The English Experience in France c.1450-1558

War, Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange

David Grummitt

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351723879
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This title was first published in 2002: This collection of essays is based on papers delivered at a conference held at the Public Record Office in November 1999. The purpose of the book is to highlight the close links between England and France and the role of England and Englishmen in Renaissance Europe. It provides a statement of current research by the leading scholars in that field and should serve as a basis both for teaching and for further work. It is necessary to fill the gap that exists in the history of this period, which is currently concentrated in narrative, diplomatic history or general surveys of the role of England in Europe. This coherent set of essays, built around complementary themes, and with the addition of a historiographical and thematic introduction, focuses solely on England and France in the period after the end of the Hundred Years War and before the onset of French Wars of Religion.

1 Introduction: war, diplomacy and cultural exchange, 1450-1558

DAVID GRUMMITT

The nine essays presented in this volume represent some of the latest research on the relationship between England and France in the century after the end of the Hundred Years War.¹ They fall into three main categories: the administration and importance of the English possessions in France; the practice of war and diplomacy; the personal experiences of Englishmen in France and the friendships they developed there. All explore one or more of the three themes of this volume - war, diplomacy and cultural exchange. The purpose of this introduction, then, is to outline the main events and historiographical trends in these three areas and to provide the background to the arguments presented in the essays themselves.

War

The Hundred Years War ended in ignominious defeat for the English.² The second phase of the wars had begun in 1415 with Henry V's expedition to Normandy, ending in the decisive victory at Agincourt. The following year a naval victory secured the beachhead at Harfleur and in August 1417 Henry set about the conquest of Normandy; by January 1419 Rouen had fallen and Henry V's name had become synonymous with English military glory in France. In May 1420 the treaty of Troyes, accepted by Philip, Duke of Burgundy and Queen Isabeau of France in the name of her incapacitated husband, Charles VI, vested the crown of France in Henry V and his heirs. Nevertheless, by 1450 the treaty of Troyes had become something of a poisoned chalice for the Lancastrian government of Henry VI. Succeeding to the throne in 1422 at only nine months of age, Henry VI had proved himself by the late 1440s to be an inadequate successor to his father. Whilst historians argue about the exact nature of the king's role in the government of his two realms of England and France, it is clear that much of the blame for defeat in 1449-53 must lay with Henry.³ Even if his involvement in domestic politics was erratic, Henry showed some appetite for intervening in foreign affairs and by the end of 1446 was committed to the surrender of Maine and Anjou in order to buy peace with France. However, the idea of a totally pacifist king, resigned to peace at any price, seems at odds with the decision taken soon after to support his close friend, Gilles de Bretagne's, son of Duke Jean IV and Jeanne of Navarre, claim to the dukedom of Brittany. In March 1449 the town of Fougères in Brittany fell to an assault in the name of Henry VI; if this break of the terms of the truce negotiated at Tours in 1444 (and extended in 1448) was not enough, the accusations of French perfidy which arose from the town's surrender to Charles VII of France the following November provided the immediate backdrop for the French reconquest of Normandy. Between May 1449, when the castle at Pont de l'Arche was taken by the French and Bretons, and 12 August 1450, when Cherbourg surrendered, the Norman conquests of Henry V were lost in one of the most spectacular military campaigns of the fifteenth century. After Normandy, Charles and his armies turned their attention to Gascony. On 23 October 1452 Bordeaux fell and on 17 July the following year an English army, led by that great hero of the wars with France, John Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, was defeated at Chastillon. The death of Talbot and Henry's ensuing collapse into madness sounded the death-knell of Lancastrian kingship.

While Chastillon is generally acknowledged as the end of the Hundred Years War, it did not mark the end of English military activity in France or English claims to the French throne, a claim that would periodically be reasserted through war. English armies fought in France in 1475, 1489, 1492, 1512-3, 1522-3, 1544-6, 1549-51 and 1557-8. On four occasions, in 1475, 1492, 1513 and 1544, kings of England led expeditions to France in person. Outside of these periods of formal war Englishmen frequently experienced France and the French in a hostile context. In the immediate aftermath of the expulsion from Normandy and Gascony this often meant acts of piracy in the Narrow Seas. English pirates along the south coast and their French counterparts regularly took hostages and attacked those who sought to trade with the enemy. Ending up a hostage in Harfleur or some other French port remained an occupational hazard for English merchants well into the 1470s.⁴ Moreover, acts of violence remained commonplace on the frontiers of Calais, the last remaining English possession. Englishmen from Calais and elsewhere were also involved in border warfare around the Calais Pale and in Picardy and Artois and in the Duke of Burgundy's service. In 1461, for example, a large French force intervened to force the lifting of the siege of the Lancastrian garrison at Hammes castle and in 1480 soldiers from Calais raided the port of Dunkirk, then a haven for pirates.⁵ Service against France, albeit under a foreign prince, offered the chance to win the honour and excitement only available through war. The Yorkshire knight, Sir Thomas Everingham, for example, served with the Burgundians at the Battle of Nancy in 1477 and with the Archduke Maximilian at Guinegate in 1479.⁶

