1528-1529: The Worlds Aflame
Empires of the Suns, W O’Reilly, 1992
1527 Had seen New Spain reduced to a husk of its former self. With Mendoza dead amidst the smouldering ruins of Santiago, only a smattering of smaller island remained along with the Spanish settlements in Venezuela. Modern day Maracaibo and Caracas had modest European populations with a large number of slaves working the fields around them. The remains of the Spanish fleet in the Columbias had sailed into Lake Maracaibo after the 1526 attacks in order to escape Lord Hampton’s fleet. By now including at least a dozen larger ships, including Hampton’s flagship the Mary Rose, the English New World fleet was easily superior to their Spanish counterparts, but Tudor wanted to wipe the slate clean.
In the summer of 1527 the English fleet launched a daring raid into Lake Maracaibo, passing in front of the city of Maracaibo to do so, but out of range of their guns. The subsequent battle pulled the remaining teeth of Spanish resistance west of Gran Canaria. The Spanish fleet was hopelessly outnumbered, outgunned, and bottled up in the Lake they made easy targets for the English navy. So without an armed fleet worthy of the name, the Spanish in Venezuela were entirely at the mercy of the English, but Lord Hampton stayed his hand.
Hampton had perhaps learned from the barabrity of Santiago or he merely realised that it was not worth his time expunging the last remnants of Spain from the Columbias as they posed little threat to him. News reached Nova Albion of the Declaration of Lucca in September, mere days before Edward’s appearance in Parliament. The news came with a command for the Columbias to ready all aid to send to Europe as might be required. Nova Albion itself was in little condition to send help to England having just begun repairs from the Great Raid, but nonetheless Hampton gathered what he could meaning that he was ready when the fast ship arrived from London in December 1527.
Hampton was ordered to levy the might of the Columbias and bring it to Europe to aid with the war. He set sail in May 1528 at the head of a ragtag fleet. It is thought that the European population of the Columbias (including New Kent) numbered around 60,000 at this time, and Henry brought some 6,000 of them across the Ocean. Further ships were needed and men were still arriving in 1529. AMongst these were many of the veterans of the 1521 campaign and the Great Raid; the Cornel Company now numbering 200 men, around 500 Welsh and Northern light infantry and 3,000 infantry made up mostly of peasants. The gold and crops also began to flow east at a strong rate, as did another oddity of the New World; Aztec warriors. In his desperation, Hampton had thrown cannons at Emperor Cuauhtemoc in Tenochtitlan (although the powder with them was unusable) and in exchange had been able to extract a large quantity of Gold and some 2,000 volunteer warriors.
Needless to say the voluntary nature of these 2,000 men’s service is open to debate, but with the Aztec Empire in a steep decline by 1528, and lacking any regional neighbours to fight, the only source of military glory was with Hampton. For his part, Henry Tudor seems to have understood the strengths and limitations of his Aztec ‘irregulars’; he barely tried to command them on the field, merely using them to cause havoc and disrupt the enemy through their fearsome headdresses and war paint. These warriors were not taught to fight in the European style, but merely given crude steel weapons and pointed at the enemy, this would be a terrifying sight in the war to come.
A final gift of the New World came from Norland. At Edward V’s express suggestion a delegation was dispatched to New Canaan to entreat with the Lollards and Hussites there. The delegation was led by a young ordained theologian called Thomas Cranmer who had already begun to develop his reformist tendencies. The English had known about New Canaan almost since its founding in 1507 but had kept quiet about it to prevent another embarrassing Crusade. Now they called on the reformists there to come back to Europe and fight the good fight. It was a tough task but signed letters from the Prince of Harts, William Tyndale and a group of Bohemian notables were able to encourage some 2,000 men to volunteer to return to Europe. Most of these were Hussites, but around 300 had English blood. They would not reach Europe until 1529, by which point the war had evolved again.
Amidst all of these military maneuverings it would be easy to overlook the continued exploration of the Columbias. In fact Henry Warren’s journey down the west coast had allowed him to discover Ithica (OTL Panama) by 1529 which he correctly judged to be the narrowest point in the Columbian Isthmus. Subsequently he established settlements at Northam (Colon) and Southam (Panama City) either side of Lake Plantagenet (Gatun Lake) to strengthen the exploration effort west of the Columbias. These efforts would be supercharged by first contact with the Incas at the end of 1529, although the true value of them would not be appreciated until after the war.
