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Title: Richard the Lion Heart
Author: Norgate, Kate
Language: English
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a top-of-page header under the page number. In this etext this has
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[Sidenote: 1190 Jan.]
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RICHARD THE LION HEART
[Illustration: (colophon)]
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
LONDON. BOMBAY. CALCUTTA. MADRAS
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK. BOSTON. CHICAGO
DALLAS. SAN FRANCISCO
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
TORONTO
RICHARD
THE LION HEART
BY
KATE NORGATE
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON
1924
COPYRIGHT
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
PREFACE
“When History drops her drums and trumpets and learns to tell the
story of Englishmen, it will find the significance of Richard not in
his Crusade or in his weary wars along the Norman border, but in his
lavish recognition of municipal life.” It may well seem strange to
begin by quoting these words of the master who inspired my earliest
venture—and thereby, indirectly at least, all my later ventures
also—into the field of history, the preface to a book on Richard
the First in which that sovereign’s island realm figures scarcely
more than in the background, and the life of its people not at all.
Certainly England and the English people ought to have stood in the
forefront and to have been treated in the fullest detail, if this
book were intended for a history of Richard’s reign; but it has been
written with no such intention. It is merely an attempt to sketch,
from materials of which some of the most valuable and interesting
have become accessible to students only within a comparatively
recent period, the life-story of a prince who reigned less than ten
years and lived less than forty-two, yet whose personal character,
peculiar circumstances, and adventurous career have given him—whether
deservedly or not—a conspicuous place in mediæval history, and made
him a hero of romance in every country from England to Palestine.
The only detailed biography of Richard known to me is that which Mr.
G. P. R. James wrote many years ago. A wealth of material unknown
at that time has since then been placed within our reach. This
is especially the case with regard to the Crusade of 1191-1192.
Richard’s struggle with Saladin is the phase of his career which
has contributed the most to his fame; and my studies have led me
to believe that he himself regarded it as the most important work
of his life. Every step in his policy from the hour when he took
the Cross till he set out for Holy Land appears to have been taken
primarily, if not solely, with a view to the one enterprise which his
contemporaries emphatically called “the work of God”; and there is no
reason to doubt that when compelled to leave that work unfinished,
he left it with the full intention of returning to complete it, and
would have returned, had not his destiny been ordained otherwise. I
have therefore allowed myself to tell the story of the Crusade with
a fullness of detail which may be thought disproportionate to the
brief space of time which the expedition actually occupied, and to
its direct influence on the history of his dominions; and I have made
a lavish use of the materials, Eastern and Western, contained in the
publications of the various French literary and historical societies,
especially the great _Recueil des Historiens des Croisades_. The
chief treasure in that collection—chief, at least, for my purpose—is
the elaborate edition of Bohadin with its French translation,
superseding the crabbed Latin of Schultens; although, as will be
seen, I cannot but think that Schultens’s work still retains a value
of its own. Of the relations between the two versions of our chief
Western authority for the story of the Crusade—the _Itinerarium
Peregrinorum et Gesta Regis Ricardi_ and the _Estoire de la Guerre
Sainte par Ambroise_—I made, about fourteen years ago, a somewhat
minute study based on the notes written by Mr. T. A. Archer in the
margins of his copies of those two books; I having had the melancholy
pleasure of becoming their owner after his death. The results of
that study, with a brief statement of the circumstances which had
impelled me to it and assisted me in it, appeared in the _English
Historical Review_ for July 1910. After going over the ground again I
see no reason to alter the conclusion which I had then formed on the
subject; rather do I find myself confirmed in that opinion. I have,
however, thought it right, when citing either or both of the two
versions, to give in every case a separate reference to each of them.
KATE NORGATE.
_January, 1924._
CONTENTS
BOOK I
RICHARD OF AQUITAINE, 1157-1189
CHAPTER I
PAGE
THE BOY DUKE, 1157-1179 1
CHAPTER II
FATHER AND SONS, 1179-1183 32
CHAPTER III
KING HENRY’S HEIR, 1183-1189 57
BOOK II
RICHARD’S CRUSADE, 1189-1192
CHAPTER I
THE YEAR OF PREPARATION, 1189-1190 91
CHAPTER II
THE OUTWARD VOYAGE, 1190-1191 119
CHAPTER III
THE FALL OF ACRE, 1191 152
CHAPTER IV
FROM ACRE TO JOPPA, 1191 176
CHAPTER V
THE ADVANCE ON JERUSALEM, 1191-1192 193
CHAPTER VI
RICHARD AND SALADIN, 1192 230
BOOK III
RICHARD AND EUROPE, 1192-1199
CHAPTER I
RICHARD AND THE EMPIRE, 1192-1194 264
CHAPTER II
RICHARD AND FRANCE, 1194-1199 294
NOTES
I. Richard and Leopold at Acre 330
II. The Capitulation of Acre 331
III. The Advance from the Two Casals to Ramlah 333
IV. Casal des Plains and Casal des Bains 334
V. Richard’s Homage to the Emperor 336
VI. Richard, William of Longchamps, and the Great Seal 338
INDEX 341
ERRATA
P. 35, footnote, line 4, _for_ Dien _read_ Dieu.
P. 91, heading of chapter, _for_ 1191 _read_ 1190.
P. 152, heading of chapter, _for_ 1190 _read_ 1191.
Pp. 152 and 153, _delete_ dates in margin.
P. 154, margin, _for_ 1190 _read_ 1189.
P. 159, lines 4 and 10, _for_ Henfrid _read_ Humphry.
Pp. 160 to 175, margin, _for_ 1190 _read_ 1191.
P. 264, heading of chapter, _for_ 1193 _read_ 1194.
P. 314, line 12 from foot, _for_ VIII _read_ VI.
BOOK I
RICHARD OF AQUITAINE
1157-1189
In Regum serie scribatur Dux Aquitanorum et Vasconum Ricardus, qui
ad probitatis opera nunquam exstitit tardus, cujus adolescentia
magna floret industria. (Geoffrey of Vigeois, A.D. 1185).
CHAPTER I
THE BOY DUKE
1157-1179
Bonum est viro cum portaverit jugum adolescentia sua.
“The eagle of the broken covenant shall rejoice in her third
nesting”—thus ran one of the predictions in the so-called “prophecy
of Merlin,” which in the latter half of the twelfth century
was generally regarded as shadowing forth the destiny of Henry
Fitz-Empress and his family. “The queen,” said those who interpreted
the prophecy after the event, “is called the eagle of the broken
covenant because she spread out her wings over two realms, France and
England, but was separated from the one by divorce and from the other
by long imprisonment. And whereas her first-born son, William, died
in infancy, and the second, Henry, in rebellion against his father,
Richard, the son of her third nesting, strove in all things to bring
glory to his mother’s name.”[1]
There was nothing to mar the rejoicing of either Eleanor or Henry in
September 1157. The young king had overcome the difficulties which
had beset him at the opening of his reign. Public order and the
regular administration of public justice had been restored throughout
his realm. He had obtained the French king’s recognition of his
rights over Normandy and the Angevin lands, and also over Eleanor’s
duchy of Aquitaine,[2] where in the winter of 1156 he had received
the homage of the barons and kept the Christmas festival with her
at Bordeaux.[3] King and queen [Sidenote: 1157] returned to England
in the spring.[4] Soon afterwards the last remnant of opposition to
the rule of the Angevin king in England had been disarmed in the
persons of Earl Hugh of Norfolk and Count William of Boulogne; Henry
had “subdued all the Welsh to his will,”[5] and received, together
with the homage of Malcolm of Scotland, a formal restitution of
Northumberland, Westmorland and Cumberland,[6] which had been in the
possession of the Scots since 1136. From these successes Henry had
either just returned, or was on his way back to rejoin his queen at
Oxford, when their third son was born there—no doubt in Beaumont
palace—on September 8.[7] A woman of S. Alban’s was chosen for the
boy’s nurse and fostered him together with her own son, born on the
same night and afterwards known as Alexander Neckam,[8] author of a
treatise on natural science or what passed for science in his time.
Her name was Hodierna; in later days she had from the royal domains
in Chippenham an annuity of seven pounds, doubtless granted to her by
her royal nursling, whom she seems to have survived by some twenty
years.[9] Whether she dwelt at the court while he was under her
charge, or whether, like his ancestor Geoffrey Martel, he was sent to
dwell with his foster-mother, there is nothing to show. Before he was
two years old his destiny was planned by the king; Richard was to be
heir to the dominions of his mother.
“Aquitaine,” says an English writer of the time, “abounding in riches
of many kinds, excels other parts of the western world in such wise
that it is reckoned by historians as one of the happiest and most
fertile among the provinces of Gaul. Although its fields respond
abundantly to culture, its vines to propagation, and its woodlands to
the chase, yet nevertheless it takes its name not from any of these
advantages, but from its waters (_aquæ_), haply esteeming as alone
worthy of account among its delights that which its health-giving
water brings forth either to be returned to the sea, or uplifted
in the air. If, indeed, we track the Garonne from its fount along
its rapid course to the sea, and if we also follow the line of the
Pyrenean mountains, all the country that lies between derives its
name from the beneficent waters that flow through it. Furthermore,
in those parts smoothness of tongue is so general that it promises
impunity to everybody, and any one who knows not the manner of that
people cannot know whether they are more constant in deed than in
word. When they set themselves to tame the pride of their enemies,
they do it in earnest; and when the labours of battle are over and
they settle down to rest in peace, they give themselves up wholly to
pleasure.”[10]
Whatever may be thought of Dean Ralph’s etymology, there was an
element of truth in his description, half jesting though it seems to
be, of the country and the character of its people. He gives indeed
hardly sufficient prominence to the pugnacious side of the latter;
and the boundaries which he assigns to the former are considerably
narrower than those of the duchy of Aquitaine as it stood at the time
of Richard’s birth. That duchy comprised, in theory at least, fully
one-third of the kingdom of France. As counts of Poitou its dukes
bore direct sway over a territory bounded on the north by Britanny,
Anjou, and Touraine, on the west by the sea from the bay now known
as that of Bourgneuf to the mouth of the Charente, and on the east
(roughly) by the course of the river Creuse from a little distance
below Argenton to its junction with the Vienne; and also over the
dependent district of Saintonge on the north side of the estuary of
the Garonne, or Gironde. As counts of Gascony they were overlords
of a number of lesser counties and lordships, extending from the
mouth of the Garonne to the Pyrenees, and forming a territory
nearly twice the size of Poitou. Between Poitou and Gascony lay the
counties of Angoulême, La Marche, and Périgord, and, between the
two latter, a cluster of minor fiefs which collectively formed the
district known as the Limousin, and of which the most important was
the viscounty of Limoges. All these had from early times owned the
overlordship of the Poitevin counts in their ducal capacity. So, too,
had Berry, an extensive district lying to the north of La Marche.
The north-eastern portion of Berry, which formed the viscounty of
Bourges, had, however, for a long time past been lost to the dukes
and reckoned as part of the Royal Domain of France. On the eastern
and south-eastern borders of the duchy lay the counties of Auvergne
and Toulouse. Toulouse, with its dependencies—the Quercy or county of
Cahors, Alby, Foix, Carcassonne, Cerdagne and Roussillon—had always
been a separate fief held directly of the Crown; but the right to
its ownership had for the last sixty years been in dispute between
the Poitevin counts and its actual holders, the house of St. Gilles,
who also held the neighbouring county of Rouergue and with it the
overlordship of a number of smaller fiefs along the southern coast.
Auvergne, originally a part of the Aquitanian duchy, was strongly
disposed to reject the authority of the Poitevin dukes; and both
Auvergne and Toulouse were more or less openly supported in this
matter by the French king. Nor were the other underfiefs of the
duchy, or even the barons of Poitou, by any means models of feudal
obedience. For a century or more the dukes had been periodically at
strife with the counts of Angoulême, the counts of La Marche, the
lords of Lusignan (in Poitou), the viscounts of Limoges, and the
neighbours and rivals of these last.[11] It was little more than
twenty years since Count William of Angoulême had carried off from
Poitiers Eleanor’s stepmother, the Countess Emma, “by the counsel of
the chiefs of the Limousin who feared lest the Poitevin yoke should
be laid more heavily upon them” owing to her marriage with the duke,
she being a daughter and a possible co-heiress of the viscount of
Limoges.[12] At Limoges itself, moreover, there seems to have been a
perennial rivalry between the bishop, the viscount, the abbot of the
great abbey of S. Martial, and the townsfolk.[13]
When Henry II went to Limoges after his marriage in 1152 he seems to
have been welcomed as duke by the viscount; but strife arose between
his followers and the citizens which so enraged him that he ordered
the recently built walls of the town to be razed and the bridge to
be destroyed. As the town—locally called “the castle”—was held by
the viscount of the abbot, this was an offence to all parties at
once; and the abbot retorted by refusing to grant the duke’s claim
to a procuration in the city—that is, outside the walls—saying he
was only bound to grant it within the enclosure of the “castle.”[14]
Henry, though angry, had his mind fixed on more important matters,
and let the insult pass; but on his next visit to Limoges, in
[Sidenote: 1156] 1156, he successfully asserted his ducal rights.[15]
In the [Sidenote: 1159] spring or early summer of 1159 he again went
to Aquitaine, to prosecute by force of arms his claim, as Eleanor’s
husband, to the county of Toulouse. The support of the Count of
Barcelona and his wife, the Queen of Aragon, was purchased by a
promise that Richard should wed their infant daughter and should on
his marriage receive the Dukedom of Aquitaine.[16] The Quercy was
conquered by Henry and held for him awhile after he had abandoned the
siege of Toulouse and returned to Normandy. A treaty made between
[Sidenote: 1160] Henry and Louis of France in May 1160 contained a
provision for a year’s truce between Henry and Raymond of Toulouse,
during which Henry was to keep “whatever he at the date of the
treaty had of the honour of Toulouse, Cahors, or Quercy.”[17] This
was probably not much, as his troops had already been withdrawn from
the conquered territory; the greater part of it seems to have fallen
back into Raymond’s hands, and we hear nothing more of the relations
between him and Henry for nearly thirteen years.
Where and how the future duke of Aquitaine was being brought up there
is nothing to show. All that we know about him, till he was well
advanced in his thirteenth year, is that the sheriffs of London
paid ten pounds six and eightpence for his travelling expenses
on some occasion—probably [Sidenote: 1163] his elder brother’s
birthday feast—in 1163,[18] and that in May 1165 he went with his
mother and eldest sister [Sidenote: 1165-6] to join the king in
Normandy.[19] Henry’s quarrel with S. Thomas of Canterbury was then
at its height; and Henry’s discontented subjects in Aquitaine were
quick to take advantage of the opportunity for mischief given them
by the difficulties with France in which that quarrel involved him.
On the pretext of “certain liberties whereof he had deprived them”
some of them became so troublesome—chiefly, it seems, by their
intrigues with King Louis[20]—that [Sidenote: 1166] in November 1166
he summoned them to a conference at Chinon. It took place on Sunday,
November 19,[21] with so little result that he sent Eleanor, who
had apparently been trying to maintain order in the duchy during
his absence, back to England and himself went to keep Christmas at
Poitiers.[22] Whether Richard went with his mother or stayed with his
father does not appear.
[Sidenote: 1167]
In March Henry had a conference with Raymond of Toulouse at
Grandmont. Shortly afterwards he tried to assert his ducal authority
over the count of Auvergne. The only result was a fresh rupture
with Louis,[23] which was temporarily patched up by a truce made in
August to last till Easter next, March 31, 1168.[24] Before that
date a formidable rebellion broke out in Aquitaine. The counts
[Sidenote: 1167-8] of Angoulême and La Marche,[25] the viscount of
Thouars,[26] [Sidenote: =1167-8=] Robert of Seilhac in the Limousin
and his brother Hugh,[27] Aimeric of Lusignan in Poitou, Geoffrey of
Rancogne in the [Sidenote: 1168] county of Angoulême,[28] “with many
others,” sought to rebel against the king, and went about ravaging
with fire and sword. When the king heard of this he hurried to the
place, took the strong castle of Lusignan and made it stronger still,
and destroyed the villages and fortresses of the rebels. He then
revictualled his own castles, and left the duchy under the charge of
Eleanor (who had rejoined him after Christmas) and of Earl Patrick
of Salisbury, while he himself went to meet Louis on the Norman
border on April 7.[29] The truce between the kings was now expired,
and Henry desired a treaty of peace; but meanwhile the southern
rebels were urging Louis to insist that Henry should indemnify them
for the loss and damage which he had inflicted upon them, and which
they represented as a breach of his truce with France, the French
king being supreme lord of Aquitaine.[30] They even placed in the
hands of Louis the hostages which they had promised to Henry.[31]
Louis did not go to the conference in person, but sent some nobles
to represent him.[32] To them Henry proposed a new scheme for the
future of Aquitaine: that its young duke-designate should marry the
youngest daughter of Louis. The French envoys refused to bind their
sovereign to this unexpected condition; it was, however, agreed
“that if Richard should ask for his rights over the Count of St.
Gilles”—that is, of Toulouse—“the king of France should try the
cause in his court.” Thus the settlement of Aquitaine on Richard
was, by implication at least, recognized by France, although Richard
himself was not yet eleven years old. As to the aggrieved nobles,
Henry promised them restitution;[33] but Louis would not give up the
hostages; and the conference ended in another truce to last till the
octave of midsummer.[34]
Scarcely had the parties separated when tidings came that Earl
Patrick had been slain in a fight with some of the malcontents.[35]
Henry was too much overburdened with other cares to attempt during
the rest of that year any personal intervention in Aquitaine. Eleanor
seems to have urged him to make it formally over to Richard.[36] She
probably saw that there was no likelihood of a good understanding
between her people and her Angevin husband, and hoped to be more
successful in governing them herself in the name of her son. Her
suggestion, and that which Henry had made nine months before to
the representatives [Sidenote: 1169] of Louis, were both carried
into effect on January 6, 1169, when the two kings made peace at
Montmirail. The two elder sons of Henry and Eleanor were both present
at the meeting. Henry himself first did homage to Louis for his
continental possessions; young Henry did the like for Britanny, Anjou
and Maine; then Richard was betrothed to the French king’s daughter
Aloysia, and likewise performed the homage due to Louis for the
county of Poitou and the duchy of Aquitaine.[37]
The feudal situation created by these transactions was a strange one.
It was capable of at least two different interpretations, and its
practical result, so far as Aquitaine was concerned, was that for
the next twenty years there were two dukes of that country. Henry’s
purpose in thus making his sons do homage to Louis was to guard
against the possibility of dispute, after his own death, as to the
portion of his dominions to which each of them was entitled. In his
eyes the homage was anticipatory of a future and perhaps—for he was
not yet thirty-six—still very remote event, and its effect was merely
prospective. But, so far as can be seen, no such limitation of its
scope was expressed in the act of homage; and the legal effect of
that act therefore was not merely prospective, but immediate; it at
once made the younger Henry and Richard respectively count of Anjou
and duke of Aquitaine, not under the suzerainty of their father, but
under the direct overlordship of the French king. Such at least would
be its legal effect as soon as the boys were old enough to govern
for themselves; and this age young Henry had almost reached, for he
was in his fourteenth year. Their father, on the other hand, as the
sequel shows, never intended to give during his own lifetime any
real authority at all to young Henry, nor did he intend to give any
to Richard otherwise than with a tacit but perfectly well understood
reservation of his own right of intervention and control whenever
he might choose to exercise it; and he still remained legally both
count and duke, for he had just repeated, in both capacities, his
own homage to Louis. There can be no doubt that Louis was fully
alive (although it seems that Henry was not) to the advantages
which the French Crown might derive from this complicated state of
affairs. But he was, of course, not desirous of pointing them out
to his rival; and during the next four years he carefully refrained
from all interference with the affairs of the Angevin dominions.
The new duke of Aquitaine was, however, not yet twelve years old,
and it was clearly with the French king’s sanction that his father,
in the spring, marched into the duchy and forcibly brought the
counts of Angoulême and La Marche and most of the other rebels to
submission.[38]
Our only certain notice of Richard between January 1169 and June 1172
shows him to have been, at some time in [Sidenote: 1170] 1170, at
Limoges with his mother, laying the foundation-stone of the abbey of
S. Augustine.[39] On the Octave of [Sidenote: 1172] Whit-Sunday, June
11, 1172, his formal installation as duke took place at Poitiers. In
the abbey church of S. Hilary he was placed, according to custom, in
the abbot’s chair, and the sacred lance and banner which were the
insignia of the ducal office were given to him by the Archbishop
of Bordeaux and the Bishop of Poitiers. He afterwards proceeded to
Limoges, where he was received with a solemn procession; the ring of
S. Valeria, the protomartyr of Aquitaine, was placed on his finger,
and he was then proclaimed as “the new Duke”[40]—for it was in virtue
of this double investiture, given not by the king of France, but
by the local prelates and clergy as representatives of the local
saints of the land, that the dukes of Aquitaine claimed to hold their
dukedom.
Eight months later another important ceremony took place at Limoges.
Henry and Eleanor, accompanied by their two elder sons, held court
in the castle for a week with the kings of Aragon and Navarre, and
the counts of Toulouse and Maurienne. Alfonso of Aragon, Raymond of
Toulouse, and Humbert of Maurienne had met Henry at Montferrand in
Auvergne, the last-named to make a treaty of marriage between his
daughter and Henry’s youngest [Sidenote: 1173] son, John, the two
former to seek the king’s mediation in a quarrel between themselves.
Alfonso was the son of Queen Petronilla and Raymond of Barcelona, and
brother of the girl to whom Richard had been betrothed in 1159. He
and Raymond of Toulouse were at strife about the homage of Cerdagne,
Foix, and Carcassonne; both were anxious for the friendship of their
nearest and most powerful neighbour. Henry “made peace between
them,” and Raymond, whose territories were ringed in by those of
Aragon and Aquitaine, paid the peacemaker his price; “he became the
man of the king, and of the new king his son, and of Count Richard
of Poitou, to hold Toulouse of them”—that is, to hold it immediately
of Richard, who held it under his elder brother and his father—“as a
hereditary fief, by military service at the summons of either king or
count, and by a yearly payment of a hundred marks of silver or of ten
destriers worth at least ten marks each.”[41]
A few months later Richard entered actively on public life; and he
made a bad beginning. Towards the end of March the younger King Henry
fled from his father’s court in Normandy to that of Louis.[42] The
elder Henry had been warned at Limoges by Raymond of Toulouse that
“his wife and his sons had formed a conspiracy against him”;[43]
but he had disregarded the warning, and left Richard and Geoffrey
in Aquitaine under the guardianship of their mother. Early in the
summer both the lads joined their elder brother in France,[44] and
all three pledged themselves by a solemn oath, at a great council in
Paris, “not to forsake the king of France, nor to make any peace with
their father save through him (Louis) and the French barons”; Louis
in return swearing, and causing his barons to swear, “that he would
help the young king and his brothers, to the utmost of his power, to
maintain their war against their father and to gain possession of the
kingdom of England” for young Henry.[45]
The “young king” was eighteen years old; he was as shallow-minded
and selfish as he was handsome and superficially attractive; and he
had fallen under the influence of Louis, to whose daughter he was
married. Crowned in 1170 as his father’s heir, he chose to consider
himself aggrieved by being given no share in the government of
England or of the Angevin home-lands. He may have persuaded his
brothers to consider themselves as victims of a similar grievance
with regard to their duchies of Aquitaine and Britanny. He and Louis
were naturally anxious to secure the forces of those two duchies in
support of their scheme of ousting the elder King Henry from his
dominions, continental and insular; and they hoped that the example
of the boy-dukes might help to detach their respective vassals from
their father’s cause.[46] But the lads had a nearer counsellor than
young Henry or Louis, and one to whose counsels it was only natural,
and in a measure right, that they should listen with reverence and
submission. Eleanor unquestionably sided with her elder son against
her husband, for she was caught in the act of trying to make her
way from Aquitaine to the French court disguised in the dress of a
man.[47] Certainly nothing can justify, or even excuse, the duplicity
of this “eagle of the broken covenant” towards the husband and
sovereign who, even when his eyes were fully opened to the treason
of their eldest son, still put such confidence in her loyalty as
to leave the younger eaglets in her charge. But there is a very
considerable excuse for Richard and Geoffrey. On the ground of that
feudal loyalty which was a principle of such importance in the life
of those days, there was, indeed, something to be said for all three
of the brothers, and more especially for Richard. None of them were
homagers of Henry II; all of them were homagers of Louis and of Louis
alone. For Richard it might further be urged that if he was under
any other feudal obligation, it was more to his mother than to his
father; his possession of Aquitaine was their joint gift, but it was
on Eleanor’s consent that the validity of the gift really rested;
Henry possessed the dukedom only in right of his wife. On the higher
ground of filial duty Henry’s and Eleanor’s claims to the obedience
of their children were equal; Richard and Geoffrey suddenly found
that those claims were conflicting, and that a choice must be made
between the two. That the choice really lay between right and wrong
is much plainer to us than it could be to these lads, of whom the
elder was not yet sixteen, and both of whom were under the direct
personal influence of their mother. On her, rather than on them, lies
the responsibility for their wrong choice.
Eleanor, captured by some of her husband’s scouts, was at once
placed by him in strict confinement.[48] Her eldest son’s cause
gained practically nothing by the adhesion of his young brothers.
According to one account, both of them accompanied him to the siege
of Drincourt in July.[49] The success of that siege, however,
was due, not to any of the three, but to their allies the counts
of Flanders and Boulogne; moreover, the death of the latter soon
afterwards caused the Flemish troops to withdraw to their own
country, and nothing further came of the expedition.[50] The rebel
barons of Geoffrey’s duchy all submitted to his father in the
autumn.[51] At a conference on September 25 at Gisors Henry made
fair offers to all three of his sons; “but the king of France did
not deem it advisable that the [English] king’s sons should make
peace with their father.”[52] At some time before the end of the
year Richard was knighted by Louis.[53] Young Henry and Geoffrey
seem to have remained at the French court through the winter,
but Richard characteristically went his own way; he returned to
Aquitaine. Considering the extent of that country and the character
of its previous relations with Henry II, it seems to have furnished
a very small proportion of names to the list of avowed partizans of
the young king; and the more important Aquitanian names which we do
find there are those of men whose disobedience is very unlikely to
have been in any way connected with that of Richard—Count William
of Angoulême, Geoffrey of Rancogne, Geoffrey and Guy of Lusignan,
William of Chauvigny, and Thomas of Coulonges in Poitou, Charles of
Rochefort in Saintonge, Robert of Blé in the Limousin, and in Gascony
Jocelyn of Maulay and Archbishop William of Bordeaux.[54] The first
four of these needed no incitement from the young duke’s example,
and the last two are not likely to have been influenced by it, to
throw off their allegiance to his father. The Aquitanian rebels in
1173 would probably have been more numerous had not the barons of the
Limousin been at that time too busy fighting among themselves to give
much heed to disagreements between their rival rulers. The confusion
in those parts was aggravated by a swarm of “Brabantines,” or foreign
mercenaries,[55] probably brought in by Henry at an earlier time,
and now roving about the land and preying on it wholly at their own
will and pleasure. There was no one to control either Brabantines
or barons, since Richard’s withdrawal and Eleanor’s imprisonment
had left Aquitaine without any resident governor at all, till in
the winter Richard went back to put himself single-handed at the
head of affairs. We hear of him as far south as Bordeaux, where he
was no doubt sure of a welcome from Archbishop William, and secured
the support of another great churchman, the abbot of S. Cross, by
confirming the privileges of the abbey.[56] He tried to win to his
cause the rising town of La Rochelle; but in this he failed; the
townsfolk shut their gates in his face.[57] He soon, however, had
under his command a considerable force of knights which [Sidenote:
1174 c. _May 12_] at Whitsuntide 1174 seized the city of Saintes.
Henry was then at Poitiers; at the head of a body of loyal Poitevins
he marched upon Saintes and drove out the intruders,[58] and
recovered possession of several other rebel fortresses.[59] The hopes
of young Henry and Louis had broken down both in Aquitaine and in
Normandy. In England they broke down still more completely; and the
failure of the rebellion there led to the reopening of negotiations
for peace.
Some ten or fifteen years later a bitter enemy of Henry II described
the characters of young Henry and of Richard both at once in the
form of a comparison, or rather contrast, between them.[60] The
contrast showed itself even in the ill-omened first stage of their
political and military careers. Throughout the rebellion of 1173-4
the young king was a mere tool—and a very inefficient one—in the
hands of Louis. At the instigation of Louis he had entered upon the
war, and at the dictation of Louis he was ready to accept terms of
peace. Geoffrey was apparently contented with a similar position;
but not so Richard. Eleanor might have made a tool of her second
son, but no one else could do so. It was not for love of either
young Henry or Louis that he had sided with them, and not at their
behest [Sidenote: 1174 _Sept. 8_] would he give up the struggle. On
his seventeenth birthday the kings met at Gisors; but “they could
not come to a settlement because of the absence of Count Richard,
who at that time was in Poitou, making war on the castles and men of
his father.” The conference ended in a truce till Michaelmas,[61]
on the understanding that meanwhile Henry should subdue Richard by
force without hindrance from Louis, young Henry, or their adherents.
Richard was not yet hardened enough to contemplate fighting his
father in person; “when King Henry was come into Poitou, his son
Richard dared not await him, but fled from every place at his
approach, abandoning all the fortresses that he had taken, not daring
to hold them against his father.” When he learned the terms of the
truce, his indignation at being thus deserted by his supposed allies
made him suddenly determine on a better course. “He came weeping,
and fell with his face on the ground at the feet of the king his
[Sidenote: _Sept. 23_] father, beseeching his forgiveness.” It was
granted instantly and completely.[62] Father and son re-entered
Poitiers together.[63] At Henry’s suggestion Richard went in
person to assure his elder brother and Louis that he was no longer
an obstacle to the conclusion of peace; and on September 30 the
peace was made at Montlouis in Touraine. Henry’s three sons placed
themselves at his mercy and “returned to him and to his service as
their lord.” He promised to each of them a specified provision; and
they all pledged themselves to accept these provisions as final
and nevermore to require anything further from him save at his own
pleasure, nor to withdraw themselves or their service from him.
Richard and Geoffrey also did homage to him “for what he granted and
gave them.” Young Henry would have done likewise, but his father
would not permit it “because he was a king.”[64] This treaty seems
to have been afterwards put into writing and formally executed at
Falaise, probably on October 11.[65] [Sidenote: 1175] Early in 1175
Richard and Geoffrey did homage to their father again at Le Mans,[66]
and on April 1 their elder brother did the same at Bures.[67]
The new provision for Richard did not include his reinstatement as
duke of Aquitaine or count of Poitou. It consisted merely of “two
fitting dwelling-places, whence no damage could come to the king,
in Poitou,” and half the revenues of that county in money.[68] The
strict letter of the treaty of Montlouis (or of Falaise) in fact
reinstated Henry II as sole ruler of all the Angevin dominions, and
reduced all his sons to the position of dependents on his bounty.
Henry, however, soon showed that he had no intention of enforcing
this punishment to the uttermost on Richard and Geoffrey. The
treaty ordained that all lands and castles belonging to the king
and his loyal barons were to be restored to their owners and to the
condition in which they had been fifteen days before “the king’s
sons departed from him”; so, too, were the lands of the rebels, but
in their case no mention was made of their castles.[69] With these
castles, therefore, Henry was left free to deal at his pleasure.
