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THE DIVINE HISTORY OF JESUS CHRIST

BIOGRAPHYCAL UNIVERSAL LIBRARY

 

 

THE CREATION IF THE UNIVERSE ACCORDING GENESIS
 
 

 

RICHARD THE LION HEART

 

BOOK I . RICHARD OF AQUITAINE , 1157-1189

CHAPTER III.

KING HENRY’S HEIR.

1183-1189

 

It was into the life of Richard himself that his brother’s death brought the most important change. He was now the eldest son of Henry II, heir to the headship of the houses of Anjou and Normandy and to the crown of England. Some readjustment of his feudal relations both with his father and with the King of France would seem to be a probable consequence of this change in his prospects. Henry was not likely to repeat the mistake which he had made thirteen years before in crowning his heir; but Richard might naturally expect that the other measures which had been taken to secure the Angevin and Norman heritages for young Henry would be renewed in his own behalf. He was evidently quite unprepared for the step which his father actually took. In September or October Henry summoned him to Normandy, and on his arrival “bade him grant the duchy of Aquitaine to his brother John and receive John’s homage for it.”

In all Henry’s plans for the future of his dynasty there was assumed a fundamental principle, implied rather than expressed, because (to him at least) too self-evident to need expression : that the territories which he had inherited from his parents, Anjou, Normandy, and England, must remain united under the direct control of the head of the family. Any deviation from this principle would, he saw, endanger the stability of the Angevin dominion, for it would be a breaking-up of the foundation on which that dominion was based. The devolution of Aquitaine and of Britanny to junior branches of the Angevin house, under the overlordship of its head, would not involve the same danger; and thus after his agreement with Conan of Britanny in 1166 Henry had ready to his hand the means of making a fair and substantial provision for two younger sons; but when a fourth son was born, he saw so little chance of being able to provide for the child on anything like the same scale that he at once called him “John Lackland,” and, it seems, placed him when little more than a twelvemonth old as an oblate in the abbey of Fontevraud. At the age of six years, however, if not sooner, John was brought back to his father’s court, and in the next ten years scheme after scheme for his future was planned by Henry, but without success. Now at last, just when John had reached an age at which he must have begun to feel keenly the difference between his prospects and those of Richard and Geoffrey, the death of the eldest brother opened a possible way— possible at least in Henry’s eyes—for redressing this inequality. We cannot tell what was the precise form of the proposition made by Henry to Richard; but if the report of it given by a contemporary English chronicler be correct, it clearly involved a tacit, if not an explicit, recognition of Richard as heir to the headship of the royal house of England and Anjou, and, as such, to the overlordship of the whole of the Angevin dominions, including Aquitaine. The chronicler’s words do not, on the other hand, necessarily or even probably imply that Henry contemplated an immediate transfer of the fief which he desired Richard to “grant” to John. John was not yet seventeen; he seems to have been brought up partly in England, partly in Normandy; it would have been sheer madness to think of setting him to take the command of affairs in a country which the united energies of Richard and of Henry himself scarcely sufficed to keep under control. In all likelihood the settlement which the king desired to make had reference, like that of 1183 1169, wholly to the future, and was designed to confirm the earlier settlement, only with a change of persons; as Richard must take the place of the dead Henry, John was to take the place of Richard.

The execution of this project required the consent of two persons : Richard and the King of France. Richard’s consent proved harder to win than Henry seems to have expected. There was a fundamental though unexpressed difference between the views taken by the father and the son of the place actually held by the son in Aquitaine. Henry’s intention apparently had been from the outset, and was still, that Aquitaine should during his own lifetime be governed by his son—whether Richard or John—as his representative, and after his death should become an under­fief of the Angevin dominion—as Britanny already was—in the hands of that same son and his heirs. Unluckily he had allowed one part of this intention to be obscured, and in practice well-nigh defeated, by his anxiety to secure the fulfilment of the other part. From Henry’s point of view, Richard in 1183 was simply his homager for the county of Poitou, his lieutenant over the rest of the duchy, heir to the whole of it when he himself should die, and, after young Henry’s death, heir also to the headship of the royal house of England, Normandy and Anjou. But Richard could, and did in effect, claim to be already duke of Aquitaine in his own right, by virtue of his homage to France and his investiture at Limoges. Moreover, Eleanor’s duchy held a different place in the estimation of her son—the son who from his infancy had been her recognized heir—from that which it held in the estimation of her husband. Henry looked upon it as a mere appendage to his ancestral territories; Richard looked upon it as his own especial possession, and a possession which ought to rank in the future, as it always had ranked in the past, on a footing of equality with them. The same feeling which made Henry shrink from reducing the heritage of Geoffrey Plantagenet or that of Maud of Normandy to the position of an underfief would make Richard shrink from contemplating a like alteration in the status of the heritage of his mother. The tragedy of the last summer and the sudden change in his own prospects had so far chastened his impetuous temper that he did not at once refuse his father’s demand, but asked for two or three days delay that he might consult with friends before giving a reply. Then he withdrew from the court; at nightfall he mounted his horse, and rode southward with all speed, sending word to his father that “he would never grant Poitou to be held by anyone but himself.”

At the Christmas feast, which he kept at Talmont—a favourite hunting seat of the Poitevin counts, on the coast near La Rochelle—Richard “showed himself lavish in the distribution of gifts.” Some of these were probably rewards to vassals who had kept their allegiance during the recent war; others may have purchased the withdrawal from the country, or the permanent enlistment under the ducal banner, of some of the mercenary leaders whom it was needful to dispose of in one way or the other, if the ducal government was to be carried on at all. The various bands of Routiers, left suddenly without employers by the submission of Aimar of Limoges, the death of young Henry, and the collapse of the league, had scattered in all directions. Raymond “the Brown” seemingly went into the Angoumois; on August 10 (1183) he was slain at Chateauneuf. One large body under Curbaran swept across Berry into the Orleanais, only to be almost destroyed at Chateaudun on July 30 by the “Peace­makers,” a sworn brotherhood formed among the country folk to resist the marauders and restore peace to the land. Curbaran himself was among the prisoners, who were all hanged. Sancho was still in the Limousin with his followers; and Curbaran’s place seems to have been taken by a man who in the “tongue of oc” bore the name of “Lo Bar,”  a name which, transmuted by northern speakers into “Louvrekaire” or “Lupicar,” was in later days to be closely associated with the last struggle of the Angevins to keep their hold on Normandy. The privilege of private warfare, which was the most cherished birthright of the barons of Aquitaine, enabled Aimar of Limoges to supply Lobar and Sancho and “ a countless host” with occupation which they supplemented by harrying monasteries from Yssandon to Orleans, and ravaging “ the king of England’s lands ” in the Limousin and La Marche. Richard evidently suspected, perhaps knew, that in this last matter the hand of Aimar was with them. It is at this juncture that the most famous of all the Routiers of the period, Mercadier, first appears in Richard’s service. “Under the protection of the duke Mercadier and his troop dashed across Aimar’s territory, and on the first day of the second week of Lent (1184) cruelly ravaged the town of Excideuil and its suburbs are almost the last words that have come down to us from the chronicler who thus far has been our chief authority for the history of Aquitaine under duke Richard.

