Episode 4

​History Documentary
The Nitwit King - Thomas Wolsey Backs France. The Battle of Pavia, in An Old Tales of Wives.

Charles V, King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor, had not made Wolsey Pope as Wolsey said he pledged he would.
Wolsey was aggrieved, conned, so he continued his secret negotiations with France to gain King Francis’s support for his ambitions for the papacy.
Henry is oblivious. The King believes he is fighting with the Emperor against France.
Wolsey cuts the money supply to Charles Bourbon, who is leading the invasion of southern France. Wolsey refuses to cross the channel and attack from the north, and so create a second front.
King Francis knows precisely what is going on; he is in league with the Cardinal and uses the time to rebuild his own army.
By the time he reached Marseille, Bourbon had run out of money and was forced to abandon the invasion and flee back over the Alps to where he had recently come from. His invasion strategy was in tatters.
Close behind him over the mountains was Francis’s rebuilt army. The King of France, leading in-person, chased Bourbon and his forces back to Pavia.
But in a remarkable twist of fate, when victory seemed inevitable for Wolsey and his French cohorts, Francis was captured during the Battle of Pavia.
Wolsey’s actions in the defeat of France had a dramatic effect on the history of England.

1525 and not a sign of Ann Boleyn, not even on the distant horizon.

The Players
Henry VIII, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, Charles V of Spain Holy Roman Emperor, Francis King of France, Catherine of Aragon,  Marguerite de Navarre, aka, Marguerite of Angoulême, Battle of Pavia, Louise of Savoy, Charles de Bourbon, Richard Pace, Charles Brandon, The Reformation