Accordingly, when early in 1175 he set himself to carry out this
clause of the treaty in Anjou and Maine, he not only revictualled
and repaired whatever fortresses of his own had suffered damage, and
destroyed whatever new fortifications had been added to the castles
whose owners had defied or resisted him, but also ordered that some
of these latter should be razed. Geoffrey was sent to carry out this
process in Britanny, and Richard in Aquitaine, while the two Henrys
returned to England together on May 9.[70]
Besides the avowed partizans of young Henry in Aquitaine, there
were others who had seized the opportunity afforded them by the war
to fortify their castles and set the ducal authority at defiance.
The men of the South for the most part would at any moment gladly
have flung off that authority altogether, no matter whether it was
wielded by the heiress of the old ducal house, her husband, or her
son. The Aquitanian barons whose castles had in the time of the war
been fortified or held against Henry II made it clear that they were
not disposed to give them up to Richard. He therefore, in pursuance
of his father’s orders, set out “to reduce the said castles to
nothing.” He began after midsummer by marching into the county of
Agen, where Arnald of Bonville had fortified Castillon against him,
“and would not give it up.” This place, “fortified by both nature and
art,” held out against the duke and his engines of war for nearly
two months; “at last he took it, and in it thirty knights whom he
kept in his own hands.”[71] We have no certain knowledge of his
further movements [Sidenote: 1176] till the following spring, when
he and Geoffrey of Britanny went to England together. They landed
on Good Friday, April 7.[72] Richard’s purpose seems to have been
to seek counsel and help in the difficult task which his father had
assigned to him, for when the Easter festivities were over it was
arranged by the elder Henry that the younger one should go with
Richard into Poitou “to subdue his enemies.” Young Henry went to
Normandy on April 20;[73] Richard probably returned about the same
time, though the brothers did not cross the Channel together.[74]
During his absence Vulgrin of Angoulême, a son of the reigning
count William Taillefer, had “presumed” to march into Poitou at the
head of a troop of Brabantines. The bishop of Poitiers had at once
resolved, with Theobald Chabot, who was “the leader of Duke Richard’s
soldiery,” to “deliver the people committed to him out of the hand of
their enemies,” and the invaders, although they far outnumbered the
forces of the bishop and the constable, had been completely routed
near Barbezieux.[75] Richard made straight for Poitou and called
out its feudal levies, “and a great multitude of knights from the
regions round about flocked to him, for the wages that he gave them.”
He began by punishing some of the rebels in Poitou; next, after
Whitsuntide (May 23), he marched against Vulgrin’s Brabantines and
defeated them in a pitched battle between St. Maigrin and Bouteville,
near the western border of the Angoumois. Thence he led his host
into the Limousin, to punish Count Aimar of Limoges, who also had
taken advantage of the duke’s absence to commit some breaches of the
peace. First, Richard besieged and took Aimar’s castle of Aixe with
its garrison of forty knights. Then he attacked Limoges, and in a few
days was master of the city and all its fortifications. All this was
the work of a month. Shortly after midsummer he returned to Poitiers;
there he was at last joined by the young king. After taking counsel
with the Poitevin barons it was decided that the next step should be
the punishment of Vulgrin of Angoulême. The brothers led their united
forces to Châteauneuf on the Charente, south-west of Angoulême,
and won the place after a fortnight’s siege. Thereupon young Henry
“would stay with his brother no longer, but following evil counsel
departed from him.” Richard, thus suddenly deserted, moved cautiously
further away from Angoulême to Moulineuf, another castle belonging
to Vulgrin; this he captured in ten days. Then he turned back again
and laid siege to Angoulême itself. Within its walls were not only
Vulgrin and his father, Count William, but also Aimar of Limoges and
two other rebel leaders, the viscounts of Ventadour and of Chabanais.
In six days Count William was forced to surrender into Richard’s
hands himself, his city, and all its contents, his castles of
Bouteville, Archiac, Montignac, Jarnac, La Chaise, and Merpins, and
to give hostages for his submission to the mercy of Richard and of
King Henry, to whom Richard immediately sent him and the other nobles
who had surrendered with him.[76] They presented themselves before
Henry at Winchester on September 21, fell at his feet, and “obtained
mercy from him”; that is to say, he, it seems, sent them back again
with instructions that they should be temporarily reinstated in their
possessions, pending a fuller consideration which he purposed to give
to their case when he should return to Normandy.[77]
Having for the moment reduced northern Aquitaine to subjection,
Richard set himself to a like task in Gascony. After keeping
Christmas at Bordeaux he marched upon Dax, which had been fortified
against him by its viscount [Sidenote: _Jan._ 1177] with the help of
the count of Bigorre. Its recovery by Richard was quickly followed
by that of Bayonne, held against him by its viscount Ernald Bertram.
Thence he marched up to the very “Gate of Spain”—St. Pierre de
Cize, on the Navarrese border at the foot of the Pyrenees—took the
castle of St. Pierre in one day, razed it, compelled the Basques and
Navarrese to swear that they would keep the peace, “destroyed the
evil customs which had been introduced at Sorde and Lespéron” (two
towns in the Landes) “where it was customary to rob pilgrims on their
way to or from S. James,” and by Candlemas was back at Poitiers,
having—for the moment—“restored all the provinces to peace.”[78]
The count of Bigorre in the south and a few barons of Saintonge and
of the Limousin had not yet submitted; Richard, however, made no
further movement against any of them for many months. His inaction
may have been due to instructions from his father, who was probably
unwilling to let him engage in another campaign against these rebels
at a moment when all the available forces of the Angevin house and
the presence of Richard himself seemed likely to be needed in another
quarter.
The richest baron of Aquitanian Berry, Ralf of Déols, the lord
of Châteauroux, whose lands were said to be worth as much as the
whole ducal domains of Normandy,[79] had died at the close of 1176
leaving as his sole heir a daughter three years old. The wardship
of this child and of her heritage belonged of right to her suzerain,
the Duke of Aquitaine; but her relations were resolved to keep, if
possible, both herself and her lands in their own power,[80] so they
carried her off to La Châtre,[81] and prepared her castles and their
[Sidenote: 1176] own for defence and defiance. When these tidings
reached King Henry in England, he sent urgent orders to his eldest
son to assemble the Norman host without delay and take forcible
possession of the lands of Déols.[82] Henry’s action in this matter
is noticeable as showing that he regarded Richard’s tenure of the
dukedom of Aquitaine at this period as merely nominal or delegated;
he claimed Denise of Déols as his own vassal, not as Richard’s. It
is, however, not at once apparent why, since he had intrusted to
Richard the task of subduing the other Aquitanian rebels, he did not
leave the affair of Déols to the same hands. The reason may have been
mainly a geographical one. These things [Sidenote: 1176-7] may have
taken place at a moment when Henry knew Richard to be busily engaged
at the very opposite end of the duchy, at any rate somewhere in
Gascony, perhaps at its extreme southern border. The young king, on
the other hand, was in Normandy, whence it would be easy for him to
lead a force through Maine and Touraine into Berry. On receiving his
father’s instructions he did so, and laid siege to Châteauroux, which
surrendered to him at once.[83] He did not, however, gain possession
of the little heiress or of the rest of her lands; for the matter now
became complicated by the intervention of the supreme lord of Berry
and of Aquitaine, King Louis.
For more than eight years, ever since January 1169, Aloysia of
France had been in Henry’s guardianship as the destined bride of
Richard. According to one of the best informed English writers of
the time, Louis, when this engagement was made, had promised that on
the marriage of the young couple he would make over to Richard, as
Aloysia’s dowry, the city of Bourges with all its appurtenances;[84]
that is, the portion of Berry the ownership of [Sidenote: =1176-7=]
which was in dispute between France and Aquitaine. Ten years
before—in the year of Aloysia’s birth—he had promised to King Henry
a like cession of the Vexin, the disputed border-land of France and
Normandy, as the dowry of Aloysia’s sister Margaret on her intended
marriage with Henry’s eldest son, and Henry had taken advantage of
the ambiguous wording of a clause in the treaty to have the two
children—contrary to Louis’s intention—at once formally married in
church; whereby he gained immediate possession, not indeed of the
whole Vexin, but of that portion of it which had once been Norman
and which contained its most valuable fortresses, these being
surrendered to him by the Templars, who were by the treaty to have
them in custody till the marriage should take place. That marriage,
nevertheless, had brought more advantage to Louis than to Henry, by
bringing Margaret’s husband, as soon as he reached manhood, under
the influence of his father-in-law in opposition to his own father.
There was but too much reason to fear a like result in the case
of Richard; and the dangers of such a result were even greater in
this case than in the former one, owing to special circumstances
connected with the betrothal of Richard and Aloysia. That betrothal
was the price, or part of the price, paid by Henry at Montmirail in
1169 for Louis’s sanction, as overlord, to the scheme devised by
Henry for securing a certain distribution of his dominions among his
sons. Henry’s own renewal of homage to Louis on that occasion for
all his continental territories was a token that he did not intend
to renounce his personal rights over any of his lands, but merely to
secure for himself the power of sharing those rights with his sons
whenever he might choose to do so, and for the boys an unquestionable
right of succession at his death to their respective shares of the
Angevin heritage. But, somewhat like Louis nine years before, Henry
made a mistake which rendered it possible for his adversary to put
another construction upon the matter. He secured young Henry’s claims
to the future possession of the heritage of Geoffrey of Anjou and
Maud of Normandy, and Richard’s claim to the heritage of Eleanor, by
making them do homage to Louis for Anjou and Aquitaine [Sidenote:
=1176-7=] respectively; but he omitted to secure the subordination of
their claims to his own during his lifetime by making them do homage
to himself. Owing to this omission, it was open to Louis to assert,
if he chose, that the Angevin counties and the Norman duchy legally
belonged to young Henry and the duchy of Aquitaine to Richard, in
virtue of the homage rendered by them for those lands direct to
himself as overlord; Henry II—so he might argue—having by his consent
to that homage tacitly renounced all claim to the lands for which it
was rendered, and being thenceforth merely in temporary charge of
them as guardian of the boys. The promise of the cession of Bourges
was a very small price to pay for a weapon so tremendous as that
which Henry had thus, it seems, unconsciously placed in the hands of
an enemy whose mean jealousy and unscrupulous astuteness he appears
never to have fully realized. He unintentionally made this possible
construction of the treaty of Montmirail still more plausible through
the crowning of his eldest son in 1170 and the solemn installation of
the second as duke of Aquitaine in 1172. Louis acted upon it in 1173,
although he does not seem ever to have put it into formal words; and
his action, coupled with that of the ungrateful sons urged on by
their mother, must have opened Henry’s eyes to the peril in which he
had involved himself through his misplaced confidence in the loyalty
both of his overlord and of his own family. It showed that as soon as
Richard and Aloysia were married, Louis might and in all probability
would demand the recognition of his new son-in-law as sole ruler of
Aquitaine, independent of any superior save Louis himself.
At the close of 1175 or early in 1176 Louis, it seems, reminded Henry
that, Richard being now in his nineteenth [Sidenote: 1175-6] year
and Aloysia in her sixteenth, it was full time for the contract of
marriage between them to be carried into effect; but the answer which
he received was so unsatisfactory that he referred the matter to the
Pope. We have no actual record of any communication between the kings
on the subject at this time, but something of the kind must have
[Sidenote: 1176] taken place to cause the Pope’s action. In May 1176
Alexander bade Cardinal Peter, then legate in France, lay the whole
of Henry’s lands on both sides of the sea under Interdict “unless
he (Henry) would permit Richard and Aloysia to be married without
delay.”[85] The legate, however, seems to have done nothing in the
matter for more than a year. Probably the two kings were negotiating;
[Sidenote: 1177] but we hear nothing of their negotiations till June
1177, when Henry sent an embassy to France to “convene” Louis about
the dowries which he had promised to give with his two daughters to
the young king and to Richard—to wit, the Vexin (that is, its eastern
or “French” part, which was still in Louis’s hands) and the viscounty
of Bourges.[86] It seems that Henry, having found Margaret’s marriage
fail to give him the control over her promised lands, demanded to
be put in possession of those of Aloysia before he would allow her
to marry Richard. But meanwhile the Pope had in May renewed the
injunctions which he had issued to Cardinal Peter eleven months
before; and on July 12 the English envoys returned with the news that
Peter was instructed to lay the whole of their sovereign’s dominions,
insular and continental, under Interdict, unless Richard were at
once permitted to take for his wife the maiden whom Henry “had so
long already, and longer than had been agreed, had in his custody
for the said Richard.”[87] Henry at once made the English bishops
appeal to the Pope. Illness detained him in England for nearly five
weeks;[88] then he went to Normandy (August 18), and on September 21
met Louis and the legate at Nonancourt.[89] In the legate’s presence
he promised that Richard should wed Aloysia, if Louis gave Bourges
to Richard and the Vexin to the young king as previously agreed.[90]
Whether the wedding or the cession was to take place first, however,
seems to have been left an open question; and four days later the
whole matter was again postponed indefinitely by a treaty whereby
the two elder kings pledged themselves to take the Cross and go
to the Holy Land together, and meanwhile, as brother Crusaders, to
lay aside all mutual strife and make no claims or demands upon each
other’s possessions as they held them at that moment, except with
regard to Auvergne and to any encroachments which the men of either
party might have made upon those of the other in the territory of
Châteauroux or of the lesser fiefs on the border of their respective
lands in Berry. If on these excepted matters they could not agree
between themselves, twelve arbitrators were to decide according to
the sworn evidence of the men of the lands in question.[91]
All immediate danger of interference from either Louis or the
Legate being thus removed, Henry summoned the Norman host to meet
at Argentan on October 9 for an expedition against the rebels in
Berry.[92] Young Henry and Richard had, by his desire, joined him on
his arrival in Normandy;[93] the former was now despatched in advance
into Berry, and when the king’s host reached the Norman border at
Alençon Richard was detached from it and once more sent into Poitou
“to subdue the enemies” there, while the king himself marched upon
Châteauroux. After receiving its formal surrender he proceeded to La
Châtre; this place, and the little Lady of Déols, were also given up
to him at once. Thence he proceeded into the Limousin and called upon
those of its nobles and knights who had taken part in the rebellion
of 1173 to give an account of their conduct; one of the most
important of them, the viscount of Turenne, surrendered his chief
castle, “strongly fortified by both art and nature”; with the others
Henry dealt “according as each of them deserved.”[94] He then hurried
back to Graçay in Berry, to meet Louis and the commissioners who were
to report to the two kings the result of their investigations about
Auvergne. What that result was we are nowhere directly told; we only
hear that both the rivals declared themselves content to abide by
it.[95] The next reference to the overlordship of Auvergne, however,
some twelve years later, seems to indicate that the commissioners
gave their award in favour of the duke of Aquitaine.
Another of Henry’s vassals in Berry, Odo of Issoudun, had lately
died leaving an infant heir, and this child had been stolen by his
kinsman the duke of Burgundy. The custody of his fief was offered to
the king by the barons who had it in their keeping, but he refused
to receive it without the child,[96] whom he made no attempt to
reclaim. It was not worth while to risk an embroilment with Burgundy
about a petty lordship in Berry at the moment when an opportunity
was just presenting itself for annexing to the Poitevin domains a
valuable fief of the duchy of Aquitaine, the county of La Marche,
which lay between Berry and the Limousin. Count Adalbert V of La
Marche had separated from his wife, lost his only son, and seemingly
disinherited his only daughter with her own consent;[97] the kinship
between him and his only other surviving relatives was so remote that
he deemed himself free to dispose of his county without regard to
them; and he now offered to sell it to its overlord, King Henry, for
a sum of money wherewith he himself might go to end his lonely days
in the Holy Land. In December Henry went to meet him at Grandmont;
the bargain was quickly struck, the conveyance executed, and the
purchase money—less than a third of what Henry is said to have
estimated the county as worth—paid down, and the barons and knights
of La Marche did homage to Henry as their immediate liege lord.[98]
In all these proceedings of Henry in Aquitaine there is no reference
to Richard. They clearly indicate that the elder holder of the ducal
title still claimed the ducal power and authority as his own, not
his son’s. He seems, however, to have left to Richard the punishment
of one important Limousin rebel whose case he had a year before
expressly reserved for his own judgement; for it was Richard who now
“took away the castle”—that is, the fortified town—“at Limoges where
S. Martial rests in his minster” from the viscount; “and it served
the viscount right,” adds a Norman chronicler, “for helping the count
of Angoulême against the duke.”[99] This seems to have been about the
time when Henry was in Aquitaine, and it is the only act of Richard’s
mentioned by any chronicler between Henry’s arrival in Normandy in
August 1177 and his return to England in July 1178.[100] We may
infer, almost with certainty, that it was done by Henry’s order; and,
with considerable probability, that the unusual state of quiescence
in which Richard seems to have passed these eleven months was due in
part at least to the restraint placed on him by Henry’s presence on
the continent. So long as Richard remained in the dependent position
to which he had been reduced by the agreement at Montlouis, it would
be impossible for him to take any considerable military or political
action, unless by his father’s order, while his father was within
reach. [Sidenote: 1178] But in the autumn of 1178, when Henry was
once more in England, Richard’s activity re-commenced. “With a great
host” he again proceeded into Gascony[101] as far as Dax. There, to
his delight, he found that the count of Bigorre, who two winters
before had helped the viscount of Dax to hold the city against the
duke, had somehow incurred the displeasure of the citizens and was
fast in their prison. They seem to have handed him over to Richard;
“but [Sidenote: 1177] King Alfonso of Aragon, grieving that his
friend the count of Bigorre was held in chains, came to the said
duke, and entreating that his friend might be liberated, stood surety
for him that he would do the will of the duke and of his father the
king of England; and the count of Bigorre, that he might be set free,
gave up to the duke Clermont and the castle of Montbron.” Richard
then went northward again, and after keeping Christmas at Saintes
gathered another “great host” for the subjugation of Saintonge and
the Angoumois.[102] These two districts had been for years, and
indeed for generations, a seed-plot of rebellion. Richard seems to
have been bent upon reducing them to order once [Sidenote: 1178] for
all. The moving spirits of defiance there were Vulgrin of Angoulême
and Geoffrey of Rancogne. Count William of Angoulême, after being
reinstated by Henry in his capital city, seems to have made over the
government of his county to his eldest son, Vulgrin, who had headed
the resistance to Richard in 1176. Geoffrey of Rancogne took his name
from a place in the same county, and was also owner of two lordships
of far greater importance in Saintonge, one of which, Pons, lay close
to the border of the Angoumois, and the other, Taillebourg, was a
fortress of great strength, about half way between Saintes and St.
Jean d’Angély. It was to Pons that Richard now laid siege. After
some weeks, finding that he made no progress, he left his constables
[Sidenote: 1179] there with a part of his forces, and led the rest,
in Easter week (April 1-8), into the Angoumois. A three days’ siege
won the castle of Richemont; four other castles—Genzac, Marcillac,
Gourville, Auville—were taken in the last fortnight of April and
levelled with the ground. Then he turned westward again, re-crossed
the border, and marched upon Taillebourg.[103]
By Richard’s contemporaries the siege of Taillebourg was looked upon
as “a most desperate enterprize, which none of his predecessors had
ever ventured to attempt. Never before had a hostile force so much
as looked upon the castle.” It seems indeed to have been not merely
a castle but a strongly fortified, though small, town, the castle
proper—perched on the summit of a rock of which three sides were
inaccessible by nature and the fourth was defended by art—forming
the citadel. “Girt with a triple ditch; defying from behind a triple
wall every external authority; amply secured with weapons, bolts,
and bars; crowned with towers placed at regular intervals; furnished
with a handy stone laid ready for casting from every loop-hole;
well stocked with victuals; filled with a thousand men ready for
fight,” this virgin fortress “was in no wise affrighted” at the
duke’s approach. Richard, however, had made up his mind to “subdue
the pride of Geoffrey of Rancogne once for all.” He had collected
auxiliaries from every quarter; and he set them all to work as soon
as the host reached Geoffrey’s border. “He carried off the wealth of
the farms; he cut down the vines; he fired the villages; whatever was
left he pulled down and laid waste; and then he pitched his tents
on the outskirts of the castle close to the walls, to the great
alarm of the townsfolk, who had expected nothing of the kind.” At
the end of a week (May 1-8), “deeming it a disgrace that so many
high-spirited and well-proved knights should tamely submit to be
shut up within the walls, they agreed to sally forth and fall upon
the duke’s host at unawares. But the duke bade his men fly to arms,
and forced the townsmen to retire. The mettle of horses, the worth
of spears, swords, helmets, bows, arbalests, shields, mailcoats,
stakes, clubs, were all put to proof in the stubborn fight that raged
at the gates, till the townsmen could no longer withstand the fierce
onslaught of the duke’s van headed by the duke himself. As they
retired helter-skelter within the walls, he by a sudden dash made
his way with them into the town. The citadel now became their only
refuge from their assailants, who rushed about the streets plundering
and burning at their will.” Two days later—on Ascension Day, May
10—the castle was surrendered, seemingly by Geoffrey in person; and
in a few days more the whole of its walls were levelled with the
ground.[104]
The capture of Taillebourg was Richard’s first great military
exploit. It laid the foundation of his military fame, not so much by
the intrinsic importance of the exploit itself as by the revelation,
in the campaign of which it was at once the turning-point and the
crown, of the character and capability of the young duke. Its
immediate result was the complete submission of the rebels against
whom that campaign was directed. Not only did Geoffrey of Rancogne
surrender Pons,[105] but Vulgrin of Angoulême, before the end of the
month, gave up his capital city and his castle of Montignac; and
when Richard, after razing the walls of all these places, sailed for
England, he left in Aquitaine, for the moment at least, “all things
settled according to his will.”[106] He seems to have visited the
tomb of S. Thomas the Martyr at Canterbury[107] before joining his
father. Henry received him “with great honour”[108] and gave him his
reward; when the young conqueror returned to Aquitaine shortly before
Michaelmas, he returned not merely as his father’s lieutenant, but as
once again, with his father’s sanction, count of Poitou.[109]
CHAPTER II
FATHER AND SONS
1179-1183
Domus divisa contra se.
We are not told on what conditions, if any, the restitution of Poitou
was made to Richard by his father. The matter might become important
whenever Henry should again cross the sea; but so long as the king
remained in England it would have scarcely any practical effect on
Richard’s position in Aquitaine. Whether he commanded the feudal
host and disposed of the feudal revenues of Poitou as count or as
his father’s delegate, he was, in his father’s absence, equally
master of both; and in Aquitaine at large the temporary degradation
inflicted on him by Henry seems never to have been recognized at
all. He himself had never laid aside the style and title of duke of
Aquitaine, nor the princely state belonging to that dignity, nor had
he hesitated to deal with the demesne lands of Poitou as his own
absolute property. In his own eyes he was count and duke by virtue
not of any grant from either Henry or Louis, but of his descent from
the old ducal line and of the investiture which he had received at
Poitiers and at Limoges from the clergy and people of the duchy. His
subjects regarded him in the same light. They fought and intrigued
against him not as an intruder or a usurper, nor as the lieutenant of
one whom they counted as such, but precisely because he was to them
the incarnation of the ducal authority in a form which was specially
obnoxious to their habits of turbulent independence and lawless
self-will. For seven years they had been watching with growing
uneasiness and dismay the development of the “new duke,” whom as a
boy of fourteen they had acclaimed at Limoges in 1172, into a man
of very different character from the dukes of the last two or three
generations.
None of the pictures of Richard’s outer or inner man which have
come down to us date from a time quite so early as the year 1179;
but the main features of his personality, outward and inward, were
already marked enough to show us in those pictures a true likeness
of the young conqueror of Taillebourg. In the sculptured effigies of
Richard at Fontevraud and at Rouen the outlines of the face give so
little indication of age as to suggest that in the living model they
may have been—except for the beard and moustache—almost the same at
forty-one as at twenty-one; the features are well proportioned and
finely formed. In life they were crowned with a profusion of hair
“of a colour midway between red and yellow”—in other words, of the
rare golden or still rarer auburn hue. The young duke’s stature was
lofty,[110] above the average height,[111] his frame shapely and well
proportioned, with long, straight, flexible limbs; “no arm was better
adapted than his for drawing sword, nor more powerful to strike with
it.”[112] His whole person had such an aspect of dignity that two
independent observers, at different times, described it in the same
words—“a form worthy to occupy a place of high command”;[113] and
the seemliness of his appearance was enhanced by that of his manners
and dress.[114] The stories of his gigantic strength all relate to
the time of the Crusade, when that strength was in its maturity; but
a man of whom such tales were told must have been a born athlete.
On the other hand, it was certainly before his Aquitanian days were
over that he contracted the quartan ague which, says Gerald of Wales,
“was given him to repress the over fierce workings of his mind, but
by which he, like the lion, yea, more than lion that he was,[115]
seemed rather to be influenced as by a goad; for while thus almost
continually trembling, he remained intrepid in his determination to
make the whole world tremble and fear before him.”[116]
In this sentence of Gerald’s we have perhaps the earliest
foreshadowing of the epithet which was to become attached exclusively
to Richard’s name. The king of beasts has in all ages been a common
simile for a king of men, whether the kingship be material or
metaphorical.[117] But Gerald’s words seem, from their context, meant
to carry a special significance which is more distinctly implied
in the special form of Richard’s traditional surname. Richard is
not the only hero whom poets and romancers, in the golden age of
old French poetry and romance, credited with the possession of “a
lion’s heart,”[118] but he is the only one who became known to the
world for all time as pre-eminently and absolutely “The Lion-Heart.”
We cannot tell precisely when the epithet came into general use;
one writer used it within eight years after Richard’s death.[119]
It had evidently fixed itself in popular tradition before a less
high-souled generation of romancers sought to explain a surname,
whose true meaning they were too far removed from the old epic spirit
to appreciate or understand, by devising an origin for it in an
impossible tale of their own clumsy invention.[120] Its true origin
need be sought no further than the character of him who bore it.
“Among the virtues in which he excels, three especially distinguish
him beyond compare: supereminent valour and daring;[121] unbounded
liberality and bountifulness; stedfast constancy in holding to his
purpose and to his word”—thus Gerald of Wales wrote of Richard some
eight or nine years after the campaign of Taillebourg.[122] The young
duke’s energy and daring had been proved before that expedition; and
his lavish readiness to reward those who served him had contributed
in no small degree to his military successes, by means of the crowd
of highly trained soldiers whom it attracted to his standard. What
medieval writers call “constancy” was one of the qualities most
universally admired in the medieval world. Richard’s “constancy” had,
as yet, shown itself chiefly in a form which compelled the admiration
and respect of all his Aquitanian subjects, but was not likely to
win him the love of the Aquitanian baronage. From the hour when his
father laid on him, a lad of scarce sixteen years and a half, the
task of restoring the ducal authority in Aquitaine, his aim was
to rule and govern what Gerald truly calls “that hitherto untamed
country” in such wise “that not only might he establish within its
borders a far more complete and unbroken peace than was wont to
reign there, but also, recovering what in time past had been lopped
off and separated from it, restore all things to their pristine
condition.”[123] The barons of the duchy were for the most part far
from regarding “peace within its borders” as a thing to be desired;
and Richard’s ideal of a well-ordered state, while thus differing
from theirs, was not made more attractive in their eyes by the
methods which he employed to realize it. Unlike his elder brother,
he did not court popularity; he was indeed absolutely indifferent to
it, if not contemptuous of it. “Strictness and firmness, gravity and
constancy,” were the characteristics in him which men contrasted with
the young king’s easy good-nature, indulgent temper, and pleasantness
towards all who approached him. Richard’s generosity and graciousness
were of a higher type than young Henry’s; they were displayed only
where they were deserved.[124] With him everything was earnest.
Even martial sports had no charm for a lad who, while other young
knights of his day—his brothers among them—were acquiring the use of
arms in an endless round of tournaments, was serving his military
apprenticeship in real warfare; a warfare which he waged with
tireless persistence and relentless severity for nearly ten years,
“that he might quell the insubordination of an unruly people, and
make innocence secure amid evildoers.”[125]
His zeal for public order and justice, his ruthless application of
the utmost rigor of law to those who in his eyes deserved punishment,
naturally provoked the hatred of his opponents, and laid him open
to the charge of cruelty.[126] No instances, however, are recorded;
the Aquitanian chroniclers say nothing on the subject, and there is
no real ground for supposing that his sternness towards the barons
who withstood his will was other than what Gerald represents it to
have been—part of a wholesome and necessary discipline.[127] In 1183
they are said to have accused him of crimes of another kind;[128]
but this accusation rests only upon an English writer’s report of
the pleas by which they sought to justify their own treason. That
some at least of the worst details of the charge were a product of
that “recklessness of tongue” for which the men of the south were
notorious, may with much probability be inferred from the silence of
the Aquitanian chroniclers on this point also. The only comment made
by a contemporary local writer on Richard’s character and conduct
during these early years of storm and stress is a tribute of praise
even more impressive, considering the period and the circumstances
in which it was written, than the panegyrics that were lavished from
all quarters upon his later achievements. Geoffrey of Breuil seems
to have been a member of a junior branch of the knightly family of
Breuil in Poitou; his father’s house was at Ste. Marie de Clairmont,
near Excideuil in Périgord. He made his profession as a monk at S.
Martial’s abbey at Limoges in 1160, was ordained priest in 1167,
and ten years later was made Prior of Vigeois in the Limousin. His
sketch of Aquitanian history ends abruptly at the year 1185. In that
year he, as he says, decided to insert in his work “the names of the
kings who are ruling the world in this our age.” After mentioning by
name Prester John, the two Emperors, the kings of Jerusalem, France,
England, Scotland, Denmark, Sicily, Morocco, Spain, and Hungary, he
continues: “In the list of the kings let there be written down the
duke of Aquitaine and Gascony, Richard, who has never been slack
in deeds of prowess, and whose youth is distinguished by great
strenuousness of life.”[129]
A cessation of war between duke and barons in Aquitaine was usually
followed by trouble with the mercenary troops who were always
employed by one party or the other, sometimes by both parties,
and who when such employment was lacking fell to raiding on their
own account. This occurred in the summer of 1179 during Richard’s
absence in England after the fall of Taillebourg. Bordeaux was
ravaged and burnt by some “Basques, Navarrese, or Brabantines,”
evidently soldiers of this class.[130] With the barons Richard seems
to have had no particular trouble for the next two years or more.
On July 7, 1179, old Count William of Angoulême and his stepson
Aimar of Limoges, “with many others,” set out on a pilgrimage to
Jerusalem.[131] William died a month later at Messina; Vulgrin, who
had surrendered the city to Richard, thus became head of the family,
but the dignity and authority of count of Angoulême seems to have
been shared between him and his brothers.[132]
The recent humiliation of Vulgrin and the absence of Aimar of Limoges
and his fellow pilgrims may help to account for the fact that the
year 1180 is almost a blank in the chronicles of Aquitaine. King
Henry’s presence in Normandy from April 1180 to July 1181 may also
have had a pacific effect throughout all his continental dominions.
It is, moreover, probable that some of the pilgrims had come
[Sidenote: 1180] to an agreement with Richard before they started; it
seems almost certain that Aimar had done so, for when he returned,
in December 1180, he was solemnly welcomed at Limoges on Christmas
Day[133] in a manner which implies that he had been reinstated in
his former position of authority there, and we hear of no further
hostilities between him and Richard for more than six months.[134]
We hear indeed of no [Sidenote: 1181] further military movements in
Aquitaine till after King Henry’s return to England at the end of
July 1181. Then Richard marched into Gascony and took possession
of Lectoure, the chief town of the viscounty of Lomagne. He was
seemingly on his way thence to Dax when Vézian of Lomagne, in the
middle of August, came and submitted himself to him at S. Sever.
