the ‘sweating sickness’ caused. The Michaelmas law term of 1517 was adjourned and the court’s Christmas celebrations were kept to a minimum, though it was Hall’s view that by then the outbreak was over.
⁴
This was not a view that Henry shared. Having spent February and March 1518 lurking at Windsor, he was off on his travels again, spending the next two months in Reading, Abingdon and finally Woodstock, all the time desperately anxious for news of the latest victims of the ‘sweat’.
⁵
For the historian, the epidemic has this advantage: by separating Henry from his leading minister it necessitated a constant interchange of letters, many of which have survived. For Henry and Wolsey it can only have contributed to their anxieties. Although the previous summer Wolsey had been able to write that ‘your realm, our Lord, be thanked, was never in such peace nor tranquility’,
⁶
external affairs were in no such good order, and had not been so for some time.

That Wolsey’s foreign policy appeared to be so unsuccessful is, given his reputation in this field, surprising, especially as the failure looks predictable, and not only with the benefit of hindsight. Many of those involved in the execution of England’s foreign policy warned that it was running into difficulty, and on occasions even suggested changes. Its ostensible aims were simple enough. Francis I was to be deprived of the fruits of his great victory in September 1515 over the Swiss at Marignano, the chief outcome of which had been the assertion of his claim to the duchy of Milan and with it the French domination of Northern Italy. With Milan safely in his hands, it was possible for Francis both to dominate the papacy and to achieve what, since at least 1494 and the first invasion of Italy, had been the ultimate goal of French policy in the peninsula – the conquest of Naples. The ostensible aim of England’s foreign policy was to ensure that none of this happened. Instead, the French were to be kicked out of Northern Italy and then pursued back into their own country, though not, in the first instance at any rate, by direct military intervention by the English. The fighting was to be done by the Swiss and the Emperor Maximilian. England’s role was confined to providing them with money, and, indeed, she never even got round formally to breaking off diplomatic relations with the supposed enemy.
⁷

This rather curious stance may be the first clue that Wolsey’s real intentions were not quite as stated, but for the moment it is the defects of the stated policy that must be considered. The chief of these was that England appeared to have linked herself not with genuine allies who shared her aims but with those whose ambitions were essentially mercenary. Prompt and regular payment was what the Swiss and
Maximilian wanted, and the more money the better. If this was not forthcoming, then there was always the possibility that the French might be more generous, which was precisely what happened. At Fribourg in November 1516 the Swiss succumbed to French money, and in the following March at Cambrai Maximilian did the same.
⁸
England was left looking exposed, not to say foolish, and apparently with nowhere very obvious to go. Still, this is perhaps unfair, and certainly anticipates events.

Back in the late autumn of 1515, when the English plans for an alliance were drawn up, it was of course known that the Swiss were mercenaries by tradition, which is no doubt why ‘divers in England saith that they be villains, and disdaineth to hear speak of them’.
⁹
But some of the Swiss were also motivated by a strong desire to avenge Marignano, a defeat that had lost them not only their pride but also territory obtained just three years previously, when they had helped to throw the French out of Northern Italy. Thus, there were grounds for believing that they might be an effective instrument against the French; and in addition there remained their most obvious qualification – despite Marignano, where they had been heavily outnumbered, they were still the best infantrymen in Europe. Against this, the division of the Swiss confederation into thirteen cantons meant that they were never an especially united force, and in 1515 only five – those most affected by the French occupation of Milan – consistently supported the English.

But if the Swiss were not entirely dependable, they were as the Bank of England in comparison with Maximilian. His unreliability was notorious, and England’s willingness to place so much faith in him would have seemed remarkable in any circumstances.
¹⁰
At this time there were additional reasons for mistrusting him. It would be a brave man who would ascribe to Maximilian any consistent aims, but certainly in 1515 neither the fate of Milan, nor indeed any attack on the French, was his primary concern. Instead, it was the need to defend the gains of his long-drawn-out, if intermittent, war with Venice, begun as long ago as 1508. It is true that France, by being Venice’s ally, became his enemy; but Milan was not Verona, and it was the defence of the latter from Venetian attack, not the recapture of the former from the French, that was Maximilian’s chief preoccupation in Northern Italy – and it was a preoccupation which helped England not at all.
¹¹

What of other possible allies? Given the continuing French obsession with his kingdom of Naples, Ferdinand of Aragon had good cause to dislike their presence in Italy. Unfortunately his track record made it difficult for the English to place much trust in him; neither, in 1515, did he have much to offer. He was old and ailing, and by the end of January 1516 he would be dead, leaving his grandson, Charles, free to take possession of his Iberian inheritance. This was not Charles’s only inheritance. The Spanish kingdoms of Aragon and Castile came to him via his mother, Joanna – nicknamed the Mad – who was the heir both to her mother, Isabella’s, kingdom of
Castile, and her father’s, Ferdinand’s, kingdoms of Aragon and Naples. The title of duke of Burgundy, and with it the Burgundian inheritance – in 1515 approximating to what is now Belgium and Holland, then commonly referred to as the Low Countries – had already come to Charles from his father, Philip the Handsome, who had died in 1506. Philip’s father – Charles’s paternal grandfather – was none other than Maximilian, head of the house of Habsburg, whose territorial centre was Austria. On Maximilian’s death in 1519, Charles was not only to succeed to the Habsburg inheritance, but was also to be elected Holy Roman Emperor in his place. It was a mighty inheritance that would force this shy and introverted man into the very centre of European politics, where amongst other things he was to be, along with Francis
I
, Henry’s, and thus Wolsey’s, leading rival.
¹²
But in 1515 this was in the future. Charles was then only fifteen, and therefore what mattered, as far as Henry and Wolsey were concerned, was not his views but those of his advisers – and these mattered a great deal. As the whole history of Anglo-French conflict during the previous hundred and fifty years demonstrated, no policy directed against the French was likely to succeed without, at the very least, the benevolent neutrality of the house of Burgundy. In 1515 not even this could be guaranteed. At the beginning of that year Charles was officially declared to have come of age. The regency of his aunt, the pro-English Margaret of Savoy, thereby came to an end, and Charles’s government was now dominated by the so-called ‘regents’, his former tutor, William of Croy, lord of Chièvres, and the chancellor of Burgundy, John Sauvage. While not in any committed way pro-French, they were not prepared to allow the young duke to be dragged into war with France at Henry’s bequest, as had happened in 1513. Instead, they immediately set about restoring good relations with the new French king, Francis
I
– which is precisely what Wolsey did not want.
¹³

