xecuting that dangerous Earl of Suffolk whom his father
had left in the Tower, and appointing Queen Catherine to the charge of
his kingdom in his absence. He sailed to Calais, where he was joined by
MAXIMILIAN, Emperor of Germany, who pretended to be his soldier, and who
took pay in his service: with a good deal of nonsense of that sort,
flattering enough to the vanity of a vain blusterer. The King might be
successful enough in sham fights; but his idea of real battles chiefly
consisted in pitching silken tents of bright colours that were
ignominiously blown down by the wind, and in making a vast display of
gaudy flags and golden curtains. Fortune, however, favoured him better
than he deserved; for, after much waste of time in tent pitching, flag
flying, gold curtaining, and other such masquerading, he gave the French
battle at a place called Guinegate: where they took such an unaccountable
panic, and fled with such swiftness, that it was ever afterwards called
by the English the Battle of Spurs. Instead of following up his
advantage, the King, finding that he had had enough of real fighting,
came home again.

The Scottish King, though nearly related to Henry by marriage, had taken
part against him in this war. The Earl of Surrey, as the English
general, advanced to meet him when he came out of his own dominions and
crossed the river Tweed. The two armies came up with one another when
the Scottish King had also crossed the river Till, and was encamped upon
the last of the Cheviot Hills, called the Hill of Flodden. Along the
plain below it, the English, when the hour of battle came, advanced. The
Scottish army, which had been drawn up in five great bodies, then came
steadily down in perfect silence. So they, in their turn, advanced to
meet the English army, which came on in one long line; and they attacked
it with a body of spearmen, under LORD HOME. At first they had the best
of it; but the English recovered themselves so bravely, and fought with
such valour, that, when the Scottish King had almost made his way up to
the Royal Standard, he was slain, and the whole Scottish power routed.
Ten thousand Scottish men lay dead that day on Flodden Field; and among
them, numbers of the nobility and gentry. For a long time afterwards,
the Scottish peasantry used to believe that their King had not been
really killed in this battle, because no Englishman had found an iron
belt he wore about his body as a penance for havi