by John Guy
Essex feared Elizabeth’s likely reaction, but felt he had to give way. As he informed Burghley, he was guided by reasons ‘which though I dare neither censure nor allow, yet I assure your Lordships I cannot impugn’. On the other hand, Henry and Essex had struck up an obvious rapport at Noyon. They had talked animatedly late into the night of how they might defeat the Leaguers in a series of joint operations, and competed in a leaping contest, which Essex won.8
• • •
Elizabeth scolded Henry for his inaction on 18 August in her own handwriting and in fluent French:
Do you really think, mon frère, that these are the ways to treat a prince who allows her subjects to risk their lives to defend your kingdom? Do those who hazard their lives to defend you deserve to be made prey to the enemy? If the Channel ports are lost, how will you protect the rest of your territory? From where will all the aid come when these areas will be hemmed in so that reinforcements cannot be sent to you? I am astounded at these reveries.9
A fortnight later, after hearing about what she described as Essex’s ‘dangerous and fruitless’ ride to Compiègne, she flew into a fury again. So enraged was she that Henry and her Lieutenant had wasted precious time on feasting and on leaping contests, she said – as Robert Cecil reported – she wished Essex dead ‘so that her troops may not miscarry’.10
Matters did not improve when the Leaguers set an ambush for Essex on his return journey from Compiègne. Thanks to the sharp eyes of his scouts, he circumvented the danger and was able to get word to his forces to meet him at Pavilly, some fifteen miles north-west of Rouen.11 Now within striking distance of his main target, Essex was unable to begin a siege before Biron brought reinforcements. And since idly waiting was never his way, he rashly attacked Pavilly. But in a desperate fight lasting several hours, he lost his brother Walter, who was hit in the face by a musket-ball. Essex was grief-stricken, describing Walter as ‘the half arch of my house’. Much worse, the following afternoon, a cooking fire in a house adjoining the English munitions dump at Pavilly caused an explosion that destroyed the entire village. Some soldiers were killed; the rest ran for their lives. Unable to handle these setbacks psychologically, Essex collapsed for several days, which required deft footwork from Unton, who had to keep the queen unawares until he recovered. This was despite Unton’s own sickness from leptospirosis, also known as black jaundice, and caused by animal urine polluting the water supply at Dieppe.12
Reluctantly ordering a retreat to his earlier camp at Arques, Essex sought to salvage his reputation by besieging Gournay-en-Bray. Biron, whose troops had finally arrived in Normandy, joined in a siege lasting ten days. Lying on marshy ground between rolling hills some thirty miles to the east of Rouen, Gournay was the final staging post on the main road from Picardy that Parma’s forces had to take, should they attempt to relieve Rouen once it came under attack.
On 26 September, the town surrendered after an early-morning bombardment by Essex’s artillery left two large breaches in the walls.13 This success came not a moment too soon: a day or so earlier, Elizabeth had demanded his recall. In a vituperative rant dictated to Burghley, who did his utmost to tone it down in three different drafts, she castigated Essex for not doing more to induce Henry to keep his promises. All this, she said accusingly, had shown ‘as much dishonour to us as could be to ourselves and our nation, whereof you have for yourself, if you be not blinded with the French qualities, no small part’.14 Already, she was deeply suspicious, even jealous, of the growing friendship between Henry and Essex. Was it, she asked him, that her favourite would so much rather serve a king than a ‘mere’ queen?15
But her tirade had barely begun. She saw, she said, no reason why her forces should remain in France for a moment longer. Essex must return at once, handing over his command to Sir Thomas Leighton, a man she unreservedly trusted and whom she had already instructed to shadow him at all times. And she went on to humiliate Essex still further. He was himself to write to the perfidious French king to inform him of his recall. ‘You may add’, she witheringly concluded, that her troops had ‘spent their time by reason of the said king’s delays both unprofitably and to the dishonour of us and themselves, whereof you may write how sorry you are to have so great a part to your own disgrace.’ In a postscript, she further sniped that Essex should by now plainly understand the reasons for her dissatisfaction with him, ‘if you be not senseless’.16
As luck would have it, Essex had just sent Robert Carey, one of his junior officers, back to England to report on the victory at Gournay and plead for an extension to his commission. Carey left Dieppe on the 27th, missing the courier passing in the opposite direction with Essex’s letters of recall by no more than twenty-four hours.
