France; while Wolsey used the occurrence to urge upon Charles that Scotland
required too much attention to allow French expeditions to be practicable.

[Sidenote: 1523 Progress of the war]

With 1523 events took a turn more favourable to Charles. The Duke of
Bourbon, Constable of France, turned against the King, on the ground of
insults more or less fancied, and of a genuine attempt to deprive him of
his inheritance by legal process. The idea was revived in Henry's mind that
in alliance with some of the French nobility he might make himself King of
France as Henry V. had done; so Wolsey had to develop an active policy
against France. His hand being thus forced, the Cardinal devoted his
energies to making the combination against the French King really serious,
coercing Venice into the coalition. The military operations however were
not in train till the autumn; Suffolk, whose military skill was extremely
limited, commanded the English expedition, and marched into the interior
instead of falling on Boulogne as Wolsey had advised; Bourbon did nothing
useful; Charles's troops gave their attention to Fontarabia instead of to a
combined operation. From the English point of view the whole campaign was a
complete fiasco. Wolsey had been set to carry out a policy of which he
disapproved, with instruments of whose incompetence he was fully conscious;
and the results were probably neither better nor worse than what he and the
cooler onlookers like Sir Thomas More expected. The one thing that Wolsey
could do, he had done: he had placed Surrey on the Northern border to deal
with the inevitable return to Scotland of Albany with threats of invasion.
Surrey was successful: Albany having advanced into England was obliged to
fall back, and the border country was subjected to the usual process of
raiding and harrying.

[Sidenote: Election of Pope Clement VII.]