Vézian was probably a very young man, for he was not yet a knight.
His submission was not only accepted as frankly as it was offered,
but it was rewarded by the bestowal of knighthood from Richard’s
hand.[135] In November Richard joined his brothers in punishing the
count of Sancerre for his rebellion against the young King Philip of
France, whom Henry had charged his sons to protect and support during
his own absence over-sea.[136]
It was probably in the interval between these two expeditions, to
Gascony and to Sancerre, that a new strife arose in the Angoumois.
Count Vulgrin Taillefer III had died on June 29[137] leaving an only
child, a girl “who,” says Geoffrey of Vigeois, “was the cause of
great calamity to her country.” Richard, as duke, took her into his
wardship as heiress of Angoulême and claimed also the wardship of
her land;[138] but her uncles, William and Aimar, tried to seize
their dead brother’s heritage. Richard drove them out of Angoulême,
whereupon they found a refuge at Limoges with their half-brother,
viscount Aimar.[139] It was plain that Richard would soon be involved
in a new war with them and with Aimar of Limoges; and meanwhile other
influences were tending to develope that war into a general one. The
comparative peace of the last eighteen months was almost ominous;
it certainly did not imply contentment on the part of the barons of
Aquitaine. They were all this while writhing under the iron rule of
their young duke; many of them were plotting schemes for “doing their
utmost to drive him out of the duchy of Aquitaine and the county
of Poitou altogether.”[140] Strangely enough, the impulse which at
length brought their plottings to a head seems to have sprung from a
private quarrel between two brothers who did not rank among the great
vassals of the duchy.
The castle of Hautefort, on the border of the Limousin and Périgord,
was the joint patrimony of Constantine and Bertrand de Born. They
lived in it together, but in continual discord, till Constantine
drove Bertrand out, seemingly in the latter part of 1181 or early
in 1182. Bertrand, however, soon made his way back, and expelled
Constantine in his turn. Constantine appealed for help to their
immediate feudal superior, the viscount of Limoges,[141] and also,
it seems, to the duke. Both took up his cause; but at the moment
they were at enmity with each other—probably about the Angoulême
succession—so “Richard made war against Aimar, and Richard and
Aimar made war against Bertrand and ravaged and burned his land.”
Constantine was “a good knight as regards fighting”;[142] Bertrand
was something more—“a good knight, and a good fighter, and a good
squire of dames, and a good troubadour, and wise and well-spoken,
knowing how to deal with bad and good—and all his time he was at war
with all his neighbours.”[143] The condition of things described
in these last words was to Bertrand an ideal condition: “I would
that the great men should be always quarrelling among themselves,”
he said.[144] It was the ideal of a typical Aquitanian baron; and
that ideal had become much less easy of realization now that the
young duke was master of the land than it had been while the ducal
interests were represented only by a woman or left in charge of mere
seneschals. Bertrand seems to have conceived a project of so working
on the minds of the other malcontents as to band them together with
himself in a conspiracy whose primary and ostensible object was to be
the overthrow of the duke, but which by uniting all its members in
a sworn alliance with each other and therefore with its originator,
Bertrand, should enable him to maintain his position as master of
Hautefort. If Aimar of Limoges could be bound to Bertrand in a sworn
league against Richard, Bertrand would be at once rid of one of his
present antagonists, and another and a greater one would—so at least
the allies might hope—soon have [Sidenote: 1181-2] his hands too full
of other work to trouble himself further about Hautefort.[145]
Aimar and his three half-brothers,[146] being already banded together
against the duke for the preservation of Angoulême to the male line
of Taillefer, were naturally quite ready to [Sidenote: =1181-2=]
embrace Bertrand’s project—if indeed the project had originated
with Bertrand. It seems to have first taken shape in a meeting at
Limoges: “in an ancient minster of S. Martial,” says Bertrand, “many
rich men swore to me on a missal.”[147] They seem to have sworn
that no individual among them should make terms with Richard for
himself independently of his allies.[148] Among the earliest members
of the league thus formed were, besides the brothers of Angoulême
and their half-brother of Limoges, the three other viscounts of the
Limousin—Ventadour, Comborn, and Turenne—the count of Périgord, and
William of Gourdon in Quercy.[149] To these were soon added “other
barons of Périgord and of the Limousin and Quercy whom Richard was
disinheriting.”[150] In one of his most vigorous sirventes Bertrand
made a stirring appeal to the great nobles of Gascony, Gaston of
Béarn, Vézian of Lomagne, Bernard of Armagnac, Peter of Dax, Centol
of Bigorre: “if they will it, the count [of Poitou] will have enough
to do in those parts; and then, since he is so valiant, let him
come with his great host this way and measure himself with us!” The
effect of Richard’s repressive measures in Saintonge and in Poitou
are indirectly acknowledged in the poet’s next words: “If Taillebourg
and Pons and Lusignan and Mauléon and Tonnay were fit for action,
and if there were a stirring and stalwart viscount at Sivray, I
will never believe that they would not help us. He of Thouars,
too, whom the count has threatened, should join us if he be not a
dastard.”[151] Of Richard’s relations at this period with Aimeric of
Thouars, Ralf of Mauléon, and the lords of Tonnay and Sivray, we know
nothing. The head of the house of Lusignan was that same Geoffrey
who had been a prominent leader in the Poitevin rising of 1167, and
had also [Sidenote: =1181-2=] joined in the revolt of 1173. Since
then a new cause of strife had arisen between him and the Angevin
rulers of Aquitaine. At the time when Adalbert of La Marche sold his
county, according to his own statement, there was “no one protesting
and indeed no one existing who had a right to protest” against the
sale.[152] But on the actual annexation of La Marche to the ducal
domain Geoffrey of Lusignan “with his brothers”—he had five—did more
than protest; he “resisted, saying that La Marche belonged to him
as heir—and,” adds Geoffrey of Vigeois, “he got it.”[153] How and
when he got it we do not know, but it was probably not earlier than
the autumn of 1182, since Bertrand de Born shortly before that time
evidently did not regard the Lusignans as being in a position to
afford much practical help to the league, and in June of that year
Henry was still sufficiently master of the county to make a peaceful
visit to Grandmont for the third time within sixteen months.[154]
Obviously, however, the league would have the sympathies of the
claimant of La Marche and his brothers. It seems to have also had
those of some at least of the towns; “the burghers are shutting
themselves in all round”—that is, rebuilding or strengthening their
town walls—said Bertrand.[155]
Concerted action was, however, so difficult to men accustomed by
lifelong habit to fighting each for his own hand that before the
allies were ready for a simultaneous rising their project seems to
have become known to the duke. On Sunday, April 11, 1182, he “with a
few of his people manfully captured” the Puy-St.-Front, a stronghold
which stood in much the same relation to the city of Périgueux as
that of the “castle of S. Martial” to the city of Limoges. The
capture was evidently a surprise, characteristically planned and
executed by Richard on the spur of the moment [Sidenote: 1182] when
he discovered that Elias of Périgord, with whom he does not seem to
have had any previous trouble, “was favouring his enemies.” He then
marched upon Excideuil and ravaged the Limousin border from that
fortress to Corgnac. By the middle of May the rebel leaders were
apparently so disheartened that they were ready to discuss terms
of peace, not indeed with Richard, but with his father. Soon after
Whitsuntide (May 16) the counts of Angoulême and Périgord and the
viscount of Limoges met the king at Grandmont, but no agreement was
reached. Henry then went to support Richard in the Limousin. Richard
suddenly attacked Excideuil, and took the town, though not the
castle; Henry went to St. Yrieix, placed a garrison there, and then
laid siege to Pierre-Buffière, which surrendered after twelve days.
At midsummer he was back at Grandmont. Richard meanwhile had gone
from Excideuil back to Périgueux. It seems that in his absence Elias
had recovered Puy-St.-Front, and this time it was well prepared for
defence. Richard “girded it all round about with a very great host”;
in a few days he was rejoined by his father, and at the end of the
month by his elder brother. The result was that in the first week of
July both Elias of Périgord and Aimar of Limoges submitted. The peace
was sworn in S. Augustine’s abbey at Limoges; Aimar promised that
his half-brothers should have no further help from him, and placed
two of his sons in Richard’s hands as hostages; Elias surrendered
Périgueux to the young duke, who thereupon made peace with him,
but took the precaution of destroying all the towers of the city
wall.[156] [Sidenote: 1181] Twelve months earlier, he had ordered
a more complete destruction of the defences of Limoges. There, the
walls of the castle of S. Martial, which Henry had ordered to be
razed thirty years before, had been hurriedly rebuilt by the burghers
during the war of 1174, “lest when peace was restored the duke should
forbid it.”[157] The duke seems to have let them alone for seven
years; it may have been [Sidenote: 1181-2] some recent addition to
the fortifications which made him issue at midsummer 1181 an order
that they should again be pulled down; and the burghers dared not
disobey him.[158]
[Sidenote: =1181-2=]
The league seemed to have failed; but its ultimate failure was by
no means assured yet. Two at least of its members were by this
time contemplating, if indeed they had not already taken, steps to
win support for it outside the duchy. Aimar Taillefer offered his
homage for Angoulême to the lord paramount, King Philip of France;
Philip accepted the homage, and thus pledged himself to uphold
Aimar in his struggle for the county against Richard, who was still
determined to reclaim it for its late count’s daughter, [Sidenote:
1182] Maud.[159] There was another young king in whom, although his
kingship was merely nominal, Bertrand saw a yet more desirable tool
for the purposes of the league. Before young Henry joined his father
and brother at the siege of Puy-St.-Front, he had been “joyfully
received” by the monks of S. Martial’s at Limoges[160]—perhaps
not by the monks only. The careless, easy, shallow disposition of
Eleanor’s eldest son was far more in accord than the energetic temper
of Richard with the ideas of the Aquitanian nobles as to what their
duke should be. The policy of setting him up as Richard’s rival was
obvious; and a characteristic action on Richard’s part helped, most
opportunely from Bertrand’s point of view, to stir up the elder
brother’s latent jealousy of the greater independence granted to the
younger one by their father. About half way between Châtelleraut and
Poitiers, on the borders of Anjou and Poitou, there rose out of the
champaign land a certain hill which seems to have struck Richard as
being a good site for a castle. He built a castle on it accordingly,
just as the first “great builder” of the Angevin family, Fulk the
Black, had built so many of the fortresses in the Loire valley, and
just as he himself in later days built the last and greatest of
all the fortresses reared by Fulk’s descendants—without regard to
the fact that the site did not belong to him. It really belonged to
his father; but, being in Anjou, it formed part of the territory
destined to fall at his father’s death to the share of the young
king.[161] Bertrand seized his opportunity. “At Clairvaux”—such was
the name given, somewhat inappropriately as it seems, to the new
fortress—“a fair castle has been, without hindrance, built and set
in the midst of the fields. I would not that the young king knew of
it or saw it,” ran the troubadour’s sarcastic verse, “for he would
not be pleased therewith; but I fear, so white it is, he will see it
from Matefélon.”[162] The young king seems to have remonstrated with
Richard,[163] but without effect. It is doubtful whether these things
took place before or after his visit to Limoges; the sequence of
events in Aquitaine during the years 1181-2, like that of Bertrand’s
_sirventes_ on which we are largely dependent for our knowledge of
those events, is obscure; but one thing is clear: before Christmas
1182 young Henry was secretly pledged to the league against his
brother.
Outwardly, that league was for a time broken up by the submission
of Aimar of Limoges and Elias of Périgord, and for some months
the Taillefer brothers and their adherents in the Angoumois seem
to have been the only enemies whom Richard had to fight. At the
beginning of November he took from them the castle of Blanzac;[164]
and about the same time Chalais was fortified against him by its
lord, Oliver of Castillon.[165] Before Christmas Richard rejoined
his father and brothers in Normandy. He seems to have taken Bertrand
de Born with him; at any rate he and Bertrand were for a while both
at once with the court at Argenton, and to all appearance on very
friendly terms.[166] Most likely, however, their friendliness was on
both sides only external. Bertrand soon afterwards unceremoniously
expressed his opinion that the Norman court, “where there was no
_gab_ and laughter and no giving of presents,” was not worthy to be
called a court, and declared that the dulness and rusticity (“l’enois
e la vilania”) of Argenton would have been the death of him, but for
the “good company” of the duchess of Saxony,[167] Richard’s sister,
to whom the troubadour had (according to his own account) been
introduced in a highly complimentary manner by Richard himself.[168]
Bertrand’s own military resources were small,[169] and he is not
likely to have taken any active part in the recent war; but the
earlier _sirventes_ by which he had striven to foment it seem to have
already brought upon him a warning from the duke,[170] and it may
have been a measure of policy on Richard’s part, when he quitted his
duchy, to command or invite the poet to accompany him, and even to be
at some pains to furnish him with a new subject for his verse.
The darkest secrets connected with the league did not come out till
after Christmas. The festival week was spent by the two Henrys,
Richard, and Geoffrey, at Caen.[171] On [Sidenote: 1183] January
1, 1183, the young king, “of his own accord, no one compelling
him,” publicly took an oath on the Gospels that he would serve his
father loyally and faithfully from that time forth; “and because—as
he asserted—he desired to retain in his mind no malice or rancour
whereby his father might afterwards be offended, he made known to
him that he (young Henry) was bound by an agreement with the barons
of Aquitaine against his brother Richard; having been moved thereto
because the castle of Clairvaux had been built against his will,
in the patrimony which was his rightful inheritance, by his said
brother; wherefore he besought his father to take that castle from
Richard and retain it in his own keeping.” Richard, when admonished
by his father on the subject, at first refused to give up the castle,
but afterwards at his father’s desire “freely made it over to him to
dispose of it according to his good pleasure.”[172]
The question of Clairvaux was thus settled for the lifetime of the
elder king; the settlement was that which the younger one had himself
proposed, and it ought to have led to his immediate withdrawal from
his engagements with Richard’s enemies. But the incident had a
further significance which filled Henry II with dismay. It showed
him that on his death not only might this particular dispute between
young Henry and Richard be reopened, but a crowd of other disputes
might arise among all his sons about their feudal relations with each
other, and that unless these relations were fixed beforehand, all
his schemes for preserving the integrity of the Angevin dominions
would probably come to nought. As soon as the festival season was
over he set out with his sons for Anjou. When they reached Le Mans,
he expressed his desire that young Henry, as the future head of
the family, should receive the homage of Richard and Geoffrey for
their respective duchies.[173] It seems that the proposition was
made privately to the young king, and was at least tacitly accepted
by him. Accordingly, on arriving at Angers, Henry II took measures
for confirming once for all “a bond of perpetual peace” between the
three brothers. First, each of them swore to keep his fealty to his
father always and against all men, and always to render to him due
honour and service. Next, they all swore that they would “always
keep peace among themselves according to the disposition made by
their father.”[174] Whatever may have been the case with regard to
Geoffrey and Britanny, it appears that Richard, at least, was thus
far wholly unaware that the “disposition” which he was thus pledged
to respect implied any arrangements beyond those which already
existed concerning his tenure of Poitou or of Aquitaine. The elder
king now publicly called upon the younger one to receive Geoffrey’s
liege homage for Britanny. To this neither of the brothers objected,
and the homage was duly rendered and received.[175] Next, the father
“used his utmost endeavours that the young king should grant the
duchy of Aquitaine to his brother Richard, to be held by Richard and
his heirs by an undisputable right.”[176] Richard at first declared
he would do no homage to his brother, who was no more than his
equal either in personal distinction or in nobility of birth; but
afterwards, yielding to his father’s counsel,[177] he consented.
Thereupon, however, the young king drew back.[178] He seems to have
explained more fully the nature and extent of his entanglement
with the malcontent barons of Aquitaine, and to have urged that
he could not thus desert their cause without a guarantee that his
father would make a settled peace between them and Richard. The
final settlement between the brothers was therefore postponed till
the Aquitanian barons could meet the king and his sons at Mirebeau.
Henry promised that he would then confirm peace on the terms settled
in the preceding summer, or, if this did not satisfy the barons, he
would judge their cause in his own court. Geoffrey of Britanny was
sent to invite or summon the barons to the meeting.[179] With these
arrangements young Henry professed himself content, and he promised
that he would, at Mirebeau, accept Richard’s homage, but on one
further condition: that Richard should, after performing the homage,
swear fealty to him on some holy relics. This last requirement, being
a plain insinuation of lack of confidence in Richard’s honour, was an
insult to which Richard could not submit. He “broke out in a white
heat of passion,” and not only again refused to perform the homage
at all, but—so it was said—declared that it was unmeet for him to
acknowledge, by any kind of subjection, a superior in a brother born
of the same parents, and that as their father’s property was the due
heritage of the first-born, so he himself claimed to be, with equal
justice, the lawful successor of their mother.[180] “Leaving nought
but insults and threats behind him” he quitted the court, hurried
into his own duchy, and prepared for defence.[181] His vehemence
kindled the wrath of his father, who hastily bade the young king
“rise up and subdue Richard’s pride,” and sent orders to Geoffrey to
“stand faithfully by his eldest brother and liege lord.”[182]
Neither young Henry nor Geoffrey needed a second bidding. Geoffrey,
sent into Aquitaine as a messenger of peace, had carried thither,
as a contemporary writer says, not peace but a sword. He and his
eldest brother were already in collusion, and instead of executing
his father’s commission to the malcontent barons, he had secretly
used the opportunity which that commission gave him to renew the
alliance between them and the young king, whom they were now eager
to set up as duke in Richard’s stead.[183] At the beginning of
February[184] the young king set out for Limoges; it seems to have
been arranged that his father, with a small force, should travel
by another route and join him there later.[185] Geoffrey was there
already; the viscount, Aimar, at once joined them, and endeavoured
to terrify the burghers of the castle into doing likewise. His
threats were emphasized by the neighbourhood of a host of Routiers
who seem to have been secretly engaged to be in readiness for a
call from Geoffrey.[186] That call Geoffrey now gave, and one body
of these ruffians, with some of his own vassals, swooped down from
Britanny upon Poitou and began plundering and burning the demesnes
of the count, who retaliated by making similar raids into Britanny,
“and if any man of that troop fell into his clutches, that man’s
head was cut off without respect of persons.”[187] Another body of
Routiers had come up from Gascony under a certain Raymond “Brunus,
or Brenuus” at the call of Aimar, and were with him engaged on
February 12 at Gorre, some few miles south of Limoges, in besieging
a church—probably fortified by the villagers for use as a place of
refuge—when the duke fell suddenly upon them. From a castle somewhere
beyond Poitiers he had ridden for two days almost without stopping;
his force was small, but the enemies were caught at unawares; many
of them were made prisoners; a nephew of their commander, Raymond,
was laid low by Richard’s own hand; Aimar and the rest of the band
escaped only because the horses of the Poitevins were too exhausted
for pursuit.[188]
The English chronicler who records Richard’s treatment of the
captured invaders may have been shocked at the indiscriminate
ruthlessness which slew mercenaries and knights all alike; but the
Prior of Vigeois evidently saw nothing more than just retribution in
the fate of the sacrilegious “children of darkness” who were made
prisoners at Gorre. Richard dragged them to Aixe and there “caused
some of them to be drowned in the Vienne, some to be slain with the
sword, and the rest to be blinded.”[189] It was almost a necessity to
get rid of these men. The league was no longer secret; many of the
conspirators were delivering up their castles to the young king.[190]
The danger was evident enough to make Richard send an urgent message
to his father asking him to come to the rescue at once.[191] Henry
accordingly advanced towards Limoges. A watchman on the castle wall
cried out that the city folk were bringing up troops to destroy their
rivals of the castle; someone else spread a report that Geoffrey of
Britanny was in great danger outside the walls; the townsfolk rushed
out and began a fierce fight which was with difficulty stopped when
the royal banners were recognized.[192] The king withdrew to Aixe.
At night young Henry—still maintaining a pretence of loyalty—went
to his father and tried to excuse the blunder of the townsfolk; but
his excuses were rejected. “Then, at the viscount’s command, the
people swore fealty to the young king in the church of S. Peter of
Carfax.”[193]
All concealment was now flung aside. Walls and ramparts, turrets
and battlements, rose with incredible speed all round Limoges; the
material being of course mostly wood, derived, it seems, from some
half dozen or more churches which castle folk and city folk alike
pulled down without scruple. Another horde of Routiers, hired by the
viscounts of Limoges and Turenne, and commanded by one Sancho “of
Sérannes” and another leader who seems to have adopted the heathen
appellation of Curbaran,[194] appeared at Terrasson in Périgord,
crossed the Limousin frontier, seized Yssandon, and swept across
the viscounty of Limoges as far north as Pierre-Buffière, which
they wrested from King Henry’s soldiers and restored to its rebel
owner and to the viscount; thence they went south again and after an
unsuccessful attempt on Brive took up their quarters at Yssandon.
Other “Tartarean legions” poured in from the north, sent by Philip
of France to support the cause of his brother-in-law.[195] If these
Routiers could have been controlled by their employers, Henry and
Richard might probably have been easily surrounded and captured.
Nothing of the kind was, however, attempted. Instead, “the whole
assembly of malignants, gathered together from divers parts,” were
left to take their own way and spread themselves over the whole of
Périgord, the Angoumois and Saintonge; the country was ravished,
shrines were plundered, altars desecrated, and expelled monks fled
with the relics of their patron saints as in the days of the heathen
Northmen.[196] Meanwhile King Henry had called up the feudal forces
of his other continental dominions[197] to deal with the rebels in
Limoges. On Shrove Tuesday, March 1, he entered the city, broke down
the bridge behind him, and disposed his forces for a siege of the
town. That siege dragged on till midsummer. Shortly before Easter
(March 17) the young king went to secure Angoulême by filling it
with “a crowd of malignants,” hired with the proceeds of a forcible
seizure of the treasures of S. Martial’s Abbey. On account of this
sacrilege the town guard of S. Martial’s castle, when he returned
thither, pelted him ignominiously away;[198] but Aimar and Geoffrey
continued to hold the place.[199]
Richard had accompanied his father to the siege,[200] but soon left
it for more active work. He set himself to recover Saintonge and the
Angoumois from the Routiers and the rebels; and he seems to have
not only succeeded in this, but to have chased the marauders out of
Saintonge northward across western Poitou right over the frontier of
Britanny.[201] This campaign, ignored by the chroniclers, won for
him a striking tribute from his most determined enemy; Bertrand de
Born, composing a _sirventes_ in behalf of the league and actually at
the request of the young king, could not refrain from expressing his
admiration for the courage and persistence of the count of Poitou.
“When this game is played out we shall know which of the king’s sons
is to have the land. The young king would have soon conquered it
if the count were not so well practised at the game; but he shuts
them (his enemies) in so fast and presses them so hard that he has
recovered Saintonge by force, and delivered the Angoumois as far
as the border of Finisterre.... Hunted and wounded wild boar saw
we never more furious than he is, yet he never swerves from his
course.”[202] On the other hand, two of the most powerful feudataries
of the French Crown, the duke of Burgundy and the count of Toulouse,
had by this time definitely pledged themselves to the league. Both of
them met young Henry at Uzerche on May 24 and brought reinforcements
to his cause.[203] Bertrand’s boast that the war begun in the
Limousin should involve France, Normandy and Flanders before it was
ended[204] might yet have been fulfilled, but for an unexpected
catastrophe: early in June young Henry fell sick, and on the 11th he
died.[205]
Almost instantly the league fell asunder. The object which its
non-Aquitanian members had in view was to break the power of Henry
II; they had found a priceless tool for their purpose in his eldest
son, who, being like himself a crowned and anointed king, could be
set up as a rival head of the Angevin house; the Aquitanian revolt
had offered a promising opportunity for using that tool to their
advantage. When young Henry was gone, their purpose in joining the
league was ruined; the internal quarrels of Aquitaine and its rulers
had no interest for them. Accordingly Hugh of Burgundy and Raymond
of Toulouse “hurried away after their own affairs”;[206] and instead
of the great coalition which was to have ringed in the Angevins from
the Pyrenees to the Channel, Henry and Richard had now only to face
the enfeebled remains of a local revolt. The news came to Richard
when he was besieging Aixe, which young Henry had seized a few weeks
before.[207] The king, when the first shock of grief was over,
resumed the siege of Limoges; Geoffrey seems to have slipped away to
Britanny; once more, on Midsummer day, Aimar surrendered the town
and renounced all dealings with his brothers of Angoulême “till they
should deserve grace of the king and the duke”; and once more the new
fortifications were levelled to the ground.[208] For what remained
to be done Henry’s presence was needless. At the end of the month he
went back to his northern dominions, while Alfonso of Aragon joined
Richard in laying siege to Hautefort. In a week (June 30-July 6)
Bertrand de Born was forced to surrender it; and a punitive harrying
of Périgord by Richard brought the revolt to an end.[209]
Brief as the war had been, it was not without results. A few at least
of the insurgent barons had made their profit out of the general
confusion. It must have been during this time that the Lusignans
gained a hold on La Marche which they never entirely lost. Richard’s
efforts to establish Maud as countess of Angoulême may have been
continued for a while longer, but they were doomed to fail sooner
or later by reason of Philip’s grant of the city to the rival
claimant. Bertrand de Born, in spite of the warning given him some
months before by the duke himself, had persisted in his defiance to
the uttermost. He was captured with his castle, brought before his
conqueror, and compelled to resign his claim to its ownership.[210]
He implored the duke’s mercy, and Richard at once granted him his
full forgiveness,[211] but gave back Hautefort to Constantine.[212]
This decision, however, was reversed by King Henry,[213] probably on
an appeal from the troubadour. Richard appears to have acquiesced
without difficulty in his father’s decision on the point;[214] and
Richard, not Henry, was destined to reap its results. Bertrand had
already declared that if the duke would be gracious and generous to
him he should find him as true as steel,[215] and he kept his word;
for he perceived that his talents for fighting, and for setting
others to fight, might after all be exercised not less actively, and
with less danger of disastrous consequences to himself, on the side
of the duke than on that of the duke’s enemies.
CHAPTER III
KING HENRY’S HEIR
1183-1189
Et vos, patres, nolite in iracundiam provocare filios vestros.
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 re-adjustment 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.”[216]
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.[217] 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 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.”[218]
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.”[219] 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 Châteauneuf.[220] One large body under
Curbaran swept across Berry into the Orléanais, only to be almost
destroyed at Châteaudun on July 30 by the “Peace-makers,” a sworn
brotherhood formed among the country folk to resist the marauders
and restore peace to the land.[221] Curbaran himself was among the
prisoners, who were all hanged.[222] 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,”[223]
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 [Sidenote: 1183-4] 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 [Sidenote: 1184] 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.[224]
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, [Sidenote: 1183] 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.”[225] 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, “quit-claimed 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 sister,” Aloysia.[226] 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 [Sidenote: 1183-4] 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.[227] 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 [Sidenote:
1184] 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.”[228] 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[229]—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.[230] It [Sidenote: 1185] was not till after Christmas that
Richard received permission to return to Poitou. He crossed from
Dover to Wissant;[231] 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.”[232]
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 [Sidenote: 1184] 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.[233] At the end
of April (1185) [Sidenote: 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.”[234]
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 whole-hearted
as his defiance had been; “he remained,” says an English chronicler
with evident admiration, “with his father as an obedient son.”[235]
Henry kept [Sidenote: 1186] 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;[236] but the maiden had died before the
end of the year.[237] 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.[238]
His inclination, however, was overridden 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 [Sidenote: 1186] on March 10, 1186, it
was distinctly stated that Aloysia and her dowry, the Vexin, were to
be given to the bridegroom for whom she had been originally destined,
Richard.[239]
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;[240] 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.”[241] 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.[242]
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.”[243] 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.[244]
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.[245] 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 [Sidenote: 1187] 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.”[246] These demands were, first, that he should
receive Richard’s homage for the county of Poitou;[247] and secondly,
that Aloysia and her dowry, Gisors, should be restored to France.[248]
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.[249] 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
Châteauroux.[250] 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 Châteauroux
till he himself could join them.[251] 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.[252] 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.[253]
Neither of these two accounts seems to imply that Richard at
Châteauroux 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.”[254] 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[255]—were arranged by the papal legate then resident in France,
and some other men of religion[256] acting “on the orders of the
Pope and the advice of the faithful men of both kings.”[257] When
the agreement was signed, the French king, “by way of shewing to
all men that concord was attained,” invited Richard to accompany
him to Paris. Richard accepted the invitation;[258] 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.[259] 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.”[260]
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.[261] 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.[262] 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.[263] 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.”[264] 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 [Sidenote: 1188] with
Philip at Hilary-tide (1188).[265] 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[266]
and separated to prepare for the enterprise on which they agreed to
set out together at the next Easter twelvemonth; that is, Easter
1190.[267]
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.[268] 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.[269] 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.”[270]
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,[271] 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.[272] 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.[273]
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 Angoulême 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.[274] 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.[275] 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.[276]
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.[277]
On hearing of this Richard, after again destroying the defences
of Taillebourg,[278] marched into Gascony and there collected a
great force of Brabantines with which he invaded the county of
Toulouse.[279] 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,[280] 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.”[281] 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.[282] 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.”[283]
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,[284] 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.[285] 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.[286] 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.”[287]
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,[288] he advanced into Berry, and
by the middle of June was master of its northern part as far as
Châteauroux, which he captured on June 16.[289] 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.”[290] 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.[291]
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.[292] 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
Châteauroux in the custody of William des Barres.[293] Richard, “by
way of doing something,”[294] 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,[295] 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[296]) 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 Vendôme, who was an adherent of the king of France.[297] Philip
dropped the pursuit, and on August 16 met Henry in conference at
Gisors, but they came to no agreement.[298] 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.[299] 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 Châteauroux for Philip at the time of Richard’s
recent adventure there, was made prisoner by Richard, but broke his
parole and escaped.[300] Next day Richard took leave of his father,
“promising that he would serve him well and faithfully,” and set out
again for Berry.[301] 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.[302]
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
Châtillon, 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.”[303]
The action of the French magnates may have opened Richard’s eyes
to the unseemliness of all this strife between fellow-soldiers 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,[304] 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.[305] Philip
went into Berry, re-took Palluau, and proceeded to Châteauroux, but
only to withdraw the mercenaries whom he had left there and lead them
back to Bourges, where he dismissed them.[306]
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.[307] 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 Châtillon—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.”[308] 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.”[309] 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
Châteauroux and Issoudun and Graçay which were not ducal domains,
but merely underfiefs.”[310] 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.[311]
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.”[312] 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[313] 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.[314] Philip responded
by promising that Châteauroux, Issoudun, and all the other castles,
lands, and fiefs which he had taken from Henry in former wars should
be restored to Richard.[315] 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.[316]
“Thus began the quarrel that never was fought out,”[317] 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.”[318]
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 there
is 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[319] 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.[320] Either for the
same purpose, or to secure, if possible, some of the fortresses
of Aquitaine,[321] Henry himself went as far south as Le Dorat
in La Marche; there, however, he “did nothing”;[322] and indeed
nothing could be done till the truce expired. It had been agreed
at Bonmoulins that the two kings should [Sidenote: 1189] 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.[323] 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.[324]
Accordingly, after the expiration of the truce he and Richard made
a joint raid across Henry’s borders.[325] 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.[326] 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.[327] After Easter the long delayed meeting of the
kings took place at La Ferté-Bernard;[328] this was followed during
the next five or six weeks by several conferences between Henry and
Richard, “but it was all lost labour.”[329] Another legate, John of
Anagni, was now endeavouring to reconcile the kings,[330] 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.[331] Accordingly, in Whitsun week Henry,
Philip, Richard, the legate, and the four assistant arbitrators
all met together near La Ferté-Bernard.[332] 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;[333] if
these conditions were granted, Philip offered to restore all that
he had taken from Henry during the current year and the preceding
one.[334] 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.”[335] 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.[336] 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.”[337] 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 Châteauroux, 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.[338] 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.[339]
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 years. 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,”[340]
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.”[341] In a few days most of the castles around
Le Mans on the north and east—Bonnétable, 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.[342]
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.[343] 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.[344]
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!”[345]
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 Vendômois, 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.[346] 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 re-distributed at
his own pleasure.[347] 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.[348] 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 Château-du-Loir and Trou, or Gisors, Pacy,
and Nonancourt, “until all the things above determined by the king of
France should be fulfilled.”[349]
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,[350] 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!”[351] 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.[352]
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
1189-1192
Ma fu di pensier nostri ultimo segno
Espugnar de Sion le nobil mura.