Henry meanwhile had come to an agreement with the king of France which was likely to have an important influence on the future of Richard and of his duchy. On December 6, 1183, the two kings held a conference, and Henry did a thing which he had never before consented to do : he did homage to Philip for “all his territories on the French side of the sea.” Philip’s acceptance of this homage constituted a legal recognition on his part, as lord paramount, of Henry as—among other things—duke of Aquitaine. The kings then proceeded to make a new settlement about the dowry of young Henry’s widow. As she was childless, that portion of it which was in the hands of her father-in-law—Gisors and the rest of the Norman Vexin—legally reverted to France on her husband’s death. Philip, however, in consideration of an annuity to be paid by Henry to Margaret, “ quit­claimed Gisors to the English king, so that he might give it to whichever of his sons he should choose, with the French king’s other sisteAloysia. Henry evidently hoped to keep Aloysia and her dowry by substituting John for Richard as her bridegroom, and thus to facilitate the winning of Philip’s assent to the further substitution of John for Richard as heir of Aquitaine. Richard was probably quite willing to relinquish his personal claim upon Aloysia; there is no indication that he had ever cared for her; and on the other hand there are indications that about this time he formed an attachment to another maiden of royal birth, Berengaria of Navarre. On the subject of Aquitaine, however, he was immoveable. In vain Henry alternately besought and commanded him to grant “ if not the whole of Aquitaine, at least a part of it,” to John. Richard’s answer was always the same : never, so long as he lived, would he give any part of the duchy to anyone. At last, in a burst of anger, Henry gave John leave to “ lead an army into Richard’s land and get what he wanted from his brother by fighting him.” The words were probably uttered without thought of their consequences, in a fit of ungovernable impatience at Richard’s obduracy; but John was quite ready to take them literally, and knew that his next brother, Geoffrey—who had been formally reconciled to his father and to Richard in July 1183—both could and would supply him with means for his purpose. No sooner had the king returned to England in June 1184 than Geoffrey and John collected “ a great host ” and marched plundering and burning into Richard’s land. Henry, when he learned what was going on, per­emptorily summoned all the three to England, brought them to a public reconciliation in November, and then sought to dispose for a while of Geoffrey where he could make no further mischief between the two others, by sending him, not back to Britanny, but to Normandy, as a nominal assistant to the officers who were in charge of that duchy. It was not till after Christmas that Richard received permission to return to Poitou. He crossed from Dover to Wissan;  whether on his way through Normandy and Anjou he met Geoffrey—who was certainly the evil genius of the family—and what may have passed between them if he did, we know not; we only know that on April 16 Henry himself went back to Normandy, and straightway “ gathered a great host to subdue his son Richard, who had fortified Poitou against him and attacked his brother Geoffrey, contrary to the king’s prohibition.”

Henry’s military preparations were in reality only a part of a new scheme which he had devised for making Richard surrender Poitou. In the preceding June (1184) Queen Eleanor, after eleven years of captivity, had been released by her husband’s order and permitted to join their eldest daughter and her husband the duke of Saxony, now for the second time driven into exile. At the end of April (1185) Henry sent for her, and also for their daughter and son-in-law, to join him in Normandy; and when they arrived, he sent instructions to his son Richard that he should without delay surrender the whole of Poitou with its appurtenances to his mother Queen Eleanor, because it was her heritage; and he added that if Richard in any way delayed to fulfil this command, he was to know for certain that the queen his mother would make it her own business to ravage the land with a great host. And Richard, when he had heard his father’s command, yielded to the wholesome advice of his friends; and laying down the arms of iniquity, returned with all meekness to his father, and surrendered all Poitou, with his castles and fortresses, to his mother.

Henry’s scheme seemed to be on the verge of success. Richard had at last been induced to surrender, nominally to his mother, but practically to his father—for Eleanor was clearly a mere cipher in the matter—the fief for which he was his father’s homager, and which was the material basis of the ducal power over all Aquitaine; he had set his father free to make a new grant of that fief to whomsoever he would. If a grant of it were made to John, with the sanction of the lord paramount, Richard would soon be unable to stand his ground in the duchy, should he even attempt to do so. For the time being Richard was utterly passive. It was his nature to do nothing by halves, and his submission seems to have been as wholehearted as his defiance had been; “he remained,” says an English chronicler with evident admiration, “with his father as an obedient son.” Henry kept him in suspense for eleven months. Then, on March 10, 1186, the two kings held another conference, and the treaty made in December 1183 was confirmed, but with a modification of one article. In 1184 Henry had either made overtures, or readily accepted overtures made to him, for a marriage between Richard and a daughter of the Emperor; but the maiden had died before the end of the year. This project had been succeeded by another whose originator is most likely to have been Richard himself; it can hardly have been at any other time than during his brief period of freedom from his engagement to Aloysia that he received a promise of Berengaria’s hand from her father, King Sancho. His inclination, however, was over-ridden by his father’s imperious will and by the exigencies of the family policy. If Philip knew or suspected anything of Henry’s projects for John, he was probably keen-witted enough to perceive their futility and to prefer running no risk of a family alliance with a Lackland. On the other hand, the retention of Aloysia’s dower-lands was a matter of interest to Henry’s heir as well as to Henry himself. The sequel was to show that Henry had no real intention of marrying Aloysia to either of his sons; he may therefore have privately intimated to Richard that the sacrifice now required of him was only temporary. At any rate, in the treaty with Philip as ratified on March 10, 1186, it was distinctly stated that Aloysia and use her dowry, the Vexin, were to be given to the bridegroom for whom she had been originally destined, Richard.