The opportunities that war offered for honour and personal advantage largely explain Edward IV's decision to invade France in the summer of 1475. J. R. Lander doubted if this was a serious attempt to assert Edward's claim to the French crown, but it seems clear that by at least 1472 the king was determined to emulate the achievements of Henry V. This is apparent in his interest in the order of the Garter and in the scale of the preparations to ensure that his army was well-equipped and prepared.⁷ In the event the campaign of 1475 did not live up to expectations. Edward joined his army in Calais on 4 July but it was not until ten days later that he was joined by his ally, Charles, Duke of Burgundy. Charles, much to English chagrin, failed to bring his army with him, it still being employed in the siege of Neuss. Francis, Duke of Brittany, also failed to take the field and by 14 August Edward was forced to begin negotiations with Louis XI. This resulted in the treaty of Picquigny, leaving Edward with a French pension of £10,000 a year (and similar lucrative sweeteners for many of the English nobility), a trade agreement and promises of dynastic union.⁸

War, as Edward III and Henry V knew, also united the English political classes against a common enemy. The need to bring harmony to a discordant polity was also a factor in Edward IV's desire to invade France so soon after the events of 1469-71.⁹ This same motivation also had a role in Henry VII's aggressive policy towards France up to 1492. As Michael Jones has shown in this volume, Henry did not need to feel indebted to Charles VIII for the victory at Bosworth and war against France offered a good means of healing the rifts in the political nation only partly assuaged by his marriage to Elizabeth of York. It is now clear that Henry was no pacifist, a picture confirmed by John Currin's essay. In war in Brittany, France and Scotland he attempted to live up to the martial reputation of his predecessors and underline his royal authority through success in war.¹⁰ By the last decade or so of Henry's reign the need to assert royal authority through successful war was lessened owing to his final victory over the pretender, Perkin Warbeck, and the king's own desire for financial security.¹¹

If the desire to emulate Henry V was an important factor in Henry VII's dealings with France in the early part of his reign, it was the dominant concern of his son, Henry VIII, in most of his dealings with France.¹² Henry VIII often made explicit his claim to the kingdom of France; even when making war on the Emperor Charles V in concert with Francis I, Henry argued that he was bound to defend France 'which is our true inheritance and for which our brother and ally the French King, payeth us yearly a great pension and tribute' (the pension negotiated in 1475 and renegotiated at various times under Henry VIII).¹³ More frequently this claim to the kingdom of France was a casus belli. As is well known, Henry VIII's French wars were fought principally for the king's personal glory. It was Henry who provided the impetus for war, often against the wishes of his counsellors. He was 'not unmindful that it was his duty to seek fame by military skill' and as early as December 1509 the Venetian ambassador reported that the new king was 'eager' for war with France.¹⁴ This desire to win personal honour and, crucially, the belief that the kingdom of France belonged to him by right, led Henry to lead invasion armies in 1513 and 1544. In 1513 the campaign ended inconclusively with the capture of Therouanne by the English (although later handed over to the Emperor Maximilian) and Tournai by the Imperial army (but presented to Henry to hold until its return to France by treaty in 1518). Henry's honour, however, was satisfied by the ignominious French flight at the so-called Battle of the Spurs before the gates of Theruoanne.¹⁵ In 1544 hopes of a march on Paris were thwarted by the actions of Emperor Charles V. The English captured Boulogne, a town they held at great cost against repeated French assaults but which, by 1546, represented, along with Calais, a greater block of French territory under English rule than anytime since 1453.¹⁶

Henry VIII's campaign in 1544 was unsuccessful in its original grandiose aims not because of the failure of the English armies but because of the withdrawal of support for the English cause by their erstwhile Imperial allies. In August, on the day Henry took Boulogne, Charles V made a separate peace with Francis at Crépy.¹⁷ The emperor had more pressing concerns in Germany against the forces of the Schmalkaldic League. The English, under the Duke of Norfolk, were lucky to escape with their forces intact from the siege of Montreuil. The dependence of English military adventures in France upon the support of the Habsburgs, or earlier the Valois Dukes of Burgundy, was a reality of the English experience of war in France. Despite the genuine desire of Edward IV, Henry VII and Henry VIII to recreate the glories of the Hundred Years War, after 1450 England could only successfully wage war on France with the help of its allies in the Low Countries, Spain and Germany. From 1475 English military objectives in France were consistently hampered by the fact that their allies' main interests were elsewhere; to them the English recreating the Lancastrian dual monarchy was at best a pointless distraction and at worse a direct threat to their own interests in France. Thus in 1475 Charles the Bold was more concerned with his conquest of Lorraine than in Edward's campaign in north-west France;¹⁸ in 1492 the campaign around Boulogne was just one part of a wider campaign for Maximilian I, King of the Romans, that centred upon the Franche-Comté. Similarly, in 1512 Henry VIII's attempt to reconquer Gascony with the aid of King Ferdinand of Aragon failed because the latter was more interested in adding Navarre to his realm than helping Henry add Gascony to his.¹⁹

The principal reason for England's reliance on foreign allies was logistical. England's resources compared unfavourably to those of France and the Empire. In the early sixteenth century England's population of two and a half millions was dwarfed by th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Contributors
• Abbreviations
• 1 Introduction: war, diplomacy and cultural exchange 1450-1558
• PART I: ENGLAND'S FRENCH POSSESSIONS
• PART II: WAR, DIPLOMACY AND DYNASTY
• PART III: FRIENDSHIP AND CULTURAL EXCHANGE IN THE RENAISSANCE
• Index