An Expedition to Aquitaine, 1512
Guienne and Gascony were lost to the English Crown in 1453. General Sir James Marshall-Cornwall describes how Henry VIII had ambitions to regain them.
When Henry VIII succeeded his father in April 1509 he was under eighteen years of age. The handsome young King was a keen horseman, fond of hunting and skilled at archery and jousting. Gifted with a shrewd mind, he was highly educated and had a talent for music.
Endowed with these qualities and tastes, Henry was extremely ambitious, his first aim being to establish his country as a leading power in Europe. At the time of his accession, the balance of European power was rocked by the rivalry between the Austrian Maximilian I, who had become Holy Roman Emperor in 1493, and Louis XII, who had succeeded to the throne of France in 1498.
In October 1511, Maximilian strengthened his strategic position by forming an alliance with that astute monarch Ferdinand II of Aragon (14521516), thus confronting the French King with a hostile combination on both his Flemish and Pyrenean frontiers. This alliance, known as the ‘Holy League’, was intended to curb the growing power of France and to protect the Papal States from Louis’s incursions.
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