toiling much at the city of Tournai? For there he came bravely fighting, and laid waste to the city, and there he carried off everything, and God granted to Soos that he should return home. But then for a long time, being well-disposed, he ceased from dismal war and the evil of discord. Now we come to consider how that man counselled others, for he finely performed so many things worthy of memory, being equal in wise judgement even to divine Zeus, like some superhuman person doing all good things.

In 1513, four years after his accession, Henry personally led an invasion of France in conjunction with the Emperor Maximilian, motivated more by the desire to strike a pose as a warrior king and signal his arrival on the European stage than by any concrete military goal. This campaign, launched from Calais, brought about the capture of the towns of Throuanne, which was razed, and Tournai, which Henry sought to incorporate permanently into his realm. Besides the heavy cost of the campaign itself, inflated by the opulence of the style in which the king travelled, large sums were spent over the following years on the garrison of Tournai and on the construction of a new citadel. However, despite Henry's determination to hold onto his prize, as an isolated, landlocked enclave whose inhabitants remained hostile to English rule it was ultimately recognised to be untenable. In 1519 Tournai was sold back to France.

Henry made peace with France in 1514 and returned home, but tension and sporadic violent incidents continued in the vicinity of Calais and Tournai until the settlement which returned Tournai to French control in 1519. War with France soon broke out again, in 1522. However, Henry did not take the field again in person until the Boulogne campaign in 1544.