And All the Worlds Aflame: Europe 1500-1535, J Ruff, 2001
The reaction to the Edict of Westminster across Europe was intensely heated. To the Holy League die-hards it proved that the English were Godless heathens worthy only of eternal damnation, and the presses of Rome, Paris, and Madrid began to say as much. This only served to strengthen their arm in the short term. Then there were the regions, all conspicuously absent from Lucca, which were sympathetic towards the English. These included Denmark where King Christian III had become King in 1527 and sought to move towards a more ‘Lutheran’ Church, Norway and Sweden followed his lead also. Further south the Holy Roman Empire was slowly breaking into either of the two camps; many of the lowland Duchies were drifting towards the English with the Rape of Antwerp being a major factor, whilst Saxony and a few smaller Duchies also considered their options.
Caught in the middle were the more moderate Catholic countries: Portugal, Scotland, Switzerland and Venice. The former two had good relations with England and no reason to throw in their lot with the Holy League, especially when their efforts had been frustrated at every turn. Switzerland was able to profit from hiring mercenaries to both sides, but culturally was moving towards the Protestant camp. Finally Venice had no love for the Holy League and was far more concerned with the eastern Mediterranean.
The tense only rose after word reached Rome of the Michaelmas Lament in early November. Charles commanded his army to march north but the more Lutheran elements refused, instead attacking Rome. What the Catholics came to refer to as the ‘sack of Rome’ was equally as much an exaggeration as the ‘Rape of Antwerp’. Only around 5,000 Lansneckts engaged in looting and most of this was along the routes towards Castel Sant'angelo where Clement VII had taken refuge. Aside from the clear religious grievances some of the men had, the fact remains that the soldiers had not been paid for weeks with Charles having lost revenue from the New World and many of them simply wanted to get their dues and return home.
Charles was forced to react strongly, the lawlessness lasted barely a day as loyal, Catholic, Spanish troops marched into the city and killed any mutinous Germans they could find. The ‘Scorching of Rome’ as the event is known in Protestant circles, resulted in the deaths of around 6,000 Imperial soldiers and about as many Roman civilians and city militia. It was a sorry episode in the already long list of brutal events of the Nine Years War, and it proved to Charles V that he had to act quickly to defeat England before his tenuous hold over his reformist holdings, and his finances, collapsed.
However before he could even take action in northern Europe, Edward V had made his move. Most historians agree that a few select people in the English Royal Family knew about the Edict of Westminster before time, and that these include Duke Richard of Brittany Prince of Wales and his Uncle Richard of Shrewsbury, along with his two sons Giovanni La Nero and Richard of Oudenburg. All four of these men took action in the four weeks between Michaelmas and All Hallow’s Eve before the winter weather made campaigning more difficult. Duke Richard of Brittany, by now fully recovered and reinforced by the Bristol and York companies, took a force of around 10,000 men and captured St Nazaire at the mouth of the Loire and on the border with Brittany whilst a Breton force secured Rennes. The city was not officially in Brittany, but was close as to be almost a Breton majority population, and the occupation went without incident. Meanwhile the Prince of Harts and his two sons engaged in a swift campaign of bridge-destroying on the border of La Poche.
These infrastructure attacks were supported by English engineering know-how gleaned from the defences of La Poche, which allowed even a relatively small amount of gunpowder to render a bridge unusable. The Calais and Piacenza companies destroyed every bridge on the Somme below St Quintin in a two week period before the French could even respond, only Abbeville and Amiens remained as bottlenecked crossing points. In the north, Prince Richard himself destroyed all crossings over the Deule River west of Lille and positioned some of his best cavalry and marksmen in the woods south of the city to hamper travel northwards. The acts of sabotage would restrict the Holy League to a mere 15 mile front around Cambrai severely hampering their 1528 campaign.
As for the campaign itself, Charles and Francis could not agree on a strategy, and instead came up with a multi-part plan which involved a lot of synchronization. Francis I wanted to obliterate Brittany, but would not allow the Spanish to do this, obliging Charles to deal with England proper. Charles was adamant that only an invasion of England would end the war decisively in his favour. However with French preoccupation in Brittany, Charles would have to achieve this more or less on his own. The Spanish had a sizable fleet in Cadiz, supplemented by Genoan and Sicillian ships, but they had to get past the White fleet in the channel. This meant that the Spanish/Imperial army would have to be collected somewhere around northern Europe for a safer crossing, although Charles’ options were slim. The final plan was this: Francis I would take the full force of the French army into Brittany to force its surrender. This would draw English attention, and hopefully ships, to the west, allowing the Holy League fleet to make it past them to the low countries where they would swiftly collect the Imperial army from Antwerp; the only city big enough and safe enough to support this endeavor. Confident in their own abilities and the righteousness of their cause, Francis and Charles put their plan into action.