After four days, Carey, spattered with mud, rode into the courtyard at Oatlands shortly after dawn, long before the queen was up and dressed. Losing no time, he went first to sound out Burghley, who warned him that she was furious with Essex and had ordered his recall. Burghley cautioned Carey to ‘look out for himself’ as, by now, Elizabeth was regaling anyone who dared to suggest that Essex’s commission should be extended with the spiteful accusation that, if her favourite was furtively lobbying behind her back to tarry longer in France, then clearly he ‘had so small desire to see her’ again that she would ‘requite’ him in kind by ‘crossing him in his most earnest desire’.17 Unton had sent his own message to the queen, backing Essex’s request for an extension, and when Burghley tried to step in she railed at him, to the point where the gout-ridden Lord Treasurer snapped, saying, ‘By God, Madam, I would have written as he did, and so done, except you meant to make him stand for a cipher.’ To this, she retorted, ‘Well, I will have him know his error and, if you do it not, I will.’18
Shortly after ten o’clock that morning, Carey was granted an audience with the queen. He reported in his Memoirs that Elizabeth ‘burst out into a great rage against my Lord and vowed she would make him an example to the entire world, if he presently left not his charge and returned’. Her mood lightened, but only fractionally, when she read Essex’s letter giving his account of the capture of Gournay. She seemed, said Carey, ‘to be meanly well contented’.19
In a decidedly high-risk strategy, Carey informed her that Essex feared that accusations of cowardice would be levelled against him if he were to leave France before completing his mission. His sense of dishonour would then be such that he would have no alternative but to retire permanently from Court. ‘I know’, said Carey, ‘his full resolution is to retire to some cell in the country.’
Elizabeth was unimpressed by this feeble attempt at emotional blackmail. With a sweep of the hand, she tetchily ordered Carey to leave her, only to send for him again in the afternoon.20 By then, she had read Essex’s letter more carefully and had consulted Burghley, who informed her that Biron, as Unton had now separately confirmed, was talking of attacking Rouen without further delay.21 Henry, admittedly, was still making excuses. But despite her ally’s studied invisibility, Elizabeth yielded, scribbling a letter to Essex in which she informed him that, on account of ‘the winning of Gournay in so short a time, whereof we are very glad’, and because, it seemed, the siege of Rouen was about to begin ‘and like well to succeed’, then, ‘for these considerations’, he could remain in France with his forces for one more month – provided that Henry himself shouldered the cost. Essex, however, was to understand that her decision was solely in the interests of the war effort. It was not to please him and ‘not to pleasure the [French] King at all’. And the Earl was to take note that there were to be no more ‘dangerous’ or ‘rash’ manoeuvres. Humble him though she might, she did not want him to die.22
• • •
A drawn-out black comedy ensued. Carey raced back across the Channel to France with the queen’s letters countermanding Essex’s recall. He landed in Dieppe shortly before midnight on 8 October, just two hours after Essex, facing up to what he believed to be a juggernaut,
caught the tide aboard ‘a little skiff’ bound for England, obeying Elizabeth’s original instructions to return. Disembarking at Rye in Sussex, he at first lacked the courage to confront her directly, sending a servant to announce his return. Bawled out by the queen, the man returned to Essex, who wrote to her in apparent humility, ‘I see Your Majesty is constant [determined] to ruin me; I do humbly and patiently yield to Your Majesty’s will’, before declaring, more theatrically, ‘I appeal to all men that saw my parting from France, or the manner of my coming hither, whether I deserved such a welcome or not.’23
As with his stepfather after his recall from the Netherlands, Elizabeth was icy when Essex made his belated entrance to Richmond Palace, but was quickly reconciled to her wayward favourite. Several days of ‘jollity and feasting’ ensued, after which her Lieutenant confidently rejoined his army at Dieppe, only to find morale and supplies at rock bottom and disease rampaging through the companies. Malaria, first in evidence in the marshy ground around Gournay, coupled with dysentery and outbreaks of bubonic plague, had halved his forces.24 But not all the news was bad: Biron was mopping up small towns in the vicinity of Rouen, and there was talk that Henry, still dallying in the vicinity of Sedan in the Ardennes, was finally preparing to march west. Of particular relief was the fact that he had sent five thousand crowns from the treasury at Caen (worth around £1.6 million today) to help pay and supply the English soldiers.25 When the queen’s allowance had run out, Essex had been forced to pay his men from his own pocket to the tune of £14,000, plunging him ever more deeply into debt.26