An agreement with France was at that moment especially important for Henry because he was anxious to return to England. He began his preparations for departure over sea by making some changes in the custody of his various demesne lands and castles; in particular, he appointed new castellans of his own choosing to the charge of the principal fortresses of Aquitaine. It was hardly possible for Richard not to feel hurt by this measure, yet his father met with no complaint from him. Suddenly the king again changed his mind, or at least his policy. We cannot tell whether he was moved by Richard’s unwonted meekness, or whether some unrecorded occurrence opened his eyes to a fact which in all likelihood Richard’s southern counsellors, when they advised the young duke to accede to his father’s demand, foresaw would be made manifest ere long : the fact that Richard was the only person who could preserve anything like administrative order and political security in Aquitaine when Henry himself was out of reach. We only know that at the end of April the king entrusted to his son Richard an infinite sum of money, bidding him go and subdue his enemies under him, and then himself sailed for England, taking the queen with him.

Richard’s surrender of Poitou was thus practically annulled. It may have been merely verbal, so that no formal act was necessary to reinstate him as count. The particular enemies whom he was to subdue are not named, but it seems plain that the chief of them was Raymond of Toulouse; for Richard straightway departing (from Normandy) collected a great multitude of knights and foot soldiers, with which he invaded the lands of the count of S. Gilles and not only ravaged, but conquered, the greater part of them. Geography suggests that the part of Raymond’s lands which Richard conquered at this time was probably the northern part, that is, the Quercy, where Richard as suzerain had already had to chastise more than one of Raymond’s subfeudataries; and this inference is strengthened by later indications. Raymond, helpless before the sudden violence of the duke’s onset, fled from place to place and despatched messenger after messenger to their common overlord, King Philip, imploring succour from France. Philip, however, was just then in no mind to quarrel openly with the king of England or his son; it suited him better to plot secretly with one of the younger sons against the father and the eldest son, and this was what he was actually doing with Geoffrey when in August their plotting was cut short by Geoffrey’s death. A question at once arose whether Henry, the immediate overlord of Britanny, or Philip, the lord paramount, should be guardian of Geoffrey’s child. An embassy sent from England to treat with Philip on this subject met with a very uncivil reception, and went back accompanied by two French knights charged with a message to Henry that he must expect no security from attack in Normandy unless Count Richard of Poitou ceased to molest the count of S. Gilles. What Raymond had done to excite the wrath of both Henry and Richard we are not told, but it is clear that Henry did not disapprove Richard’s proceedings; he made no attempt to check them, and did not return to Normandy till February of the next year. Richard met him at Aumale, and accompanied him on Low Sunday, April 5, to a conference with Philip “from which they withdrew without hope of peace or concord, on account of the intolerable demands made by the king of France. These demands were, first, that he should receive Richard’s homage for the county of Poitou; and secondly, that Aloysia and her dowry, Gisors, should be restored to France.

However intolerable these demands might be to Henry, they were in themselves not unreasonable. Richard seems to have been personally not unwilling to comply with the first condition; he had when a boy been made to do homage to Louis VII, and probably saw no reason for not doing the same to Louis’s successor. Henry, however, was resolved that the homage should not be done, and while ostensibly leaving the matter in Richard’s hands, made him put it off from day to day. The second condition was a natural consequence of the fact that although more than twelve months had passed since the explicit renewal of Richard’s engagement to Aloysia, there was still no sign of any preparations for their marriage. On this point Henry and Richard were probably at one. At a somewhat later time a horrible reason was assigned—seemingly by persons whose testimony had weight enough to carry conviction to both Richard and Philip—for Henry’s obstinate non-compliance with Philip’s demands for either Aloysia’s marriage or the restoration of her person together with her dowry. As yet, however, Richard at least evidently did not suspect his father of being actuated by any worse motives than, as regards the former alternative, consideration for Richard’s own disinclination to make Aloysia his wife; and as regards the latter alternative, a reluctance, which Richard himself could not but share, to loose the Angevin hold on Gisors.

Seeing that he could get no satisfaction by negotiation, Philip prepared for war. Marching from the French part of Berry into the Aquitanian part, he seized Issoudun and Graçay and advanced upon Chateauroux. It is doubtful whether Henry and Richard set out together to check him, or whether Henry sent forward Richard and John, each at the head of a body of troops, to defend Chateauroux till he himself could join them. At any rate, by midsummer the combined action of father and sons had caused Philip to raise the siege and decide upon trying his fortune against them in the open field. On the eve of S. John the two armies were drawn up facing each other in battle array, ready to engage next morning. At the last moment, however, the kings made a truce and withdrew each to his own domains. Two English authorities assign the most important part in the preliminary negotiations to Richard. According to Gervase of Canterbury the first overtures came from the French side, and were addressed to the count of Poitou; Count Philip of Flanders contrived to get speech with him and urged upon him the importance, for his own future interest, of making a friend of the king of France; after some discussion Richard followed Flanders back through the French lines to the tent of Philip Augustus, held a long private colloquy with him, and at length returned, with his mind at rest, to his own comrades in arms. He had gone without his father’s knowledge; Henry, when he heard of the incident, sus­pected that it meant treachery, not peace, and sent a request to some of the French nobles that they would come and confer with himself. They complied; he commissioned them to ask Philip for a truce of two years, on the plea of a vow of Crusade; Philip consented, but when his consent was announced Henry declared he had changed his mind—he would have no truce. Philip on hearing this ordered an attack at break of day. Henry grew alarmed; the mid­summer daybreak was very near, for it was already past midnight, when he hurriedly called his son. “What shall we do ? what counsel dost thou give me? ” “What counsel can I give,” said Richard, “when thou hast refused the truce which yesterday thou desiredst? We cannot ask for it again now without great shame.” Moved, however, by his father’s evident distress, he offered to face the shame. He went; he found Philip already armed for battle; bare-headed he knelt before him, offered him his sword, and  begged him for a truce, promising that if Henry should break it in any way he, Count Richard, would submit his own person in Paris to the judgement of the French king. On this condition Philip gave a reluctant consent to the truce. Gerald of Wales, on the other hand, represents the first advances as having been made by Henry in a letter to Philip proposing peace on the following terms : that Aloysia should be given in marriage to John, with the counties of Poitou and Anjou and all the other territories held by Henry of the French king, except Normandy, which was to remain united to England as the heritage of the eldest son. Philip sent the letter to Richard, who, when he had mastered its contents, was naturally moved to deep indignation on learning that his father was thus scheming to deprive him of the larger part of his heritage at a time when they were actually in camp together and he was loyally fulfilling his duties as vassal and son. Caring no longer to fight for his father against Philip, he seized an opportunity which presented itself at the moment to bring about a truce.

