1487 THE BRETON QUESTION. 27 II. to resist the incorporation of the duchy with France, but the CHAP. cause of Breton independence, however defensible upon grounds of provincial and historic sentiment, was soiled by intrigue, venality and faction. The grand treasurer of the duchy, Pierre Landois, was the son of a tailor, and his conduct was marked by the overbearing manner and wide ambition of the successful upstart. In 1484 Landois summoned the Duke of Orleans to Nantes, promised him the hand of Anne, and entered into a league for the dismemberment of France with Richard of England and Maximilian of Austria. A knot of Breton nobles hated the treasurer, rose against him, hanged him on July 19, 1485, and then concluded a treaty with the government of Charles VIII. It was a hollow concord. The Breton nobles had been willing enough to accept French help against their mortal enemy, but they had no intention of sacrificing their nationality to France. The estates of Brittany in February, 1486, recognised the daughters of Francis as heiresses to the duchy, and arranged that they should respectively marry Maximilian and his son Philip. On March 15, 1486, the bargain was struck with Maximilian, then King of the Romans. The Dukes of Bourbon and Lorraine were to be drawn into the alliance. The Duke of Orleans, the Duke of Angoulême, a powerful Gascon noble, Alain d'Albret, were parties to the league in defence of the rights of Brittany. A league more composite or more brittle could scarcely be imagined. Orleans, d'Albret, and Maximilian all wished to marry the same princess, then a girl of ten, though Orleans was already married, though d'Albret was lame, ugly, forty-five and the father of numerous bastards, and Maximilian was a widower of thirty-one. The Bretons distrusted the French princes, and liked too well the colour of the French government money. The struggle wavered fitfully through 1486 and 1487, but the advantage in the main lay with the regents, who recovered control of Gascony, invaded Brittany and took Vannes, while at the same time their capable general, Philip de Crèvecœur, Seigneur D'Esquerdes, took St. Omer and Thérouanne in Picardy and won a decisive victory over the troops of Maximilian at Bethune, Still Henry remained quiescent. A French embassy brought congratulations on the victory of Stoke cleverly mingled with II. CHAP. an apology for the Breton campaign. There were rebels and declared traitors in both countries, and Charles was only attempting to do in Brittany what Henry had already so successfully achieved in Nottinghamshire. The Breton campaign was not a war of conquest; it was a measure of police, defensive not offensive. While French nobles were parties to the Breton league, and Orleans was the life and soul of the defence of Nantes, there was a sufficient measure of truth in this contention. Henry determined to avoid war if possible, and to compose the quarrel: he signed a truce with Brittany; he sent envoys to Maximilian to arrange a peace and the renewal of the Flemish intercourse; his almoner, Christopher Urswick, crossed the sea to refresh the Anglo-French truce and to mediate a peace between the courts of Paris and Nantes. But this chilly and temperate dealing was by no means to the taste of some of the English nobility, and Edward Woodville Lord Scales, the queen's uncle and the governor of the Isle of Wight, prayed the king that he might be permitted to raise some volunteers for the rescue of the duchy. The request was refused, but perhaps in such a way as to suggest that disobedience would be condoned. Woodville crossed the Channel with 700 men and landed at St. Malo in May, 1488. Though English envoys were at Nantes, and Charles was pretending to treat with Orleans at Angers, both parties were girding themselves up for a final struggle. La Trémouille, a young general with an old head, destined to win fame in the Italian wars, cautious to a fault, but careless of no detail, was in command of the French army. His artillery was invincible; and town after town fell before him. At last, on July 28, 1488, at St. Aubin du Cormier he fell in with the main Breton army, a motley host some 10,000 strong, including Germans and English, Spanish and Navarrese, in addition to the main body of native infantry. The English archers were placed in the vanguard, and 1,300 Bretons were made to wear the red cross of St. George upon their doublets in order to impress the foe with the size of the English contingent. The battle began with a cannonade, followed by a fierce encounter between the Swiss infantry in the pay of France and the Breton vanguard under de Rieux. But while in this portion of the field the Bretons, stiffened by the English 1488 ST. AUBIN DU CORMIER. 29 II. archers, held their ground, a German captain, seeking to avoid CHAP. the fire of the French artillery, moved his men to one side, and the French cavalry, perceiving the gap, galloped through it, cut up the Breton rearguard, and then turned upon de Rieux. The weak Breton cavalry on the wings offered little assistance, and the defeat became a rout. Orleans, who fought on foot, because it had been rumoured in the camp the night before that the French princes would betray the cause, was taken in the field and sent to a dungeon. No quarter was given to the red cross of St. George, and Woodville and nearly all the English paid for their adventure with their lives. The army of Brittany was swept out of existence; the coalition with the French nobles was dissolved: it was the French pendant to the field of Stoke.1 On August 20 a treaty was signed at Sablé between Francis and Charles. The Duke of Brittany acknowledged himself a vassal of the French crown; he placed St. Malo, Dinan, Fougères, and St. Aubin du Cormier in the hands of the French king as pledges; he promised to expel the foreign troops; he promised that Anne should not be married without Charles's consent. The French king in return for these concessions engaged to withdraw