Hoping to repair his losses, Essex entreated Burghley to send more men and money.27 A few days later, he sent Sir Roger Williams to Richmond to argue his case before the queen.28 To Williams’s astonishment, Elizabeth agreed to send a thousand soldiers from her auxiliaries in the Netherlands and another four hundred and fifty from England, whom she would pay for one month. Her confidence in Essex had been restored since his brief return to Court, and with Rouen in her sights she softened, no longer subjecting him to tirades of abuse.29
But the siege of Rouen proved to be slow and intractable. Situated on a gentle slope on the right bank of a sweeping curve in the fast-flowing Seine, the old administrative and judicial capital of Normandy was protected by thick ramparts, deep ditches and formidable towers. Accessible only through heavily fortified gates, it housed a population of around 75,000 in its many half-timbered buildings, as compared to London’s 186,000.30 Stoutly defended by the Leaguers since 1589, it was further protected by a recently restored fort at the top of the nearby Mont Sainte-Catherine. There, André Brancas, Sieur de Villars, the local Leaguer commander, had reinforced the garrison to some six thousand fighting men and stationed forty large cannon with a plentiful supply of shot.
Essex and Biron agreed to begin the siege before dawn on 29 October, when their forces would make a commando-type raid on the surrounding villages under cover of darkness. Biron was late, and his troops came under fire, but by the end of the day Essex’s men were safely lodged on Mont aux Malades to the north-west of the city, close to a building, once a flourishing leper house, that was now the site of a popular fair held in September each year.31 A fanciful scheme to build a floating artillery platform from which to pound the city’s ramparts on their weakest, riverside section came to nothing, so Essex’s men began to dig trenches near the foot of Mont aux Malades, overlooking the Cauchoise gate into the city.32 From this vantage point they could fire their muskets at any of the Leaguers who dared to venture out.33
To Elizabeth’s exasperation, however, there was still no sign of Henry. On 8 November, she dictated a chivvying letter to him in English, which she had translated by one of Burghley’s clerks. The next day, she replaced it with a thundering, much shorter diatribe she wrote herself in French:
From our enemies we were expecting nothing but bad faith, and now that our friends treat us in exactly the same way, what difference do we find? I am astounded that someone who is so much in need of our assistance should repay us, his most assured ally, in such base coin. Do you imagine that my sex deprives me of the courage to resent such a public affront?34
In fact, as she dictated her letter, Henry really was at last on his way to Rouen. When he arrived, Essex and Biron went out to kiss his hand at his camp midway between the city and Mont Sainte-Catherine. At a Council of War, a decision was taken to concentrate the attack upon the Sainte-Catherine fort. After the generals dispersed, Essex stayed on, while Henry dined, ‘talking and discoursing of many matters’, presumptuously wearing his cap while the king’s advisers stood bareheaded. Riding back to Mont aux Malades, he narrowly escaped a hail of small artillery fire from the Leaguers. Two bullets whistled past his head, ‘for I might sensibly feel the wind of the bullets in my face’.35
A week later, Essex went on a second, desperate visit to see Elizabeth. He found her this time at Whitehall Palace, where she had just watched the closing ceremony of that year’s Accession Day tilts from a newly refurbished gallery.36 There, he appealed to her for a further extension of his stay and for more money and reinforcements, as a freak spell of cold weather and fresh outbreaks of disease had hit him hard: his men were close to mutiny and deserting in droves.37
Burghley was more shocked by the suddenness of Essex’s unauthorized return than by his requests.38 What he could not know was that, to support his pleas, Essex lied, vastly exaggerating his success so far in the siege: it was only this that persuaded a grudging Elizabeth to consent to pay his troops for two more months. Led to believe that valuable plunder might be had by pillaging Rouen and by intercepting the heavy chests of money and valuables that the citizens were removing and sending for safety to their relatives elsewhere in France, she even ordered four royal navy pinnaces to blockade the Seine.39