Neither of these two accounts seems to imply that Richard at Chateauroux acted otherwise than loyally and in good faith towards his father. In one of them, however, the father is distinctly charged with plotting behind his son’s back to deprive him of half his inheritance. The proposal which Henry is said to have made to Philip is indeed utterly at variance with the policy implied in all his previous arrangements for the future of his dynasty; it is a proposal to disintegrate the foundations of the edifice which he had been building up all his life, by putting asunder what the marriage of his parents had joined together, Anjou and Normandy. We are not told whether it provided that John should hold his share of the Angevin territories under his brother’s overlordship, or not. If it did, its fulfilment would have reduced the original Angevin patrimony to the rank of a mere underfief; if not, the scheme would seem to imply nothing short of a deliberate intention on Henry’s part of rending in twain with his own hands the dominion which he had been for thirty years labouring to weld together into a solid whole. Yet that Henry would, if he could, willingly have gone as far as this or even farther, in his infatuated partiality for John, seems to be the only possible explanation of his attitude, or rather of his endless shifts and changes of attitude, towards both Richard and Philip through the six years which followed the death of the young king. When the end came, he himself summed up the tragic story of those years in one significant sentence : “For the sake of John’s advancement I have brought upon me all these ills.” His paternal affection had been concentrated mainly upon two of his sons, the eldest and the youngest; after young Henry’s death it was concentrated upon John alone; Richard, though of all the four he was certainly the least unworthy, seems never to have enjoyed more than a com­paratively small share of it. The story of the letter may have been a fiction, or the letter may have been a forgery; but whether the falsehood—if there be one—were Gerald’s or Philip’s, it was a lie which was half a truth.

The formal terms of the truce—which was to last for two years—were arranged by the papal legate then resident in France, and some other men of religion acting on the orders of the Pope and the advice of the faithful men of both kings. When the agreement was signed, the French king,  by way of showing to all men that concord was attained, invited Richard to accompany him to Paris. Richard accepted the invitation; and he stayed so long, and—so at least it was reported—on terms of such close and affectionate intimacy with Philip that Henry marvelled what this might be, and delayed his intended journey to England till he should know what would be the outcome of this sudden friendship between his overlord and his son. He sent messenger after messenger to call Richard back, promising to do all that might be justly required of him. Richard answered that he was coming, but instead of doing so he went to Chinon, where the treasure of Anjou was kept; in spite of the treasurer’s opposition he carried off all the treasure that he found there—which indeed is not likely to have been much—proceeded with it into Poitou, and there used it to fortify or revictual his castles. His contumacy, however, as usual, did not last long. His father ceased not to send messengers to him till they brought him back; and when he came, he submitted to his father in all things and was penitent for having consented to the evil counsels of those who strove to sow discord between them. So they came both together to Angers; and there the son became his father’s obedient man, and swore on the holy Gospels, before many witnesses, fealty to him against all men; and he swore also that he would not go against his father’s counsel.

Early in November Richard was at, or near, Tours, when suddenly the tidings of an event which had occurred in Holy Land four months before changed the whole current of his aspirations and desires. On July 7 the Saracens under Saladin had won a great victory at Hattin over the Latin king of Jerusalem, Guy of Lusignan, and captured not only Guy himself, but also the most sacred relic in all Christendom, the relic of the Holy Cross. This news arrived in France about the end of October or beginning of November. It came to Richard’s ears—so the story goes—one evening; his resolve was made at once and with his whole heart; early next morning he received the Cross from the hand of Archbishop Bartholomew. When Henry, who seems to have been in Normandy, was informed of his son’s action, he appeared exceedingly perturbed, and for several days would scarcely see anyone. Not a word of comment on the matter, however, passed his lips till Richard rejoined him. Then, after a few days, he said : “Thou shouldst by no means have undertaken so weighty a business without consulting me. Nevertheless, I will not oppose thy pious design, but will so further it that thou mayest fulfill it right well.” Philip on the other hand was quick to seize the opportunity for bringing up again the matter of Gisors and Aloysia. That Aloysia’s plighted bridegroom should betake himself to far-off Holy Land while that question was still unsettled was a thing not to be tolerated; so Philip gathered a great host and threatened that he would harry all the English king’s lands on the French side of the sea unless either Gisors were surrendered or Richard married to Aloysia without more ado. Henry, on hearing this, hurried back from the Norman coast to the border for a meeting with Philip at Hilarytide. Their conference was interrupted by the arrival of the Archbishop of Tyre, who had come to Europe to plead as only one who had personal knowledge of the state of affairs in Holy Land could plead, for a Crusade to check the advance of Saladin. Carried away by his appeal, both kings took the Cross and separated to prepare for the enterprise on which they agreed to set out together at the next Easter twelvemonth; that is, Easter 1190.

