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Was the last battle of the Wars of the Roses fought in France?

Well no, not exactly, so please forgive the shameless clickbait, nevertheless there is a connection between the 16th Century Siege of Marseille, which ended on the 29th of September 1524, and the fratricidal strife that divided England for more than thirty years.

The link is Richard de la Pole, the youngest of Richard III’s nephews and the last prince of the House of York to actively seek the throne of England. Richards oldest brother, John de la Pole, earl of Lincoln, had led the disastrous Lambert Simnel rebellion against Henry VII, which had ended in 1487 at the battle of Stoke Field. John had been killed in the fighting and though his brothers, Edmund and Richard, initially made their peace with the Tudors, the mantle of “White Rose” eventually passed to them.

Image: Marseille in 1584 from the Civitates Orbis Terrarum by Braun and Hogenberg

After a succession of humiliations engineered by Henry VII, Edmund and Richard fled into self-imposed exile. They left England  in the summer of 1501 and for the next five years they tried to persuade the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I, to back another Yorkist rebellion. In 1506 Edmund was betrayed by Maximilian’s son, Philip the Handsome, and sent back to England in chains but Richard escaped to Hungary.

After spending more than 6 years in hiding, Richard accepted offers of French support for a Yorkist restoration and he spent the rest of his life leading French armies in campaigns from Picardy to the Pyrenees. Though Richard served the French king Louis XII, and his successor, Francis I, faithfully for the rest of his life, his cherished dream of recovering England’s throne never materialised.

During his French service, Richard proved himself to be an exceptional infantry commander and he was particularly skilled at handling the unruly German mercenaries known as landsknechts. He also distinguished himself in the bloody hand-to-hand fighting that was a feature of medieval wars but it was a revolt by the duke of Bourbon that took Richard to Marseille.

 Image: Women At The Siege of Marseille, 1909 illustration by Albert Robida

Bourbon and the French king, Francis, had once been close but they had fallen out over the duke’s refusal to marry the king’s widowed mother, Louise of Savoy. The proposed marriage was a clumsy attempt by Francis to seize control of the vast Bourbon wealth but the erstwhile groom saw through the pretence. Bourbon fled to the court of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V, who loathed Francis personally. Charles was busy trying to expel the French from northern Italy and he was happy to provide the rebel duke with an army to depose his rival.

Bourbon invaded Provence from Imperial-held Italy at the beginning of August 1524. The French were taken by surprise and Bourbon was able to capture most of the region’s towns in a largely bloodless campaign but Marseille was a different matter. Bourbon needed Marseille’s harbour so his troops could be resupplied by sea once winter snows closed the Alpine passes but the city was loyal to Francis and her defences were strong. An imperial assault launched on the 15th of August was driven off with heavy casualties on the imperial side, leaving Bourbon with no choice but to try and batter the city in submission.

The imperial artillery bombarded Marseille for the next month. Day and night, the bronze culverins roared but the city’s ancient walls held fast and the imperials did not have everything their own way. Each night, the ladies of the city repaired the damage to the city's walls whilst their menfolk infiltrated Bourbon’s camp to cut the throats of their sleeping enemies. These fearsome assassins apparently wore no clothing and covered themselves in olive oil, which must have been decidedly uncomfortable. No doubt this bizarre practice was designed to give the assassins the edge in any hand-to-hand combat and it certainly weakened imperial morale. Furthermore, whilst the imperials were wrestling with their slippery nemeses, Francis was assembling a powerful army of mercenaries to relieve the city.

Image: an 18th Century engraving showing a breach in Marseille's walls being repaired by the city's women.

“The king [of France], seeing the army of his enemy before Marseille … sent to Switzerland to raise 14,000 men and 6,000 landsknechts, 3,000 under the charge of François, monsieur de Lorraine, and 3,000 under the charge of the duke of Suffolk, the Rose-Blanche, whom I have mentioned several times in these memoires,” wrote the French chronicler Martin du Bellay.

The White Rose is, of course, Richard de la Pole, who had claimed the dukedom of Suffolk after the death of his older brothers, as well as their nom deguerre.

When the loyalist army reached Avignon, Burbon tried a last desperate throw of the dice. On the 24th September he made a rousing speech promising his men that Marseille was ready to open liked a cooked clam. The army cheered, the imperial trumpets sounded the charge but it was all in vain. The city was as strong as ever, crude mines hidden in no man’s land exploded as the imperials ran towards the walls and those that did survive this killing ground were shot to pieces as they tried to raise their ladders. The assault failed, the imperials were broken and Bourbon had to retreat.

“The Lord of Bourbon, feeling the power of the king himself approaching, ordered his retreat and to do this he sent his large artillery to Genoa by sea and had the smaller guns taken to pieces so they could be carried on the backs of mules over roads where it was impossible to drive a cart,” wrote Bellay, but Honoré de Valbelle, a resident of Marseille who watched Bourbon’s withdrawal, tells us that the imperials were so afraid of being surrounded that they buried their cannon to speed their escape.

Bourbon had been defeated at the siege of Marseille but the war was far from over. Francis and his army, which included Richard de la Pole’s landsknecht mercenaries, chased the fleeing imperials all the way back to Italy where another siege, this time at Pavia near Milan, would decide the fate of the French, English and Italian crowns. It is that story forms the climax of The Last Yorkists.

Image: Contemporary portrait of the duke of Bourbon by Jean Clouet c.1520