CHAPTER I
THE YEAR OF PREPARATION
1189-1190
Surgite, et ascendamus in Sion.
The headquarters of Philip and Richard had been at Tours since
their capture of that city on July 3;[353] it was probably there
that Richard received, from a messenger despatched by William the
Marshal,[354] the tidings of his father’s death at Chinon on the 6th
and the intended burial at Fontevraud. The night-watch round the
open coffin was beginning in the great abbey church when he reached
it next evening.[355] All endeavours to guess at his feelings were
baffled by the rigid stillness of his aspect and demeanour,[356]
broken only by a momentary shudder when he saw the uncovered
face.[357] For a long while he stood gazing at it in silence;[358]
for a briefer space he knelt in silent prayer.[359] When at last he
spoke, it was to call for two of his father’s most loyal adherents,
William the Marshal and Maurice of [Sidenote: 1189 _July 7_] Craon.
They came forward, and at his command, followed him, with some
others, out of the church. “So, fair Sir Marshal,” he began, “you
were minded to slay me the other day! and slain I should have been of
a surety had I not turned your lance aside by the strength of my arm.
That would have been a bad day’s work!” The Marshal answered that his
own strength of arm was great enough to drive a lance-thrust home to
its aim in spite of interference, and the issue of the encounter was
sufficient proof that he had sought only the life of the horse, not
the rider. “Marshal, I will bear you no malice; you are forgiven,”
was Richard’s reply.[360] The burial took place next morning.
[Sidenote: _July 8_] As soon as it was over Richard despatched
the Marshal and another envoy[361] to England with orders for the
release of his mother, and with a commission to her authorizing
her to act as his representative until he could himself go over
sea.[362] His choice of the Marshal for this errand was an indication
of the spirit in which he took up the rights and duties of his new
position. He showed himself gracious to all persons who had been
faithful to Henry, and expressed his intention of confirming them
in their several offices and rewarding their fidelity to the late
king. He was asked to ratify a number of grants which Geoffrey the
chancellor assured him Henry had recently made or promised to make,
and he consented in every case save one, a grant of Châteauroux and
its heiress to Baldwin of Béthune, which he said must be cancelled
because he had himself, as duke of Aquitaine, granted the damsel
and her fief to Andrew of Chauvigny; but he promised to compensate
Baldwin.[363] One man only who had held high office under Henry
fell under Richard’s displeasure: Stephen the seneschal of Anjou,
who was not only deprived of the castles and the royal treasury
which he had in custody for the late king, but was also chained
hand and foot and put in prison. The cause of Stephen’s disgrace
is unknown; his previous history is obscure;[364] but the disgrace
was only temporary; within a few months he was once more free, and
reinstated in the king’s confidence and favour. On the other hand,
when three of the men who had deserted Henry and transferred their
allegiance to Richard asked for restitution of their lands of which
Henry had disseised them, Richard gave it, but disseised them again
immediately, “saying that such was the due reward of traitors who
in time of need forsake their lords and help others against them”;
and he treated with coldness and aversion all, save one, who had
thus acted. The exception was John, who when he presented himself
before his brother was “received with honour”[365] and “kindly
comforted.”[366]
[Sidenote: _July 8-20_]
Richard next proceeded into Normandy. At Séez the archbishops
of Rouen and Canterbury met him, and (acting doubtless under a
commission from the legate) absolved him from excommunication.[367]
On July 20 he received the ducal sword and banner of Normandy at
the high altar of Rouen cathedral, and immediately afterwards
the fealty of the Norman clergy and people.[368] He then went
to Gisors for a conference with the king of France. The French
historiographer-royal notes that as “the count of Poitou” set foot
in the great border-fortress about which he and his father had
wrangled so long with Philip, fire broke out within it, and that next
day as he rode forth the wooden bridge broke down under him and he
and his horse fell into [Sidenote: _July 22_] the ditch.[369] The
conference took place on the 22nd, between Chaumont and Trie.[370]
Philip began by renewing his original claim to Gisors, but waived
it on receiving an intimation that Richard still purposed to marry
Aloysia.[371] The French king seems to have further claimed a large
share of the castles and towns which he had taken from Henry,
including Châteauroux, Le Mans, and Tours. Submission to such a
demand would unquestionably have brought upon Richard, as an English
chronicler says, “shame and everlasting contempt”; indeed, he would
have been within his feudal right in refusing it entirely, on the
ground that no forfeiture on his father’s part could invalidate the
grant of all these fiefs which had been made to himself by Philip
in November 1188. He consented, however, to resign once for all his
rights in Auvergne, and two little fiefs in Aquitanian Berry that lay
close to the French Royal Domain—Graçay and Issoudun; and he bought
off Philip’s other demands by a promise of four thousand marks in
addition to the twenty thousand due from Henry under the convention
of Colombières.[372] These terms Philip accepted. Richard renewed
his homage to his overlord, and they agreed to set out on the Crusade
together in Lent of the next year.[373]
For three weeks longer Richard stayed in Normandy, winning all
hearts by his gracious and affable demeanour.[374] [Sidenote: _Aug.
12_] On August 12 he went to England.[375] Landing at Southampton
or Portsmouth,[376] he was received two or three days later with a
solemn procession at Winchester by his mother and the chief nobles
and prelates of the land.[377] As the archbishop of Canterbury had
previously returned from Normandy,[378] the coronation might have
taken place immediately, had the new king desired it. But, unlike
every other king of England since the Norman conquest, Richard was
in no haste to be crowned. There was no need for haste; he had no
rival; he had, in England, no enemies; and he had made for himself a
host of friends by a proclamation which during the last five weeks
“honourable men” sent out by Eleanor according to instructions from
him had been publishing and carrying into effect in every county.
All persons under arrest for offences against Forest Law were to be
discharged; those who were outlawed for a like cause were permitted
to return in peace. Other persons imprisoned “by the will of the
king or his justiciar,” not “by the common law of their county or
hundred, or on appeal,” were also to be discharged. Persons outlawed
“by common law without appeal by the justices” were to be re-admitted
to peace provided they could find sureties that they would come up
for trial if required; prisoners detained on appeal for any shameful
cause were to be released on the same terms. All persons detained
“on appeal by those who acknowledged themselves to be malefactors”
were to be set free unconditionally. Malefactors to whom “life and
limbs” had been granted as approvers were to abjure and depart
from the king’s land; those who without the concession of life and
limbs had of their own free will accused others were to be kept in
custody till further counsel should be taken. The ordinance concluded
by requiring every free man of the realm to swear fealty and liege
homage to the new lord of England, “and that they will submit to his
jurisdiction and lend him their aid for the maintenance of his peace
and justice in all things.”[379] We cannot ascertain how far Richard
was justified in the insinuation conveyed in this ordinance, that the
administration of criminal law in Henry’s latter days had been marked
not only by undue severity, but also by arbitrary interference on the
part of the Crown or its officers with the rights and liberties of
Englishmen. The most philosophic historian of the time, William of
Newburgh, evidently thought that however Henry might have erred on
the side of rigour, Richard at the outset of his reign erred no less
in the opposite direction. “At that time,” says William, “the gaols
were crowded with criminals awaiting trial or punishment, but through
Richard’s clemency these pests came forth from prison, perhaps to
become bolder thieves in the future.”[380] But the people in general
were delighted to welcome a ruler who seemed to them bent upon
outdoing all that was good and undoing all that they considered evil
in the government of his predecessor.[381]
From Winchester Richard was moving on by leisurely stages towards
London when a report of a Welsh raid made him suddenly turn towards
the border, with the intention of punishing the raiders; but Eleanor,
who perhaps better understood the danger of plunging unnecessarily
and unwarily into a Welsh war, called him [Sidenote: _Sept. 1, 2_]
back, and as usual he obeyed her.[382] On September 1 or 2 he was
welcomed with a great procession in London;[383] on the 3rd he was
crowned at Westminster.[384] Three contemporary writers, one of whom
actually assisted in the most [Sidenote: _Sept. 3_] sacred detail
of the ceremony,[385] tell us how at its outset Duke Richard was
“solemnly and duly” elected by clergy and people; how he took the
threefold oath, to maintain the peace of the Church, to suppress
injustice, and to promote equity and mercy.[386] After receiving the
threefold anointing and being clothed with the symbolical vestments
of the kingly office, he was adjured by the Primate not to assume
it unless he were fully minded to keep his vow; he answered that by
God’s help he did intend so to do. He then took the crown from the
altar and handed it to the archbishop, and the archbishop set it on
his head.[387] Richard’s coronation is in one way the most memorable
in all English history, for it is the occasion on which the form and
manner of crowning a king of England were, in every essential point
and in most of the lesser particulars, fixed for all after-time.
The court festivities lasted three days,[388] and the manner in
which they were conducted presented a marked contrast to the
rough, careless, unceremonious ways of the court of Henry II. The
banquet each day was as stately and decorous as it was lavish and
splendid. Clergy and laity were seated apart, and the former had the
place of honour, being at the king’s own table.[389] Richard had
further emphasized the solemnity of the occasion by a proclamation
ordering that no Jew and no woman should be admitted to the palace.
Notwithstanding this, certain Jews did present themselves at the
doors on the evening of the coronation-day with gifts for the king.
The courtiers of lower rank and the people who crowded round robbed
them, beat them, and drove them away; some were mortally injured,
some slain on the spot.[390] The tumult reached the ears of the king
in the banqueting-hall, and he sent the justiciar and some of the
nobles to suppress it; but it was already beyond their control.[391]
A great wave of anti-Jewish feeling swept through the city; before
morning most of the Jews’ houses were sacked; and the number of
persons concerned in the riot was so large and public feeling so
strongly on their side that although some of them were arrested by
Richard’s orders and brought before him, he found it impossible to do
justice in the matter,[392] and only ventured to send three men to
the gallows—one who in the confusion had robbed a Christian, and two
who had kindled a fire which burned down a Christian’s house.[393]
For the rest he had to “condone what he could not avenge.”[394] He
tried, however, to prevent further disturbances of the same kind by
sending into every shire letters commanding that the Jews should be
left in peace and no one should do them wrong;[395] and so long as he
remained in England these orders were obeyed.
The new king had now to make provision for his Crusade, and for the
carrying on of the government of England after his departure. There
was no reason to anticipate any difficulty in the latter half of
his task; but the other half of it presented a very serious cause
for anxiety—the want of money. The Angevin treasury was empty;[396]
the ducal revenues of Normandy and Aquitaine were not large enough,
at the best of times, to furnish more than a very insignificant
surplus for purposes external to the two duchies. Richard’s first
act on reaching Winchester had been to cause an exact account to
be taken of the contents of the royal treasury.[397] We have no
trustworthy statement of the result;[398] but it evidently proved
quite inadequate to supply his needs. The twenty-four thousand
marks due to Philip, the cost of equipping and maintaining his own
followers and of fitting out a transport fleet, were only a part
of those needs; there was another part which from Richard’s point
of view was incalculable and almost unlimited. A great effort for
the deliverance of Holy Land had been in contemplation throughout
western Europe for nearly five years; the form in which it had been
originally projected was that of an expedition to be led by the
Angevin king of England as head of the elder branch of the royal
house of Jerusalem, and composed chiefly of his subjects, although
since then circumstances had so altered and the scheme had so widened
out and developed that he was now only one of several monarchs who
were to lead their respective contingents as portions of one great
army. From 1184 onwards crowds of Englishmen of all ranks had taken
the Cross; most of them—very likely including the English-born
count of Poitou—without counting the cost, in any sense of that
word. Theoretically, the undertaking being not a national but a
personal and voluntary one, each Crusader was responsible for his own
equipment and expenses and those of his tenants or other followers.
The king, however, seems to have at once recognized that if the
English (or Angevin) contingent was to take such a share in the
Holy War as befitted its leader’s rank among the sovereigns and his
kingdom’s rank among the powers of Christendom, he must carry with
him a large reserve fund for the maintenance of the whole force under
his command in a state of efficiency on a service of which no one
could forecast the requirements, the difficulties, or the duration.
As we read the after-story, indeed, we are almost led to credit him
with a presentiment that his war-chest was destined to become the
war-chest of the whole crusading host. At any rate, his most pressing
anxiety was to fill the chest, and—since he expected to leave Europe
in the spring—to fill it as quickly as possible. He might impose a
special tax, or more than one; a tallage, or “donum,” or both at
once. But these would take many months to collect, and would bring
in, probably, scarcely enough to be worth collecting, from his point
of view; while his subjects, who were, or considered themselves,
already hard pressed by the financial administration of Henry, would
have felt or at least resented such taxes as an additional and
oppressive burden. Richard adopted quicker and easier methods.
Among the crowds who had taken the Cross in a moment of enthusiasm
there were many whose zeal had cooled during the months or years of
waiting, and who would now gladly be relieved of the obligation to
fulfil their vow. There was also among them a much larger number
of officers of the English court and government, and of other men
belonging to the classes from which such officers were usually
taken, than could well be spared from the work of administration at
home. Accordingly, Richard had asked and obtained from Pope Clement
letters patent granting release from their vow to all persons whom
the king should appoint to take part in the safe-keeping of the realm
during his absence.[399] Naturally such release was conditional on
compensation being made to the crusading cause by all who were thus
transferred from the service of the Cross to that of the Crown,
since they had taken the former upon themselves and the latter was
not compulsory; and this compensation necessarily took the form of
the payment to the king of a sum which could only be fixed in each
case by a bargain between him and the payer. From this it was not a
difficult step for the king to make similar bargains with men who had
not taken the Cross, but were suitable for and ambitious of office
in England, and able to pay for it. Neither the sale of public
offices nor the yet more general practice of requiring payment for
royal grants of land, privileges, and benefits of any kind—including
confirmations by a new king of grants made by his predecessors—was
condemned, in principle at least, by the ordinary code of political
morality in Richard’s day. He might fairly argue that men who
desired any of these things, and had means to pay for them, ought
to be made to contribute as largely as possible to the Treasury for
the furtherance of the Crusade; and he accordingly set himself to
drain, as it seemed, to the uttermost all these sources of revenue.
“He deposed from their bailiwicks nearly all the sheriffs and their
deputies, and held them to ransom to the uttermost farthing. Those
who could not pay were imprisoned.”[400] He “induced many persons to
vie with each other in spending money to purchase dignities or public
offices, or even royal manors.”[401] “All who were overburdened
with money the king promptly relieved of it, giving them powers and
possessions at their choice.”[402] “Whosoever would, bought of the
king his own rights as well as those of other men.” “All things were
for sale with him—powers, lordships, earldoms, sheriffdoms, castles,
towns, manors, and suchlike”;[403] or as Roger of Howden sums it all
up, “the king put up to sale everything that he had.”[404]
The part of these proceedings which chiefly perturbed Richard’s
counsellors, it seems, was his reckless alienation of Crown demesne;
in his passionate eagerness to pile up treasure for the Crusade he
was, they considered, stripping himself of his proper means of living
as a king should live at home; it was as if he did not intend, or did
not expect, ever to come home again at all; and when some of them
ventured on a remonstrance he answered, “I would sell London if I
could find a buyer for it.”[405] He was in fact in a mood to, almost
literally, sell all that he had and give it to the Crusade. The means
which he employed to raise money undoubtedly served their purpose;
and they seem to have neither provoked any general discontent nor
inflicted any hardship on the people, or even upon more than a
very few individuals. The chronicler who speaks of a wholesale
“deposition” and “ransoming” of the sheriffs has considerably
exaggerated the king’s treatment of those officers. In the first
place, all sheriffs were always liable to be “deposed” at any moment,
since they were always appointed to hold their office “during the
king’s pleasure.” At Richard’s accession there were in England
twenty-eight sheriffs; two of these had each three counties under his
charge, seven had two counties each. When Richard’s redistribution
of offices was completed, six shires were by a special grant to John
withdrawn from the royal administration altogether; seven or eight
shires remained or were replaced under their former sheriffs; five
sheriffs were transferred to shires other than those which they had
previously administered; four—perhaps more—went on the Crusade; all
the rest seem to have been employed in some other capacity under the
Crown. In all likelihood most, if not all, of these men had taken the
Cross and their “ransom” was no more than they were justly bound and
could well afford to pay. One case does indeed present a different
aspect. Ranulf de Glanville, at this time sheriff of Yorkshire and
Westmorland, was also, and had been for nine years, Chief Justiciar
of England. He had taken the Cross in 1185.[406] One chronicler
asserts that Ranulf was now “stripped of his power,” put in ward, and
set free only on payment of fifteen thousand pounds to the king.[407]
According to other authorities, however, he asked to be relieved of
his functions that he might fulfil his vow.[408] He is said to have
had also another motive for his resignation: “he was of great age,
and saw that the new king, being a novice in government, was wont
to do many things without due deliberation and forethought.”[409]
Behind these words there may lurk a partial explanation of Richard’s
seemingly harsh and extortionate treatment of the Justiciar. It is
possible that the king really wished to retain Ranulf’s services
as his vicegerent in England, and persuaded or coerced him into
commuting his vow for that purpose, but that Ranulf, when he had
seen a little more of his new sovereign’s ways—which were indeed not
likely to meet with the approval of statesmen who had grown old under
Henry II—preferred to sacrifice the money as the price of Richard’s
consent to his departure. That the sacrifice was, after all, not a
ruinous one may be inferred from the fact that it left him still able
to make his expedition independently of the king, for he died at
Acre seven months or more before Richard’s arrival there.[410] Two
Chief Justiciars were appointed in his stead, of whom one, William de
Mandeville, was a trusted and faithful friend of King Henry, and the
other, Bishop Hugh of Durham, was a kinsman of the royal house and
a man of long experience in politics, untiring energy and ambition,
and great wealth, with the surplus of which he was quite willing to
purchase release from his vow of Crusade and as many other benefits
as Richard cared to bestow on him.[411]
Several other high offices, both in Church and State, had to be
filled anew, some from causes altogether beyond the king’s control,
some in fulfilment of his promise to carry into effect the grants
which his father had left uncompleted. There were five vacant
bishoprics, besides the metropolitan see of York. This last Henry had
destined for his son Geoffrey the Chancellor; to Geoffrey Richard
gave it,[412] and thereby the chancellorship was vacated. Two men
vied with each other as candidates for this important post; both
offered large sums for it; Richard in this instance showed that his
choice of men was not governed by his thirst for money, by accepting
the lower bid of the two, because it was made by a man whom he knew
and trusted;[413] and the person who received the largest share
of grants out of the royal domain received them absolutely free.
That person was John. Henry had (or was said to have) expressed the
intention of endowing John with the Norman county of Mortain and four
thousand pounds’ worth of land in England. As soon as Richard was
by investiture as duke of Normandy legally able to make grants in
that duchy, he put John in possession of Mortain.[414] The heritage
of the late Earl of Gloucester had been promised, with the hand
of his heiress, to John ever since 1176; Richard [Sidenote: _Aug.
29_] secured it for him by causing the marriage to take place a
fortnight after the brothers reached England.[415] Within the next
month the king further bestowed upon John a number of escheated
honours and other lands to the gross annual value of some five or six
hundred pounds. Within three more months he added the gift of six
whole counties, with the entire revenues and profits of every kind
which they were wont to render to the Crown, and the control of all
administration and justice within their limits.[416]
Of all Richard’s administrative arrangements this was unquestionably
the most imprudent and dangerous; it is indeed almost the only one
which can be clearly seen to have produced disastrous results. When
its motive is realized, however, criticism is almost disarmed; for
Richard’s act was not the spontaneous throwing away of an extravagant
fraternal benefaction, or of a wholly needless bribe to a brother to
whom he owed nothing and from whom, had he let him remain “Lackland,”
he could have had nothing to fear. It was simply a literal and exact
fulfilment of Henry’s latest design for completing his provision
for John by endowing him with lands in England to the value of four
thousand pounds a year.[417] This ill-advised project of Henry’s
might perhaps have been less unwisely carried out in some other
way, such as the bestowal of a number of small estates scattered
in various parts of the realm, instead of this solid block of
territories with so much political influence and power attached to
their possession; but the only safe mode of dealing with it would
have been to ignore it altogether. Richard’s share of responsibility
in the matter amounts simply to this, that he—in his father’s
lifetime a disobedient son—carried loyalty to his dead father’s
wishes beyond the limits of worldly wisdom and sound policy.
Some of Richard’s administrative arrangements and appointments
were made in a great council held in the middle of September at
Pipewell[418] in Northamptonshire, others at various times within the
next three months. Early in October the king spent a week in London;
thence he went to Arundel and afterwards to Winchester.[419] He had
meanwhile sent John with an armed force—which the Welsh called “the
host of all England”—against Rees of South Wales, who had laid siege
to Caermarthen castle. It was to John’s interest that there should
be peace with Rees, since the honour of Gloucester included a large
piece of Welsh territory. Accordingly John and Rees made an agreement
between themselves,[420] and Rees, with an escort furnished him by
John, came to Oxford in the hope of a meeting with the king; but
Richard “would not go to meet him.”[421] For Richard the chief gain
from this expedition against Rees was that it enabled him to collect
from those tenants in chivalry who did not personally take part in it
a “Scutage of Wales” which helped to finance the expedition to Holy
Land.
Early in November envoys from France brought letters from Philip
setting forth that he and his barons had sworn on the Gospels to
be at Vézelay ready to start on the Crusade at the close of Easter
(April 1, 1190), and begging that Richard would take an oath to the
same effect. Richard exacted from the envoys an oath “on the King of
France’s soul” that this pledge should be fulfilled on the French
side; then he called a great council in London and there caused
one of his chief counsellors to take a like oath on his behalf
in presence of the Frenchmen.[422] After this the king went on
pilgrimage to S. Edmund’s on the festival of its patron saint.[423]
Soon afterwards he was at Canterbury,[424] making peace between the
archbishop and the monks, who had long been at strife.[425] The
settlement was destined to be only temporary, but for the moment it
was a triumph both of Richard’s kingly power and of his personal
tact; the dispute had been a scandal which had baffled Henry II,
and a legate sent by the Pope to deal with it had landed at Dover
on November 20 (when Richard was at S. Edmund’s), but had been by
Eleanor’s order forbidden to proceed inland, his mission having
no sanction from the king.[426] Richard, however, wanted to make
use of him for two other purposes: the confirmation of Geoffrey’s
election to the see of York, and the raising of an Interdict laid by
Archbishop Baldwin on John’s lands in consequence of the marriage of
John and Isabel of Gloucester, who were cousins within the prohibited
degrees. Accordingly the legate was entertained at Canterbury for two
nights; he did what the king desired of him and then departed out of
the realm.[427]
A weightier matter was settled in that same council at Canterbury.
Shortly after the accession of Henry II to the English crown the
Scot king Malcolm had done homage to him “in the same manner as his
grandfather had been the man of King Henry the First.”[428] What were
the precise grounds and conditions of the homage due to the sovereign
of England from the rulers of the composite realm which was generally
known as Scotland, but would have been more correctly termed North
Britain—whether that homage was due for the whole realm, consisting
of the Highlands (or “Scotland” properly so called), the Lowlands,
and Galloway, as well as for the lands which the Scot kings held in
England, or only for the last three, or even for the English lands
alone—was a question which both parties had for many generations
found it prudent to evade by the use of some such formula as the
one adopted in 1157. But in 1175 Malcolm’s brother and successor,
William the Lion, having invaded England and been made prisoner,
purchased his release by definitely becoming Henry’s liegeman “for
Scotland and all his other lands,” promising that all his barons
should likewise do liege homage to Henry, and that his own heirs and
the heirs of his barons should do the same to Henry’s successors,
and giving up to the English king the castles of Roxburgh, Berwick,
Jedburgh, Edinburgh, and Stirling, with an annual payment from the
Scottish Crown revenue for their maintenance.[429] Edinburgh was
given back to William in 1186 to form part of the dower of his wife,
Henry’s cousin Ermengard of Beaumont.[430] In the summer of 1188 some
abortive negotiations concerning the restoration of the other castles
to the Scot king took place between him and Henry. According to one
account, Henry attempted to levy the Saladin tithe for the Crusade in
Scotland as well as in his own dominions; William refused to permit
this, but offered to give five thousand marks instead of the tithe
if his castles were restored to him; this, however, Henry “would not
do.”[431] Another version of the story is that William spontaneously
began negotiations by offering four thousand marks for the castles;
that Henry answered “the thing should be done if William would give
a tithe of his land” for the Crusade and that the Scot king was
willing to do this if he could obtain the consent of his barons, but
they refused emphatically, so the project came to nothing.[432] It
is not likely that Henry imagined himself to have by the settlement
made in 1175 finally disposed of the question about the homage. A
settlement which had been forced upon William the Lion when he was
powerless in the English king’s hands could not possibly be final on
such a matter; he, or the Scot kings after him, would be certain to
repudiate it at the first opportunity; and the opportunity came in
autumn 1189 when he was summoned to the English court to do homage
to Henry’s successor. It was imperatively necessary for Richard to
secure William’s homage before setting out on the Crusade. To go
without having done so would have been to leave northern England
without any safeguard against invasion and ravage during his absence.
He himself had neither time nor means to spare for an expedition
against Scotland. Had William chosen to delay indefinitely—as more
than one of his predecessors had done—his appearance at the English
court, he could easily, and probably with impunity, have put Richard
in a very awkward position. Most likely he would have done so but for
Richard’s tact in turning the difficulty. Overlord and vassal agreed
upon a bargain which was in all likelihood more profitable to both
parties than the one proposed a year before could ever have been to
either of them. William covenanted to give Richard a lump sum of ten
thousand marks;[433] Richard quit-claimed “all customs and agreements
which King Henry extorted from William by reason of his capture,
so that he shall fully and completely do to us what his brother
Malcolm King of Scots rightly did to our predecessors and what he
ought rightly to do”; he renounced the liege homage of William’s
men and restored all the charters given to Henry by William when he
was Henry’s prisoner; and he undertook to do to William “whatsoever
our predecessors rightly did and ought to have done to Malcolm
according to a recognition to be made by four English nobles chosen
by [Sidenote: _Dec. 5_] William and four Scottish nobles chosen by
ourself”; to make good any encroachments which had taken place on the
Scottish Marches since William’s capture; to confirm any grants made
to William by Henry; and finally, that William and his heirs for ever
should possess his English lands as fully and freely as Malcolm had
possessed or ought to have possessed them.[434]
Richard’s phrase about the conditions of release which Henry
had “extorted”[435] from the king of Scots seems to indicate a
consciousness that his father had, in forcing upon the caged Lion
of Scotland terms of such abject submission, taken a somewhat
dishonourable advantage of the lucky combination of accidents—for it
was really nothing more—which had placed William at his mercy.[436]
But policy, as well as chivalry, had a share in Richard’s agreement
with his royal vassal. Ten thousand marks, paid down in a lump and
almost immediately, was probably a much larger contribution than
could have been obtained from a country so poor as Scotland without
some very substantial concession in return. The retention of the
castles was quite unnecessary to the security of England; it must
inevitably be a source of constant irritation to the Scots, and
thus tend to endanger rather than to safeguard the tranquillity of
the border; and the restitution of them was the only real sacrifice
which the treaty involved. Richard’s charter is most cautiously
worded; he renounces nothing except the direct homage of the Scot
king’s subvassals and the explicit mention of “Scotland” by name
in William’s own act of homage on this occasion. The former would
have been extremely difficult to enforce at the moment, and of very
little practical value. As to the latter point, the form of words
chosen by Richard involved no recognition of the Scottish claim to a
partial independence, and no renunciation or abatement of the English
claim to the overlordship of all North Britain. It left Richard and
his successors quite free to re-assert that claim explicitly at any
future time, and to re-assert it as based not on a concession wrung
from a helpless prisoner in 1175, but on their acknowledged right to
“all” that William’s predecessors “had done and ought to have done”
to the predecessors of Richard in virtue of a series of agreements
going back from Henry II and Malcolm III to Eadward the Elder and
Donald IV; for the English theory on the subject was that those
ancient agreements included, or involved, the homage of the Scot
kings to the kings of England for the whole realm of Scotland. The
Scottish view was, of course, different; but these divergent views
were of little practical consequence so long as no necessity arose
for expressing them in words or carrying them out in action; no such
necessity had yet arisen, and none was destined to arise for another
hundred years. A formula capable of this double interpretation was
thus the only kind of formula on which the two parties could agree;
and the point of immediate importance was that they should agree so
that the Scot’s homage should be done and done quickly, not delayed
indefinitely or altogether refused at the eleventh hour. It was done
at Canterbury on December 5.[437]
[Sidenote: _Dec. 5_]
On the same day Richard proceeded to Dover;[438] about [Sidenote:
_Dec. 11, 14_] a week later he went to Normandy.[439] He kept
Christmas[440] [Sidenote: _Dec. 25_] in great state, “but,” adds a
poet-chronicler, “there was little singing of _gestes_”; Richard,
who usually revelled in that kind of entertainment, was now too
busy and in too grave a mood for minstrelsy.[441] On December 30
he and [Sidenote: _Dec. 30_] Philip, after holding a conference at
the Gué St. Rémi, issued a joint proclamation setting forth their
arrangements for going together on the Crusade and for the safety
and mutual protection of each other’s subjects and dominions during
their absence, and bidding all their Crusader subjects either to
precede them or be ready to set out with them from Vézelay within the
octave of Easter (March 25-April 1).[442] [Sidenote: 1190 _Jan._]
By the middle of January, however, both kings had discovered that
they could not be ready by April. The date of departure was again
postponed, to S. John the Baptist’s day; and at a third conference
held in the middle of March the delay was further prolonged to the
octave of that festival.[443] Richard meanwhile had made a visit
to Aquitaine; on February 2-4 he was at La Réole,[444] on February
12 at Londigny on the border of the Angoumois and Poitou,[445]
moving back towards Normandy to meet certain persons whom he had
summoned thither from England soon after Candlemas. One of the two
men whom he had appointed as joint chief justiciars, William de
Mandeville, had died on November 14.[446] For a time, it seems,
the king put no one formally into Mandeville’s place, and thus
left Hugh of Durham legally sole chief justiciar; but he gave the
custody of the Tower of London, which usually appertained to that
officer, to the chancellor, Bishop William of Ely, whom he also,
before leaving England, intrusted with one of the royal seals “to
carry out the king’s orders in the realm,” thus making him virtually
independent of Hugh.[447] In February, however, the king summoned
his mother, his betrothed, his brothers John and Geoffrey (the
archbishop-elect of York), Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury, and
seven bishops, among whom were Hugh of Durham and William of Ely, to
join him in Normandy. “And when he had taken counsel with them, he
appointed his chancellor, Bishop William of Ely, chief justiciar of
[Sidenote: _Feb._] England, and granted to Bishop Hugh of Durham the
justiciarship from the river Humber to the Scot king’s border.”[448]
He also made both his brothers swear that they would not enter
England for three years “from that hour” except by leave from
him.[449] At the end of March or early in April[450] he sent the new
chief justiciar, William of Ely, back to England “to prepare things
necessary for him”—that is, for the king—“and for his journey.”[451]
The chief item in this commission was the requisitioning of a supply
of horses; William “took for the king’s use from every city in
England two palfreys and two additional sumpter horses, and from
every manor of the king’s own [Sidenote: _March to April_] one
palfrey and one sumpter horse.”[452] These horses were doubtless
shipped across to Normandy, being, it seems, for the use of the king
and his immediate companions, who, together with his continental
followers, were going overland with Philip to meet the English fleet
at Marseille. [Sidenote: 1189] Immediately on reaching England
Richard had set about collecting a transport fleet, by sending his
bailiffs to “all the sea-ports of England, Normandy, Poitou, and
his other lands” to choose for him the largest and best of all the
ships they found there and the fittest to carry heavy burdens. Some
of these he gave to certain of his familiar friends who were bound
on Crusade; some he retained for his own use, and had them loaded
with arms and victuals.[453] The terms on which these ships were
acquired seem to have varied considerably; in some cases the Crown
paid half their value, in others the whole; a few were gifts from
wealthy individuals.[454] In addition to all these the king already
had some “smacks” (_esneccae_) in ordinary use for the transport of
himself and his treasure between England and Normandy; these were now
put in repair to fit them for a longer and more dangerous voyage.