Lastly, the Pope – and it is extremely difficult to make any simple statement about Leo
X
’s intentions.
¹⁴
This is due in part to the complexities of his personality, but even more to the complexities of his situation: ruler of the Catholic Church and of the papal states and, as head of the Medici family, effectively ruler of Florence, it required a considerable juggling act on his part to keep in play the conflicts of interest that resulted. No wonder he, and even more his cousin, the future Clement
VII
, at this time his close adviser, have been accused of being over-cautious. Probably Leo would have preferred the French not to have been in Northern Italy. But once they were there he was prepared to make the best of it.
¹⁵
At the famous meeting between him and Francis at Bologna in December 1515, despite the French king’s recent military victories, Leo had not emerged altogether the loser. Just who in reality secured the greater benefits from the Concordat of Bologna, by which the relationship between the papacy and the French Church was from henceforth to be governed, is difficult to evaluate – the usual answer has been the French Crown, whose right of nomination to major benefices in France, was formally conceded. But from Leo’s point of view the mere fact that the concordat replaced the long-hated
pragmatic sanction of Borges of 1438, whereby all papal rights in France had been severely curtailed, was an enormous feather in his cap. Territorially, he had had to endure the loss of Parma and Piacenza to Francis, and Modena and Reggio to his supposed ally, the duke of Ferrara all of which was very painful and, incidentally, soured relations between the papacy and France. On the other hand, Leo was given a free hand to remove the duke of Urbino and replace him with his own nephew, Lorenzo de’ Medici, even though the duke’s neutrality during the war had been of great help to Francis. The result of all this was that, while during the next three years Leo
X
did find continuing French influence in Italy irksome, there was no great incentive for him to ally with England to throw the French out.
¹⁶

One way and another, the anti-French alliance that Wolsey concocted in the aftermath of Marignano was a pretty ramshackle affair: a few Swiss cantons and an emperor who bore all too close a resemblance to that famous knight of la Mancha, Don Quixote. The surprising thing is that in March 1516 it came very close to success. Urged on by the English envoys, Richard Pace and Sir Robert Wingfield, the Swiss and Maximilian were converging on a very inadequately defended Milan. By 25 March their two armies were poised for attack only nine miles from the city, at which point Maximilian decided to sit ‘still in pensiveness, and was angry with every man that did move him to set forward’.
¹⁷
That evening he announced his decision not to besiege Milan and the next day he was off, taking with him the gunpowder, thereby effectively preventing the Swiss from pressing on with the siege alone.
¹⁸

Why Maximilian retreated at this juncture need not concern us. All sorts of reasons were given at the time, by those like Pace who were very critical, and by those like Wingfield, whose many years at the Imperial court had made him so great a devotee of Maximilian’s that even as regards this episode he would have nothing said against him. Two brief comments may be helpful. Maximilian’s complaint that the promised English money had not arrived was true as far as it went – and poor Pace suddenly found himself having to serve as a human surety that it would eventually be paid. On the other hand, on the day that Maximilian decided to retreat the money was less than a fortnight away, and if he could have got within nine miles of Milan without it, he could surely have continued for just a little longer.
¹⁹
The truth seems to have been that he had very little wish to attack the city, and the lack of money was merely an excuse. As has been made clear, it was Venice, not France, that was his main enemy, so to have provoked the wrath of France would not have been at all to his advantage. During the spring and summer of 1516 Maximilian was to occupy himself chiefly with the defence of Brescia and Verona, though without much success. As early as May he had managed to lose Brescia, and though he hung on to Verona for longer, by the end of the year he had decided to cut his losses and sell it back to Venice. By then he had also come to terms with the French.

But if there was something a little strange about Maximilian’s performance before Milan, it was as nothing compared with Henry’s and Wolsey’s reaction to it. Far from drawing the obvious conclusion that Maximilian should never be trusted again, after just a brief period of disillusionment, they were to offer him an equally prominent part in an even more grandiose scheme to bring the French down.
²⁰
This entailed the construction of a new league consisting of Henry, Maximilian, Charles and, if possible, the pope, the principal purpose of which was to raise an annual pension for the Swiss, who in return would spearhead a military effort against the French. In essence it was the same policy as before, but instead of the rather ad hoc arrangements which had come to grief at the siege of Milan something rather more formal and, with luck, more effective was to be put in their place.