Leaving Whitehall for Dover on 5 December, Essex was back in Normandy by the 14th.40 With Burghley’s support fast waning, however, it would only be a matter of days before the queen had second thoughts. By the 17th, Unton was in receipt of a letter in which Burghley warned him of ‘Her Majesty’s dislike of the King’s letters and demands for further aid’. She was now convinced that her French ally was attempting to fleece her.41
The trigger for Essex’s final recall was a report that many of his blue-blooded officers had succumbed to plague.42 Two days before Christmas, Elizabeth wrote him a handwritten rebuke, recapitulating all her earlier criticisms and ordering him to repatriate as soon as possible any surviving ‘gentlemen of good quality dear to their parents and blood’ before they, too, were struck down. Cuttingly, she then suggested he return himself, ‘if you shall at last be so well advised as to think how dishonourable it is for you to tarry with so mean a charge, after so many men consumed so little to the purpose they were sent for, with many other absurd defects which blemish the honour of the place you hold under us as our general’.43
On Christmas Eve, in hastily scribbled orders, she recalled her delinquent favourite without any further excuses or delays.44 Her instructions were steely:
We have thought good no longer to suffer you to continue there to so small purpose to the needless hazard of all such as are with you there in our service whom we sent as auxiliaries to aid a French king and not to be drawn to every dangerous desperate attempt which the king shall and hath moved you to undertake and that which you do continually come into, as by our Treasurer’s letters you shall perceive by divers particularities . . . We therefore, both in regard of our own honour and your particular reputation, do require you, upon the sight hereof, to make your speedy return.45
Unbeknown to Elizabeth, even as she was signing the letter, Henry and Essex would join forces in a daring attack on the Mont Sainte-Catherine fort, successfully ousting the Leaguers from their defensive positions until a counter-attack next day reversed their gains.46 Three days later, Essex decided to lead his men in a last decisive, all-out surge over the walls of the fort at dead of night, using scaling
ladders supplied by Biron. Blatantly defying the queen’s instructions that he take no personal risks, he crossed the ditch and ordered his men to raise their ladders, only to find that they were eight feet too short.47
Much, much worse, the Earl had personally ordered his soldiers to wear white shirts over their armour so they could see one another more easily in the dark. But this also made them visible to the enemy, whose sniper fire picked them off one by one as they ran away.48 It was a final, ignominious blow. For Essex, the Normandy adventure was a catastrophe, and he knew it. In Unton’s wonderfully deadpan assessment, these setbacks ‘killeth our hope of Rouen’.49
• • •
On Tuesday, 10 January 1592, after surrendering his command and taking leave of Henry, Essex hastened to Dieppe for the last time.50 Downcast and weary, he was far from the dashing figure he had been five months earlier, even if, to keep up appearances, his pages still wore their fine orange livery coats. He had conspicuously failed on the battlefield, but it would not be long before his spin doctors would be rewriting history to make things appear very different. Nor could he resist melodrama. In a farewell gesture worthy of a Victorian gothic novelist, he drew his sword and kissed the blade as his ship sailed out of the harbour and unfurled its sails.51
On the Saturday following, Essex reappeared in the Privy Chamber at Whitehall and danced with the queen. Shortly afterwards, she recalled Sir John Norris from Brittany. A highly experienced commander but a disillusioned man, he cursed her for her neglect of his mission in the Blavet valley. While all her attention had been on Rouen, she had turned his company, he confided to Burghley, into ‘the forgotten army’. He had suffered no defeat, but neither could he capture more than a few minor towns, most of which the Leaguers had quickly recovered. By the time winter had set in, more than half his men had died in the mud in their boots, either from cold or from a ‘new sickness’, most likely plague but quite possibly a new strain of influenza.52