The crews and captains of the other ships were of course taken over
together with the vessels, and were paid by the king [Sidenote:
1190] from Michaelmas 1189.[455] Some time in March or early in
April (1190) Richard held a council at Chinon and thence issued an
ordinance for the maintenance of discipline in the fleet, in the form
of a charter which he delivered into the hands of the archbishop of
Auch, the bishop of Bayonne, Robert de Sabloil, Richard de Camville,
and William de Fors of Oléron, appointing them justiciars over “his
whole navy of England, Normandy, Poitou, and Britanny, about to sail
for Holy Land.” The regulations which they had to administer were
drastic. Any man who slew another on board ship was to be tied to the
corpse and cast with it into the sea; one who slew a man ashore to
be tied to the corpse and buried with it. A man convicted of drawing
knife on another or striking him so that blood flowed was to lose
his hand. If he only struck with his palm, so that no blood flowed,
he was to be ducked three times in the sea. Anyone who insulted or
cursed a comrade was to forfeit an ounce of silver for every such
offence. A convicted thief was to be “shorn like a professional
champion, then tarred and feathered so as to be known,” and cast
ashore on the first land at which the ship touched.[456] Another
writ from the king bade all those of his subjects who were going to
Jerusalem by sea, as they valued their lives “and their return home,”
swear to keep these “assizes” and obey the justiciars of the fleet,
who were further bidden to set out on the voyage as soon as possible;
which they did shortly after Easter.[457]
The next step in Richard’s preparations for departure was of a very
different kind. Of all the country seats belonging to the counts
of Poitou the one in which for many generations they seem to have
most delighted was Talmont. The lordship of which this castle was
the head included a territory known as “the Land of the Countess,”
because it had formed part of the dower of the successive countesses
of Poitou ever since the middle of the eleventh century. Here, “on
the sea-shore, in the wood of La Roche, and not far from the mouth of
the Jard”—a little stream which falls into the sea some few miles
south-east of the castle of Talmont—Richard now founded a house of
Augustinian canons. Its dedication was to “our Lord and the glorious
Virgin Mary His Mother”; its name was to be “God’s Place,” _Locus
Dei_, _Lieu-Dieu_; and its endowment consisted of the whole “Land of
the Countess” with all its appurtenances, “including everything that
his mother, as well as himself, had or might have in that place,”
with the addition of other gifts and privileges.[458] Eleanor had no
need of “the Countess’s Land,” for Richard before leaving England had
granted to her, in addition to the dowry given her by his father, the
whole of that which Henry I had given to his queen and that which
Stephen had given to Maud of Boulogne.[459] Evidently it was with
his mother’s sanction that the king now dedicated to higher uses
this large share of a cherished possession of her forefathers which
was also a favourite pleasure-resort of his own. In God’s Place at
Talmont we may surely see an offering made with special intention by
the offerer and his mother for his safety and welfare in his great
adventure and for the success of the enterprise on which his heart
was set.
On May 6 Richard issued, at Fontenay, a charter for the foundation of
another religious house, a small minster dedicated to S. Andrew, at
Gourfaille, in the same neighbourhood.[460] [Sidenote: _May 8_] Two
days later he was at Cognac;[461] a month [Sidenote: _June 6_] later,
at Bayonne,[462] and it seems to have been about this time that he
besieged and took the castle of Chis in the county of Bigorre and
hanged its lord for the crime of having robbed pilgrims to S. James
and other persons who passed through his lands.[463] By June 20
Richard was again at Chinon;[464] thence he went to Tours, where he
held a final conference with Philip,[465] and received his pilgrim’s
scrip and staff from the hands of Archbishop Bartholomew.[466] He
seems to have characteristically proved the staff by leaning on it
with all his gigantic strength, for a chronicler adds: “When the
king leaned on the staff, it broke.”[467] Never before, probably
never again, was there seen at Tours such a muster as that of the
Crusaders who followed the banner of Richard the Lion Heart. City and
suburbs were overcrowded; “there were many good knights and famous
crossbowmen; and dames and damsels were sorrowful and heavy-hearted
for their friends who were going away, and all the people were in
sadness because of their valiant lord’s departure” when he and his
host set out [Sidenote: _June 27_] “with a good courage”[468] on June
27 for Vézelay. Whether the two kings actually kept their tryst on
the appointed day, July 1, is doubtful. Richard was certainly at the
meeting-place on the 3rd, but according to one account Philip did not
arrive till the 4th.[469] When they did meet, they took a reciprocal
oath that they would loyally divide between them whatever conquests
they should make together, and that whichever of them reached Messina
first should wait there for the other.[470] They spent two days at
Vézelay together,[471] and then at last the united host began its
march towards the Holy Land, “the two kings riding in front and
discoursing of their great journey.”[472]
CHAPTER II
THE OUTWARD VOYAGE
1190
Initia Regis Ricardi, qui nondum elapso triennio regni sui
probitatis suae radios longe lateque dispersit; nam Messanas
civitatem Siciliae uno die viriliter subjecit, et terram Cypri
in quindecim diebus potenter subjugavit.—_Chron. Edw. II_, auct.
monacho Malmesburiensi, ii. 191.
A march of eight days brought the Crusaders to Lyons on July 10
or 13.[473] Here they were to cross the Rhône and then proceed
down its left bank to the coast. The two kings with their personal
followers crossed at once and encamped on the further side of the
river (seemingly on a height whence their tents were visible from
the hither side) to wait till the stragglers and late comers should
overtake the main body of pilgrims, who lodged as they could in
and around the city.[474] When the muster seemed to be complete,
the kings gave the signal for departure by causing their tents to
be struck.[475] The main body of the host on the other bank[476]
thronged to the narrow wooden bridge; when a small number had crossed
one of the arches broke down.[477] Only two persons were drowned, but
the multitude left behind were sorely puzzled how to get across the
“crested waters” of the Rhône in flood.[478] According to one account
they in three days achieved the passage “as best they could, in
little boats, with great difficulty.”[479] Another version, however,
tells us that it was only Philip who had actually set out before the
bridge gave way,[480] and Richard, having merely escorted him out of
the camp, was still at hand when the catastrophe occurred; whereupon
he, “whose constancy never failed in action,” quickly caused a bridge
to be made of boats lashed together, and waited three days while by
this means the whole host made its passage in safety.[481] Then,
while the French king’s subjects followed their sovereign to Genoa
or went by whatever route they chose to meet him at Messina,[482]
the English king at the head of his own contingent set out[483] for
Marseille, [Sidenote: _July 31_] where he arrived on the last day of
July.[484]
“From Marseille to Acre,” says a contemporary writer, “is a sail of
only fifteen days. But,” he adds, “then you go through the Great
Sea, so that after the mountains round about Marseille cease to be
visible you will, if you keep the direct course, see no land either
to right or left till you see the land of Syria.”[485] Some of the
Crusaders who accompanied Richard—among them Archbishop Baldwin of
Canterbury and Ranulf de Glanville—faced the mysterious terrors of
the “Great Sea” and took this route[486] to Tyre, which they reached
on September 16.[487] The two kings had chosen Messina as the final
starting-point of their voyage at a time when they deemed themselves
sure of finding there every possible facility for refitting and
revictualling their ships, and substantial help of every kind for
their enterprise; King William of Sicily being married to a sister
of Richard, and having long ago promised every assistance in his
power to the Crusade.[488] In March, however, they had learned that
William had died in the preceding November.[489] The original scheme
nevertheless had obvious advantages both for Richard, who knew that
William had made some testamentary dispositions for his benefit,
and for Philip, who “dreaded the sea.”[490] As the difficulties and
dangers of the real overland route from northern France to Apulia
and Sicily through the Alpine passes and Italy were apparently still
considered even more formidable than those of the Mediterranean sea,
Philip had arranged to be conveyed by the practised mariners of Genoa
from their city to Messina, not exactly as an English chronicler says
“by land,” but by the shortest and easiest coasting route. Richard
on the contrary was minded to go by water as much as he could, and
had ordered his fleet to meet him at the nearest Mediterranean
port—Marseille.[491] When a week had passed and no fleet appeared,
he grew weary of waiting; so he hired “two large busses and twenty
well armed galleys,” in which he set sail with his household troops
on August 7.[492] He was “grieved and confounded at the delay of his
navy,”[493] and seems to have coasted along very slowly in the hope
of its overtaking him, for it was not [Sidenote: _Aug. 13_] till
the 13th that he reached Genoa, where he went ashore to [Sidenote:
_Aug. 14_] visit Philip, who was lying there sick. Next day, at
Portofino, he received a message from Philip asking for the loan
of five galleys; Richard offered three, but this Philip declined.
[Sidenote: _Aug. 23_] On the 23rd Richard relieved the tediousness of
the slow coasting voyage by landing with a small escort at Baratto
and hiring horses on which the party rode to Piombino; [Sidenote:
_Aug. 24_] there they rejoined their ships. “Then the king went on
board the galley of Fulco Rustac” (or “Rustancri”) instead of the
one in which he had been sailing (the “Pumbone”), and they proceeded
to Porto Ercole, which was reckoned to be half way between Marseille
and Messina. “But that day the sail of the galley in which the king
was got torn; so he went back to the Pumbone.” On the same day,
August 25, he landed at Ostia,[494] where he was met by the cardinal
bishop and some other persons sent by the Pope to receive him and
invite him to visit Rome; this he declined to do,[495] preferring, it
seems, to spend a day in what a modern traveller might call seeing
the sights of the neighbourhood. [Sidenote: _Aug. 28 to Sept. 8_] He
spent nearly a fortnight in the same way at Naples, making excursions
round about (August 28-September 8); thence he went on horseback to
Salerno,[496] and stayed there till on September 13 he heard that his
fleet had arrived at Messina, and at once set out to rejoin it.[497]
The report was [Sidenote: _Sept. 14_] premature; but the fleet did in
fact reach Messina next day. The story of its voyage illustrates the
spirit of adventure in which the men of the more remote western lands
set out upon their Crusade. The “justiciars of the navy” appointed
in the spring had apparently taken each the command of a little
squadron, and these squadrons had sailed in April, according to the
king’s order, from various ports of England, Normandy, Britanny, and
Poitou. Ten ships of the English division set out from Dartmouth;
some of them touched at Silvia in Portugal, others at Lisbon, and all
stopped to help the Christian Portuguese in their war against the
Moors. Other ships of Richard’s—perhaps from more distant ports—came
into Lisbon harbour at the close of the war; the whole fleet sailed
thence on July 26, passed the Straits of Gibraltar on August 1, and
sailing along the coasts of Spain and Provence reached Marseille on
August 22. Finding that the king was gone, they stayed a week for
necessary refitting, set out again on the 30th, and came to Messina
on Holy Cross day.[498] According to English accounts Philip of
France [Sidenote: _Sept. 14_] arrived there two days later;[499]
his own biographer, however, says he came in August.[500] As he had
no ships of his own, the greater part of his host had either gone
before him to Messina or proceeded towards Syria by other routes; and
to the disappointment of the townsfolk and the pilgrims assembled
at Messina, who all hoped to see a king arrive with great pomp and
majesty, only the ship which bore Philip himself came into the
harbour, and landing at the steps of the royal palace[501] he slipped
out of sight as quickly and quietly as possible.[502]
The disappointed spectators of Philip’s landing were to be more
than compensated ere long by the arrival of another royal guest.
By September 21 Richard, travelling leisurely along the coast from
Salerno, had reached Mileto in Calabria. Here a characteristic
adventure nearly brought to an untimely end both his enterprise and
his life. He was riding forth next day, accompanied only by one
knight, “and as they passed through a little township the king turned
aside towards a house where he heard the voice of a falcon, and he
went into the house and took the bird; and when he would not let
it go, a number of villagers came running up and attacked him with
stones and sticks. One of them drew his knife upon the king, and the
king beat the man with the flat of his sword till the sword broke.
The other assailants he overcame with stones, and narrowly escaping
from their hands made his way to the Priory of La Bagnara.” There,
finding himself close to what an English chronicler describes as
“the great river which is called the Far of Messina,” he took boat
and crossed it immediately, and “lay that night in a tent hard by
the great stone tower which stands by the entrance to the Far on
the Sicilian side”—that is, the pharos, lighthouse, or beacon-tower
which gave the strait its medieval name.[503] He probably crossed
in a vessel of his own fleet, the whole of which seems to have been
assembled at the northern end of the strait in readiness to meet
him. [Sidenote: _Sept. 23_] Next day (September 23) he sailed at its
head into the harbour of Messina. “The galleys filled the Strait;
they were crowded with hardy looking warriors, and decked with
pennons and banners. So came the king to the shore,”[504] amid such
blowing of horns and trumpets that “all the city was alarmed at the
sound.” Philip and the governors and people of Messina went down to
the beach and stood there “marvelling at that which they saw and
heard of the king of England and of his power.”[505] Richard “leaped
ashore,” and went immediately to speak with Philip.[506] Meanwhile
those of his barons who had reached Messina before him brought “the
fine destriers which had come over in the transport ships; and he and
his people all mounted on horseback,”[507] and rode to their lodging,
which—the royal palace being, by permission of the new sovereign of
Sicily, occupied by Philip—was being prepared for them in the house
of one of the Sicilian king’s officers, “in the suburb outside the
city wall, among the vineyards.”[508]
The next of kin to the late king of Sicily and the person whom he had
designated as his successor was his father’s sister Constance; but
she was far away in Germany—being married to the Emperor’s son—and
a cousin, Tancred, had without much difficulty become master of
the kingdom, or at least of its insular half. Tancred had, as has
been seen, provided lodgings for his two royal guests at Messina;
he himself was at Palermo, and so was the widowed Queen Joan,
Richard’s sister. Richard knew that a very liberal dowry in land
had been settled upon Joan by King William at their marriage,[509]
and also that William had made a will containing a bequest to his
father-in-law, Henry II, of “a golden table twelve feet long and a
foot and a half wide, three golden tripods for sitting at the table,
a silken tent large enough for two hundred knights to eat in it
together, a hundred first-rate galleys with all necessary gear and
food for the crews, sixty thousand seams of wheat, the same number
of barley and of wine, and twenty-four cups and twenty-four dishes”
of either silver or gold.[510] This bequest was evidently intended
by William, who seems to have been long in ill-health and expecting
an early death, as his contribution to the Crusade. Richard, as
Henry’s heir, now claimed it from Tancred, and he also demanded that
Joan should be sent to him immediately with her dowry and a golden
chair[511] for her use “according to the custom of the queens of
that land.”[512] Tancred sent Joan off at once by sea “with just her
bedroom furniture” and a million _terrini_ for her expenses.[513]
[Sidenote: _Sept. 28_] She reached Messina on Michaelmas Eve, and
was conducted by her brother to a lodging prepared for her in the
Hospital;[514] but he speedily took steps for removing her to a
safer place; for trouble, possibly with Philip, certainly with the
townsfolk of Messina and with their king, was now evidently close at
hand.
The English king’s subjects who had reached Messina before him on the
fleet had been refused admittance into the city; they were obliged to
encamp on the shore, and suffered much annoyance and persecution from
a section of the townsfolk whom one of them describes as “a parcel
of Griffons and low fellows of Saracen extraction.” These people not
only insulted the Crusaders in the vilest ways, but even killed some
of them and outraged the corpses.[515] All “Ultramontanes,” or men
from beyond the Alps, were hated by the two races with which Sicily
was mainly peopled—the “Griffons” or Greek-speaking folk, and the
Italian-speaking whom the western writers call Lombards. In the minds
of the last-named especially the memory of the Norman conquest of
Sicily and Apulia still rankled; “they always had a grudge against
us,” says the Norman poet-historian of Richard’s Crusade, “because
their fathers had told them that our ancestors had conquered them;
so they could not love us.”[516] It seems not unlikely that Tancred
had gained the support of both Griffons and Lombards by posing as
the champion of a sort of national government in opposition to the
representatives of the foreign royal line, and that they looked
with suspicion upon the crusading host as possibly designed to be
the instrument of a new Norman conquest; more especially when they
discovered, as they very soon did, that although it had nominally
two crowned leaders, its real and sole commander-in-chief was the
Anglo-Norman king. On the morrow of his arrival Richard set up
outside the camp a gallows for thieves and robbers. “His judges
delegate spared neither sex nor age; and there was one punishment for
a stranger and for one born in the land.” The French king took no
notice of any ill-doing on the part of his own men, nor of any evil
done to them; but Richard cared not whose subject the criminal might
be; “considering every man as his own,” he left no wrong unpunished;
“wherefore the Griffons called him the Lion and Philip the Lamb.”[517]
Both Griffons and Lombards did their utmost to make the position of
the “tailed Englishmen”—as they called Richard and all his followers
indiscriminately—absolutely intolerable. They tried to starve them by
refusing to let them buy food in the city; they fell upon and slew
any whom they caught in small parties and unarmed; they even began
to raise the town walls, as if challenging the strangers to besiege
them.[518] By the time of Joan’s arrival matters had come to such a
pass that two days later (September 30) Richard with a small armed
force re-crossed the strait into Calabria, turned the Griffons out
of a fortress called La Bagnara, [Sidenote: _Oct. 1_] and next day
established his sister in it with a guard of his own men.[519] He
next seized a very strong fort or tower, which went by the name of
“the Griffons’ Minster,” on an island in the Far, midway between
La Bagnara and Messina,[520] put its garrison to death, and made
it a storehouse for the provisions which had been brought by his
fleet from England and his other dominions.[521] Scarcely was this
done when on October 3 a dispute between a pilgrim and a townswoman
about the price of some bread which the woman brought into the camp
for sale led to an outbreak of hostilities. Richard, hearing the
noise, sprang on horseback and strove to recall his men, riding in
and out among them and striking with his staff all whom he could
reach, to check the attack which they were threatening on the city
gate. His efforts and those of the “elders” of the city at length
quieted the tumult.[522] Both parties, however, felt that the matter
was not ended. Before nightfall Richard went by boat to the palace
[Sidenote: _Oct. 4_] and held a consultation with Philip.[523] Next
morning the archbishops of Messina, Monreale, and Reggio, with the
“justices of Sicily”—that is, the governors whom Tancred had put in
charge of Messina, Margarit and Jordan du Pin[524]—and some others of
Tancred’s chief counsellors came to Richard’s lodging, bringing with
them the French king and some of his nobles, and also some of the
chief nobles of Richard’s dominions, to discuss terms of peace.[525]
Three times the colloquy was interrupted by tidings, first that the
English were being attacked, next that they were getting worsted,
and finally that they were being killed “both within and without
the city.” The Sicilian members of the conference hurried away,
ostensibly for the purpose of checking their own people, “but they
lied,” says Richard’s Norman chronicler.[526] Richard hastened
forth to control his troops, learned that the quarters of one of his
Aquitanian followers, Hugh the Brown of Lusignan, had been attacked
by a party of the townsfolk, and that another party was lying in wait
for himself, the city wall bristling with armed men, and another
strong body of citizens posted on the hills at the back of the
town.[527] He hurried back for his armour and instantly gave orders
to “assault the city all round by land and by sea.”[528] He himself
began by driving out the assailants from the camp. With scarce twenty
men at his back, he made for the quarters of Hugh the Brown; the
Lombards turned and fled from him “like sheep from a wolf,” says one
who saw the scene, and he drove them “as oxen are driven under the
yoke” all the way to “the postern gate which is towards Palermo,” the
west gate of the city.[529] Meanwhile the whole English host was in
motion. The fleet could do nothing, because Philip, who had returned
to the palace under a promise from the governor that he should not
be molested, intercepted the galleys as they approached and forbade
them to proceed.[530] The land attack met with a fierce resistance;
part of the host endeavoured to storm the walls and the gates;
Richard himself led a small party up a hill “so high and steep that
no one would have thought they could by any means climb it,” drove
down in headlong flight the Sicilians who occupied its summit,[531]
and rejoined his main force in time to be one of the first to enter
the city. “A good ten thousand went in after him,” says one of the
number.[532]
The suddenness and rapidity with which the city was captured, and the
contemporary French form of its name, “Messines,” or in the Norman
dialect “Meschines,” appear to have suggested to some Norman or
Angevin rimester in the host a jingle which from the camp has found
its way into history:
“Our king and his men have taken Messines
More quickly than priest can say his matines.”[533]
The whole fight had lasted less than five hours.[534] The town was
plundered, “and there would have been more people slain, but that
the king took pity” and restrained his men. The Sicilian galleys
in the harbour were set on fire and destroyed.[535] Philip and his
followers meanwhile had sat at their ease within the palace and the
city, doing nothing to help their fellow-Crusaders, and totally
unmolested by the Sicilians, among whom they seemed quite at home.
But when Philip learned that the victorious host had set up their
royal leader’s banners on the walls, he angrily declared that this
act was an insult to himself as Richard’s feudal superior, and
demanded that the banners should be taken down and replaced by his
own. Richard at first ignored the demand; but some of the prelates
and nobles brought about a compromise; the banners of both kings were
placed on the towers together, and the custody of the fortifications
was given to the Templars and Hospitaliers till it should be seen how
matters would go between Richard and Tancred.[536] The compromise
was a fair one on Richard’s part; as his poet-chronicler says,
“Sirs, I ask your judgement—which of the two had the best right to
set his banners over the city, the one who would take no part in its
assault, or the one who dared the enterprize?”[537] “But,” he remarks
no less truly, “the king of France’s envy on that subject was like
to be lifelong; that was the origin of the war whereby Normandy was
ruined.”[538] According to one account, Philip next, on the strength
of the agreement made at Vézelay, demanded his share of the spoils of
the city, and grew so insolent and quarrelsome that Richard prepared
to load up his ships and depart on his pilgrimage alone with his own
people rather than be tied any longer to so disagreeable a comrade.
Hereupon, however, Philip made overtures for reconciliation, and
[Sidenote: _Oct. 8_] they renewed their alliance,[539] swearing and
making their respective barons swear to keep good faith with each
other [Sidenote: _Oct. 6_] throughout the expedition.[540] Two days
earlier, on October 6, the governors of Messina had given hostages
to Richard, pledging themselves to keep peace towards him and his
men and to let him have free possession of the city unless Tancred
speedily satisfied all his demands.[541]
Those demands, for the whole of Joan’s dowry and William’s legacy
to Henry, were now again transmitted to Palermo, by envoys who
represented both the Crusader kings, for one of them was no less
a personage than the duke of Burgundy.[542] In the Anglo-Norman
camp it seems to have been reported that the French envoys returned
loaded with gifts because they had carried a private message from
Philip to Tancred encouraging him to resist Richard’s demands and
promising that in any strife which might ensue the French would
remain neutral.[543] However this may have been, the envoys of the
English king brought back a very unsatisfactory reply to their
master. “I gave to your sister Joan,” said Tancred, “a million
terrins for quit-claim of her dower before she went away from me.
Concerning your other demands I shall do whatever I ought to do
according to the custom of this realm.”[544] During the absence of
the envoys a very suspicious event took place at Messina. One night
the two governors of the city, Jordan du Pin and Margarit, stole away
with their respective households, taking with them all the gold and
silver they possessed. Richard at once seized their houses, their
galleys, and whatever other property they had left behind them. His
own treasure was already stored in the “Griffons’ Minster,” which
he further strengthened by digging a deep and wide ditch across the
island on which the fort stood.[545] When his envoys returned from
Palermo they found him busy with another piece of work “which gave
him pleasure,”[546] the erection, on the top of a hill overlooking
the city, of a strong wooden fortress to which he gave the name of
Mategriffon, “Check” or “Kill-Greek.”[547] All these precautions did
in fact check the Griffons effectually; but when Richard on hearing
Tancred’s reply straightway retorted that he would enter upon no
pleadings at law and would get what he wanted in his own way,[548]
the Lombards again began to give trouble. They refused to sell even
necessary food to the host, “and but for God and the navy, many would
have led a poor life”; the ships, however, had ample stores. Philip
was accused of being secretly in league with the Lombards. The city
and the camp were guarded day and night. Mediators went to and fro
between the palace and Mategriffon, but could not bring the two kings
back to friendship.[549]
At last Tancred intervened. “He was,” says Ambrose the poet-Crusader,
“very wise; he had heard tell of many happenings; he was a good
scholar; he knew his business.”[550] Through all these months he had
played a waiting game till he could feel sure which of the two kings
would be most useful to him as an ally. At first he had inclined to
Philip, and “would have given him untold gold” for the marriage
of one of his daughters to either the French king himself or to
his infant son Louis; but Philip declined this proposal because he
did not wish to quarrel with Tancred’s rival, Constance’s husband,
who was now king of the Germans and Emperor elect,[551] and whose
friendship he doubtless foresaw might be useful to him in future
struggles with Richard. By the end of October, however, Tancred not
only knew that the townsfolk of Messina had gone too far; he also
perceived that he had himself gone too far in his haughtiness towards
the English Lion. He therefore despatched two messengers to Richard
with an offer of alliance. He proposed to give twenty thousand ounces
of gold to Joan instead of her dower-lands, and to Richard, in place
of King William’s legacy, the same amount as the dowry of one of his
(Tancred’s) daughters on condition of her marriage with Richard’s
nephew, Arthur of Britanny.[552] Richard saw at once that this offer
must be accepted. The necessity of coming to a settlement of some
kind with Tancred, and the outrageous conduct of Tancred’s subjects,
had already detained him in Sicily much longer than he had originally
contemplated. Now it was quite clear that he would be obliged to
remain there for several more months, as the season of the year had
begun when the “inclemency of winds and waves and weather”[553] made
navigation so difficult and dangerous that no fleet could attempt a
voyage to Palestine till the return of spring. The same cause must
of course detain Philip also; and to reject Tancred’s offer would
have been to throw Tancred and Philip into each other’s arms. Nor was
the offer itself a bad one. Whatever might be the intrinsic value
of Joan’s dower-lands and of William’s legacy, there was obviously
very little chance of ever gaining either the one or the other; while
forty thousand ounces of gold would be a very convenient addition to
the treasury of the Crusade. A treaty on these terms was therefore
drawn up and executed forthwith. Richard promised that all questions
about his sister’s dowry and his own claims should be henceforth at
rest; that he and his men would faithfully keep peace by sea and by
land with Tancred and all his subjects, and if the Sicilian realm
should be invaded or attacked while they were in it, they would help
the king against his assailants; that Arthur—“our dear nephew, and
our heir if we should die without issue”—should be contracted to
Tancred’s daughter; and that the bride should have a dower of lands
within her husband’s duchy “befitting a lady so illustrious and the
daughter of so magnificent a king.” If Arthur succeeded to the Crown,
his wife was to have the customary dower of a queen of England. If,
on the other hand, from any cause dependent on Richard or Arthur,
the marriage should not take place “in due time” (that is, when the
children should be old enough; Arthur was in his fourth year), the
dowry given by the bride’s father was to be returned.[554] Tancred
on his part promised that he and his subjects would keep peace
with Richard and his men,[555] and he paid over the covenanted sum
without delay.[556] Richard was in a pacific mood; although none
of the gold which he had just received could fairly come under his
agreement with Philip as to the division of conquests, he at once
made Philip a peace-offering of part of it.[557] He next insisted on
his men restoring to the townsfolk the plunder which they had taken
from them, and Archbishop Walter of Rouen enforced this order by
threatening to excommunicate those who failed to obey it. Finally, a
set of ordinances for the regulation of intercourse and trade between
the pilgrims and the townsfolk was issued in the joint names of all
the three kings.[558] Thenceforth town and camp were on friendly
terms, and so were—for a while—the two pilgrim kings. There was,
however, some grumbling in the host, especially among the knights
who had reached Messina before Richard, at their long detention
there and the expense which it entailed on them, and at being forced
to give back the plunder with which they had recouped themselves.
