Qualla: Battle of Gravelines (1558)

Battle of Gravelines (1558): Introduction

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. On 13 July 1558, on sand dunes at the mouth of the Aa river, an English warship fired into the rear of a French army that had no idea Queen Mary's navy was about to enter someone else's battle. Mary I had died-but-not-quite-yet, married to Philip II of Spain, and her ships answered to her husband's flag as readily as to her own. The cannonade from the Channel was the last shove that turned a defeat into a rout. The French Marshal Paul de Thermes was taken prisoner; only 1,500 of his men reached the border. Within months the king who lost him was suing for peace, and within a year Philip II of Spain - widower of one English queen - would marry the dead king's daughter to seal the truce.

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Battle of Gravelines (1558): The Revenge Campaign

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. The Battle of St. Quentin in August 1557 had been a Spanish triumph and a French humiliation. Henry II of France spent the winter recruiting an army of revenge. He gave one column to the Duke of Nevers, asked the Ottoman Sultan for a fleet, and encouraged the Scots to threaten En...

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Battle of Gravelines (1558): Caught Against the River

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit FrDr, CC BY-SA 4.0. Lamoral, Count of Egmont moved faster than anyone expected. The Spanish governor of the Netherlands, Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy, gave him 15,000 infantry and 3,000 cavalry and turned him loose. De Thermes turned to find the Spanish army already on him - and his own position was ...

Image: FrDr | CC BY-SA 4.0

Battle of Gravelines (1558): Cannonades from the Sea

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. The French fired first, and the cavalry of both armies tangled. The Spanish arquebusiers were the difference - better trained, better disciplined, and free to pick targets through the smoke. They peppered the French horse, then fired into the infantry sheltering behind the wagons...

Image: Public domain

Battle of Gravelines (1558): Peace by Marriage

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Coming after St. Quentin, Gravelines made the war financially unwinnable for France. Henry II opened negotiations, and in April 1559 he signed the Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis with Philip II. The clauses included two royal marriages designed to make the peace harder to reverse: Phi...

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Battle of Gravelines (1558): The Last Battle of an Era

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit FrDr, CC BY-SA 4.0. Gravelines was the closing engagement of the long Italian Wars - the sixty-five-year contest between the Valois kings of France and the Habsburg emperors that had begun in 1494 with Charles VIII's march into Naples. Two generations of French dynastic ambition collapsed in the dun...

Image: FrDr | CC BY-SA 4.0