TWENTY-THREE
JÜLICH-CLEVES
The celebrations over, most of Henry’s foreign visitors left. Some went straight to join the Protestant forces of Maurice of Nassau and Sir Edward Cecil. Henry ordered a fine suit of Greenwich armour for Frederick Ulrich and commissioned Isaac Oliver to paint a portrait of his Brunswick cousins, to be hung at St James’s. Sir David Murray, Keeper of the Privy Purse, petitioned the Privy Council for £1,000 for the extraordinary expenses the prince incurred entertaining his guests. Already, the newly independent court lacked funds to cover its outgoings.
Regrouping after the death of Henri IV, a combined European force finally marched on Jülich. Henry ordered Captain George Waymouth to keep a journal of the campaign. Waymouth had previously sailed with Robert Tindall to Virginia. Henry always needed to ‘be informed’ to help him ‘apprehend and judge of matters of so great consequence’, when he could not see for himself. He was bitterly disappointed not to be riding through the heart of Europe that summer, to the places his friends described in their travellers’ tales, announcing his arrival on the European stage.
The allied force reached the walls of Jülich by the middle of July 1610. Maurice and Cecil split the army to approach from two sides, and concentrated on taking the castle. ‘Being master of that, the town of necessity must render,’ wrote Waymouth. ‘This town and Castle is reputed to be one of the best fortified by art that is in Christendom.’ Busy with plans to renovate England’s coastal forts, Henry wanted to know the strengths and vulnerabilities of these massive structures. Waymouth noted it all down and made drawings.
Waymouth also observed Maurice of Nassau. Prince Maurice’s ‘approaches and batteries were made with great art, for the safety of his men, and the offense of the castle’, he reported to his prince. His Excellency ‘has gotten great advantage of other soldiers in Christendom, ever applying himself to the knowledge of the mathematics, which General Cecil … has in his approaches, [also] made proof of his time spent therein’. All Henry could do was ensure he did the same at home, and wait for his day to come.
‘Riding beyond the trenches, to view the ground for the next night’s approach’, Sir Edward Cecil came ‘within 100 paces of the town’. Something exploded nearby, killing his horse under him, but missing Cecil. As skilled as Prince Henry in manège, Sir Edward leapt balletically from the falling beast and continued on foot until he had ‘viewed the ground, the castle and the town’. The enemy was ‘all this while, continually playing upon him with great and small shot’. Stoical, valiant, courageous, ‘unmoved from his usual pace, he returned to the trenches, and ever after, till the castle and town was taken in, General Cecil was in the trenches and batteries at the making of them up, directing in such manner everything should be done’. This was ‘a great encouragement to all others, seeing their General participate the common hazard’. Not only what you did, but how you did it, strengthened your virtue. A proper fear might flood you, but you did not let yourself drown in it.
Edward Cecil sent Henry a series of letters describing the progress of the siege. ‘We press him [the enemy] so nighly with our approaches, that if his expected relief from the Archduke and Emperor fail him (as without doubt it will), the town in three weeks’ time will … [be] in our hands.’ Cecil had a problem with one officer, Sir Thomas Dutton, ‘whom your Highness was pleased to favour beyond his merit’, Cecil chided politely. Dutton was repeatedly challenging Cecil’s authority and questioning his judgement. He wanted Henry’s permission to dismiss him, before Dutton attacked him physically.
Henry wrote back to thank Cecil for his service and analysis. ‘That great and high favour which your Highness has vouchsafed to cast upon me by [writing in] your own princely hand … has given me a new life and encouragement in all my endeavours,’ Cecil replied. A letter in Henry’s own hand was an enormous compliment.
By 30 July the Protestant allies had battered a hole in Jülich castle’s outer walls. Maurice ordered Colonel Cheke to charge the breach, but look out for minefields. Cecil and Maurice watched Cheke’s party go. Archduke Leopold’s soldiers also spied them, and exploded all their mines at once. The generals looked on as the ensign was ‘blown a pike’s length from the ground and almost smothered with the earth … [he] was carried off and is now well. Only one soldier was blown quite away’ into pieces.
Maurice and Sir Edward sapped under the moat, laying mines beneath it, while all the time the enemy shot ‘wild fire and grenades out most of the night’ over their heads. They fired their mines to drain the moat, dropped down into the empty ditch and furiously threw up a wall of faggots to scale the last defences, the castle inner walls. At their feet, engineers started to mine under them. That night was black as hell and the enemy launched ‘a boat full of artificial fireworks’ over the walls, lowering it on the allies, to set fire to the scaffold. Allied musketeers played continually upon the enemy’s parapet, so that ‘they durst not peep over to see what effect their artificial boat took’. Several times the flaming boat set fire to the wooden ‘galerie’ they climbed, but the old soldiers pushed it away.