Richard “was not avaricious or stingy”; he silenced the grumblers
by a distribution of costly gifts, of which all ranks, down to the
lowest foot-soldiers, received such a share that every [Sidenote:
_Feb. 1191_] man was fully satisfied.[559] Early in the next year he
made a present to the French king of several of the ships which had
come from England, and to his own troops, of all ranks, a further
distribution of “more treasures than any of his predecessors had ever
given away in a whole year.”[560]
[Sidenote: 1190]
Before Christmas Richard’s growing sense of the weightiness of his
enterprise showed itself in another step in his preparations. One day
he called together in the chapel of the house where he was lodging
all the bishops in his host, came before them as a penitent, with
three scourges in his hands, fell at their feet and openly confessed
to them a vice in which he had lived and which he now solemnly
abjured; he received his penance at their hands, “and thenceforth
returned to his iniquity no more.”[561] At Christmas he entertained
Philip and the French nobles at a great feast in Mategriffon.[562]
The festivities were disturbed by a quarrel between the Genoese and
Pisan sailors and some of the men belonging to Richard’s galleys, and
not till some lives were lost did the two kings in person succeed in
quelling [Sidenote: 1191 _Feb. 2_] the strife.[563] An incident on
Candlemas Day (1191) throws a curious side-light on one phase of
Richard’s character of which there is little trace elsewhere, and
also on his relations with the other crusading chiefs during this
dreary time of waiting. He and some English and French knights, on
their way back from a ride, met a countryman with a load of reeds or
bulrushes and bought some for a game such as boys played, tilting
with the rushes for spears. The king challenged William des Barres,
with whom he had had at least two encounters in real warfare, and who
(according to one account) on the second of these occasions,[564]
being made prisoner, had committed a breach of the rules of chivalry
which Richard was not a man to condone easily: he had regained his
liberty by breaking his parole. When William’s first thrust broke the
head of Richard’s bulrush, Richard was seized with one of those fits
of unaccountable, irrational fury before which all persons accustomed
to associate with the Angevin counts quailed as before a direct
manifestation of the powers of darkness whence the house of Anjou was
said to have sprung. He set his horse furiously at his opponent; the
shock of the encounter failed to unseat William, but caused Richard’s
own saddle to slip; he leapt from it, mounted another horse, and
renewed the attack, but with no better success; nor did his angry
threats disturb the coolness of the Frenchman. The Earl of Leicester,
trying to intervene, was roughly bidden by his sovereign, “Leave me
to deal with him alone!” and finally, after a long struggle and much
bandying of words, the king burst out to William, “Get thee hence,
and take heed that I see thee no more, for henceforth I will be an
enemy to thee and thine for ever.” William, now thoroughly alarmed,
went and besought counsel and help of his own sovereign. Philip in
person interceded for his unlucky vassal; some of the highest nobles
of France actually went down on their knees to Richard for the same
purpose; but Richard would hear none of them; and on the third day
William des Barres had to leave Messina “because the king of France
would not keep him against the will of the king of England.”[565]
The time was now approaching when the seas would again be navigable,
and Philip presently asked Richard to get ready to accompany him on
what was called “the March passage” to Holy Land. Richard is said
by a French chronicler to have answered that he could not go before
August.[566] It seems that either August here must be a mistake for
April, or Richard cannot have been serious in answering thus, unless
indeed he entertained some vague project of going back for a short
visit to his island realm before proceeding further eastward. Such
a project is not impossible; for the reports which had been coming
to him through the winter about the state of affairs in England
were at once so disquieting and so contradictory that he may well
have longed to see for himself how matters really stood and settle
by his personal authority the quarrels which had arisen between his
justiciars and his brother. In the end he committed the solution
of these very puzzling difficulties to Archbishop Walter of Rouen.
He had, however, another reason for delaying at least for a few
weeks his own departure for Acre. Early in the year King Sancho
of Navarre had placed his daughter Berengaria in Queen Eleanor’s
charge to take her to Richard to become his wife.[567] Before the
end of February the two ladies reached Naples, and Richard sent
some galleys to meet them there; but “on account of the multitude
of men who accompanied them” Tancred’s people refused them leave to
go to Messina—which indeed must have been already overwhelmed with
foreign visitors—and they had to spend a month in his continental
dominions.[568] Their coming was a clear intimation that Richard was
now fully determined to shake off the bonds of his engagement to
Aloysia. Philip peremptorily bade him, as his vassal, choose between
two alternatives: either to go with his overlord across the sea, in
which case he should be at liberty to marry Berengaria, or, if he
would not go, to keep his promise of marriage with Aloysia. Richard
bluntly refused both.[569] Meanwhile Tancred had invited him[570] to
a [Sidenote: _March 3_] meeting at Catania. A splendid welcome was
given him there on March 3, and for three days he was Tancred’s guest
in the palace. Tancred offered him “gifts many and great” in gold and
silver, cloth of silk, and horses, but Richard, “needing none of such
things,” would accept only one small ring as a token of friendship;
in return for this he presented Tancred with a sword which he seems
to have asserted to be the famous Excalibur of King Arthur. Finally
Tancred offered a substantial gift which Richard did not decline: a
contribution of four large ships “which they call ussers” and fifteen
galleys to the crusading fleet.[571] The Sicilian king escorted his
guest on the way back as far as Taormina, where Philip was to meet
them on March 8. There Tancred is said to have put into Richard’s
hands a letter which he declared had been brought to him by the
duke of Burgundy from the French king, containing an assertion that
Richard had no intention of keeping faith with Tancred, and a promise
that if Tancred were disposed to attack Richard, the French troops
and their sovereign would give their help in effecting Richard’s
destruction. Richard on this left Taormina before Philip reached it
and returned to Messina by another way so as to avoid meeting him.
When he did meet him again, he at first studiously avoided him or
ignored his presence; when asked the reason, he showed the letter.
Philip accused him of having invented the whole affair as an excuse
for “casting off” the daughter of France whom he had promised to
wed. Thus driven to extremity, Richard said plainly that a marriage
between him and Aloysia was impossible, and gave a reason which, as
he produced several witnesses who declared themselves ready to swear
to its truth, fully justified his refusal.[572] The result was that
Philip formally released him from his engagement and declared him
free to marry whomsoever he would. On the basis of this and certain
other conditions which were to take effect only at a later time, a
“firm peace” was once again made between the king of France and his
“friend and faithful liegeman, the illustrious king of England.”
The treaty was made before March 25;[573] shortly afterwards Philip
and his “company” sailed, in the galleys which Richard had given
him, for Acre.[574] Before starting he again besought Richard to
pardon William des Barres, and Richard after some demur promised to
keep the peace towards William so long as they were both engaged in
the cause of the Cross.[575] He convoyed Philip through the Far,
and then himself went to Reggio, having just heard that Eleanor and
Berengaria had arrived there. He took them on board and brought his
mother back with him to Messina, after, it seems, placing Berengaria
at La Bagnara with Joan; the men of the queen’s suite seem to have
been left at Reggio, and possibly even Eleanor and her ladies may not
have landed at Messina at all, for she stayed with her son only four
days and then departed for England.[576] He had nothing more to wait
for. With all speed the fleet was made ready, and on April 10, the
Wednesday before Easter, it put to sea.[577]
The ships which Richard had found awaiting him in the harbour of
Messina when he arrived there are said to have numbered one hundred
and fourteen.[578] Stragglers that had come in later, Tancred’s
gift, and other vessels bought or hired by Richard had now raised
the total to about two hundred.[579] Of these, some forty or fifty
were galleys or battleships, built after the pattern of the old
Roman _liburnae_ or the “long keels” of Richard’s Norse forefathers,
long, slender, with armed prows, and propelled by two tiers of
oarsmen.[580] The rest were transport vessels; those of the largest
size, of which there seem to have been now twenty-four, were called
“busses” by the northerners and “dromonds” in the Mediterranean and
the Levant. Of these vessels, fourteen which had formed part of the
original English fleet had each of them three spare rudders, thirteen
anchors, thirty oars, two sails, triple ropes of every kind, and a
double set of everything else that a ship could need, except the mast
and the boat; the lading of each consisted of forty war-horses, forty
knights with all their arms and accoutrements, forty foot-soldiers,
and fifteen sailors, with food enough for all these men and horses
for a whole year. The other ships of burden, called “huissiers,”
“ushers,” “enekes” or “smacks” (_esneccae_) were round-shaped
vessels, seemingly dependent on sails alone; their carrying capacity
was half that of the busses. The king had taken the precaution to
distribute his treasure among all the transport ships, “so that if
part were lost, another part should be saved.”[581]
[Sidenote: _April 10_]
If the fleet’s arrival had been a great sight for the people of
Messina, its departure must have been a much more imposing spectacle.
Three dromonds, one of which carried Queen Joan and the Damsel of
Navarre, went in advance of all the rest. Thirteen ships formed
the second line or squadron; in the third were fourteen, in the
fourth twenty, in the fifth thirty, in the sixth forty, in the
seventh sixty; the last consisted of the galleys, on one of which
was the king himself. Throughout the fleet the order of its going
was so carefully arranged that a trumpet’s sound could be heard from
squadron to squadron, and a man’s voice from ship to ship.[582] When
all had passed, with a fair wind, through the Far into the open sea,
the galleys sped forward to overtake the slower vessels[583] and took
their place as the advanced guard of the whole fleet, Richard’s own
ship leading.[584] “The king had arranged, as far as possible, that
the ships should never be separated unless indeed a storm should
disperse them. So the galleys moderated their speed and endeavoured
to keep pace with the transports, for the protection of the multitude
and the comfort of the weak.”[585] Suddenly the wind dropped, and
the whole fleet had to anchor for the night. Next morning, Maunday
Thursday, [Sidenote: _April 11_] “He Who took the wind from us,” as
one of the pilgrims says, “gave it us back again”; but the breeze was
so faint that they made very little progress, and at night they were
again becalmed. On the following morning (Good Friday, April 12) they
were met by “a contrary wind on the left,”[586] and all that day they
had to struggle with a heavy gale and storm. As good pilgrims they
endured their sufferings “right willingly, as a fitting discipline
for the holy day.”[587] On their leader wind and weather had no
effect; he was “just as healthy and hearty, brave and strong, on sea
as on land”;[588] throughout this first experience of Mediterranean
storms and all those that followed, he “remained perfectly calm, and
ceased not to comfort the others and encourage them to endure with
confidence, hoping for better things.”[589] Every evening he had “a
large candle in the lantern” lighted on his galley, to show the way
to the other ships; they all followed the light, and if one got out
of the course he waited for it to get back. “Thus as a hen leads her
chickens out to feed he led his mighty fleet,” sailing day and night
till late on the Wednesday in Easter Week (April 17) they anchored
off Crete.[590] Next morning, it seems, Richard counted up the ships,
and found to his “great wrath” that despite all his precautions no
less than twenty-five were missing.[591] He then directed his course
to Rhodes, reached its capital city on the following Monday (April
22), and stayed there three days, partly because he was unwell,
partly in the hope of hearing some tidings of the missing vessels,
and also to make inquiries about Cyprus and its “tyrant.”[592]
This “tyrant” was Isaac Comnenos, who, sent to Cyprus as governor
for the Byzantine Emperor in 1185, had made himself master of the
island and ruled it as an independent sovereign for six years. His
“tyranny,” or usurpation, was not one of the least of the hindrances
to the deliverance of Holy Land; the Franks in that land had in
former times depended largely on the fertile and wealthy Greek island
for its supplies, but now they could get nothing thence, for Isaac
was in close alliance with Saladin, and “never ceased doing as much
ill to Christians as he could.”[593] Whether [Sidenote: _April_]
Richard’s detour to Rhodes had any special motive or was caused
merely by circumstances and stress of weather we do not know; but
it seems quite clear that he went out of his direct way from Rhodes
to Acre in consequence of information received at Rhodes as to what
was going on in Cyprus. Probably, too, he thought Cyprus a likely
place in which to obtain news of his strayed ships; and so it proved
to be. Among the ships dispersed in the great storm of Good Friday
were the three dromonds which carried the ladies and their escort.
These three and some others had drifted southward, and while Richard
was sailing by the north coast of Crete to Rhodes, they were passing
through the open sea between Crete and Libya. On April 24, two or
three days after Richard’s arrival at Rhodes, they were trying to
put into the harbour of Limisso, or as the Crusade writers call it
Limasol, the ancient Amathus, on the south [Sidenote: _April 24_]
coast of Cyprus, when a storm arose and dashed two of them to pieces
against the rocks;[594] a third ship put back into the open sea in
time to save itself[595] and its precious freight—it was the ship
which carried not only a considerable part of the king’s treasure
(under the charge of Stephen of Turnham, now restored to the king’s
favour and acting as his marshal and treasurer), but also Joan and
Berengaria. The “Griffons” of Cyprus took the men who struggled
ashore from the wrecks to a fort hard by, promising them food and
shelter, but stripped them of their arms on the plea that this was
necessary till the pleasure of the “Emperor” (Isaac) concerning
them should be known; and they also seized the clothes and other
necessaries which the knights on the remaining ships sent to their
distressed comrades. These latter, finding themselves prisoners and
[Sidenote: _May 2_] almost starved, at the end of a week made a
determined effort to escape. With three bows which they had either
secreted or found in the fort they did such execution that the whole
party was able to make its way to the harbour, where their friends
in the ships, seeing what was going on, had meanwhile landed and
were fighting hard with the Griffons; finally the Griffons were
worsted, and the queen’s ship was brought into the harbour.[596]
That evening Isaac came to Limasol; the pilgrims appealed to him,
and he [Sidenote: _May 3_] promised them redress for their wrongs.
Next day he sent the queen and her future sister-in-law a courteous
invitation to land; this being prudently declined, he followed it up
[Sidenote: _May 4_] on the morrow with hospitable gifts of bread,
meat, and the [Sidenote: _May 5_] famous wine of Cyprus. On the
Sunday he again tried to persuade the ladies to come ashore; after
anxious consultation they, fearing that longer resistance might
lead to their being taken captives by force—for Isaac meanwhile was
assembling his troops on the shore—promised to commit themselves to
his protection on the morrow. But on that same Sunday Richard’s fleet
came in sight.[597] It had left Rhodes on May 1; the galleys, headed
as usual by Richard’s own ship, had been driven by the wind into
the dangerous gulf of Satalia (or Atalia) on the coast of Pamphylia,
and narrowly escaped destruction, but were extricated and brought in
safety to Cyprus, seemingly by the fine seamanship [Sidenote: _May
6_] of their royal leader.[598] On the morning of Monday they reached
the entrance to the harbour of Limasol. As soon as Richard learned
what had been taking place there he sent a messenger ashore with a
civilly worded remonstrance to Isaac and a request that he would make
amends for his people’s ill-treatment of Crusaders. Isaac was on
the shore with all the troops that he had been able to collect from
every part of his island “empire.” He cut the messenger short with an
insulting word—“Tproupt, sir!”; the messenger went straight back and
repeated it to the king. Richard’s retort was equally brief; it was a
command to his own men—“To arms!”[599]
Between the fleet and the shore five armed galleys lay in the
harbour. On the shore Isaac’s troops were drawn up behind a barricade
composed of every bit of wood that the town could supply, doors and
window-frames or shutters, barrels and casks, shields and bucklers,
pieces of old ships and boats, planks, steps, benches, boxes, all
piled up along the water’s edge.[600] At the back of the troops was
the fortified town, overtopped by a lofty castle or citadel built
on the rock.[601] The Crusaders could land only by means of their
boats. Knights and crossbowmen hurriedly obeyed the king’s order,
and all weary and worn with long tossing on the sea and laden with
their heavy armour and cumbrous weapons, crowded into the tiny
cockle-shells[602] to join battle as foot-soldiers with an army of
which part at least was well provided with good horses and mules, and
which, moreover, was on its own soil; “but,” as one of the pilgrims
says, “we knew the most about war.” Richard’s crossbowmen opened the
fight by shooting at the enemy’s galleys; “there were some who did
not miss their aim,” says the same eye-witness; the Greek sailors
in a panic leaped into the water, and while they were struggling
there their ships were captured and taken outside the harbour to be
guarded by the English fleet. Meanwhile the king, when he saw his
comrades struggling to land from the boats under a storm of arrows,
“leaped from his boat into the sea and made for the Greeks, and
assailed them.” His men followed his example and drove the Greeks
back, some into the town, more into the fields. Isaac took to flight;
Richard, running after him, caught a horse “with a sack attached to
its saddle, and stirrups of cord,” sprang on its back, and shouted
“Emperor! come and joust!” But Isaac “had no mind to joust,” and
continued his flight.[603] The town of Limasol now submitted to
Richard, and he brought his sister and his bride ashore.[604] That
same night the horses were [Sidenote: _May 7_] landed and exercised;
and next morning Richard with a small force set out in search of the
enemy. A party of them was soon found in an olive garden, dislodged,
and chased till the main body suddenly came into view. Then Richard,
having with him at the moment only fifty knights, called a halt.
Meanwhile the shouts of the Greeks whom he had been chasing reached
the ears of Isaac, half a league in advance, where he had stopped
to dine and sleep, for he had no idea that the Franks possessed any
horses. He and his escort climbed a hill “to see what their folk
would do.” All they did was to keep turning about and shooting and
shouting back at the little band of Franks, who stood motionless.
One Hugh de la Mare, who though he bore arms was a clerk, said to
the king, “Come away, sire, their numbers are too overwhelming.”
“Get you to your own writing-business, sir clerk, and leave matters
of chivalry to us,” retorted Richard. He knew that reinforcements
were not far behind him; even before they came up, the suddenness
and vehemence of his onset threw the Greeks into confusion; and
the victory was soon complete. Isaac fled to the mountains; his
standard-bearer was struck down and the standard taken by Richard’s
own hand. After chasing the enemy for a couple of leagues the king
called off his troops from the pursuit and leisurely returned, the
men-at-arms stopping on the way back to collect countless spoils left
by the Emperor in the place where he had camped. On reaching the town
the king caused a proclamation to be made that “all people of the
land who did not desire war might come and go in safety; but such as
did seek war should have no peace or truce from him.”[605]
On the way from Rhodes to Cyprus Richard had spoken a ship westward
bound from Acre and heard of Philip’s arrival there.[606] Some vessel
sailing from Rhodes or Cyprus to Acre seems to have carried thither
news of Richard’s whereabouts. On May 11 three galleys were seen
approaching Limasol. Richard characteristically[607] set off in a
little [Sidenote: _May 11_] boat to ascertain for himself what they
were,[608] and found that they carried King Guy of Jerusalem and some
of his chief nobles, who had come in search of the king of England to
secure his alliance and support against a scheme which had been set
on foot at Acre under Philip’s auspices for deposing Guy and making
Conrad of Montferrat, the lord of Tyre, king in his stead. Richard
welcomed them cordially and royally. His marriage and the coronation
of his queen took place next day (May 12). A few more days were spent
in festivities and in waiting for some belated ships to come into
port.[609] Among those irretrievably lost in the great storm there
seem to have been several galleys, but some at least of these were
now replaced by the Cypriote ones which had been captured.[610] When
at last the tale of vessels was complete, Richard prepared to resume
his pursuit of Isaac. Isaac, however, who had retired inland to the
capital of Cyprus, Nicosia, anticipated him by sending proposals for
a parley. It took place “in a garden of fig trees between the shore
and the Limasol road.”[611] The king went in regal state, attired
in a tunic of rose-coloured samite and a mantle “bedight with small
half-moons of solid silver set in rows, interspersed with shining
orbs like suns”; his head was covered with a scarlet cap; he was
girt with a well-proved sword “with a golden hilt, a silken belt,
and a finely chased scabbard edged with silver”; his spurs were
golden (or gilt), and he was mounted on a Spanish horse of great
beauty as well as of a size befitting a rider of such lofty stature;
“his saddle was red, studded with little golden and bright-coloured
stars, and having on its hinder part two golden lion-cubs rampant,
and as if snarling at each other.”[612] Isaac swore fealty to
Richard, promising to accompany him to Holy Land and serve under him
there with five hundred knights; meanwhile Richard was to hold the
castles and imperial domains of Cyprus in pledge and to receive an
indemnity of three thousand five hundred marks. On these terms they
exchanged the kiss of peace.[613] That night, however, Isaac mounted
his fleetest horse, a wonderful animal called Fauvel, and fled to
Famagosta (the ancient Ammochontos, on the east coast). His flight
was discovered immediately, but Fauvel seems to have had a reputation
which was already known to Richard, for the king forbade all direct
pursuit as useless. Instead, he took stronger measures; he put to
sea at the head of his galleys and [Sidenote: _May 15-30_] sailed
round to Famagosta while his land-forces were, at his request, led
by Guy along the coast-road to meet him there. When they reached the
place, however, they found it deserted. Richard sent some ships round
to the other coast-towns to guard against Isaac’s escape by sea; he
himself stayed three days at Famagosta, and there gave an audience
to some envoys from Philip, charged with a pressing request that he
would proceed to Acre without further delay. Their urgency was so
vehement and so insulting that “the king grew angry, and raised his
eyebrows, and there were words spoken which it is not meet to write.”
“Not for half the wealth of Russia” would he leave Cyprus till he had
conquered it and made sure that the supplies of food of which it was
the storehouse should be available for the Crusade. So he marched
upon Nicosia, whither Isaac had again retired. This time Richard,
fearing an [Sidenote: c. _May 18_] attack from behind, took the
command of the rearguard. Isaac was lying in wait with his household
troops; after an unsuccessful attempt to check the advance of the
Frankish vanguard, he “like a Turcople” harassed the flanks of the
host till he came near enough to Richard to shoot at him two arrows.
Richard dashed forward and would have taken summary vengeance, but
the Cypriote Emperor was mounted on Fauvel, and the matchless steed
carried him away, at a pace which defied pursuit, to the strong
castle of Candaria or Kantara. His troops retired in confusion. Next
morning the citizens of Nicosia made their submission to Richard,
and he “had their beards shaved off in token of the transfer of
their allegiance to a new lord.” He then divided his army into
three parts, probably intending himself to take the command of one
of them; but he fell sick and was obliged to remain at Nicosia and
leave the direction of the campaign to the king of Jerusalem. Guy,
who seems to have known the country, besieged and took the castle
of Cherina,[614] on the north coast, and found within its walls
the emperor’s only child, a young girl. Her father was so dismayed
at her capture that he ordered the immediate surrender of the next
fortress, “Didemus,”[615] to which Guy laid siege. Richard, as soon
as he recovered, went to attack a third stronghold, “Bufevent.”[616]
Scarcely had he reached it when Isaac offered complete surrender
of his castles, lands, “everything,” begging only to be spared
the indignity of “irons or bonds.” Isaac followed close on his
messenger and threw himself at the king’s feet. Richard raised him up
graciously, seated him at his side, and relieved his anxiety about
his daughter by bringing her to meet him. As for the fetters, Isaac’s
request evidently ran counter to the king’s inclination or to his
fears of a possible escape; but, “lest folk should make an outcry,”
he granted it after a fashion: he put the fallen tyrant in chains of
silver.[617]
[Sidenote: _May 18-June 1_]
Thus in fifteen days—the last fortnight of May[618]—Richard, with
Guy’s help, had “won the mastery of Cyprus for the service of God.”
For the same purpose he took possession of a mass of treasures of
all kinds which he found in the castles.[619] Moreover, the people
of the land, to whom Isaac had been a “tyrant” in every sense of the
word,[620] gave to their new ruler “the half of all they possessed”
“for the restoration of the laws and institutes which they had had
under the Emperors of Constantinople” and which Richard confirmed
to them by charter.[621] He further secured his conquest by turning
out all the Greek garrisons,[622] replacing them with Franks, and
appointing two Englishmen, Richard de Camville and Robert of Turnham,
governors or “keepers” of the island,[623] who were charged to send
regular supplies of the victuals—barley, wheat, sheep, bullocks—which
Cyprus produced in abundance, to the Franks in Syria, “where,” adds
the poet-pilgrim, “they were of great use.”[624] Meanwhile he had
sent Isaac, under the charge of Guy,[625] straight across the sea
to the nearest point on the Syrian coast, the fortress of Markab in
Tripoli. The Damsel of Cyprus, who seems to have been almost a child,
was placed under the care of the two queens and remained with them
throughout the Crusade.[626] On June 5, the Wednesday in Whitsun
week, the fleet sailed for Palestine.[627] The various losses
which it had sustained in the Mediterranean Sea were compensated by
the acquisition of the Cypriote navy; the total of ships was now a
hundred and sixty-three, of which thirteen were three-masted busses
and fifty were triremes.[628]
One more adventure at sea awaited the king before he reached the
Holy Land. “Full of health, and light as a feather,” he led the way
“as fast as a stag could run” in a direct line across the water
till Markab was sighted. Thence the fleet sailed down the coast
past Tortosa, Tripoli, and [Sidenote: _June_ 6 or 7] Beyrout.[629]
Suddenly, between Beyrout and Sidon, Richard and his companions in
the leading galley saw ahead of them a ship of such size “that we
read of no larger one ever existing save the ark of Noah.”[630]
On a nearer view they perceived that it had three tall masts; one
side of it was covered with green felt or tarpaulin, the other with
yellow;[631] and its whole appearance, to western eyes, was unnatural
and uncanny.[632] Richard’s men hailed it and demanded whence it
came and where it belonged. “We are Genoese, for Tyre,” was the
answer. But one of Richard’s oarsmen said: “Hang me, sire, if that
ship be not Turkish!” At his suggestion another galley was ordered
to go close up to the ship without hailing her; this was done, and
her crew immediately opened fire on the galley with arbalests and
Damascus bows. Richard’s galley came swiftly up; his men tried to
board the ship, but in vain. The king swore he would hang them all if
they let the Turks escape. Again and again they renewed the attack;
at last they fairly stormed the ship, but were driven back again
into their own vessels. Then Richard bade them make a breach in the
enemy ship’s side or keel; in this they succeeded, and she sank.
Some thirty-five of her officers and engineers were saved and kept
as prisoners by Richard’s orders; the rest of the men on board her
were either slain or drowned.[633] When the victors reached their
destination they learned that the ship had been specially built
by order of Saladin’s brother Safadin and despatched from Beyrout
to carry reinforcements and supplies to the besieged Saracens in
Acre, but had been unable to enter the harbour and was, when the
Franks overtook her, cruising about, waiting for an opportunity to
return thither;[634] she carried, besides her crew, at least six
hundred and fifty picked soldiers;[635] a man, doubtless one of the
prisoners, who had seen her loaded at Beyrout, said eight hundred,
and further asserted that she contained a hundred camel-loads of arms
of all kinds, victuals and other stores “beyond reckoning,” bottles
filled with Greek fire, and two hundred “ugly grey serpents” which,
according to one account, he had himself helped to stow in her, and
which were destined to be let loose against the Christian host;[636]
probably these were some kind of serpent-like contrivances for
throwing the fire. In the Saracen camp the story of the catastrophe
was somewhat differently told by a Moslem who represented himself
as its sole survivor, rescued and sent by the Christians to inform
his people of the disaster which had befallen their cause. He seems
to have stated that the dromond had been sunk by its own captain to
save it from capture. Saladin’s biographer, however, frankly admits
that the issue of Richard’s first encounter with Turks was a severe
blow to the defenders of Acre.[637] To Richard and his followers it
must have seemed a good omen; and it was immediately followed by
another. At the opening of the fight they had had the wind in their
faces;[638] suddenly it dropped[639] and then shifted to the north
and carried them before nightfall to Tyre.[640] Here Richard landed,
intending to spend the night in the city, but its keepers refused to
admit him, asserting that their lord, Conrad of Montferrat, and the
king of France had forbidden them to do so.[641] Next day the wind
still favoured him and his fleet, and bore them past Scandalion and
Casal Imbert straight to the haven where they would be.[642]
CHAPTER III
THE FALL OF ACRE
1191.
What brave chief shall head the forces
Where the Red Cross Legions gather?
From Mount Taurus to the Gulf of Aden, from the river Tigris to
the Mediterranean sea, and from the Arabian to the Libyan desert,
Saladin was now master of everything except some fragments of
territory in the north-west of Syria and one sea-port in Galilee.
The first of these exceptions consisted of a small portion of the
Latin principality of Antioch, including its capital city; south of
this, a few fortified coast-towns—Markab, Tortosa, Tripoli; and east
of these latter, the little settlement of Ismaïlite warriors who in
their stronghold under the shelter of Mount Lebanon defied Franks
and Turks alike, and acknowledged no ruler save their own chieftain,
called by western chroniclers “the Old Man of the Mountain.” The one
unconquered city in the Holy Land itself was Tyre.
The goal of the Crusade was, of course, Jerusalem. Ninety years
before, when Islam was split up into a number of separate and rival
states, all weakened and well-nigh exhausted by constant strife
with each other, the First Crusaders had attained that goal by a
victorious land march all the way from Antioch; but now all was
changed, and it would have been sheer madness for their successors to
dream of following in their steps. Now that the resources of Aleppo,
Damascus, Bagdad, and Cairo were all at the command of one ruler, the
acquisition of a base on the sea-coast in such a position that troops
and supplies could be poured through it from the West direct into the
Holy Land in safety and on a large scale (or what in the twelfth
century was accounted such) was an almost indispensable preliminary
to any practical attempt at the re-conquest of Jerusalem. Tyre, with
its peninsular citadel facing the valley which leads round the foot
of Lebanon into Coele-Syria, was somewhat too isolated as well as
too far north for this purpose. But some twenty-five miles south of
Tyre there was a fortified sea-port whose character and importance
were summed up by an Arab writer, a few years before it fell into
Saladin’s power, in one significant sentence: “Acre is the column
on which the Frankish towns of Syria rest.”[643] Acre stood on the
site of the ancient Ptolemaïs, at the northern extremity of the wide
semicircular bay whose southern extremity is the point of Carmel,
and which forms the only real break in the long straight coast-line
of the Holy Land. Its harbour was the best—indeed, the only good
one except Tyre and, perhaps, Ascalon—in the whole length of that
coast-line. Under the Franks it was the chief landing-place for both
pilgrims and traders from Europe; for it was the converging-point of
all the main lines of communication between the West and Jerusalem,
Mecca, Egypt, and Damascus. For the trade of Damascus it was
practically the only available sea-port, being the only one to and
from which access on the land side was not blocked by Mount Lebanon.
“There,” says the Arab visitor quoted above, “put in the tall ships
which float like mountains over the sea; it is the meeting-place
of crafts and caravans, the place whither Mussulman and Christian
merchants congregate from all quarters.”[644] To the natural
advantages of the site were added fortifications which ranked among
the mightiest of the many mighty productions of military architecture
reared by the Frank settlers in Syria. The mouth of the harbour was
guarded by a chain; a great tower rose on a tongue of land which ran
out into the sea and sheltered the harbour to westward; the city
lay partly on this peninsula and partly on the mainland, and was
protected on the land side, to north and east, by strong walls and
towers, and beyond these by a wide and deep fosse.[645] Saladin had
taken the place in July 1187; he was fully alive to its importance,
and it was strongly garrisoned and well provisioned when at the end
of August 1189 King Guy of Jerusalem, having made his way down from
Antioch, collecting forces as he went from among the natives of the
land and the newly enlisted Crusaders who during the last year had
been arriving in small parties at the few northern sea-ports still
in Christian hands, set to [Sidenote: 1189 _Aug._] work to begin the
re-conquest of his kingdom by laying siege to Acre with about ten
thousand men.[646]
It was a great venture of faith; and the faith was justified. Acre at
once became the rallying-point for all the remaining forces of the
realm and for the Crusaders who came pouring in from Europe during
the next few months. Saladin on his part had immediately despatched
a large army to occupy the hills which bordered the plain, some
eight to ten miles wide, at the back of the town. The besiegers, in
their entrenched camp outside the walls and fosse, found themselves
practically besieged in their turn; and this double siege lasted,
with many vicissitudes and very little real [Sidenote: 1191] progress
on either side, till the spring of 1191. By the middle of April, when
Philip Augustus arrived, the Christian host was sufficiently numerous
to maintain a complete blockade of the city by land and entire
control over the harbour, and thus to prevent the entrance of men
and provisions, either by land or by sea. They had, however, little
prospect of winning the place except by starvation; for they could
not venture on attempting to capture it by a general assault, because
their own encampment was in constant danger from a great host of
fresh troops which Saladin had brought up to occupy the surrounding
country as soon as the winter was over. Thus on the evening of
Saturday, June 8,[647] “the valiant king, the Lion-heart,[648]
saw before him Acre with its towers, and the flower of the world’s
people seated round about it, and beyond them the hill-peaks and the
mountains and the valleys and the plains, covered with the tents of
Saladin and Safadin and their troops, pressing hard on our Christian
host.”[649]
Not the least of the disadvantages under which that host laboured
was the lack of a commander-in-chief. Neither the character nor the
circumstances of Guy were such as could enable him to retain that
position after the influx from Europe had begun; and the supreme
command of the siege therefore passed from one to another of the
more influential leaders of the western contingents by a succession
of temporary arrangements, intended only as makeshifts till the
three sovereigns who were expected to take the joint leadership of
the whole expedition should arrive. The greatest of these three,
however, the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa, never arrived at all,
having been accidentally drowned on the way in June 1190. After the
main body of the French Crusaders reached Acre in July 1190, the
chief command devolved upon their leader, Count Henry of Champagne,
whose mother was half-sister to both Philip Augustus and Richard,
and who was thus in some sense a representative of both the kings.