Edward V, G Bradshaw, 2001
In England the majority of the nobility were overtly supportive of Edward’s Edict of Westminster. A few, including the Earls of Kent and Wiltshere, were clear Reformists with Prince Richard and his court being outwardly sympathetic. However the majority of the support Edward enjoyed came from his political clout; not only was he the stern King who had ruled English prosperity for almost 40 years, but the Act of Supremacy had merely replaced the Pope, not the Catholic Church and so most nobles and gentry could support Edward as their rightful King even if they did not totally agree with Luther and Tyndale. The only notable dissenters were Lord Penrith and Thomas More who both refused to pledge allegiance to Edward under the Act of Supremacy. More was placed in the tower whilst the Bishop of Durham had Penrith kept cloistered in the Cathedral Priory where he could not do any damage.
Consequently the English reaction to the Michaelmas Lament was a mostly positive one. Even those he did not agree on the religious aspect, could agree that the Pope had become corrupt and it would little benefit England to bend to his will unthinkingly. The result was a real shot in the arm for the English cause. Parliament, itself more pro-Reform than the Lords, granted another taxation and the southern counties began to call up their yeomen for fear of Roman Catholic invasion. This last measure hints to a theory many have long suspected; that Edward V knew of the Holy League’s plans. Surely La Souris, the suspected spy in the French court, played a role in this.
Therefore Edward V had his forces prepared by the end of February 1528; Lincoln and Prince Richard commanded around 20,000 men in La Poche whilst Edward was poised at Portsmouth to throw his own 15,000 wherever it was needed. Lord William Hawkins had the White Fleet, now over 100 ships in total in three squadrons at Ostend, Portsmouth and Plymouth ready to respond to any threat.
And All the Worlds Aflame: Europe 1500-1535, J Ruff, 2001
Francis I made the first move as his 30,000 men surrounded and cut off Rennes in the first weeks of March, plunging into the Breton countryside and moving towards Vannes to cut off Duke Richard in St Nazaire. However Richard himself had predicted this when word came that Brittany was to be attacked. He had blocked many of the roads running west and south from Rennes to slow French progress and by the 15th of March Francis had only reached Plumelec some 5 miles from Vannes, his army having been harried by Breton light horse and missiles all the way. Meanwhile Edward V had crossed to St Malo and swept aside a token French force blocking the port. The 20,000 men of the English army made south to relieve Rennes with Duke Richard abandoning St Nazaire to join them. However Richard had blocked the harbour entrance with two wrecked merchantmen before his departure, denying its use to the French for months.
Francis, however, was not deterred and moved quickly east towards Redon to block Duke Richard, these roads were much clearer. On the 27th of March 1528 the two armies almost blundered into each other around the village of Redon. The village sits just north of the confluence of two rivers; the Vilaine running east to west and the L’Oust River moving north to south. Duke Richard’s 15,000 men were crossing the Vilaine heading north when they ran into the advanced scouts of Francis’ army crossing L’Oust to their west. The Anglo-Breton army rushed to cross the river whilst Richard himself fended off the French scouts and established a rearguard on the hill north of the village. However by late afternoon the first units of the main French army arrived and crossed into the village as the English baggage train made it over the Villain.
Richard himself, aided by the York Company led a desperate cavalry charge down the hill into the French flank, which bought enough time for the English to escape but the Company’s commander Lord Bolton was killed in the battle. Richard’s army had escaped but at the cost of 1,000 soldiers killed or captured, whilst the French had lost less than that number, his army arrived at Rennes on the 28th totally exhausted and with the French close behind. Thankfully Edward V had brought his own force and now the son and father combined with the Breton force from Rennes, the French blocking company having fled east.
The Battle of Rennes took place on the 29th of March 1528 to the east of the city near the village of Acigne. Francis seems to have forgotten that he was intended as a distraction for Charles’ main invasion of England, designed to distract and hold the English rather than destroy them. But after all, he had 30,000 men in the field and Edward could barely manage 28,000, around half of which were exhausted and shaken. The French crossed the Villaine River at Acigne and formed up on the plateau behind it facing the English to the north; Francis held the centre with Francois de Lorraine on his right, Charles d’Alencon to his left and Montmorency in reserve. Across from them the English army waited with Edward also holding the centre, Northumberland to his right and Duke Richard to his left with the London Company under Richard of Warwick in reserve. The English may have been outnumbered but the kilometre wide battlefield was flanked by difficult hedged streams which made it rather compact.