By the third week of August, Cecil was able to report to Henry that Leopold had admitted defeat. He ‘has called to parlay, demanded conditions [for surrender], and within a day or two we look to have troops in the town’. Not a moment too soon. Cecil’s forces, having breached the outworks and negotiated the castle ditch, with its four levels, were now lodged in the ramparts. His engineers had dug into them, placing ‘two great mines’ and were ready to set them off the next morning. Besides, his cannon ‘had already played with … fury upon the foot of the bulwark, that a great breach was made’. The game was up. Cecil rather regretted the lost opportunity to set off the mines, ‘which we much desired’, he confessed, to ‘have had a true experience how powder works in so high and so thick a wall’.
Henry’s military exercises and ceremonial duties lacked bite compared with this sort of news; they honed skills, but offered no mounting heartbeat.
By 24 August, the princes and lords sat in council to agree terms of surrender. Jülich must return to religious toleration; the imperial forces would be allowed to leave with their colours, as long as Leopold did not blow up the munition stores and supplies; if he did, Maurice and Cecil would show him no mercy. It was a triumph for the old, mixed order of Europe, fragile and abused as it was, that everyone shared a desire not to escalate this to all-out war.
Henry pored over Waymouth’s detailed record of the campaign. The king and prince could not agree on the part of war in foreign policy. The king ‘is naturally very gentle, an enemy to cruelty, a lover of justice, and full of good will’, observed the Italian ambassador. He loves his ‘tranquillity, peace and repose; he has no inclination for war, and … it is this that displeases many of his subjects’. James’s preference was to ‘live privately, among eight or ten of his own set’, rather than ‘magnificently and in public, as is the custom of the country and the wish of the people’ flattering and showing himself to them, to assure them of their importance.
When the military wing of the establishment returned to London, it continued to convene at Prince Henry’s court. Like his father, Henry adhered to the few men he really trusted. Yet his repeated requests to participate in public tournaments and to stage displays showed an Elizabethan sense of spectacle. He knew instinctively something of the need to earn his people’s love and respect. Although the king had prevented Henry from participating in the wars in Europe so far, for how long could he contain his son? This had been Moeliades, God’s holy knight’s, moment to shine. His father had denied him. He must grit his teeth and wait.
At the end of September 1610, Henry announced the completion of a long-cherished project. His flagship, the Prince Royal, built by Phineas Pett, and backed by the king, was ready to launch.
The whole royal family turned out for the ceremony at Woolwich, accompanied by hundreds of servants and followers from the three courts. The crowds began climbing up onto the towering ship. Pett worried that the weight of them milling about on the top deck might unbalance and capsize the vessel. Up on the poop, Lord High Admiral Nottingham waited as ‘the great standing gilt cup was ready filled with wine, to name the ship, so soon as she had been on float, according to ancient custom, by drinking part of the wine, giving the ship her name, and heaving the standing cup overboard’.
A cry went up to cut the ropes. The ship groaned, slid forward, reached the dock gates, then shuddered to a halt. Everyone tipped this way and that. The tide was too low. The ship had wedged herself between the gates. People smiled nervously, glancing towards the king for their cue. Tables were consulted. High tide was at 2 a.m. Then they could launch.
Too long for most of them to wait, Henry’s family returned to Westminster, the court flowing in their wake. But Henry had come to launch his flagship and that was what he intended to do.
The prince and his friends waited on board all day and into the night.
Around midnight, a vicious wind sprang up out of nowhere and the vessel stirred as if being jostled by unseen spirits. Pett watched the sudden squall churn and lash the waters, threatening to smash the Prince Royal against the dock. ‘Indirect work’ was to blame, Pett concluded, sending his men to scour the quays for signs of witches or other dark forces. Perhaps weird women stood close by, swirling a cauldron of water, crashing a ship in miniature against its sides.
Then, as high tide came in through the first hours of the morning, they felt the river shift the ship under them. High enough in the dock to squeeze through the gates, the Prince Royal teetered out into the Thames. As Nottingham had gone, Henry christened her himself. He, and his followers, drank off the bumper before throwing the chalice far out into the middle of the river. Then they repaired back to the prince’s cabin, to drink long toasts and plan the great voyages they and his ship would soon make together.
Hours later, the young men emerged back into the early sunlight. Henry ordered a salute from the ship’s sixty-four cannon to announce his presence to the waking city.