Philip on his arrival devoted himself to setting up his military
engines, of which he had brought a goodly store, in whatever places
he deemed most advantageous, and according to one English chronicler,
building a stone house for himself; but he declined to take any
further action without his brother-sovereign.[650] Richard had no
sooner passed from the clamorous welcome given him by the whole host
as he landed, and the exchange of courteous greetings with Philip,
than he plunged at once into practical matters.[651] Having learned
that Philip was paying his followers three gold bezants apiece every
month, [Sidenote: _June 8_] he—seemingly that very night—issued a
proclamation throughout the host offering four bezants a month to
any knight, of any country, who would take service under him.[652]
The consequence was that nearly all those who were free to dispose of
themselves and their services “took him for their leader and their
lord.”[653] Among the first to come forward for this purpose were the
Genoese and the Pisans. He declined, however, the homage and fealty
of the Genoese, because it was already pledged to Philip. The Pisans
became his liegemen, and “he confirmed to them by his charter the
customs which they were wont to have in the land of Jerusalem.”[654]
It is highly significant that Richard could already, and seemingly
without calling forth a protest or even a remark from anyone, make
an assumption of authority in a realm of which he was neither ruler
nor overlord. Scarcely less significant was the action of Henry of
Champagne. Henry—so at least says an English chronicler—having come
to the end of his own resources, had asked his uncle of France for a
subsidy; Philip offered him a loan of a hundred marks, if he would
pledge his county for their repayment. Henry then applied to his
uncle of England, who at once gave him four thousand pounds and a
supply of food for his men and his horses. Thenceforth [Sidenote:
_June_] the troops of Champagne and their count served under
Richard’s standard, and their own sovereign remained in command
only of the strictly “French” followers who had come to Acre in his
train.[655]
The wind which had brought Richard’s galleys swiftly to Acre on
June 8 changed again before the slower vessels of his fleet could
follow him, and until they arrived he had no engines of war.[656]
But “Mategriffon” had been packed on one of the galleys; on the 10th
it was set up, and by daybreak on the 11th his archers were looking
down into Acre from the tall wooden tower, and “Kill-Greek” was ready
to become “Kill-Turk.” Philip renewed his attacks on the “Accursed
Tower,” the chief defence of the city on its [Sidenote: _June 11-14_]
eastern side; and all along the line of the walls stone-casters and
miners set vigorously to work. Richard meanwhile “went about among
the groups, instructing some, criticizing others, encouraging others;
he seemed to be everywhere and at every man’s side, so that to him
might fairly be ascribed whatsoever each man was doing.”[657] Within
a day or two, however, he was prostrated by a strange illness, a
kind of malarial fever which among other effects caused alopecia
or loss of hair.[658] Much against his wishes, a general assault
was nevertheless made under Philip’s orders on June 14. It failed,
and so did another three or four days later.[659] Presently Philip
was attacked by the same malady which had struck down Richard.[660]
In Richard’s case it seems to have been complicated by his chronic
trouble, ague;[661] and thus Philip was the first to recover. Richard
occupied part of his time of enforced inactivity in an exchange of
courtesies with Saladin. Each party was anxious for information
as to the strength, or weakness, of the other; and the courtesies
of chivalry, which were quite as familiar to the Moslem as to the
Christian prince, were utilized by both for this purpose. Saladin
appears to have opened communications by sending a gift of fruit to
the two royal invalids. Richard was eager for a personal interview
[Sidenote: _June 19-July 21_] with his courteous adversary; this
Saladin refused, on the ground that “kings should not have speech
with each other till terms of peace between them have been arranged”;
he consented, however, to a meeting between his brother Safadin and
the king, but when the time for it came Richard was still too ill
to leave his tent. Richard next despatched to the Saracen camp a
negro slave as a gift to the Sultan.[662] On the king’s part these
proceedings were unwise, not in themselves, but because they were
liable to be misconstrued by his fellow-Crusaders and to bring upon
him the suspicions of the other princes in the host, and especially
of Philip Augustus, with whom he was already at variance about a
much more serious matter which practically depended upon their joint
decision. This was nothing less than the disposal of the Crown of
Jerusalem.
King Amalric, who died in 1174, had by his first wife a son, Baldwin,
and a daughter, Sibyl; and by his second wife an infant daughter,
Isabel. The first marriage had been dissolved on the ground of
consanguinity; in strict law, therefore, Baldwin and Sibyl were
illegitimate; Baldwin, however, became king without opposition,
because he was the only male survivor of the royal house. But he was
not yet fourteen, and he was a leper. In 1176, therefore, an attempt
was made to provide for the succession by marrying his elder sister
to a member of a distinguished family of Italian Crusaders, William
of Montferrat. Within a year Sibyl was a widow; but she was also the
mother of a son, and in 1183 this child was solemnly crowned and
anointed king in his uncle’s lifetime. This precaution staved off the
impending crisis for nearly three years, though the imminent prospect
of a long royal minority in the existing political and military
circumstances of Palestine was felt to be so alarming that the very
Patriarch who had crowned the child became, only a few months later,
eager to undo his own work and tried, but without success, to bring
from Europe to the dying king and the distracted realm an adoptive
male heir of full age in the person of one of the descendants of the
first marriage of the Angevin Count Fulk V, whose second marriage had
brought the crown of Jerusalem into the house of Anjou. Baldwin IV
died before Heraclius returned from Europe, in the winter of 1184-5;
in September 1186 little Baldwin V died also. Sibyl then claimed
the crown in her own right, as the natural heiress at once of her
child, her brother, and her father; the Templars, the Patriarch,
and some of the nobles rallied round her at Jerusalem; the people
acclaimed her as queen, and she was crowned in the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre together with her second husband, Guy of Lusignan. Sibyl’s
half-sister, Isabel, was now fifteen years old, and had been married
three years. A party among the nobles had ever since King Amalric’s
death been biding their time to bring Isabel forward as his only
legitimate representative and heir. They tried to do so now; they
failed, however, because her young husband, Humphry of Toron, and
his step-father and guardian, Reginald of Châtillon, both adhered to
Sibyl. But when the sickness which raged in the Christian camp before
Acre in 1190 carried off first the two little daughters of Sibyl and
Guy and then Sibyl herself, Isabel and her partisans found their
opportunity. On the pretext that Isabel had been wedded to Humphry
without her consent, the Patriarch declared her [Sidenote: _Nov. 24_
1190] marriage void. Immediately afterwards she married the man who
had long been Guy’s most implacable rival, Conrad of Montferrat, a
younger brother of Sibyl’s first husband.
In four words the Norman poet-historian of the third Crusade has at
once pronounced a rare and splendid panegyric on Guy of Lusignan as
a man, and given us the clue to Guy’s failure as a statesman. “No
king was endowed with better qualities save for one characteristic
which he had: that he knew no evil. That,” adds the poet with a
charming touch of perhaps unconscious irony, “is what men call
simpleness.”[663] “Simpleness,” whether as a virtue or a failing,
can certainly never have been laid to the credit or the charge
of Conrad of Montferrat. He had in 1187 landed with a handful of
followers at Tyre when it was literally on the eve of surrendering
to Saladin, and had taken upon himself the command and defence of
the place with such vigour that Saladin was compelled to raise the
siege. An Arab historian called him “the mightiest devil of all the
Franks”;[664] an English writer called him “a son of the piercing
and crooked serpent.”[665] His valour and capability, together with
the possession of Tyre, soon made him a personage of much greater
importance than the titular king. In birth Conrad was much more than
Guy’s equal; the marquisate of Montferrat, to which he succeeded in
1188, ranked among the chief principalities of the kingdom of Italy,
and his mother was granddaughter to one emperor, sister to another,
and aunt to a third; while Guy was merely the youngest of the five
brothers of that Geoffrey of Lusignan who had been a ringleader in
almost every Aquitanian revolt from 1167 onward, and who had finally,
some months after Conrad’s arrival at Tyre, gone to expiate in
Palestine the last and worst of his offences against Duke Richard.
To avert civil strife, both parties agreed to submit the whole
question of the Crown to the arbitration of the two western kings.
Guy now laid before them a complaint that Conrad had “forcibly and
unjustly taken from him” (probably during his absence in Cyprus) “the
rights and revenues of the kingdom.” His brother Geoffrey appealed
the marquis of disloyalty, perjury, and treason against the king of
Jerusalem and the whole Christian host. Conrad for the moment avoided
answering the appeal by slipping away to Tyre;[666] its prosecution
was postponed, and with it the trial of the rival claims to the
Crown; pending a decision, the royal dues and revenues of the market
and port of Acre were sequestrated and entrusted to the Templars and
Hospitaliers.[667]
The two arbitrators inclined opposite ways. Guy’s “simpleness” had
led him aright when it pointed him, notwithstanding the previous
hostile relations between his family and their overlord in Aquitaine,
to Richard as his natural protector against the Italian claimant
to his Crown. On the other hand, Conrad’s family connexions and
his talents had secured for him the support of most of the other
princes in the crusading host; the ceremony of marriage between him
and Isabel had been performed by a French bishop, a near kinsman of
King Philip.[668] Thus supported, he had, as we have seen, already
ventured to set Richard at defiance by preventing him from entering
Tyre; and he was now speedily[669] recalled to the camp by Philip,
who at once openly “took him into familiarity and counsel.” According
to one account it was at Conrad’s instigation that Philip laid claim
to half the island of Cyprus and of the spoils which Richard had
acquired there; the pretext for the claim being the agreement made
at Messina. Richard answered that the said agreement related only to
whatever he and Philip might acquire in the Holy Land; he offered,
however, to satisfy Philip’s demand if Philip would in exchange grant
him half the county of Flanders and of everything that had escheated
to the French Crown by the recent death of the Flemish count. On this
Philip dropped his claim and consented to a new arrangement whereby
both kings explicitly promised to share equally whatever they should
acquire in Palestine. This convention was confirmed by oaths and
charters, and its fulfilment was safeguarded by a provision that all
conquests and acquisitions made by either party should be placed
under the charge of the two great Military Orders for safe custody
and division.[670]
Meanwhile Richard’s fleet had arrived, bringing the rest of his
followers[671] and his engines of war. These seem to have been
mostly stone-casters and other missile engines worked at long range.
Philip’s machines were chiefly engines of assault and battery, which
had to be advanced close up to the walls, and were thus more exposed
to damage and destruction by fire from the enemy. The most effectual
work of all was that of the miners who had long been making their
way under the walls and especially under the “Accursed Tower.”[672]
The defences of Acre were now crumbling fast, and the fall of a
long piece of wall close to that tower, on July 3,[673] coinciding
with the failure of an attack made by Saladin and his brother on
the Christian trenches,[674] was [Sidenote: _July 4_] followed next
morning by an offer from the garrison to surrender the place and all
its contents if their own lives and liberty were spared.[675] The
two kings, knowing that the garrison comprised—as a Moslem writer
says—“the best emirs of the Sultan’s host and the bravest champions
of Islam,”[676] refused the condition.[677] That night another attack
on the Christians’ outer trench was successfully beaten off.[678]
Then Richard, sick though he was, determined to try the effect of an
assault on the city under his own personal direction. He caused a
kind of moveable hurdle-shed, called by the French writers _cercloie_
or _circleie_, to be brought up to the edge of the fosse; under cover
of this shelter his crossbowmen could shoot at the tower; he himself,
wrapped in a rich silken quilt, was carried forth and placed among
them, “and many a bolt was shot by that skilful hand,” the Turks
shooting back all the time.[679] All day long his stone-casters
worked incessantly; so did his miners; at night the mine was fired,
and their efforts were rewarded by the fall of some turrets and a
great breach in the curtain wall.[680] Hereupon Richard sent a crier
through the host to proclaim a reward for any man who would pull out
a stone from a certain piece of wall close to the great tower. The
offer met with a quick response from his own troops and the Pisans,
and before the rest of the host had finished [Sidenote: _July 6_]
breakfast next morning they had nearly made an entrance into the
city,[681] when the besieged again signified their desire to treat
for peace.[682] Again the two emirs in command, Karakoush and
Seiffeddin-el-Meshtoub,[683] came to speak with the kings, and again
their offers were refused, seemingly on the understanding that the
matter was to be referred to Saladin.[684]
Saladin’s headquarters were at Tell-Ayadiyeh, at the foot of the
hills, some seven or eight miles east of Acre, on the direct road to
Damascus. Twice within the last two days the besieged had warned the
Sultan that unless he relieved them at once, they must surrender,
with his consent or without it.[685] The two kings, knowing that
his forces were unequal to coping with the united Christian host,
were at the same time negotiating with him in the hope that the city
might meanwhile fall into their hands; and he could only endeavour
to stave off its surrender by spinning out the negotiations till the
reinforcements which he was expecting should arrive.[686] No sooner,
however, had these begun to come up than on July 8-10 he took the
significant step of cutting down the vineyards and orchards around
Acre and levelling most of the towns and smaller fortresses in the
neighbourhood;[687] and on the 11th the besieged intimated their
readiness to make peace “at the will of the Christian [Sidenote:
_July 12_] kings.” Next morning (12th), in a great assembly at the
Templars’ quarters, the kings “by the counsel of the whole host” made
an agreement with the two emirs.[688] Acre was to be surrendered
immediately, and its garrison were to be kept by the Franks as
hostages for the fulfilment of three conditions to which the emirs
pledged themselves in Saladin’s name: the restoration of the Holy
Cross, the release of sixteen hundred Christians who were prisoners
in the Sultan’s hands, and the payment of two hundred thousand
bezants (or, according to another account, dinars) to the kings and
fourteen (or forty) thousand to Conrad “because the treaty had
been made by his mediation.”[689] The emirs returned to the city; a
herald proclaimed throughout the host that all molestation, injury,
or insult to the Turks must cease at once; the gates were opened, the
garrison, unarmed, were brought out[690] and placed under guard in
the Christian camp,[691] and the kings sent representatives to take
formal possession of Acre for them by planting their banners on its
[Sidenote: _July 13_] walls and towers.[692] Next day (July 13) they
made an equal division of the city and all its contents, and also of
the prisoners (or hostages), and then, seemingly, cast lots for the
two halves. The royal palace fell to Richard’s share, the Templars’
house to Philip’s; but neither king appears to have taken up his
abode in the city for several days. The prisoners were sent back into
lodgings assigned to them within the walls, and the greater part of
the host also found quarters there.[693]
These prisoners—the late garrison of Acre—were, by the terms of
capitulation, to be detained till the relic of the Cross, the
stipulated number of Christian captives, and the indemnity, should
all be delivered up by Saladin; then they were to depart free
with their personal property and their wives and children.[694]
The fulfilment of the conditions on which their release depended
was obviously beyond the control of the officers who had made the
agreement. Those officers were understood by the Christians to be
acting with Saladin’s authorization, but it appears that this was
not the fact; according to Saladin’s friend and biographer Bohadin,
they communicated the terms to the Sultan and then acted upon them
without waiting for his reply, and he was about to send back a flat
refusal of his sanction to them when he saw the Frank banners on the
walls.[695] After waiting two days in the hope of some movement which
might give him a chance of successfully attacking the [Sidenote:
_July 14_] Christian camp, he on the 14th removed his headquarters
from Ayadiyeh to Shefr’ Amm, a village in the plain, ten miles
south-east of Acre.[696] Thence he sent a messenger to inquire what
were the terms on which the surrender had been made, and the date
fixed for their fulfilment. On the same day three envoys came from
Acre to speak with him about the Christian prisoners to be released
and the money to be paid; he gave them an honourable reception, and
sent them on to Damascus, that they might inspect the prisoners
there.[697] Thus he, implicitly if not explicitly, committed himself
to the conditions which had been accepted in his name.
Friendly embassies continued to pass between the two camps;[698]
but within the Christian camp there were dissensions. First the
Crusaders who had been at the siege before the kings arrived—some
of them ever since its beginning—claimed a share of the spoil, and
threatened to desert if it were not given to them. The kings put
them off with a promise. Then Richard proposed that he, the king
of France, and all the men of their respective armies should bind
themselves by oath not to leave the Holy Land for three years unless
the whole of it should before the end of that time be surrendered
by Saladin. Philip, however, refused to take such an oath.[699]
Next day (July 21) Richard with his wife and his sister took up his
abode in the palace.[700] It may have been either on his entry into
the city on this occasion or on an earlier visit of inspection that
in passing through the streets he noticed on one of the towers a
banner which he did not recognize, and asked to whom it belonged.
It was that of Duke Leopold of Austria, by whom the tower had been
taken. The king ordered the banner to be pulled down and trodden in
the mire, and further vented his wrath in insulting words addressed
to Leopold himself.[701] He seems to have acted under the impulsion
of one of those fits of unreasonable fury which were part of his
Angevin heritage and by which every member of the Angevin house
was liable to be occasionally goaded into blunders as well as into
crimes. Blunder and wrong were united in this case, and were to be
dearly paid for at a later time; for the moment, Leopold was only
one of a number of crusading princes and nobles who chafed under
Richard’s control. In spite of all the arrangements for an equal
division of authority between the kings it was inevitable that the
supreme command should fall to Richard, not only because he had the
greatest number of troops, but also because Philip made no attempt
to assert himself openly with regard to anything except the division
of the spoils.[702] This last was in fact the only matter connected
with the Crusade which had any real interest for Philip. His one
aim was to get back to his own realm, that he might, first, secure
for himself the heritage of the lately deceased count of Flanders,
and next, make whatever profit could possibly be made out of the
absence of the duke of Normandy and Aquitaine. His difficulty was
to abandon the expedition without disgracing himself in the eyes of
all Christendom. Four of [Sidenote: _July 22_] his barons went to
the palace on the day after Richard took up his abode there, with a
message of which they seem to have been so ashamed that they could
not utter it for tears till Richard helped them by anticipating
its tenour—the king of France wanted his counsel and assent for
returning home. Philip, according to these envoys, said that unless
he speedily left Syria he would die. “If he leaves undone the work
for which he came hither,” answered Richard, “he will bring shame
and everlasting contempt upon himself and upon France; so he will
not go by my counsel. But if he must needs either go or die, let
him do what best pleases him and [Sidenote: _July 23_] his folk.”
Next day Philip repeated his demand for half [Sidenote: _July 26_]
of Cyprus; which Richard again refused. Three days later Conrad of
Montferrat, on Philip’s advice, came and threw himself at Richard’s
feet and “asked his pardon” (seemingly for the insult to which the
king had been subjected at Tyre); [Sidenote: _July 27_] Richard
granted it.[703] On the following day the plea of Conrad against Guy
was tried in the presence of both the western kings. Conrad claimed
the kingdom in right of his so-called wife, Isabel; Guy, as having
been made king, and done nothing to forfeit his crown. Both put
themselves on the judgement of the two western sovereigns and the
prelates and nobles of the host. Judgement was given on the morrow
(July 28) in the palace of Richard. Guy was to be king for life;
if he died before Conrad and Isabel they were to succeed him,[704]
and according to one account the crown was to remain with their
heirs;[705] according to another account, if Guy, Conrad, and Isabel
should all die while Richard was in Holy Land, Richard—evidently
as being head of the house of which the Angevin kings of Jerusalem
were a younger branch—was to dispose of the realm at his will.[706]
Meanwhile, the royal revenues were to be divided equally between
Conrad and Guy.[707] Geoffrey de Lusignan and Conrad were both
confirmed in the fiefs which they actually held.[708] On the morrow
Philip made over all that he had acquired in Acre to Conrad, and
again asked Richard’s leave to go home.[709] Richard is said to have
been so dismayed that he offered Philip a half share of everything
he had gathered together for the Crusade—gold, silver, provisions,
arms, horses, ships—if he would abandon his project; but it was in
vain.[710] All that the English king could do was to insist on the
French one taking a solemn oath not to invade the Angevin lands
or work any mischief against their owner while the latter was on
pilgrimage, nor without forty days’ notice after his return. The
oath was sworn, and the duke of Burgundy, the count of Champagne,
and some other French nobles stood surety for its fulfilment.[711]
Each of the kings then detached from his troops a hundred knights
and five hundred men-at-arms and sent them to Bohemond of Antioch
for the defence of his city and principality; Richard furnished his
share of this contingent with money enough to pay its expenses up to
the following Easter, and added a gift of five “large ships” laden
with horses, arms and food. Finally, the French king’s share of the
prisoners was separated from Richard’s[712] and placed, together with
the French troops who were to remain in Syria, under the command of
the duke of Burgundy.[713] On July 31 or August 1 Philip and Conrad
went, in two galleys lent to them by Richard, to Tyre.[714] There
Philip procured three Genoese galleys, and with these, on August 3,
he sailed for Europe.[715]
However much the lesser chieftains and their followers might resent
the supremacy of Richard—and if we may believe a German report, the
Germans and some of the Italians did resent it so fiercely that
they would have set upon him openly with their weapons had not
the Templars intervened[716]—it was now evident that he must be
henceforth commander-in-chief of the whole Crusade. He at once,
after holding a council with the other princes, had all [Sidenote:
_Aug. 1-3_] his ships loaded up with provisions for man and beast and
with his military engines, and issued an order that all the Crusaders
should make ready to follow him, with their arms and horses, to
Ascalon. He also “made all the archers of the host come before him
and gave them good wages.”[717] It was of course impossible to
leave Acre till the treaty with Saladin was carried into effect;
and this was becoming a matter of considerable anxiety. From July
14 to August 2 frequent communications had passed between Saladin
and the kings.[718] An English writer of the time says that Saladin
offered them the whole kingdom of Jerusalem except one fortress (Krak
of Moab, or Montreal) if they would lend him two thousand knights
and five thousand men-at-arms for a twelvemonth to help him against
the Mussulman enemies in his rear, the sons of Nureddin the lord of
Mosul.[719] Such a proposal, if made at all, could hardly be taken
or expected to be taken seriously, and can only have been a device
for spinning out negotiations and gaining time. A modification of one
detail of the treaty was, however, granted to the Sultan. The period
originally allowed him for the delivery of the Cross, the Christian
captives, and the money seems to have been one month from the day
of the surrender of Acre;[720] but this was soon perceived to be
impracticable. On July 24 the Frank envoys who had gone to inspect
their imprisoned fellow-Christians at Damascus returned with four
whom they had picked out for release;[721] and on the same evening
a list of the Saracen prisoners in Acre was brought to the Sultan.
On August 2 envoys from Acre came to him to ascertain whether the
Cross was still in his camp or had been sent away to Bagdad. When
satisfied on this point by ocular demonstration, they told him that
the kings accepted his proposal to deliver all that was specified in
the treaty by three monthly instalments. The first instalment was to
comprise more than two-thirds of the total; it was to consist of
the Cross, the whole stipulated number of Christian captives, and
half the money payment. The term for its delivery was to be August
11[722]—an ingeniously equitable arrangement for both parties,
since, the duration of the Mohammedan calendar month differing from
that of the western peoples, the period from the surrender of Acre
would be a month and a day[723] according to the reckoning of the
Moslems whose part in the treaty must be the most difficult and
lengthy of accomplishment, and one day less than a month according
to the reckoning of the Franks, who had most to gain by a speedy
fulfilment of the conditions.[724] Richard presently grew uneasy as
to the possibility of fulfilling the Franks’ side of the compact on
the appointed day; for Philip, after formally giving the charge of
his share of the prisoners to the duke of Burgundy,[725] had carried
them, or at least the most important and valuable of them, away with
him to Tyre and left them there in the custody of Conrad.[726] On
August 5 Richard despatched envoys to Tyre to request that Conrad
would at once return to Acre and bring these prisoners with him.
Conrad flatly refused. Richard’s [Sidenote: _Aug. 6_] first impulse,
when his envoys came back next day, was to go and bring the marquis
to submission by force. But Conrad was a dangerous person to quarrel
with, owing to his position as heir to the Crown, and still more
because, as master of Tyre, he could stop the coming of provisions
for the host; he was in fact already doing this again, as he had
done in the earlier days of the siege. Hugh of Burgundy therefore
undertook the task of inducing Conrad to give up the prisoners to
him as the representative of their proper owner, Philip.[727] He set
out for Tyre on August 8, but did not get back with the prisoners
till the 12th.[728] According to the letter of the treaty, however—at
least, according to the Franks’ understanding of it—the presence of
all the Saracen prisoners on the 11th was not really necessary; for
their release was to be conditional on, and should therefore have
been preceded by, Saladin’s fulfilment of his part of the bargain.
On the 11th therefore Richard called upon Saladin to do what he had
promised for that day. Saladin replied that he would do so only on
one of two conditions: either that the Franks should at once release
the captive garrison of Acre, in which case he would give other
hostages for the completion of his payments; or that the Franks
should give him hostages to keep till the garrison were set free.
The Franks rejected both these propositions, offering instead, in
return for what was now due from the Sultan, to give a solemn oath
that the prisoners should be restored to him; but this he, having no
confidence in their good faith, would not accept.[729] The discussion
seems to have ended for the time in a postponement of the “first
term” (as Bohadin calls it) till August 20.[730]
On the 14th Richard led his own troops out of the city and pitched
his tents near the enemy’s lines. A western [Sidenote: _Aug.
15_] writer tells us that next day Saladin begged for a further
prolongation of the term, which Richard sternly refused; Saladin
then asked for a colloquy with Richard on the [Sidenote: _Aug. 16_]
morrow, but failed to keep the tryst, and excused his failure by
declaring, “I did not come, because I could not fulfill the agreement
which my people had made with him.”[731] The next two days seem to
have been occupied in skirmishes in which the king took his full
share.[732] [Sidenote: _Aug. 20_] Saladin’s advanced guard had now
been withdrawn from Ayadiyeh to another height, Keisan, some two
miles further south. On the morning of the 20th—the day finally
fixed for the expiration of the “first term”—Richard sent his tents
to the pits at the foot of the hill which the Saracens had quitted.
Noon passed without a word or sign from Saladin. After mid-day the
watchers on Keisan saw Richard come out on horseback with what to
them looked like “the whole Frankish host” into the middle of the
plain between Keisan and Ayadiyeh. They at once sent word to the
Sultan, and were anxiously awaiting instructions and reinforcements
from him when they saw the Moslem prisoners, bound with cords, led
forth into the midst of the host and instantly slaughtered with
swords and spears. Saladin’s reinforcements came too late to do
anything except unite with the troops at Keisan in a futile, though
gallant, effort to avenge the massacre by an attack so fierce and
persistent that it was not beaten off till nightfall.[733]
The victims of this wholesale execution comprised the entire
Moslem garrison of Acre except a few persons of distinction who
were specially reserved for ransom. Richard himself stated the
number of the slain to be about two thousand six hundred.[734]
Bohadin, whose computation is doubtless that of the Moslem troops
who visited the place of slaughter next morning, says “more than
three thousand.”[735] This writer, whose narrative we have been
following, and who was Saladin’s confidential secretary and constant
companion, says that in this matter “the English king, seeing all
the delays interposed by the Sultan to the execution of the treaty,
acted perfidiously with regard to his Mussulman prisoners.” This
charge of perfidy is based upon a clause which occurs only in the
same writer’s account of the terms of the capitulation of Acre;
according to him, the garrison were thereby promised that in any
case their lives should be spared; if the Sultan failed to do his
part of the agreement, their fate was to be slavery.[736] The Frank
writers know nothing of this stipulation. Two of them distinctly
assert that the promise of life to the garrison was made conditional
on Saladin’s fulfilment of the bargain.[737] Another says they were
to go out free and unharmed if the agreement were carried out within
the term, but if not, they were to be at the mercy of the kings
for their limbs and lives.[738] The others simply speak of them as
hostages. If the Frankish version of this matter be the correct one,
then the persistent “delays interposed by the Sultan to the execution
of the treaty” had unquestionably, on the principles universally
recognised by both Franks and Saracens, rendered the lives of
these hostages legally forfeit at mid-day on August 20. Bohadin’s
admission about the “delays” is practically an acknowledgement
that they would have been so but for the special promise which he
alleges to have been made to these men. Even if that promise were
given, indeed, a feudal lawyer might have made out a case for
Richard and his colleagues in the war-council, on the plea that the
moment the garrison became legally slaves, they became, as such,
the absolute property of their masters, to be kept alive or slain
at their masters’ will; and a Mussulman lawyer might have had even
more difficulty than a Christian one in finding an answer to such
a plea. It is, however, quite possible that the treaty—drawn up as
it was, in haste, in two different languages, between parties who
could only hold communication through interpreters[739]—may have
been honestly understood by the Moslems in one sense and by the
Christians in another. As for Richard’s personal responsibility in
the matter, Bohadin certainly exaggerates it. The other princes of
the Crusade clearly concurred in the determination of the hostages’
fate.[740] The cruelty of such wholesale slaughter shocked neither
their moral sense nor that of their contemporaries; the chroniclers
of the time all record the massacre without a word or a hint of
reprobation; one at least who was himself in the host openly rejoices
over it as a just vengeance for the Crusaders slain during the siege
by the crossbows of the garrison.[741] With the leaders every other
consideration would probably be outweighed by a military one. Until
these prisoners were disposed of in some safe way, the Crusade must
be at a standstill. They could not be left in Acre or anywhere else
without a guard far more numerous than it was possible to spare from
the main enterprise. Saladin’s conduct had extinguished the hope
of disposing of them by exchange. The only sure way was to follow
an example set by him, though on a much smaller scale, four years
before, when he put to death all the Templars and Hospitaliers who
had been captured in the battle of Hattin.[742] So the deed was done;
and that same night a herald proclaimed throughout the host that on
the morrow all must be ready to set out for Ascalon.[743]
CHAPTER IV
FROM ACRE TO JOPPA
1191
Lignum Crucis, Signum Ducis,
Sequitur exercitus,
Quod non cessit, sed praecessit
In vi Sancti Spiritus.
_Berter of Orleans._
Two main roads led southward from Acre. One crossed the river Kishon
at a point which on the map is about half way between Nazareth and
the sea, passed over the middle of Mount Carmel, and then along
the eastern side of the plain which lies between the coast and the
mountain-range of Samaria and Judea. Cross-paths through the defiles
of this range led from the road to the Holy Places of southern
Palestine—Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Hebron—and connected it with the
great lines of communication running through these places southward
to Egypt and Mecca and northward up the Jordan valley to Damascus;
paths across the plain connected it with the other great main road,
which followed the coast-line all the way to the mouth of the Nile.
The inland route was the more direct way to Jerusalem; but for the
Crusaders the coast route was the safer, indeed the only safe one.
The re-conquest of the land must begin with the re-conquest of the
seaboard towns. Acre might serve as principal base for the whole
expedition; but this was not enough; before the Crusaders could
venture into the interior of the land they must make sure of being
able to communicate with Cyprus and with Europe through other ports
besides Acre, and with Acre itself by sea as well as by land. They
must also endeavour to block at least one of the enemy’s lines
of communication with Egypt; and of these the most frequented and
important was the coast route, to which the entrance from Egypt, both
by land and sea, was commanded by the great fortress of Ascalon. Thus
the plan of campaign implied in the order issued on the night of
August 20 was to regain, first and foremost, the whole seaboard of
the Holy Land.
