On the 16th of August 1513, a massive French cavalry force, the pride of the kingdom, fled so rapidly from the English and Imperial lines that the battle was instantly nicknamed the Day of the Spurs. This was not a standard engagement but a chaotic rout where French gendarmes, desperate to escape, threw away their lances, cut off their heavy horse armor, and spurred their mounts to a gallop that left them breathless and humiliated. The English, led by King Henry VIII and Emperor Maximilian I, had been besieging the French town of Thérouanne when a large body of French heavy cavalry under Jacques de La Palice attempted to break the siege and deliver supplies to the garrison. Instead of a hard-fought battle, the French forces were surprised, routed, and pursued for miles, resulting in the capture of high-ranking nobles including La Palice himself and Pierre Terrail, seigneur de Bayard, known as the knight without fear. The sheer speed of the French retreat was so notable that contemporary English sources claimed the French had learned to ride fast at the journey of Spurs, a phrase that would echo through history as a symbol of English military dominance in the early 16th century.
The Siege of Thérouanne
The campaign began in May 1513 when English soldiers began to arrive in Calais to join an army commanded by George Talbot, Earl of Shrewsbury, who was appointed Lieutenant-General on the 12th of May. Henry VIII, having announced his intention to join the invasion in person on the 17th of May, sailed from Dover and arrived at Calais on the 30th of June with a main force of 11,000 men. The army was a complex mix of martial forces including cavalry, artillery, infantry, and longbowmen using arrows with hardened steel heads designed to penetrate armor. Eight hundred German mercenaries marched in front of Henry, while the Earl of Shrewsbury commanded a vanguard of 8,000 and Charles Somerset, Lord Herbert, led a rearward of 6,000. The siege of Thérouanne proved difficult; English soldiers dug mines and set up batteries but made little progress against the defending garrison of French and German soldiers in July. The town was held by Antoine de Créquy, sieur de Pont-Remy, who returned fire until the town surrendered. The English called one distinctive regular cannon shot the whistle, and reports of setbacks reached Venice, where two English cannon named John the Evangelist and the Red Gun had been abandoned and lost during French skirmishing. Despite these early struggles, Henry VIII camped to the east of Thérouanne at a heavily defended position, described by English chronicles as environed with artillery such as falcons, serpentines, cast hagbushes, tryde harowes, and spine trestles. His field accommodation consisted of a wooden cabin with an iron chimney, topped by large tents of blue water-work, yellow, and white fabric, adorned with the King's beasts: the Lion, Dragon, Greyhound, Antelope, and Dun Cow.
The political landscape of the battle was defined by the meeting of two monarchs, Henry VIII and Emperor Maximilian I, who arrived at Aire-sur-la-Lys in August with a small force of between 1,000 to 4,000 horsemen. Henry VIII donned light armor and dressed his entourage in cloth-of-gold to meet Maximilian, whose followers were still dressed in black in mourning for his wife Bianca Maria Sforza. The weather on the day of the meeting was described by chronicles as the foulest ever, yet Henry hosted Maximilian at a tent with a gallery of cloth-of-gold over the weekend beginning the 13th of August. News of this meeting delighted Catherine of Aragon, who wrote to Wolsey that it was an honor for Henry and would raise Maximilian's reputation, noting he would be taken for another man than he was before thought. Louis XII of France, determined to break the siege, had previously sent a force of 800 Albanians commanded by Captain Fonterailles through the besieger's lines in July, successfully delivering gunpowder and supplies including bacon to the gates of the town. Fonterailles was helped by covering artillery fire from the town, and reports sent to Venice mentioned 300 English casualties or more. The Venetians were aware that their French sources might have been misrepresenting the situation to gain their support, yet the French garrison was able to hold out until the feast day of the Nativity of the Virgin on the 8th of September. The alliance between Henry and Maximilian was fragile; an Imperial agent of Margaret of Savoy wrote that two obstinate men governed everything, Charles Brandon, Viscount Lisle, called the Grand Esquire, and the Almoner Wolsey. Despite the friction, the two monarchs prepared to face the French counter-attack that would define the campaign.
The Flight of the French
The French had hoped to catch the besieging army unprepared by moving out before dawn, but English border prickers, light cavalry from the Scottish borders, detected the movement of the larger body of French cavalry. Henry VIII drew up a field force from the siege lines, sending out a vanguard of 1,100 cavalry, followed by 10,000 to 12,000 infantry. La Palice's force encountered English scouts at the village of Bomy, 5 miles from Thérouanne, and the French, realizing the English were alert, checked themselves on the edge of a hillside. The stradiots, a type of French light cavalry equipped with short stirrups, beaver hats, light lances, and Turkish swords, began their forlorn attempt to contact the garrison, riding in a wide arc towards the town. Historical accounts differ on the exact sequence, but Sir Charles Oman, basing his narrative on the mid-16th century English Chronicle of Edward Hall, suggests La Palice made a mistake by staying in his exposed position too long. The English heavy cavalry of the vanguard drew up opposite Palice's front, while the mounted archers dismounted and shot at the French from a flanking hedgerow. The Clarenceux Herald urged the Earl of Essex to charge, and the English men-at-arms and other heavy cavalry charged just as the French were moving off, throwing them into disorder. To complete the French disarray, the stradiots crashed in confusion into the flank of the French heavy cavalry, having been driven off from approaching the town by cannon fire. A body of Imperial cavalry also arrived to menace the other flank of the French horsemen. Panic seized the French cavalry, whose retreat became a rout. La Palice tried to rally them but to no effect. In order to flee more quickly, the French gendarmes threw away their lances and standards, some even cutting away the heavy armor of their horses. The chase went on for many miles until the French reached their infantry at Blangy, where they were finally halted.
