The pacific policy of the first years of the reign did not last long. The young king felt the need of martial glory, of emulating the fifth Henry, of making himself talked about and enrolling his name on the list of conquerors who, in return for plaguing mankind, have been deified by them. It is useless to look for any statesmanlike purpose in the war provoked with France and Scotland, but in the purpose for which he set out Henry was brilliantly successful: the French were so quickly routed near Guinegate [Sidenote: August 13, 1513] that the action has been known in history as the Battle of the Spurs. While the king was still absent in France and his queen regent in England, his lieutenants inflicted a decisive defeat on the Scots [Sidenote: September] and slew their king, James IV, at Flodden. England won nothing save military glory by these campaigns, for the invasion of France was at once abandoned and that of Scotland not even undertaken. [Sidenote: Wolsey, c. 1475-1530] The gratification of the national vanity redounded the profit not only of Henry but of his minister, {280} Thomas Wolsey. A poor man, like the other tools of the Tudor despot, he rose rapidly in church and state partly by solid gifts of statesmanship, partly by baser arts. By May, 1515, Erasmus described him as all-powerful with the king and as bearing the main burden of public affairs on his shoulders, and fifteen years later Luther spoke of him as "the demigod of England, or rather of Europe." His position at home he owed to his ability to curry favor with the king by shouldering the odium of unpopular acts. [Sidenote: May, 1521] When the Duke of Buckingham was executed for the crime of standing next in succession to the throne, Wolsey was blamed; many people thought, as it was put in a pun attributed to Charles V, that "it was a pity so noble a _buck_ should have been slain by such a hound." Wolsey lost the support of the nobles by the pride that delighted to humble them, and of the commons by the avarice that accumulated a corrupt fortune. But, though the rich hated him for his law in regard to enclosures, and the poor for not having that law enforced, he recked little of aught, knowing himself secure under the royal shield.