Whether Richard had been present at the conference does not appear; he was, however, at Le Mans with his father a few days afterwards, when Henry issued the ordinance for the “Saladin tithe” to raise money for the Crusade. The kings might require a delay of fifteen months to make their preparations; but the count of Poitou had no mind to be so long detained from fulfilling his vow. He now came to his father with two requests. First, he begged that the king would either lend him money for his expedition on the security of the county of Poitou, or would give him leave to raise the needful sum by pledging that county to some safe and trustworthy man known to be loyal to both father and son, and would confirm the transaction by a royal charter. Secondly, he prayed that “forasmuch as the journey that lay before him was long and perilous, lest aught should be maliciously plotted to his disadvantage during such a lengthy absence” he might be permitted to receive the fealty of the nobles of England and of Henry’s continental lands, “saving in all things the fealty due to his father.” To the former of these requests Henry answered that his son should go to Palestine with him; they would have in common all things needful for their journey, and “nought should separate them but death.” No answer could Richard get but this, which in regard to his second request was tantamount to a refusal. Yet he had asked nothing beyond what was natural and reasonable; nothing, indeed, beyond what he might have fairly expected to receive without needing to ask for it. A public confirmation of the rights of King Henry’s eldest surviving son as heir to the crown of England and to the headship of the house of Anjou, such as would safeguard those rights until the son’s return from Holy Land in case the father should die before the Crusade was over, was a measure of obvious prudence not merely for the personal interest of the heir but also for the security of the Angevin dominion as a whole. Henry’s obstinate silence when the measure was suggested to him was one more indication that his sense of right and his care for the future of his house were both alike obscured by his infatua­tion for John. Richard understood it only too well, and “ finding that he could get no other answer, he departed from his father in heart as well as in body.”

No considerations either of policy or of self-interest, however, had any influence on his resolve to fulfil his vow without delay. While his father returned to England, he hurried back to Poitou, sent messengers to his brother-in-law, King William of Sicily, to expedite arrangements for the equipment of the ships needful for his voyage, and busied himself with preparations for setting out in the coming summer. But his plans were checked by a new outbreak of revolt. Geoffrey of Lusignan, it is said, laid an ambush for one of Richard’s most intimate friends and treacherously put him to death. Richard of course marched against Geoffrey, and punished him by taking several of his castles and slaughtering a number of his men, only those being spared who purchased their lives by taking the Cross. Geoffrey’s outrage proved to be part of a concerted rising which ran what had now become the ordinary course of an Aquitanian revolt. The rebels, headed as usual by Aimar of Angouleme and Geoffrey of Rancogne, harried the domains of the count of Poitou, and the count retaliated by over­running their lands, capturing and destroying their castles, burning and wasting their farms and orchards, till he had once more subdued them to his will. The leaders took refuge in Taillebourg, and there they were surrounded by Richard’s forces. The damage inflicted by him on that famous stronghold in 1179 had doubtless been long ago repaired; but this time the siege lasted only a few days, though the place was occupied by “more than seventy picked men of might.” They surrendered on the only condition which Richard would grant—that every one of them should join him in his Crusade. This was an excellent practical expedient for increasing the force which he hoped to lead to Palestine, and at the same time withdrawing from Aquitaine the men who were most likely to cause a dis­turbance if left there during his absence.

But behind the revolt lay graver complications. It was rumoured that King Henry, in the hope of compelling his son to abandon his project, had not only stirred up Geoffrey of Lusignan and the other rebels and secretly furnished them with help and money, but had also instigated Raymond of Toulouse to join them against Richard. However this may be, Raymond did, while Richard was busy quelling the revolt in Saintonge, capture “certain merchants from Richard’s land” who were travelling through the land of Toulouse; some of them he imprisoned, some he blinded and mutilated, some he put to death. Oh hearing of this Richard, after again destroying the defences of Taillebourg, marched into Gascony and there collected a great force of Brabantines with which he invaded the county of Toulouse. In a short time he took Moissac and several other castles of Raymond’s, harried all the northern part of the county with fire and sword, and captured, among many other prisoners, a certain intimate friend of Raymond’s, Peter Seilun, who had long been Richard’s enemy and is said to have instigated the imprisonment of the Poitevin merchants. Richard placed this man in close and harsh confinement and refused all Raymond’s offers of ransom for him. Raymond now began a system of treacherous warfare against Richard, laying ambushes for him and his soldiers, and setting men on the watch, in towns and castles, to seize anybody who belonged to the following of either Richard or Henry. By this means two knights of Henry’s household, who had been on pilgrimage to Compostella and for some reason or other went round by Toulouse on their way home, were captured and imprisoned. After a while Raymond let one of them go—seemingly on parole—to Richard with a message that both should be set free, if Richard would liberate Peter Seilun in exchange. Richard, however, on learning that they had been captured when pilgrims, declared that “no prayers and no price” should make him a party to such a transaction; “it would be an intolerable offence against God and His holy Apostle S. James, were he to give a ransom for men whose character of pilgrims was in itself sufficient to entitle them to their freedom.” Meanwhile Raymond had complained to Philip Augustus of Richard’s invasion of Toulouse, as being a breach of the agreement made between the two kings when they took the Cross, that no interference with each other’s lands should take place till after the Crusade. Philip appears to have gone “ into those parts ” in person, hoping to pacify the belligerents; and to him the captive knights, finding they could get no help from Richard, told their story. Philip seemingly regarded the matter in the same light as Richard; he bade Raymond release them “not for love of the king of England or of Count Richard, but out of love and reverence for S. James.” Raymond, however, still insisted on the condition which he had originally demanded. Then the French king, seeing he could make no peace or agreement between the two counts, inflamed with wrath and mortal hatred against each other, returned to France. He, however, so far took Raymond’s part as to send messengers over sea to Henry, complaining of Richard’s doings in Toulouse, and asking the English king to make amends for them; to which Henry merely answered that it was not by his counsel or desire that his son had done any of these things, and that he could not justify him.”

Whatever may have been Henry’s real share—if indeed he had any real share at all—in the origin of the quarrel, matters had by this time reached a pass at which his personal sympathies could hardly fail to be on the side of his son. Richard had taken no less than seventeen castles in the territory of Toulouse, and was almost at the gates of its capital city—that famous city which both he and his father had always longed to call their own, and of which he still considered himself the rightful owner as being through his mother the legal representative of Count William IV—and was actually preparing to lay siege to it. Both Raymond and Philip were so much alarmed that Philip, at Raymond’s entreaty, sent envoys to the invader to tell him that if he would desist, “he should receive his rights and be justly compensated for his wrongs in the Court of France.” The French king’s distrust of Henry’s attitude in the affair was shown by his despatch at the same time of another mission, to the seneschals of Normandy and Anjou, warning them that they must either recall count Richard at once, or consider themselves no longer protected by the truce between the two kings. Henry, no doubt urged by the terrified seneschals, sent to admonish his son; but his admonitions and Philip’s threats were alike unheeded. To Henry, indeed, Richard’s answer was that he had done no ill in the lands of the count of S. Gilles except by leave of the king of France, forasmuch as the count refused to be in the truce and peace which the two kings had made.