The English had also been able to make some swift defences digging a trench in front of the winded army of Duke Richard, but they had little time for much else. It was also raining, and the boggy ground did not allow for adequate cavalry charges. The weather also limited the use of gunpowder and so Francis merely ordered a general charge on Edward and Northumberland, leaving Duke Richard to watch. The heavy French infantry clattered into the English centre and gradually began to push them back as they struggled to hold both Francis and Francois de Lorraine. The slog through the mud lasted half of the day until just after noon three events occurred in quick succession. First Edward V’s battle gave enough ground that the French flank was exposed to the Duke of Brittany. In the process Sir Owen Grey, royal standard bearer, slipped in the mud, and the royal banner fell with him. Seeing this Duke Richard charged, but so too did Anne de Montmerency. Montmorency hated the English, they had wounded him at the field of Gold, and humiliated him at Antwerp, only his service in Italy allowed his reputation to stand, and he now sought retribution. Thus when the English standard fell, he saw his moment to break his enemy once and for all. Thus the Duke charged without orders and was immediately hit in the flank by the Pikes of Duke Richard’s Welsh Guards.
Montmerency was killed instantly, but his reserves were routed and in the confusion Francis’ army also began to panic as the newly invigorated Bretons hit them in the flank. In the space of an hour the French army folded as Francis pulled back, ordering Alencon to cover his retreat. The weather, terrain, and exhaustion of the English prevented a counter-charge from the field, but Charles left around 12,000 men on the field including Francois de Lorraine who died of his injuries a week later. The English had fared little better; around 10,000 of their men were dead or dying including Charles Brandon, Edward de la Pole and Humphrey Bonville, some of the greatest warriors in the English army.
The Battle of Rennes had been a regression into a Medieval slog-fest. There was little of the intricate movement, tactics, or gunpowder technology seen elsewhere, it was just a fight in a muddy field for around 6 hours. In the end Francis only pulled back to Le Mans, but his army was severely weakened and there was little he could do. Edward would stay in Rennes and St Malo for another 5 months where he heard news of developments further north.
Francis had acted too soon. The English navy was back on station by the end of March and by mid-April was no longer concerned over Brittany. Instead, they waited for the Holy League fleet which they knew to be coming. Andrea Doria and Pedro Arias de Avila, joint commanders of the 120 Holy League ships, had left Cadiz in late March before news of Rennes reached them. Therefore they had no idea that the English fleet was waiting for them. The Battle of Pointes des Peignes, or the Battle of the Combs in English, took place between the 18th and 20th April 1528 around a mile north of the Breton coast near Roscoff.
Sir William Hawkins was at sea with around a third of his fleet, about 50 ships, when the enemy were spotted rounding Ushant and turning East. He did not have enough ships to stop the Holy League but with the Plymouth Squadron, and Breton pilots who knew the dangerous coast and its currents he maneuvered himself to the west of the Holy League giving himself the weather advantage. Doria continued towards Antwerp whilst Avila tried to keep the English at bay. Unbeknownst to him the coast to his south was incredibly dangerous and in the process around 20 Holy League ships were lost on the rocks of Brittany to only 4 English ships. However the fleet was undeterred and anchored off Antwerp by the first of May, their 100 ships ready to transport the invasion force into England.
To this point Charles’ part of the plan had gone well; he had some 30,000 Imperial soldiers camped around Antwerp under the command of Georg Schent van Toutenburg and the Duke of Alba. Charles had forbidden raiding and looting, desperately trying to keep Burgundy loyal to him, but the 6 weeks the army spent waiting devoured his already diminished Gold reserves. When Doria’s fleet finally arrived, Charles was keen to begin the invasion immediately and his soldiers began loading from the 2nd of May. Meanwhile the English navy gathered out to sea slowly building their forces, and by the 5th outnumbered the Spanish. This led to a heated Council of war in Antwerp where Alba and Toutenburg pleaded with the king to unload the ships and have them clear the English rather than risk both army and navy in one engagement. Reluctantly Charles agreed and on the 10th of May 1528 Doria and Avila took their fleet to sea at high tide in order to give them the most room to work with as they moved into the channel.
