Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/401

A.D. 1558.] removed all danger from Philip's Transalpine possessions, led to a loss on tho part of his English ally, which might be termed the crowning mischief of his union with Mary.

The news of the victory of St. Quentin was received in England with extraordinary rejoicings, the kindling of bonfires, and singing of Te Deum. Philip, on the approach of winter, retired into quarters in Flanders. Meantime, the Scotch had invaded the northern counties on the departure of the English army for France. There had been many mutual inroads and skirmishes, but by the time that Scotland could get together a considerable army, October had set in, and with it bad weather. The roads and rivers became almost impassable, and a contagious disease broke out amongst the troops. When the united army of Scots and French crossed the Tweed to assault the castle of Wark, they found the Earl of Shrewsbury laying near with a largo army. Instead of attacking him, they began to hold councils, in which they showed more caution than boldness, and talked much of the fatal field of Flodden, and of the recent defeat of their French ally at St. Quentin, and they agreed to retreat and disband the army. The Earl of Huntly was the only leader who opposed this undignified counsel, and for his remonstrance he was put under arrest, and tho queen-regent, in defiance of her entreaties, menaces, and tears, saw the army quit the field without a blow.

But this demonstration on the part of Scotland had drawn the attention of tho English Council from a more important point. Tho Duke of Guise, disappointed of his laurels in Italy, was now planning an attack on Calais. The information of the Bishop of Acqs and the Governor of Boulogne was ever present to the Government of France. When King Philip drew off his forces from St. Quentin, the Duke of Guise commenced his march in that direction. In the month of December he had assembled at Compiègne 25,000 men, with a numerous train of battering artillery. Suddenly he marched out; but whilst every one expected him to take the road towards St. Quentin, he took that towards Calais, and, on the 1st of January, 1558, he was seen advancing on the road from Sandgate to Hammes. He was bound to carry out an idea of Admiral Coligni's and attempt Calais in the middle of winter, when such an attempt would be least expected.

The English were never less prepared for the invasion. The fleet which had ravaged the coasts of France, and the troops sent to Flanders, had totally exhausted the exchequer of Mary, which at no time was well supplied. To victual that navy the queen had seized all the corn she could find in Norfolk, without paying for it, and to equip the army sent to aid Philip, she had made a forced loan on London, and on people of property in different places; she had levied the second year's subsidy voted by Parliament before its time, and now was helpless at the critical moment.

It is only justice to Philip to state that the moment he heard of the design of the Duke of Guise, he offered to throw a garrison of Spanish troops into the town for its defence; but this was declined from the fear that, once in possession, he might remain so. The caution was worse than useless, unless the English had possessed means of defending it themselves, for Philip's possession if by consent of the English Government, would have appeared a matter of diplomatic arrangement, the capture of it by the French must be a serious blow to the military reputation of the nation. This means of defence the English Government had not. Lord Wentworth, the Governor of Calais, prescient of the approaching storm, sent repeated entreaties for reinforcements for its defence. They were wholly unattended to.

The Duke of Guise, after entering the English pale, sent a detachment of his army along the downs to Risebank, and led the other himself, with a very heavy train of artillery, towards Newnham Bridge. He forced the outwork at the village of St. Agatha, at the commencement of the causeway, drove the garrison into Newnham, and took possession of the outwork. The bulwarks of Froytou and Neslo were abandoned, for the lord-deputy could send no forces to defend them. At Newnham Bridge the garrison withdrew so silently that the French continued firing upon tho fort when the men were already in Calais; but at Risebank the garrison surrendered with the fort.

Thus, in a couple of days, the Duke of Guise was in possession of two most important forts, one commanding the harbour, the other the causeway across the marshes from Flanders. A battery on the heath of St. Pierre played on the wall to create a false alarm, whilst another in real earnest played on the castle. A breach was made in the wall near the Watergate, and, whilst the garrison was busy in repairing it, Guise cannonaded the castle (which was in a scandalous state of neglect) with fifteen double cannons. A wide breach was speedily made. Lord Wentworth, well aware that the castle could not be maintained, had ordered mines to be prepared, and calculated on blowing the castle and the Frenchmen into tho air together as soon as they were in.

Guise, seeing no garrison defending the breach, ordered one detachment to occupy the quay, and another, under Strozzi, to take up a position on the other side of the harbour. Strozzi was repulsed; but at ebb-tide in the evening, Grammont, at the head of 100 arquebusiers, marched up to the ditch opposite to the breach. No one being soon in the castle, Guise ordered plenty of hurdles to be thrown into the ditch, and, putting himself at the head of his men, forded the ditch, finding it not deeper than his girdle. The lord-deputy, seeing the French in the castle, ordered the train to be fired; but there was no explosion. The soldiers crossing from the ditch to the breach, with their clothes deluging the ground with water, had wet the train and defeated Wentworth's design.

The next morning Guise sent his troops to assault the town, calculating on as easy a conquest of it; but Sir Anthony Agar, with a handful of men, not only repulsed tho French, but chased them back into the castle. The brave Sir Anthony, with a larger force, would have driven the French from the decayed old castle too, but he had the merest little knot of followers, and in the vain attempt to force the enemy out of the castle, he fell at the gate with his son, and eighty of his chief officers. Lord Wentworth perceiving the