The king of France, however, was now gathering his host for an invasion of the Angevin lands. Directing his attack against the unprotected north-eastern frontier of Aquitaine, after seizing some of the border castles of Touraine, he advanced into Berry, and by the middle of June was master of its northern part as far as Chateauroux, which he captured on June 16. On that day Henry, perplexed and terrified alike by what he heard of Philip’s doings and of Richard’s, despatched four envoys to the former to entreat for peace in some form or other. If they ever reached the French king, their mission was fruitless; he continued his conquests till he was master of everything that Henry possessed or claimed in Berry and Auvergne as far as Montluçon.

On July 11 Henry returned to Normandy with an armed force of English and Welshmen, and at once summoned the Norman host to a muster at Alençon. Richard meanwhile had abandoned his attack on the lesser foe to march against the greater one, and was advancing northward with fresh forces towards Berry. Philip, probably fearing to be caught between two fires, hereupon retired into France, leaving Chateauroux in the custody of William des Barres. Richard, by way of doing something, began to devise schemes for regaining the place. One day some of its garrison who had been out on a foraging expedition found on their return the gate blocked by him and his troops. They, however, cut their way through and stirred up their comrades within the castle to make a sally in force. The Poitevins, taken by surprise, were repulsed with heavy loss; the count himself was in such danger that he fled for his life. Thrown from his horse, he was rescued by a sturdy butcher, and with the remnant of his troops rejoined his father, seemingly somewhere in Touraine. The defence of Henry’s frontiers was clearly the matter most in need of attention now; father and son accordingly led their combined forces back to the Norman border. At Trou, in the south-eastern corner of Maine, they were all but overtaken by Philip “with a great host”; they escaped, however, and the loss of forty knights and the burning of Trou (which Philip fired because he could not take it) were compensated by Richard’s capture of a neighbouring fortress, Les Roches, with its garrison of twenty-five knights and forty men-at-arms. This place was in the dominions of Count Burchard of Vendome, who was an adherent of the king of France. Philip dropped the pursuit, and on August 16 met Henry in conference at Gisors, but they came to no agreement. Among other proposals there seems to have been one for a settlement of the disputes between the two kings by a combat of four champions on either side. Four names on the English (or Angevin) side were suggested to Henry by William the Marshal; Richard was offended because his own name was not among them. “You have done me grievous wrong; of all the men of my father’s lands I was deemed one of the best to defend him; but you give him to understand otherwise.” The Marshal protested that Richard misinterpreted his motive: “You are our lord the king’s most direct heir; it would be an outrage and crime to risk your life in such a business.” “It is true, Richard,” interposed Henry, “what he has said is but right”; and therewith it seems the whole project fell to the ground. At the end of the month Richard, hearing that Philip was at Mantes, proposed to attack that place. The expedition, however, resulted merely in a skirmish between Richard himself, Earl William de Mandeville, and some of Henry's followers on the one side and a few French knights on the other, in which William des Barres, who had been commandant of Chateauroux for Philip at the time of Richard’s recent adventure there, was made prisoner by Richard, but broke his parole and escaped. Next day Richard took leave of his father, “promising that he would serve him well and faithfully,” and set out again for Berry.4 What he did there we are not told; but he seems to have recovered at least one—Palluau—of the castles which Philip had captured in the spring.

The war languished partly because the counts of Flanders and Blois and some other chief nobles of France refused to fight against princes who, like themselves, wore the Cross; and in October Philip asked Henry for another conference. It took place on October 7 at Chatillon, on the border of Touraine and Berry. A proposition that all conquests made by Philip from Henry and by Richard from Raymond of Toulouse since the beginning of the truce should be restored came to nothing through Philip’s demand for a security which Henry would not grant. Then, it seems, Richard offered to do what Philip had in vain required of him a few months before—to go to the French king’s court and stand to its judgement on all that had taken place between himself and the count of S. Gilles, in order that peace might be made between his father and the king of France. The action of the French magnates may have opened Richard’s eyes to the unseemliness of all this strife between fellow­soldiers of the Cross and led him to see that peace, at almost any price, was absolutely necessary for the purpose which he had most at heart, the fulfilment of his vow of Crusade. His proposal, however, greatly displeased his father, and Philip seems to have deemed the moment a favourable one for seeking to impose upon Richard some other require­ments whose nature we are not told, but which led to “high and bad words and finally resulted in the count of Poitou giving his lord paramount the lie direct and calling him a  vile recreant, whereupon the conference broke up with a mutual defiance. Philip went into Berry, retook Palluau, and proceeded to Chateauroux, but only to with­draw the mercenaries whom he had left there and lead them back to Bourges, where he dismissed them.