his army, saving the garrisons necessary to hold the towns which had been given him in pledge. On September 9 the duke died, leaving de Rieux as the guardian of his daughters. Charles at once claimed the wardship as feudal superior, and contended that Anne could not bear the title of Duchess of Brittany until the legal claim of France had been tested. It was clear that France intended to devour the Bretons, and Anne and de Rieux appealed to England for help. English blood had been shed in battle, and was England to look on quietly while the great and active sea-faring population of Brittany was being absorbed by the power of her ancient enemy? It was clear that Maximilian could give little aid for the present. From February 5 to May 16, 1488, he had been held a prisoner in Bruges, and having been released under 1 Alain Bouchard, Les Grandes Cronicques de Bretaigne, bk. iv., p. 207; D'Argentré, Histoire de Bretaigne, p. 972 ff.; St. Gilles, Les Grandes cronicques et Annales de France; Polydore Vergil, pp. 577-79; Dupuy, Réunion de la Bretaigne à la France, pp. 124-27. Polydore gives Woodville about 400 men. The French authorities are more liberal. II. CHAP. humiliating conditions, he was now attempting to restore his authority in Flanders. Henry was in no mood to go into the fray single-handed, and on July 14, he had renewed his truce with France; but meanwhile he was laying the basis for an antiFrench coalition. South of the Pyrenees a new power of the first class had come into being as the result of the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon with Isabella of Castile. It was not, indeed, as yet free to play a spirited part in northern politics, for it was closely engaged in the arduous task of reducing the Moors in the south of the Iberian peninsula. But there was one object which gave to the Castilian court a special interest in northern politics. Ferdinand was determined at the first opportunity to recover from France the counties of Roussillon and Cerdagne. The more numerous the tribulations of the King of France, the stronger the diplomatic position of the sovereigns of Castile and Aragon, and it did not require much insight to perceive that the Breton war might be made indirectly to promote the recovery of two Pyrenean provinces. On his side Henry was anxious for a foreign alliance, not only to consolidate his dynasty, to ensure it against internal danger, to give it a footing among the great powers, but also that if he were driven into war with France over the Breton question he might at any rate have a powerful friend. Accordingly, on March 10, he sent to Spain to propose a treaty of peace and commerce, and a marriage between Catharine, aged three, the younger daughter of the Spanish sovereign, and Arthur, the heir to the Tudor throne. The English overtures were received with favour, and in July two Spanish envoys, Sepulveda and Puebla, were in London to discuss terms, and if possible to push Henry into war. A large political issue was wrapped up in minute disputes as to the infanta's dowry. Ferdinand wished to obtain English help towards the recovery of the Pyrenean provinces; Henry wished for the prestige of the Spanish alliance. Ferdinand hoped to commit Henry to war; Henry desired to spin out time. The English court proposed that Anne should marry the Duke of Buckingham, and an embassy was sent to Brittany to forward the match and to promise English support, on condition that certain towns should be delivered up as security for the payment of the troops. Ferdinand, however, suggested 1489 THE WAR GRANT. 31 II. that it would be unwise to push a project which would cer- CHAP. tainly drive d'Albret and his friend de Rieux into the arms of France, and in deference to these representations the scheme was dropped. While the English envoys were travelling to Spain to treat more fully of the alliance, the French had recommenced warlike operations in Brittany, and Henry was stirred to more active measures. In November a council was summoned to Westminster to consider how Brittany might be saved, and as the winter drew on the air was filled with martial preparations. On December II embassies were sent to Spain and Portugal, to France and Brittany, to Maximilian and Philip, and commissions were issued to raise archers and to muster men. War was in the air when parliament met on January 13, 1489. The king asked for a grant of £100,000 to provide for the support during a whole year of an army of 10,000 archers to be used against the ancient enemies of the realm. But however popular a war with France might be, a demand at once so large and so instant provoked anxious thought. The sum which Henry was now asking of his parliament was more than three times the amount of the customs revenue; it was nearly three times the amount of a fifteenth and tenth; it was probably equal to, if not larger than, the whole revenue derived from the royal demesnes. No one could say how long the Breton war might last, but that the English troops would be home again within the year would certainly be a sanguine estimate. It would seem that the discussions were careful and protracted, for it was not until February 23, forty-one days after the opening, that parliament was ready with its reply. It was agreed as the result of conferences held with convocation that the temporalty of the realm should contribute twothirds and the spirituality one-third of the sum demanded. In the absence of any trustworthy statistics it was guessed that an income tax of ten per cent. levied upon all incomes exceeding ten marks in value, together with a tax of is. 8d. for every ten marks of personal capital, would make up the required sum, always understanding that household stuff kept for use and not for sale and all sea-going ships were to be exempt from the operation of the tax, and that it was not to extend to the counties of Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmorland, which were poor in resources and already bur |