Chapter 832: Veto Revenge
At this moment, the anti-invasion battle in Stirling, led by Queen Mother Marie de Guise, is still ongoing. The Scottish army in the town of Jedburg on the southern border was speeding up its march to the city of Stirling, nearly a hundred miles away, after their victory, to protect the Queen Mother's Stirling Castle. In addition, Earl II of Allen, who had been stationed in the town of Jedburgh, immediately wrote to the troops stationed near Edinburgh Castle to send a detachment of light cavalry to the city of Stirling to resist the invading English.
By this time, the English royal fleet had lost its operational significance in capturing the city of Stirling and the royal castle. Even if the Commander of the fleet, the Duke of Richmond, agreed to Isabel's revenge, the Duke's deputy, Viscount John Dudley of Lyle, would not easily agree to Isabel's adventurous plan to re-enter the River Forth with the help of the royal fleet.
Isabel had no idea that Sir Andrew, who had already pledged allegiance to the Duke of Richmond, would rebel against the English again. In other words, if Sir Andrew hadn't rebelled, her betrothed husband would have captured Stirling Castle with 200 noble soldiers and captured Queen Mary or the Queen's mother. As such, her object of revenge was Sir Andrew Melville, the guard of the royal palace in Linlithgow, Scotland.
On the other hand, the conflict between the Kingdom of France and the Kingdom of England, far away on the continent, continued. Before returning to England at the end of September 1544, Henry VIII ordered the Dukes of Norfolk and Suffolk to send troops to defend Boulogne, a town in the Seine department of the Kingdom of France, only about 11 miles from Paris, which was occupied by the English army.
However, after Henry VIII returned to England, the two dukes quickly disobeyed his orders. Subsequently, most of the army was withdrawn to Calais (a city in the Pas-de-Calais department in France), leaving behind about 4,000 mercenaries to defend the occupied city. When the English army was forced to stay in Calais, King Francis I of France thought that Boulogne should be recaptured at this time.
On October 9, 1544, in a raid under the command of Francis I, the French army came close to recapturing Boulogne. However, the French army began to raid prematurely and was besieged by the English army. Later, the French and British kings tried to negotiate peace in Calais.
During the negotiations, representatives of Henry VIII, in the name of the King of England, refused to consider the return of Boulogne to the French, insisting that Francis I had abandoned his support for the Scots. At the same time, King Charles V of Spain, who had been appointed mediator between Francis I and Henry VIII, was also embroiled in a dispute between the two kings.
Francis I was very annoyed by Henry VIII's attitude, and he decided to make a more dramatic attempt. An army of more than 30,000 men was assembled in Normandy by May 1545 and was the most populous municipality in the whole of Normandy at Le Havre (a coastal city in the north-west of France, a sub-capital of the Seine-Maritimes-Maritimes in the Hauts-Normandy region). About 400 ships were prepared, all under the command of Claude de Anibaur.
Somewhat puzzling or ironic, Ani Bauer, who graduated from the Jean Cluère School in 1535, was appointed commander-in-chief of the fleet by his king, Francis I, despite having no experience in naval warfare. During an expeditionary operation against England, command the fleet that invaded England.
In the summer of 1545, during the French invasion of England and the landing on the islands off the coast of England, it is worth noting that Henry VIII's royal fleet defeated the French fleet in a brief skirmish, forcing it to return in vain.
Earlier, on May 31, a French expeditionary force had landed in Scotland, planning to assist the Scots of the Old League against the invading English. The following in early July, the royal fleet under the command of Admiral John Dudley, Viscount Lyle, attacked the French fleet near Portsmouth on the south coast, but with little success due to bad weather. However, the French fleet also suffered a series of accidents: Ani Bauer's first flagship was burned and the second was stranded.
When the King's expeditionary force retreated to the port of Calais, Henry VIII paid a small price: the ship "Mary Rose", which set sail on July 19 to fight against the French invasion, was heavily tilted by a sudden gust of wind. Even more unfortunate, the undisciplined crew did not close the gun hole on the bottom. Instantly, the sea water rushed into the ship's hull, and the Mary Rose soon sank unexpectedly with more than 700 crew members.
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Francis I's plans to invade England in the summer of 1545 had already been made known to Henry VIII's ambassador to France. Therefore, Henry VIII intended to assemble all the ships of the royal fleet in Portsmouth immediately after the end of the invasion of the city of Stirling, ready to meet the arrival of France.
Portsmouth, also known as Pompey, is a port city located in the southeast of England, bordered by the Solent Strait to the south. Located 70 miles southwest of London and 19 miles southeast of Southampton, the city dates back to Roman times and has been England's most important military port since the Romans left the island of Britain.
Since Viscount Lyle had previously been appointed by Henry VIII, he rejected Isabel Walton's plan to take revenge on Stirling Castle with the help of the royal fleet. In early March, the royal fleet, commanded by the Duke of Richmond and Viscount Lyle, returned from Forth Bay, north of Edinburgh, with plundered Scots' treasures and remnants of mercenary troops.
Isabel sat alone in the worship room, contemplating the consequences of her betrothed husband's death at the foot of Stirling Castle. She knew she didn't love Sir William Ingleby, but the other party had set foot on the battlefield to get her love. She had thought that her betrothed husband would not die in battle under her own careful planning, but the result shocked her.
It seems that it has become impossible to use the royal fleet to cover herself to avenge her engaged husband. At this time, she can only put her hope on Captain Hawkins in Plymouth, let him build five armed merchant ships of 300 tons for herself, and lead her fleet to attack Stirling Castle for the second time. While avenging her betrothed husband, she earned herself a Knight of the Garter.
On this morning, the Duke of Richmond returned to the service room in his free time, intending to comfort Isabel, who had lost her engaged husband.