For military and political reasons alike Philip did not want to fight with Richard. He knew that Richard would be compelled ere long to make a friend of him, for nothing but his friendship could enable Richard to secure his rights as Henry’s heir; and Richard himself now saw that until those rights were secured it was impossible for him to venture on leaving Europe. He therefore resolved on bringing matters to a crisis. At his suggestion the two kings arranged to meet again on November 18 at Bonmoulins Meanwhile, as an English writer says, he “was reconciled to” Philip—which probably means that he made, and Philip accepted, an apology for what had occurred at Chatillon—and endeavoured to soften the mind of the French king, that in him he might find at least some solace if his own father should altogether fail him.  Accordingly he had a private interview with Philip before the formal conference, and went to the place of meeting in his company, “for the sake,” so he told his father, “of concord and peace.” Philip opened the colloquy with a proposal that all the results of the fighting since a certain event—which is stated as “the taking of the Cross,” but seems to have been really the agreement at Gisors on March 10, 1186— should be wiped out, he himself setting the example of restitution, “and after this, all things should continue as they were before” the specified date. This Richard opposed; it seemed to him unmeet that he should by the acceptance of these terms be compelled to restore Cahors and its whole county, and many other places forming part of his domain, which were worth a thousand marks a year or more, in exchange for Chateauroux and Issoudun and Graçay which were not ducal domains, but merely under­fiefs. Philip’s proposal and Richard’s answer may have been arranged between them beforehand, and may have been merely intended to prepare the way for the introduction of the crucial question which Richard was determined to bring, with Philip’s help, to a decisive issue once for all. He now asked his father for an explicit recognition, to be confirmed by an oath, of his rights as heir. Furthermore, as such a recognition would, so far as Henry’s continental territories were concerned, be ineffectual without Philip’s sanction as overlord, and as it was now clearly understood that Philip’s sanction depended on the marriage of Aloysia, her hitherto reluctant bridegroom at last made up his mind to the sacrifice and asked his father to give him at once the bride who was lawfully his, and the kingdom—that is, the assurance of succession to the Crown. In these requests he was supported by Philip. Henry answered that he would on no account do this in existing circumstances, since he would appear to be acting under constraint rather than of his own free will. Richard persisted in his entreaties, but in vain. At last he exclaimed : “Now what I hitherto could not believe looks to me like truth.” Ungirding his sword, he turned to the French king and, imploring his aid that he might not be deprived of his due rights, did homage to him as his “ man ” for the whole continental dominions of the Angevin house and swore fealty to him against all men, saving Henry's right of tenure for life and the fidelity due from son to father. Philip responded by promising that Chateauroux, Issoudun, and all the other castles, lands, and fiefs which he had taken from Henry in former wars should be restored to Richard. Henry was, it seems, too thunderstruck to say or do anything except consent without more ado to a truce with Philip till S. Hilary’s day.

“Thus began the quarrel that never was fought out,” says a contemporary poet of the fateful conference at Bonmoulins. The meeting had been held, according to custom, in the open air and in public, the two kings and Richard, with the Archbishop of Reims, standing in the middle of a wide and dense circle of their followers and other spectators. To some of these the symbolical action which accompanied homage must have been visible; and when the central group broke up and father, son, and lord paramount were seen to move away, each in a different direction, “all men marvelled.”Richard's homage to Philip was an act of filial undutifulness, since it was done in opposition to the known wishes of his father; but it involved no further breach of duty, if he really intended—and thereis nothing to show that he did not, at that time, intend—to abide by the saving clause which reserved his father’s rights. Fairly interpreted with that clause, the homage would be merely prospective in its effect; and some prospective measure of this kind had been made almost necessary as a matter of self-protection on Richard’s part, by the conduct of both Henry and Philip. We cannot tell precisely to what it was that Richard alluded in the words which he spoke immediately before the homage; but it can only have been one, or both, of two things : the sinister rumours about Henry and Aloysia, and the suggestion that Henry aimed at making John his heir instead of Richard. As to the truth or falsehood of the former charge against Henry we have no means of judging; but of the truth of the latter charge it is impossible to doubt. The anathema said to have been pronounced by the Legate Henry of Albano against Richard as a disturber of the peace which the pope was anxious to secure for the furtherance of the Crusade might have fallen more justly upon Richard’s father; perhaps, too, not less justly upon their overlord.

Richard had no sooner set out for Poitou than his father sent messengers to recall him; but it was too late. Either for the same purpose, or to secure, if possible, some of the fortresses of Aquitaine, Henry himself went as far south as Le Dorat in La Marche; there, however, he did nothing; and indeed nothing could be done till the truce expired. It had been agreed at Bonmoulins that the two kings should then, on January 13 (1189) meet again to discuss terms for a lasting peace. When the time came, Henry on the plea of illness postponed the meeting, first till Candlemas, and then till after Easter. This was too much for the patience of either Philip or Richard. Philip, it is said, had already promised that he would assist Richard in any attempt to gain possession of Henry’s continental dominions. Accordingly, after the expiration of the truce he and Richard made a joint raid across Henry’s borders. Henry in alarm sent the Archbishop of Canterbury to confer with Richard; but Richard had now come to regard with distrust every messenger and every message from his father, and curtly refused to give Baldwin an audience. His confidence in Philip was—justly enough—not much greater; when Henry sought to renew negotiations with France, his envoys found Richard’s chancellor, William of Longchamp, at the French king’s side, placed there on purpose to prevent any betrayal by Philip of the interests of the count of Poitou; and William’s diplomacy proved more than a match for theirs. After Easter the long delayed meeting of the kings took place at La Ferté-Bernard;  this was followed during the next five or six weeks by several conferences between Henry and Richard, “but it was all lost labour.” Another legate, John of Anagni, was now endeavouring to reconcile the kings, and had succeeded in obtaining from both of them an undertaking to stand to his judgement and that of four archbishops, two from Philip’s realm and two from Henry’s. Accordingly, in Whitsun-week Henry, Philip, Richard, the legate, and the four assistant arbitrators all met together near La Ferté-Bernard. Philip set forth his demands for himself and for Richard : that Aloysia should be given to Richard to wife, that some security should be granted to Richard for his succession to the kingdom of England after his father’s death, and that John should take the Cross and join the Crusade; if these conditions were granted, Philip offered to restore all that he had taken from Henry during the current year and the preceding one. Richard made the same demands in his own behalf, saying that he himself would in no wise go to Jerusalem unless John went with him. The suspicion which had evidently prompted these demands was amply justified by Henry’s reply. He said that he would never do this; but he offered, if the French king would consent, to give Aloysia with all the things aforesaid, more fully and completely than Philip asked—not to Richard, but to John. The writer who reports this offer of Henry’s does not explicitly mention security for Richard’s succession to the English Crown as one of the conditions demanded by Philip and Richard; he says they asked Henry to “cause the men of his lands to swear fealty to Richard.” Even if the lands here meant were only the English king’s continental territories, Henry in refusing to do any of the things asked of him for Richard and proposing to do all and more than all of them for John was clearly proposing nothing less than a complete dis­inheritance, so far at least as those territories were concerned, of the elder brother in favour of the younger one. What Richard had suspected and feared, what Philip had, to some extent at least, known to be in Henry’s mind ever since the truce of Chateauroux, if not earlier still, was thus confirmed by Henry’s own lips. Philip had doubtless indirectly encouraged Henry in this insane project, so long as it suited his own interest to play off the father and the elder son one against the other; but he was far too practical to have ever intended giving it his serious support; and he now at once refused to sanction it. He seems to have expected, reasonably enough, that the legate would uphold him in his refusal; but instead of this, John of Anagni threatened to lay all France under Interdict if its king did not come to a full agreement with the king of England. Philip retorted that he did not fear, and would not heed, a sentence without basis in either equity or law, and that the legate had been bribed with English gold. The meeting broke up in hopeless discord.

