Yet the first act of Henry's reign was ominous of future cruelty and ruthlessness. Knowing the unpopularity of his father's harsh and extortionate but faithful servants, Empson and Dudley, he cast them into prison, and had them attainted by Parliament on a preposterous charge of treason. They were well hated, and the people saw their heads fall with joy, not reflecting on the character of a king who could deliberately slay his father's councillors merely to win popular applause. [Sidenote: =Foreign policy.--The Holy League.=] Henry retained most of his father's old ministers in office, but he instantly reversed his father's policy of non-intervention in the wars of the continent. He had not long been seated on the throne when he joined the "Holy League," a confederacy formed against France by Pope Julius II., in which both those old intriguers, the Emperor Maximilian and King Ferdinand of Aragon, were already enlisted (1511). Henry might have left them to fight their own battles for the mastery of Italy and Flanders, but he was burning to assert his power in Europe and to win military distinction. His arms were fairly fortunate. A first attack on the south of France failed, but he met with considerable success in 1513, when he landed at Calais with 25,000 men, took the towns of Tournay and Térouanne, and routed the French army of the North at an engagement called "the Battle of the Spurs," from the haste with which the French knights urged their horses out of the fray. Finding his armies losing ground both in Italy and in Flanders, King Lewis XII. sought peace from Henry, and obtained it at the cheap price of paying 100,000 crowns, and marrying the Princess Mary, the young English monarch's favourite sister (1514). These easy terms were granted because Henry found that his two wily allies, Ferdinand and Maximilian, had no intention of helping him, and were bent purely on their own aggrandisement. The alliance with Lewis was not to have much duration, for within a year he was dead--killed, as the chroniclers assert, by the late hours and high living which his gay young English queen persuaded him to adopt. His widow soon dried her tears, and married Sir Charles Brandon, one of her brother's favourite companions, whom Henry, to grace the match, decorated with the ill-omened title of Duke of Suffolk, the spoil of the unhappy de la Poles. From this union sprang one who was to sit for a brief moment on the English throne.[31] [Sidenote: =Scottish war.=] Ere the French treaty had been made, a short stirring episode of war had taken place on England's northern frontier. King James IV. of Scotland had certain border feuds to settle with the English, and thought he might best take his revenge while Henry and his army were over-seas in Flanders. So he suddenly declared war, and crossed the Tweed into Northumberland. [Sidenote: =Battle of Flodden.=]