SE Academic Review 2023

70 ST EDWARD’S, OXFORD

When Edward VI re-asserted his authority in 1471 with the defeat of Clarence, he pursued an aggressive policy towards France; the alliance with Burgundy and landing at Calais in 1475 was the starkest piece of Anglo-French conflict since 1453. It was the first attempt at a resurrection of the Hundred Years War, and one that promised in theory more than it ever hoped to deliver in practice (Horspool, 2017, pp. 112-113). As one of the five dukes of the campaign, Richard was given the largest contingent of the 20,000 men who made up the largest English expedition to France yet seen (Ross, 1988, p. 34). He could have been forgiven, says David Horspool, for thinking ‘he was about to take part in a glorious new chapter in the Hundred Years War’ (Horspool, p. 113). Yet Richard witnessed the diplomatic failures of Edward’s plan that would curse him in more than a decade’s time. Relying on an alliance with the Duke of Burgundy, Edward’s hopes of being crowned King of France at Rheims were dashed by the Duke’s withdrawal of meaningful support. Rather than continue the expedition, Edward resorted to diplomacy. A tacit search for peace was made through diplomatic channels, culminating in the Treaty of Picquigny of August 1475. Edward was granted a generous pension by the French, in return for the removal of his forces from France (Horspool, 2017, p. 114). The fate of English aggression now seemed to lie in compromise and agreement. The irony of the occasion was sharp: Richard stayed two nights at Agincourt, where his great-uncle had been killed 60 years earlier. Nothing like the same victory would be attempted again. At home as well, the ‘idea of an aggressive foreign war was a good deal less popular than it had once been’ (Ross, 1997, p. 207). Richard was unmistakably disappointed by the failure of the English expedition in 1475, and saw the revival of English authority in northern France as a

foreign policy priority for his rule when he came to the throne eight years later. He was ‘conspicuously absent’ from the meeting on the bridge of Picquigny, seen to ‘have disapproved of Edward IV’s intention to use the campaign to seek diplomatic and financial advantages rather than military glory’ (Ross, 1988, p. 34). Contemporary observer Philippe de Commynes records his absence on the basis of Richard’s being ‘averse to the treaty’, and Richard was known to have felt the betrayal of Burgundy implicit in the deal at Picquigny ‘particularly deeply’ (Grant, 1993, p. 98). As a result, he was relatively unproven as a military leader by 1483 and proving oneself as a military ruler, especially over foreign adversaries, was the simple mark of success for a 15th-century monarch. Richard’s broad motives, based on the principle of aggression rather than diplomacy, earned him the dangerous reputation abroad, which the suspicious usurpation of 1483 only enhanced (Ross, 1988, p. 192). For French, Breton and Scottish rulers thereafter, Richard was abrasive, dangerous and unreliable; the state of Anglo-French relations suffered accordingly. His aims were deemed, correctly, to fit into the same framework of intermittent attacks and antagonistic coalitions which had been the constant of English foreign policy for the last century and a half. When he did come to power, therefore, it was in this mindset that foreign powers were prepared to act, and with the same motives that France and Scotland were prepared to sort the domestic troubles of the Wars of the Roses for themselves. Ultimately, the inability of Richard to shift this perception determined his eventual encirclement and made what happened at Bosworth at all possible. Continuing Anglo-French aggression was a feature of his upbringing, and it was a factor taken for granted, until the victory at Bosworth in 1485 secured in England the triumph on French soil that had happened in 1453.

“ Proving oneself as a military ruler, especially over foreign adversaries, was the simple mark of success for a 15th century monarch. ”