If ever a father set at nought the precept “Provoke not your children to wrath”, Henry had done so by his conduct towards Richard, not merely on one or two isolated occasions, but persistently through a course of year. And if any circumstances are conceivable in which a son might be, not indeed justified, but in some degree excused for taking forcible measures against his father, in such a case Richard stood now. Neither he nor Philip could possibly acquiesce in the scheme which Henry had just proposed; and it was clear that Henry would not be induced to renounce that scheme by any persuasion, nor even by intimidation unless it were something more than verbal. Both parties had come to the conference with horses and arms, and the main body of Henry’s available forces was quartered in and around Le Mans. While he rode slowly back towards that city, Philip attacked the castle of La Ferté; its constable made a brave defence, but was obliged to surrender. Philip then advanced to Ballon, which he reached just after Henry had quitted it, and at once “took it, no man gainsaying him”. In a few days most of the castles around Le Mans on the north and east—Bonnetable, Beaumont, Montfort— were likewise occupied by his troops. But it was not to him that they had surrendered. Richard was with him; and the castellans all round about showed their dis­approval of Henry’s scheme for altering the Angevin suc­cession by voluntarily delivering up their castles to the count of Poitou.

On June 12 the allies surprised Le Mans; their troops forced an entrance into the lower town, the fire kindled to keep them out of the city set it ablaze, and Henry fled. There was a hot pursuit; Richard was among the foremost, but it seems that he had taken no part in the assault, and now only wished to prevent by his presence any personal violence to his father, for he was clad only in a doublet and an iron headpiece and carried no arms at all. Some of his men, however, outstripped him, and before he could overtake them were skirmishing with Henry’s rearguard, one of whom, William des Roches, had just unhorsed a knight of Richard’s household when the count came spurring up and shouted : “William! you waste time in folly; mend your speed, ride on!” At the sound of that voice another of the little band covering the king’s retreat turned round and spurred his horse straight at Richard, and the heir of the Angevin empire suddenly found his life at the mercy of one who was already known as the most accomplished warrior of his day, William the Marshal. So close was the encounter that Richard caught hold of his assailant’s lance and by sheer strength of arm turned it aside, shouting : “By God’s Feet, Marshal, slay me not! it were an ill deed, for I am wholly unarmed.” But the thrust had not been meant for him, and its aim was only momentarily diverted. “Nay! may the devil slay you, for so will not I,” answered the Marshal as he recovered control of his weapon and plunged it into the body of Richard’s horse. The animal instantly fell dead, dragging its rider with it to the ground; knights and men-at-arms crowded anxiously to the spot, and when Richard had struggled to his feet he bade them proceed no further—“You have spoiled everything; you are a set of distracted fools!”

Three weeks later father and son met once more, and for the last time. From Le Mans the allies moved eastward along the borders of Maine and the Vendomois, and thence into Touraine as far as Amboise; castle after castle surrendering to them without resistance. Henry had at first gone northward, but changed his course, and while they were thus occupied he made his way back, with a very small escort, to Chinon. Negotiations were resumed; but the French king now saw his opportunity for an unparalleled display of his sovereign authority as lord paramount, and he resolved to be satisfied with nothing less than a surrender of the whole continental possessions of the Angevin house into his hands, to be restored or redistributed at his own pleasure. On July 1 he laid siege to Tours; on July 3 he took it by assault. Next day (July 4), at Colombières, Henry made the required surrender. This done, Philip formally made him a new grant of the surrendered lands and received his homage for them on new conditions. One of these conditions was for the sole benefit of Philip; it was a fine of twenty thousand marks to be paid to him by Henry. The others concerned Richard. One related to Aloysia; another bound Henry to make all his barons, insular and continental, swear fealty to his rightful heir. No baron or knight who in this war had withdrawn from Henry’s service and joined Richard was to return to the former within a month of Mid-Lent next, at which date the two kings and Richard were to set out all together on the Crusade. All Henry’s barons were to swear that if he broke his plighted word with regard to anything in the agreement they would support Philip and Richard against him; and it seems that Philip and Richard, while restoring all their other conquests, were to retain either Tours, Le Mans, and the castles of Chateau-du-Loir and Trou, or Gisors, Pacy, and Nonancourt, “until all the things above determined by the king of France should be fulfilled.”

The meeting between the two kings at which this extra­ordinary arrangement took place was held in the open air. So far as we can gather, Richard was either a silent spectator or was not actually present, though he was certainly close at hand. After its conclusion he went to his father’s lodging in the house of the Knights Templars at Ballan, hard by Colombières, to receive, according to agreement, the kiss of peace. He did receive it, but as he turned to depart he heard his father mutter : “The Lord grant that I may not die till I have had my revenge of thee!” The words were the half delirious utterance of a sick man whose brain was on fire with fever and, still more, with shame at the public degradation he had just gone through, and with disappointment at the failure of his most cherished scheme; although the worst detail connected with that failure did not become known to him till some hours later, when he received the list of the followers who had deserted him. Then he learned that John had anticipated the issue of the struggle and secured for himself the protection of the party whose success he saw to be a foregone conclusion, by pledging his allegiance to Richard.

The triumph of Philip Augustus was for the moment complete. He had successfully asserted and exercised his sovereign authority over the greatest of his vassals, the vassal who was, no less than himself, a crowned and anointed king, and whose lands comprised, besides the island realm, more than two-thirds of the realm of France. The succession to all those lands, including England, had been, or seemed to have been, determined at Philip’s bidding. He was, or seemed to be, master of both Henry and Richard. But his triumph was only momentary. Within three days the convention of Colombières was a mere piece of waste parchment, for Henry of England was dead.

 

BOOK II. RICHARD’S CRUSADE

CHAPTER I

THE YEAR OF PREPARATION

1189-1191

 

 

 

 

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