Whether or not the sandbanks of the Scheldt estuary had moved in the winter rains, or the burghers of Antwerp had provided inaccurate maps is unknown, but the consequences would have huge issues for the Holy League in the coming battle. In the Battle of Vlissingen the fleet of the Holy League tried to punch through the English blockade of Antwerp. William Hawkins allowed the fleet to emerge from the estuary by drawing them deeper with his larger ships whilst a smaller force of Caravels slammed the door shut behind them. Doria and Avila took the bait - after all they did need to clear the larger English ships as a priority. However this allowed the smaller English ships to attack the rear of the Holy League fleet and then scuttle away again. Eventually, a mile north of Vlissingen, the English turned and set about the lead ships, taking them to pieces with more accurate and efficient gunnery.
Around 60 of the Holy League ships attempted to flee the battle back towards Antwerp but the receding tide hampered their efforts; a number of them ran aground or got stuck on sandbanks where they were easy prey for the lighter and smaller English ships. All told the battle cost the Holy League around 65 ships and the life of Pedro Arias de Avila. Doria was able to escape to Antwerp.
With his plans in ruins, Charles turned his army on the English Low Countries. Even with the defenses and the 15,000 men of the English army, the region itself could not survive such an onslaught. Between June and September 1528 the ‘Emperor’s Fury’ was let loose on La Poche: Calais, Boulogne, Arras, Lens and Bapaume were all placed under siege and Richard of Shrewbury’s Palace at Oudenburg was razed to the ground. Richard himself took refuge in Calais whilst his sons carried out covert raids against the flanks and rears of Imperial formations. These harrying tactics, though minor, forced Charles to concentrate his forces and Calais and Boulogne were released in September, although the southern three cities remained under siege until December.
Lens, Arras and Bapaume had survived almost 6 months of siege through the preparations of Edward V and the quick thinking of his brother Richard. The three settlements had at least 6 months of provisions stored for a siege and Richard had removed the majority of civilian populations to Calais allowing them to be filled with enlarged garrisons. These alone resisted attempts to storm their battlements, although a breach at Arras in September got quite hairy for a while. Even when Edward V arrived in September with 5,000 men from Brittany, he was still outnumbered by Charles and did not want to risk a defeat, the cities were well-stocked.
The Duke of Alba was the only exception as he managed to capture the English fortress at Baralle and repaired it with a Spanish garrison only 6 miles from Arras. Eventually the privations of winter, and the spectre of the Ottomans in the east, forced Charles to withdraw his army, although Alba was left in command at Baralle. 1528 had been disappointing for the Holy League. They had certainly damaged the English, and had killed men which would not be easy to replace, but they had failed to capture their two main objectives. However they had finally cracked La Poche, and the region was ripe for the plucking in 1529.
Edward V, G Bradshaw, 2001
Although Edward spent most of 1528 in Europe it was not entirely quiet back in England. First official notice arrived in January of Edward’s excommunication, to no-one’s surprise. The Papal edict was almost passed off as a joke by the Propaganda machines of the London presses, but some men saw it as a pretext for action. Sir Richard Tresham and John Keyes led a group that became known as Titheburn Turncoats as they plotted to kill Edward V and turn the throne over to a devout Catholic. There were a couple of options in 1528; Elizabeth of Ware and Catherine, Queen of the Scots, being just two (Edward’s daughter and younger sister) but the conspirators lacked the muscle, connections and wealth to pull the plot off. They were discovered by the Tiercel in October of 1528, arrested, imprisoned, and Tresham and Keyes were executed in 1529.
Remarkably the rest of England remained loyal to the King, save the obstinacy of Lord Penrith and Thomas More. Even the more die-hard Catholics agreed with England’s righteous position in the war, and believed rebellion to be unconscionable treason at this time. Furthermore with the Seneschals, Justiciars, Regional Councils, the Star Chamber, the Lord Protector and the Tiercel keeping the King’s peace there was a formidable array of authorities against any would-be rebels.
The final non military issue of 1528 was Brittany. The Duchy had not taken kindly to the Edict of Westminster, for even nominally they were now under a monarch who had broken ties with Rome. But Duke Richard had called the Council to Vannes in January, before the Rennes campaign began, to issue them the Assizes of Vannes. Essentially this allowed the Breton nobles to have individual communion with the Pope if they wished, but it also reiterated the point that Clement VII had wanted to see Brittany under a French heel. This final article seems to have won them over. Of course it probably helped that the French had invaded Brittany in 1526 and would do so again in 1528, the Lords of Brittany really only had one horse to back, and that was England.