The Capture of Nobles
During the pursuit, a number of notable French leaders and knights were captured, including Jacques de La Palice, Pierre Terrail, seigneur de Bayard, and Louis d'Orléans, Duke of Longueville. The initial cavalry clash took place between the village of Bomy and Henry's camp at Guinegate, and the capture of these high-ranking prisoners was a significant blow to French morale. The Emperor Maximilian, who had recommended that parts of the troops should be sent to the flank and rear of the enemy, commanded 2,000 vanguard cavalry troops himself. He charged with the cavalry against the French as soon as contact was made, acting as commander-in-chief of the allied forces and directing the military operations in person. The French cavalry initially charged back strongly but quickly gave way and retreated. According to Howitt, the French retreat was intended as a distraction that would allow the Duke of Alençon to provide the city with supplies, but the Duke was repelled by Lord Herbert before reaching the gates of the city. The retreat soon turned into a disastrous flight that the French commanders could not control. After a three-mile chase, the French prisoners included Jacques de la Palice, Pierre Terrail, seigneur de Bayard, and Louis d'Orléans, Duke of Longueville. The Emperor's decision for his troops to serve under Henry's standard was noted, though Hall's account suggests friction between the English and Imperial forces over prisoners taken by the Empire, who were not brought to sight and released. Henry returned to his camp at Enguinegatte and heard reports of the day's actions, while the garrison of Thérouanne had come out and attacked Herbert's position, killing three English soldiers of note and suffering 3,000 French casualties. Nine French standards were captured, with 21 noble prisoners dressed in cloth-of-gold.
The Fall of Tournai
On the 20th of August, now unthreatened by French counter-attacks, Henry moved his camp from Guinegate to the south of the town. Thérouanne fell on the 22nd of August, and the garrison were initially unimpressed by a show of captured colors, but the French and German garrison were drawn into negotiation with Shrewsbury by their lack of supplies. Shrewsbury welcomed Henry to the town and gave him the keys. Eight or nine hundred soldiers were set to work demolishing the walls of the town and three large bastions which were pushed into the deep defensive ditches. The dry ditches contained deeper pits which were designed for fires to create smoke to choke assailants. The Milanese ambassador to Maximilian, Paolo Da Laude, heard that it was planned to burn the town after demolition was completed. While demolition continued at Thérouanne, allied attention moved to Tournai after discussions on the 4th of September. Henry would have preferred an attack on Boulogne, but Maximilian and Henry went to St Pol, St Venan, Neve and Béthune, and on the 10th of September Henry entered Lille with great ceremony where Margaret of Savoy held court. That evening, Henry played on the lute, harp, lyre, flute, and horn, and danced with Madame the Bastard till nearly dawn, like a stag, according to the Milanese ambassador. The same day the army began the siege of Tournai, and Maximilian and Henry visited on the 13th of September. Tournai fell to Henry VIII on the 23rd of September, and the defenders had demolished houses in front of their gates on the 11th of September and burnt their suburbs on the 13th of September. On the 15th of September, the wives and children of the townspeople were ordered to repair damage to the walls caused by the besieger's cannon. The town council proposed a vote on whether the town should declare for France or the Empire, but the vote was suspended, and the people appointed deputies to treat with Henry VIII. Charles Brandon captured one of the gatehouses and took away two of its statues as trophies, and the garrison negotiated with Henry and Richard Foxe, Bishop of Winchester, on the 20th of September.
The Aftermath and Legacy
Henry attended mass in Tournai Cathedral on the 2nd of October and knighted many of his captains. The town presented Margaret of Austria with a set of tapestries woven with scenes from the Book of the City of Ladies by Christine de Pizan. Tournai remained in English hands, with William Blount, 4th Baron Mountjoy as Governor. The fortifications and a new citadel were reconstructed between August 1515 and January 1518, costing around £40,000. Work ceased because Henry VIII planned to restore the town to France. Tournai was returned by treaty on the 4th of October 1518. The surveyor of Berwick, Thomas Pawne, could not find a market for the unused building materials there, and sent stones by boat via Antwerp to Calais, some carved with English insignia, along with the machinery of two watermills. The construction work at Tournai has been characterized as retrogressive, lacking the input of a professional military engineer, and an essentially medieval conception out of step with Italian innovations. Henry VIII and his queen Catherine did feel genuine gratitude for Maximilian's assistance and later sent him the sizeable sum of 100,000 golden florin. Maximilian's tomb at the Hofkirche, Innsbruck, constructed in 1553 to designs by Florian Abel, includes a marble relief of the meeting by Alexander Colyn following Dürer's woodcut. In the immediate aftermath of the battle, Maximilian objected to the use of his name in the battle report, even before that, he adopted the red rose and the Cross of Saint George, and declared that he would serve as Henry's soldier, to avoid the complaint that his force was too small in comparison with his position and his promises. Henry VIII and his queen Catherine did feel genuine gratitude for Maximilian's assistance and later sent him the sizeable sum of 100,000 golden florin. The battle was immortalized in propaganda, with Henry and Maximilian jointly publishing an account of their victories, and Maximilian commissioning woodcut images of his meeting with Henry from Leonhard Beck and from Albrecht Dürer who included a scene of the mounted rulers joining hands in the Triumphal Arch.