The Siege of Haddington
After centuries of war between the two countries, the policy of
the Tudors was to force a union between England and Scotland. In
the 1540s it seemed a golden opportunity had come. With the death
of Henry VIII in England and James IV in Scotland, both countries
had children on the throne – the sickly Prince Edward in England
and the young Mary Stuart in Scotland.
The Earl of Somerset, Lord Protector of England, saw an arranged
marriage between the infant sovereigns as the way forward.
Initially, the Regent of Scotland, Lord Hamilton Earl of Arran and
Mary of Guise the Queen Dowager agreed. But Cardinal Beaton
persuaded them otherwise and the Scots nobles convened in Stirling
to determine that Mary would be married into the French royal
family. In 1548, the Scots Parliament was convened at Haddington
and passed the Abbey Declaration, an Act of Parliament confirming
the betrothal of Mary to the Dauphin, the heir to the French
throne.
Somerset settled on a policy of subduing Scotland by fortifying
and garrisoning key locations in the country. Haddington, lying
across the main route from the south to the capital was one of his
principal targets. “Most men thynk kepyng Haddington, ye wyne
Skotland.”
The town was fortified using earth walls on the ultra modern
Italian pattern (see “Haddington’s Italian Walls”) under the
direction of Sir Thomas Palmer. On April 18th 1548, Sir William
Grey entered the town with a garrison of 2000 foot and 500 horse.
It was an international force, English soldiers along with German
landsknecht troops, Albanians, Spaniards and Italians.
In June 1548, the French commander, Andre de Montalambert, Sieur
d’Esse, landed at Leith with 6000 troops and many cannon. It was
another international force, Frenchmen alongside Germans, Swiss,
Italians and Spaniards. The French force was under orders to evict
the English from Scotland. Capturing Haddington was just one of
their objectives. It proved the hardest of the nuts they had to
crack.
The Scots Army had been roundly defeated the previous year at
the battle of Pinkie (near Musselburgh) and Scots forces were not
consistent participants in the siege. An irregular, ad hoc force,
Scots turned up in groups, fought for a while and then returned
home. De Beauge, reporting the siege to France said “Scots never
take the field but when forced to arms by necessity…they then seek
out the enemy with all expedition and fight with invincible
courage. This done, and their victuals being consumed, they break
up their camp and retire”. Contingents came from all over Scotland
at various times, including men from Orkney armed in Viking style
and Highlanders “who go almost naked” and who were terrified by
cannon fire.
The siege consisted of prolonged and heavy exchanges of
artillery and arquebus fire (see “The Beaten Steeple”) and fierce
attempts to enter the town (see “The Camisado”). Elements of the
French force were regularly detached for action elsewhere in
Scotland and a complete encirclement of the town could not be
continuously maintained. So there were occasional opportunities for
reinforcements and resupply to be brought into Haddington. And
there were sorties by the garrison – some of them disastrous (see
“Tuesday’s Chase”).
Despite occasional relief, conditions in the town quickly became
terrible – and got worse. Heavy artillery fire destroyed every
building: “Our enemies so beat the town with shot that they left
not one whole house for our men to put their heads in, whereby they
were constrained to lie under the walls”. As provisions ran low,
the troops inside the town “were constrained to eat horses, dogs,
cats and rats…these extremities made them look more like ugly
monsters than human men”.
For the besieging forces the fortifications proved frustratingly
strong. The earth walls absorbed shot and breaches could be easily
repaired from within, often strengthening the original structure.
The design of the fort meant that direct assaults on the walls or
attempts to countermine them were very costly in terms of
casualties.
Eventually it was a third force that brought the siege to an
end. Plague had entered the town and spread rapidly. The garrison
was reduced to fewer than 1000 men, probably at least half of them
already infected. A relief force of 6000 troops was sent from
Berwick under the Earl of Rutland. The French and Scots, without
sufficient numbers to attack the relief column, watched as the
garrison was escorted out, the fortifications levelled and what
remained of Haddington burned to the ground. It was the first day
of October 1549.
Tuesday’s Chase
Once the French and Scots had closed the siege round Haddington
at the end of June 1548, they began a series of assaults and
cannonades, apparently intending to take the fortifications quickly
and move on to their many other objectives in Scotland. The
garrison was urgently in need of reinforcements and resupply by the
middle of July. And there were additional English horse and foot
stationed near Coldingham at a camp on the Pease river.
Sir William Grey, commanding the garrison, had intelligence that
the Scots army were leaving the siege after the defeat of a
concerted attack on the town on Tuesday 14 July. Given the
intermittent involvement of Scots contingents throughout the siege,
there may have been some foundation to this. But Grey seems to have
miscalculated badly, thinking that the whole Scots force was
withdrawing and believing that the French would follow suit. It was
a costly error.
A strong party of horse and foot, including Sir Thomas Palmer
(the principal engineer of the fortifications) and John Brende and
Sir Thomas Holcroft, the captains of large contingents within the
town garrison, was dispatched to the Pease camp on Tuesday 15th
July to link up with the reinforcements.
On the return from the Pease, at Linton (now East Linton) Palmer
was warned that there were enemy troops operating in the area. He
joined forces with 400 horse under Sir John Ellekar and they were
suddenly assaulted by French cavalry. The English force seemed to
be gaining the upper hand but French foot arrived in overwhelming
numbers. With the enemy between them and Haddington, the English
fought on as more troops were drawn in on both sides.
The French account of the battle describes the escalating
engagement. d’Esse had wind of the English sortie and dispatched a
picket of twenty infantry supported by the Earl of Cassils with
fifty horse as an advance party to hold the crossroads. A battalion
of infantry under d’Andelot advanced on the French right while
Count Rhinegrave brought up the Germans with six cannon in support
on the left. Coming up behind them was the Lord d’Etauges with part
of the French cavalry supported by Hume the Laird o’ Duns and his
Border horsemen. d'Esse with the remainder of the French cavalry
was behind them. The strategic situation was catastrophic for the
English and their allies from the start. They had to fight their
way through the enemy to get back to Haddington, with the French
and their allies arriving in successive waves from that very
direction. No wonder that the day declined into disaster.
As the initial engagement proceeded, d’Andelot took two hundred
arquebusiers and pretended to retreat. As part of the English
forces advanced, the French turned, formed line and delivered a
devastating volley. D’Etauges and the Laird o’ Duns brought their
cavalry in to charge the Albanian mercenaries who were on the
English flank. And the French artillery was firing continuously,
adding to the slaughter. Finally, d’Esse arrived with the rest of
the French cavalry and, joining forces with d’Etauges and Hume
charged the English flank already weakened by the loss of the
Albanians.
The French claimed eight hundred English killed and more than
two thousand captured in the battle. Palmer was among those
captured; and Brende and Holcroft finally decided to try to break
off the action and retreat to Haddington. They were immediately
fallen on by the Germans under Rhinegrave and “Tuesday’s Chase”
ensued - the English force harried the whole way back with the loss
of seven or eight hundred more captured or killed, including almost
all their cavalry. Brende wrote later “of 300 demilances but 36 fit
for service, of 450 light horse not 100”.
And yet it was not the end. For only two days later, Lord
Shrewsbury came north from Berwick and entered Haddington with 5000
new reinforcements. “The rest to follow as I have signified,” as he
wrote to Somerset. Despite the losses of the battle and “Tuesday’s
Chase”, the siege would continue for another 17 months.
The cache is close to the bridge and the Linton crossroads in
the area where the escalating battle which led to the Chase was
fought.