King Henry VIII & King Francis I

The Sport of Kings

Henry VIII of England and Francis I of France had a great deal in common. Francis (Francois, in French) was only three years younger than Henry, and both inherited their thrones as very young men, Henry at not quite 18, Francis at age 21. Both had a taste for the new Renaissance styles, Francis going so far as to hire Leonardo da Vinci. They had a shared taste for women, Francis becoming notorious for his mistresses, Henry for his wives.

Most of all they had a shared taste for war. For a 16th century king war was no abstract board game. Henry's father, Henry VII, won his kingdom on a battlefield, and Francis would very nearly lose his the same way. But Henry and Francis also treated war rather as though it were an "Xtreme" sporting event. Both were natural athletes, and most of the sports popular at royal courts, such as hunting and especially jousting, were thinly disguised military training. For a young king, war was a means to personal glory and international reputation.

Henry was the first to become a king, in 1509, just before his 18th birthday. By 1512 he picked a fight with France, then still ruled by shrewd old Louis XII. Henry crossed over to France along with his army and in 1513 personally led his army to victory in what came to be called the Battle of the Spurs – so called because the French immediately took to flight.

It was the smartest thing they could have done. Henry VIII got a personal victory to strut, but France came out of the war none the worse off. Henry promptly agreed to a peace settlement, to be sealed literally by a kiss, and it was old King Louis who got to do the kissing: the treaty married him to Henry's famously beautiful sister Mary, "the Tudor Rose."

For Louis XII, making love proved deadlier than making war. Three months after the marriage he was dead; worn out, they said at the French court, by his exertions with his young bride. The crown of France passed from childless Louis to his nephew Francis, who became Francis I of France.

Francis was as eager to make war as Henry had been, but not against England. Since the 1480s the French had been trying to dominate Italy, then divided into a welter of small states. These could not resist French power, but Spain could, and Italy became a battleground between France and Spain. Then a series of dynastic accidents joined Spain with Austria and the Low Countries under the rule of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. Faced with such a powerful enemy, Francis decided to make nice with Henry VIII.

They arranged to have a personal meeting, what today would be called a summit. Held on the frontier between English-ruled Calais and French territory, it became an excuse for legendary pomp and pageantry. The English built a temporary stage-set palace 300 feet on a side to house Henry and his court, and a reported 2800 tents were set up for lesser guests from both sides. So much expensive fabric went into these preparations that the meeting has been known ever since as the Field of the Cloth of Gold.

The conference went on for three weeks. With tournaments by day and dancing by night, a good time was presumably had by all, though one French account claims that Henry lost a wrestling match to Francis. At the end of it they'd hardly settled anything, and the Field of the Cloth of Gold has gone down in history as a diplomatic fizzle. Perhaps this is unfair. For all the finery and fountains flowing with wine, sixteenth century peace was less expensive than sixteenth century war.

But Henry went on to have a friendly if less elaborate meeting with Charles V a few weeks later, and ended up joining him in a war against France. This time Henry himself stayed at home. The war cost a great deal of money and produced no splashy English victories, and after a couple of years Henry merely sat on the sidelines watching Francis and Charles fight.

Francis I got his own taste of battle, at the Battle of Pavia in 1525, and it did not go as well for him as the Battle of the Spurs had for Henry VIII. He was captured and ended up in a jail cell in Madrid.

As Francis was trying to negotiate his way out of jail, Henry VIII was making eyes at Anne Boleyn, and soon he was trying to dump first wife Catherine of Aragon. This reshuffled European politics. Catherine was Charles V's aunt, and since Charles dominated Italy and the Pope, he could see to it that no divorce was granted to Henry. Henry VIII, never one to take no for an answer, broke from Rome – and found himself at odds not only with Charles but with Francis.

Thus in the 1530s England faced a real threat of invasion. Henry responded by expanding his fleet with new, heavily gunned ships, and built a string of coastal defense fortifications now called the Henrician castles. (Though they are not castles but forts of a later type built to resist artillery.) Henry also patched things up with Charles V – a task that became easier after Anne Boleyn lost her head. That left his old rival Francis I of France.

By 1545, both Henry and Francis were over 50, and years of living like kings had wrecked their health. But Francis was ready to try one last go-round of war. This time he decided on a full-scale invasion of England, and assembled an invasion force of over two hundred ships, more than the Spanish Armada had in 1588, though most of the ships were much smaller. Francis celebrated the pending departure of his armada by dining on the French flagship. After he had dined and gone back ashore the ship caught fire and sank; a second French flagship ran aground while leaving port.

In spite of these omens the French made the short crossing without further mishap and landed troops on the Isle of Wight. Henry had meanwhile assembled his own fleet, smaller but with more powerful ships. The fleets met in battle off Portsmouth, with King Henry watching from the shore. As the fighting was joined one of the largest English ships, Mary Rose abruptly capsized and went down with nearly her entire crew of 400 men.

In spite of this loss the English held their own, and after an indecisive fight the French fleet withdrew. England had been saved from invasion. The war brought no glorious victories to either side, and was all but forgotten for more than 400 years, till the wreck of the Mary Rose was found and raised. It is now a museum display at Portsmouth.

Two years after their last war both Henry and Francis were dead, dying within a few weeks of each other.