The fortifications of Acre had been carefully repaired under
Richard’s personal superintendence;[744] and the other preparations
for departure were so far advanced that one day sufficed to complete
them. The two queens and the damsel of Cyprus were left in the
palace, with the king’s treasure, under suitable guard. Bertram de
Verdon and Stephen de Longchamp were appointed constables of the
city.[745] Every man in the host was bidden to take with him food
for ten days; the ships were already loaded up with the rest of the
stores, and their skippers were instructed [Sidenote: _Aug. 21_] to
sail close along the shore, ready to put in at intervals and supply
the host with whatever it might need. “Thus they were to go,” says
one of the pilgrims, “in two bodies, one by sea and one by land; for
Syria could be reconquered from the Turks in no other manner.”[746]
The total number of the Frank forces is reckoned by the same
authority at three hundred thousand.[747] On Thursday August 22 they
began to cross the “river of Acre” (the Belus, or Nahr el Namein,
which falls into the sea just below the city) and pitch their tents
between it and the sea.[748] A large proportion of them, however,
had become already so demoralised by their stay in the city, now
once more filled with all the luxuries and temptations of Eastern
life, that they were [Sidenote: _Friday Aug. 23_] very reluctant to
leave it; and it was not till the next day that Richard succeeded in
getting the greater part of the host together in its new encampment,
and himself followed it thither, having taken his position in
the rear to guard against possible attack from the Moslems.[749]
The detachment at Keisan was, however, too small to venture upon
anything more than a harmless demonstration at a safe distance;[750]
[Sidenote: _Sat. Aug. 24_] and it was altogether withdrawn next
day, when Saladin, being now assured of the route which the Franks
intended to take, disposed his army on the hills above Shefr’ Amm,
ready to attack them on their march along the shore.[751] They seem
not to have started till Sunday, August 25.[752] Richard led the
vanguard; his English and Norman followers had charge of the great
Standard which was surmounted by his royal banner and was to serve
as guide and rallying-point for the whole host. The Frenchmen under
the duke of Burgundy formed the rearguard. They soon found themselves
in difficulties. The roads of Palestine had been originally good
Roman ones; but by the closing years of the twelfth century even the
highroads had become in many places little more than trackways. The
transport corps, struggling through an awkward passage, fell into
confusion; at the critical moment the Saracens swooped down, cut
them off from the rearguard, and drove them towards the sea. One
John FitzLuke spurred forward and told Richard what had occurred;
“and the king with his meinie galloped back at a great pace; he fell
upon the Turks like a thunderbolt—I know not how many he slew”;[753]
“and they fled before him like the Philistines of old from the
face of the Maccabee.”[754] The Franks re-formed in order, and
proceeded [Sidenote: _Aug. 25_] without further interruption till
they found a convenient camping-ground, seemingly near the mouth of
the Kishon, whence a short day’s march brought them to Cayphas, the
modern Haïfa. Here they encamped for two days between the castle,
which they found deserted, and the sea. This first brief stage of
their journey from Acre—it is only about ten miles—had taught them
at least one practical lesson: that on a march along the burning
sand of the Syrian coast in August superfluous baggage was to be
avoided. They therefore discarded everything that was not strictly
necessary. The fight on the way had also another good result; it had
healed Richard’s feud with William des Barres. William had fought
with such valour that the king’s admiration had overcome his anger,
and the gallant Frenchman was received back into favour by the
Lion-Heart.[755]
On Tuesday August 27 the Crusaders set out again, and wound their
way unmolested round the point of Carmel to Capharnaum, a distance
of about eight miles; finding this place also deserted, they stopped
there to dine; and thence another march of four miles brought them
to a spot where in later days the Templars were to rear a famous
fortress known as Athlit, or Pilgrims’ Castle, but which the earlier
pilgrims called the Casal (village) of the Straits—why, it is
hard to guess, for the distance from the shore to the foot of the
Carmel range increases all the way from Capharnaum southward, so
that even from the north the approach to Athlit is much less of a
“strait” than the pass which the host had just come through round the
promontory.[756] The site indeed afforded an ample and convenient
camping-ground, and also a place where the ships could put in. This
they had been ordered to do, so the host waited there two [Sidenote:
_Aug. 27_] days to receive from them a fresh store of provisions.[757]
[Sidenote: _Aug. 24_]
Meanwhile Saladin had on the night of the 24th removed his
headquarters from Shefr’ Amm to Kaimoun (the ancient Jokneam of
Carmel), where the inland road from Acre to [Sidenote: _Aug. 25_]
the south crosses the Kishon. Next day he rode over Carmel on a
reconnoitring expedition to Mallâha, “the Salt-pit,” called by the
Franks Merle. Returning on the 26th to Kaimoun, he there reviewed
his army, and on the [Sidenote: _Aug. 28_] morrow led it across the
mountains to “the head of the river which runs by Caesarea.”[758]
Caesarea lies, fifteen miles south of the Casal of the Straits,
midway between the mouths of two rivers which are five miles
apart. The northern one was called by the Crusaders “the River of
Crocodiles”;[759] between its two principal springs passes [Sidenote:
_Aug. 28-30_] the main road leading south from Kaimoun. In the next
three days Saladin shifted his camp three times among the hills
above these springs.[760] From these hills, or from the last spur of
Carmel, a little further south, he would see his first opportunity
of checking or hindering his enemy’s advance. The slopes of the
Carmel range were too steep to be practicable for his cavalry; it
was doubtless for this reason that Cayphas and Capharnaum had been
evacuated, and also that the fortifications of Caesarea had been
dismantled.[761] When the Crusaders should reach Caesarea, however,
they would be on the verge of Sharon, “the Level,” on whose eastern
border the comparatively low mountains of Samaria rise by a gradual
ascent, in terrace-like ridges, broken by many easy passes leading
into the valleys and level spaces among the hills; while the distance
between mountains and sea, which round the promontory of Carmel is
only two hundred yards, is at the lower end of the Carmel range
six miles. On August 28 Richard advanced from Casal of the Straits
to Merle and spent the night on the ground where Saladin had been
three nights before. [Sidenote: _Aug. 29_] Next day the whole host
followed, and with the king at its head and the Knights of the Temple
and Hospital forming the rearguard proceeded towards Caesarea. By
Richard’s orders all the sick had been transferred to the ships; but
even for the able-bodied the day’s march—some fifteen miles—was a
long, slow, and painful one over the burning sand in the heat of an
August day in Syria; not a few died by the way; and the outskirts
of the host were attacked by some skirmishing parties of Turks, who
were, however, driven off by Richard. The weary pilgrims camped that
[Sidenote: _Aug. 30_] night on the bank of the River of Crocodiles,
and next day entered the ruins of Caesarea, which were evacuated at
their approach. Here on that evening or the next the ships came into
port, bringing further supplies and also some of the “lazy folk” from
Acre, who in response to an urgent summons sent to them by Richard
had thus at length come to rejoin their comrades in arms.[762]
[Sidenote: _Sept. 1_]
With these reinforcements the march was resumed on Sunday, September
1. On the preceding day Saladin had taken up a position on the hills
whence he could, as soon as the Franks issued from Caesarea, make
it impossible for them to avoid an encounter. They had scarcely set
out when they were well-nigh surrounded by his light cavalry, and
a shower of arrows fell upon them from all directions.[763] But his
attack proved less effective than he had hoped, owing to the order
of march which the Crusaders had now adopted. The princes, knights,
and mounted men-at-arms advanced between two columns of infantry, of
which one, marching on their left—the side nearest to the hills and
the enemy—“protected them,” says an eye-witness, “as with a wall.”
These foot-soldiers in their thick felt jerkins and mailcoats recked
little of the Turkish arrows, while the heavier missiles which they
hurled at their assailants in return wrought execution on both horses
and riders. On the other side of the cavalry, along the sea-shore,
marched another body of foot-soldiers who carried the baggage, and,
being safe from attack, were always comparatively fresh, and ready to
change places with their comrades on the exposed side when the latter
were worn out with fatigue or wounds. Of the cavalry thus enclosed,
the van consisted of the knights of the kingdom of Jerusalem under
King Guy; the rearguard was composed of the mounted troops of Galilee
and others, including no doubt the Military Orders; in the centre
were the king of England, the duke of Burgundy, and their followers,
with the Standard in their midst. Thus, slowly and cautiously, the
host moved along; on this first day it advanced only about two or
three miles, to the “river of Caesarea.”[764] This seems to be what
is now called the Nahr el Mefjir; the Crusaders called it the Dead
River, perhaps because the Turks—such at least is the pilgrims’
account of the matter—had done their utmost to choke it up and
conceal its existence, so as to make it a trap for the strangers to
fall into; but the trap may have been the work of nature, for the
stream appears to be the same to which Bohadin gives the name of Nahr
el Casseb, river of reeds or rushes. The host reached this stream
at [Sidenote: _Sept. 1_] mid-day, crossed it in safety, and pitched
their tents on its southern bank: whereupon the Turks retired,
“for,” says Bohadin, “whenever they were in camp, there was no hope
of doing anything with them.” That afternoon Saladin shifted his
headquarters to a place a little higher up on [Sidenote: _Sept. 1-3_]
the same river;[765] and for two nights both parties remained in
their respective encampments, close to each other, but quiescent.
Thus far the pilgrims had been journeying along the edge of a
plain consisting chiefly of moors, marshes, and sand. Before them
lay a tract of more wooded country, and also, it seems, a part of
the coast-road so neglected and overgrown with brushwood as to be
impassable for their heavy cavalry. It appears that in consequence
they made their way up the left bank of the Dead River till they
struck the inland road.[766] Here they were much nearer to the
hills and to the enemy. But Saladin had no mind to risk a general
engagement till he had collected all his forces on a battle-ground of
his own choosing; and on that same [Sidenote: _Sept. 3_] day he again
removed his camp further south, into the midst of a great forest
where he hoped to intercept the Christians on their way to the city
which must be their next objective, Arsuf. His cavalry continued to
hang about the Christian host[767] and harassed it incessantly on
its march; yet the pilgrims plodded on, keeping in the same order
as before, never breaking it except when the enemy’s attacks became
so intolerable that the infantry had to open its ranks to let the
cavalry pass through for a charge. On one of these occasions Richard
was wounded in the left side by a Turkish javelin, but so slightly
that the wound only inflamed his eagerness for the fight, and all day
he was constantly driving off the assailants.[768] At nightfall they
retired, and the host encamped near the “Salt River”—now the Nahr
Iskanderuneh—which runs down to the plain from Shechem and falls
into the sea seven or eight miles south of Caesarea. Here, again,
they stayed two nights (September 3-5). The horses had suffered more
severely than the men from the Turkish missiles; the badly wounded
ones were now killed and sold by their owners to the men of lower
rank for food; owing to the rush for them and the high prices charged
there was much strife over this matter, till Richard checked it by
proclaiming that he would give a live horse to any man who would make
a present of a dead one to his poorer comrades in arms.[769]
From the Salt River a tract of wild wooded country called the Forest
of Arsuf stretched southward for twelve miles or more. Saladin had
taken up his position on a hill almost in the middle of it; here
his foot-soldiers had rejoined him on the morning of September 4;
and here, on the same day, he received a message from the Christian
princes asking for a parley about terms of peace between him and
the native Franks of the kingdom, “such as might enable those from
over-sea to return to their homes.” They were [Sidenote: _Sept.
5_] evidently becoming awake to the extreme difficulty of their
enterprise; and the Sultan’s apparent reluctance to engage in a
pitched battle may have raised hopes of a peaceful settlement with
him. He, on his part, was glad of anything to delay their further
advance till the Turcoman reinforcements which he was expecting
had arrived; so a meeting took place between Richard and Safadin,
with Humphry of Toron as interpreter, early on Thursday, September
5. Richard spoke first; at the mention of peace Safadin asked,
“What conditions am I to propose to the Sultan in your name?” “One
condition only,” answered Richard, “that you restore the whole land
to us, and go back to your own country.” This brought the conference
to an abrupt end; Safadin returned to his brother,[770] and the
Christians set forward on their march through the Forest. They seem
to have traversed it in a south-westerly direction which brought
them back to the coast-road. A report had reached them that the
enemy intended to set fire to the Forest “and make of it such a blaze
that they would all be roasted”; but nothing of the kind took place;
“no host ever had a better day’s march; they met with no hindrance
at all”; they passed the “Hill of Arsuf”—seemingly the hill which
Saladin was occupying—and came safely out on the plain, where they
found a good camping-ground beside what they called “the River of the
Cleft Rock” (Rochetaillie).[771] They soon learned why they had been
thus left unmolested through the day’s march; Saladin was disposing
his whole force—estimated by a scout at three hundred thousand men,
while the Christians were only about a third of that number[772]—to
give them battle as soon as they should emerge from the cover of the
Forest into the open fields and cultivated land around Arsuf. It
was therefore in very carefully planned array that they set forth
again on Saturday, September 7.[773] The host was divided into five
battalions; the vanguard consisted of the Templars; next came the
Bretons and Angevins; then the Poitevins, who were placed under the
command of King Guy; after these the Normans and English with the
Standard; in the rear the troops of the Hospital. Every battalion
was subdivided into two squadrons, one of horse, one of foot, which
advanced parallel to each other; the duke of Burgundy and some picked
followers rode up and down and round about the host to regulate and
direct its movements according to what they saw of those of the
Turks; and Count Henry of Champagne acted as special “side-guard” on
the flank nearest to the hills, where he rode continually alongside
of the foot-soldiers.[774]
Saladin, meanwhile, had rapidly disposed his forces so as to occupy
the hills parallel with the Crusaders’ line of march from the River
of the Cleft Rock to Arsuf. By the coast-road the distance between
these two places is little more than four miles. Setting out probably
at dawn, the Christian vanguard reached the outskirts of Arsuf before
nine o’clock, and some of the footmen began to pitch the tents among
the fields and gardens.[775] Then the Saracen archers swarmed down
upon the flank of the advancing host, pouring on it an overwhelming
shower of arrows.[776] It was, however, in the rear that Saladin
hoped to deliver his most effectual blow. Here his line curved round
from the hills towards the mouth of the river, so that, as a Frank
writer says, the Christian rearguard, “packed together so closely
that you could not have thrown an apple at it without hitting either
a man or a horse,” filled the whole space between the sea-shore and
the enemies.[777] Thus surrounded, the crossbowmen and archers in the
rearguard struggled on for hours, constantly compelled to turn round
and sometimes to march backwards, returning as best they could the
continuous fire of missiles in their rear. At length it ceased, only
to be succeeded by an attack at close quarters from another body of
Turks with maces and swords, who fell upon the foot-soldiers of the
Hospital in overwhelming force. Once already the Knights had sent a
message to Richard, begging for leave to disperse their assailants
by a charge, but it had been refused. Now the Grand Master himself
spurred forward and urged the same request. “Be patient, good Master;
one cannot be everywhere,” was the reply. Richard was determined not
to risk a charge till he saw the fitting moment for a general one
all along the line. It had been pre-arranged that when the charge
was to take place, two trumpets should be sounded in the van, two
in the centre, and two in the rear, so as to be heard above and
distinguished from the din of the innumerable Turkish brass drums
and other noisy instruments, and to let the three divisions of the
host know their relative positions. At last the leaders decided that
the moment had come, and the signal was about to be given, when the
Marshal of the Hospital and a Norman knight, Baldwin le Caron,[778]
burst through the ranks without waiting for it, and shouting “Saint
George!” dashed into the midst of the enemy. The other knights at
once turned their horses and followed the rash example. For a moment
the whole rearguard was in confusion, and a great disaster seemed
imminent; but Richard’s promptitude retrieved the day.[779] The
trumpets were sounded so instantaneously that the Turks seem never
to have discovered what had really precipitated the charge.[780]
While Richard himself, “quicker than quarrel from crossbow,” spurred
at the head of his picked followers to what had now become the
van instead of the rear, and drove off its assailants—the Turkish
right wing—with great slaughter,[781] the rest of the Frank cavalry
charged the Turkish centre and left wing and put them both to
headlong flight, also with heavy loss of life. Saladin’s secretary
and friend, Bohadin, escaping from the rout of the centre, tried
to rejoin first the left wing and then the right, but found each
division in worse plight than the one he had quitted; and when he
reached the reserve he found there only seventeen men remaining to
guard the Standard, all the rest having been called up by the Sultan
to support their comrades, and shared their fate. Saladin tried hard
to rally the fugitives, and when the Franks, having also rallied to
their Standard, re-formed their ranks and sought to continue their
march, they were impeded by repeated attacks which they had to turn
and repel. At last another charge, led by William des Barres and
Richard on the famous Fauvel, which he had brought with him from
Cyprus, drove the assailants and carried the pursuers right up into
the hills. There the dangers of the unknown and difficult ground were
too great for the Franks to venture on an engagement; they therefore
withdrew from the pursuit, and proceeded along the lower ground till
the whole host was encamped outside Arsuf,[782] Saladin making no
further attempt to molest them. He had succeeded in collecting all
that was left of his army; but his losses were very heavy, and they
included several emirs, while among the Christian slain was only one
man of distinction, James of Avesnes.[783] Richard’s assertion that
the battle of Arsuf had cost Saladin more lives of noble Saracens
than he had lost in any one day for the last forty years[784] may
not be literally exact; but Bohadin does not attempt to minimize
[Sidenote: _Sept. 7_] the disaster or to disguise its effect on the
survivors and on Saladin himself. “God alone knows what intense grief
filled his heart. All our men were wounded, if not in their bodies,
in their hearts.”[785]
That night Saladin pushed on as far as the Nahr el Aoudjeh, crossed
it, and encamped on its southern bank.[786] This river is called by
the Frank writers “the River of Arsuf,” but might have more fittingly
taken its name from Joppa, for its mouth is seven miles south of the
former place and only three miles north of the latter. It is formed
by the union of three streams, one of which rises at the foot of the
hills of Samaria, another in the valley which divides Mount Ephraim
from the Judean range, and the third flows through the northernmost
of the passes leading from the plain into the hill-country of Judah.
The inland road through the plain crosses these three streams some
three miles above their meeting-point, and a road branching off from
the crossing-place runs alongside of the southernmost stream up the
pass, and thence over the plateau to Jerusalem. Saladin appears
to have thought that the Franks might march across the plain and
attempt an advance [Sidenote: _Sun., Sept. 8_] upon the Holy City by
this route; next day he re-crossed the river and took up a position
nearer to Arsuf, ready to intercept them.[787] They, however, had
no such intention. They spent that Sunday at Arsuf, keeping the
feast of our Lady’s Nativity, and burying their dead hero, James of
Avesnes. On Monday the 9th they resumed their southward march,[788]
pursued it steadily despite the provocations of the Saracen bowmen,
and encamped that night on both sides of the river near its mouth.
Hereupon Saladin, perceiving that their immediate objective was Joppa
and that he could not prevent them from reaching it, let [Sidenote:
_Tues., Sept. 10_] them proceed thither unmolested and encamp
next day outside its ruined walls (for, like Arsuf and the more
northerly coast-towns, it had been evacuated and dismantled some time
before),[789] while he with all his forces hurried to take up his
position at Ramlah,[790] whence he could easily watch all the three
possible routes of the Christians’ next advance. Two of these routes
led—one through Ramlah itself—to Jerusalem; the third led coastwise
to Egypt. Either of the two former Saladin might hope either to block
or defend; but with the third it was otherwise. The plain south of
the Nahr el Aoudjeh is much wider than further north: Joppa is ten
miles from the foot of the hills; between Joppa and Ascalon the width
of the plain varies from ten to eighteen miles. The character of
the country, too, is different; instead of sand-dunes, marshland,
moorland, and forest, the way lies through cornfields, palm-groves,
villages and towns. It was thus not a place where the Saracen mode
of warfare could be made effective against that of the Franks in a
pitched battle; yet if the Franks decided to continue their march
down the coast, nothing but defeat in a pitched battle could prevent
them from laying siege to Ascalon.
Ascalon was a post of far greater importance than any other on the
whole coast south of Acre. It was the key to Egypt, the only sea-port
of any consequence between Joppa and Alexandria, the only fortified
city, now that Caesarea was destroyed, on the whole length of the
coast between Acre and the Egyptian frontier. To the Arabs Ascalon
was “Syria’s Summit,” “Syria’s Bride.” Strong as were her walls,
Saladin knew that the garrison within them was wholly inadequate
for their defence, and that an attempt to reinforce it might lead
to trouble with his army, owing to the unwillingness of men who had
seen the fate of their brethren at Acre to incur the risk of a like
destiny by shutting themselves up in another great fortress;[791]
and he knew, too, that if the Franks did besiege the place, his
troops would be unable to harass them from the hills as they had done
at Acre, the hills opposite Ascalon being more than fifteen miles
distant. He saw, in short, only one means of preventing Ascalon from
falling into the hands of the Franks and becoming thenceforth as
formidable a danger as it had been hitherto a valuable protection
to his communications with Egypt. Giving out that he intended to
concentrate all his forces on the preservation of Jerusalem, and
commissioning his brother Safadin to keep watch on the movements of
the enemy, he on Wednesday, September 11, left the main body of his
troops at Ramlah under Safadin, and himself set out for Ascalon. He
spent [Sidenote: _Thurs., Sept. 12_] a sleepless night outside its
walls, and declared next morning to Bohadin that he would rather lose
all his sons—one of whom, El Afdal, was present—than pull out one
stone of the place, but there was no alternative. Under his personal
superintendence the town was cleared of its inhabitants, and the
troops which he had brought with him, with every other available man,
were set to destroy its fortifications. Ten days of incessant work,
picking, digging, and burning, reduced “the Summit of Syria” to a
heap of ruins.[792]
These operations were just beginning when Safadin, who [Sidenote:
_Sept. 12-13_] had transferred his headquarters to Jafna (called
by the Arabs Yebnah and by the Franks Ibelin), on the coast-road,
about thirteen miles south of Joppa, received from the Frank leaders
some new overtures for a treaty.[793] Their object probably was to
ascertain, if possible, something as to the plans and movements
of their adversaries; and Safadin did his utmost to spin out the
negotiations, his brother having charged him to detain the enemy
at Joppa by every means he could devise till the Sultan’s work
at Ascalon, which he was most anxious to keep secret from them,
should be done.[794] The Franks were in no great haste to move;
the rich orchards and vineyards and olive-yards round Joppa formed
a delightful camping-ground; moreover, they must in any case wait
till their fleet came into the harbour. Soon after its arrival some
of the poor folk who had been turned out of Ascalon wandered into
Joppa [Sidenote: c. _Sept. 20-22_?] and astonished the Crusaders by
telling them what Saladin was doing. The tale seemed so incredible
that Richard despatched Geoffrey de Lusignan and some others by sea
to reconnoitre Ascalon and find out the truth. When these scouts
confirmed the report of the refugees, a council was held to decide
what should be done. Richard’s military instinct told him that the
plan with which they had set out from Acre—the securing of the whole
coast before they risked any attempt on the interior—was the only
sound one. “The Turks are razing Ascalon; they dare not fight us.
Let us go and recover it. All the world ought to hasten thither!” he
pleaded. But the duke of Burgundy and the French party urged that the
shortest route to the goal of their pilgrimage was the route which
started not from Ascalon but from the place where they now were, and
that Joppa should be rebuilt and made the base for an advance upon
Jerusalem. Richard, feeling that anything was better than dissension
within the host, yielded to their urgency. A tax was levied for the
expense of the restoration of Joppa;[795] and on October 1 Richard
wrote home: “Know ye that by God’s grace we hope to recover the Holy
City within twenty days after Christmas, and then we will return to
our own land.”[796]
CHAPTER V
THE ADVANCE ON JERUSALEM
1191-1192.
Ambulantes et flentes properabunt.... In Sion interrogabunt viam,
huc facies eorum.
While Richard was building, Saladin was pulling down. Having razed
Ascalon, he on September 23 rejoined his main force at Jafna,
thence returned with it next day to Ramlah, and set his men to raze
the citadel of this latter place and the great fortified church
of S. George at the neighbouring town of Lydda. On the 25th he
left his army at Ramlah under Safadin to complete this work and
watch the enemy, while he went to see with his own eyes the state
of the defences of Jerusalem and take measures for securing their
efficiency. On the 30th he returned to Ramlah.[797] To Richard
this abandonment of all attempt to hold the country seemed like
the conduct of “a man bereft of all counsel, and of all hope of
succour”;[798] but Richard himself was not without secret misgivings
as to the ultimate success of the Crusade. On the same day on which
he wrote—probably to one of his ministers, for communication to his
subjects in general[799]—the letter declaring his hope that Jerusalem
would be won by the middle of January, he wrote also a letter to the
abbot of Clairvaux which reveals more clearly the actual condition of
affairs and the king’s real expectations as to their future course.
He thought there was good hope that the whole “heritage of the Lord”
would be speedily recovered; indeed, part of it was recovered
already. But in the recovering of that part he had, as he truly said,
borne the burden and heat of the day and exhausted not only his money
but also his health and strength, so that he felt he could not stay
in Syria beyond Easter; and the other western leaders, having spent
all they had, would return to their homes unless fresh supplies of
men, money, and other necessaries were sent out from Europe to enable
them to remain. He therefore besought the abbot to stir up princes
and peoples by his preaching, and induce them to make provision
for the safety and defence, after Easter, of the Lord’s heritage,
“which,” he said, “by God’s grace we shall have fully won by that
time.”[800]
A nearer future than Easter had a share in Richard’s secret
anxieties. All these weeks ships had been plying to and fro between
Joppa and Acre, too many of them bringing from the northern city
visitors who were not merely useless but undesirable, and carrying
back thither lukewarm Crusaders who preferred its pleasures and
indulgences to the hard work of the Holy War; whereby the host was
considerably diminished in numbers.[801] The extent of the leakage
seems to have been made fully apparent to the princes when at the
end of September they removed their troops from the gardens to a new
encampment somewhat further out, near the Casal of S. Habakkuk.[802]
King Guy was commissioned to go to Acre and bring the truants
back;[803] and while awaiting their return Richard, probably to keep
the enemy inactive, sent on October 3 a messenger to Safadin to
propose a renewal of the suspended negotiations. A few days earlier,
Saladin had received from Conrad of Montferrat overtures for an
alliance; Conrad offered to make peace with the Moslems, break openly
with the Franks, and recover Acre for the former, if they would
give him Sidon and Beyrout. Saladin was quite willing to agree to
these terms—“for,” says Bohadin, “the marquis was a most terrible
adversary to us”—but not to grant Conrad’s demand that the Sultan
should pledge himself by oath to the cession of the two sea-ports,
till Conrad should first have proved his sincerity by attacking his
fellow-Christians at Acre and releasing his Moslem prisoners at
Tyre.[804]
On October 4 Saladin, finding that at Ramlah he could not get enough
fodder for his horses and camels, owing to his foragers being too
much exposed to attacks from the enemy, removed his army some eight
or nine miles south-eastward into the hills, close to a place whose
character is expressed in one form of its name, Natroun, “post of
observation.”[805] The Franks called the place Toron of the Knights;
“toron” meaning height or mount, and the knights being those of
the Temple, who had built on its summit a tower of great strength
overlooking two of the roads to Jerusalem. This tower Saladin at
once began to pull down; like the other strongholds which he had
demolished, it was useless to him for present purposes, and could be
of value only to his enemies, should the site fall [Sidenote: _Oct.
8_] into their hands. Four days later Safadin, whom he had left at
Ramlah in command of the advanced guard, sent him word that Richard,
having discovered Conrad’s dealings with the Sultan, had sailed
for Acre in order to put a stop to them by making friends with the
marquis.[806] There was, however, another reason for the king’s visit
to Acre. The loiterers there were so slow to move at the bidding of
Guy that it was clearly necessary to bring a stronger influence to
bear upon them. Richard’s exhortations took such effect [Sidenote:
_Oct. 13_] that within a fortnight[807] he was back at Joppa
accompanied not only by the two queens, whom he established there
with their attendants, but also by so “much people” that the host
seemed to have become more numerous than ever.[808] It took another
fortnight to clear out of Acre and convey by sea to the new base the
remaining stragglers and the stores needed for a fresh advance.[809]
During this enforced delay the host was once at least very near
losing its commander-in-chief. Richard, having ridden out with a very
small escort partly to exercise his hawks,[810] partly to look out
for an opportunity of surprising the Turks, was himself surprised by
some of them when he had stopped to rest and fallen asleep. Awaking
just in time, he sprang to horse and drove them off, but they led him
into an ambush, and he was only saved from capture by the devotion
of William des Préaux, who concentrated the attention of the enemies
on himself by shouting, “Saracens, I am Melec”—that is, the king—and
was seized and hurried away accordingly, while the real king escaped.
The whole host was aghast when the adventure became known, and some
of Richard’s friends upbraided him for his rashness and implored him,
for the sake of the cause to which his safety was so important, never
again to expose himself thus without sufficient escort; but it was
all in vain. “In every conflict he delighted in being the first to
attack and the last to return.”[811]
Meanwhile Richard had, immediately on his return to Joppa, renewed
his friendly intercourse with Safadin by sending him a beautiful
horse as a present. A few days later an envoy from Safadin came,
by the king’s desire, to meet him at Yazour, some four miles, from
Joppa on the road to Ramlah, to receive his proposals for a treaty.
Of these proposals the Moslem envoy carried back two sets, one for
direct transmission to the Sultan, the other intended primarily for
Safadin’s personal consideration. To Saladin the king wrote that,
with Franks and Moslems alike perishing and the country ruined, the
war had gone far enough; the only matters in dispute were the Holy
City, the Cross, and the limits of the two realms, Christian and
Mussulman. Their claim to Jerusalem, as the most sacred seat of their
Faith, the Christians could not renounce so long as there was one
man of them left alive. Of the country they claimed restitution up
to the western bank of the Jordan. As for the Cross, “seeing that to
the Moslems it is but a piece of wood,” Saladin might well give it
back to those who accounted it a sacred treasure; and thus should
there be for both parties peace and rest from their labours. Saladin
at once decisively refused all three conditions.[812] To Safadin the
king had proposed another scheme: that Safadin should take Queen Joan
of Sicily to wife, and reign over the land jointly with her, she
holding Jerusalem as her royal seat, Richard endowing her with Acre,
Joppa, and Ascalon (which he accounted his own conquests), the Sultan
[Sidenote: c. _Oct. 18_] giving the Holy Cross to the Christians, and
all the places which he held in the Sahel or Maritime Plain to his
brother and declaring him king of the land. With these terms Safadin
appeared well pleased, and Saladin, when they were laid before him,
answered immediately and emphatically, “Yes! yes! yes!”—“being,” says
Bohadin who was present and who knew him well enough to read his
thoughts, “persuaded that the king would never really sanction such
a thing, and proposed it only in trickery and play.” His persuasion
was justified; when on October 23 an envoy from the Sultan and his
brother again came to the Christian camp, he was sent back with
a message that when the king had told his sister of the marriage
proposed for her, she had become “furious with indignation and
wrath,” and sworn by all she held sacred that she would never submit
to it; whereupon her brother had promised to bring, if he could,
Safadin to accept Christianity. All this was of course mere diplomacy
to wile away the time till the host was ready for a further advance;
and on the 27th Saladin received [Sidenote: _Oct. 28_] tidings that
the enemy was preparing to leave Joppa. Next day the Sultan returned
to Ramlah. On the 29th he sent some troops to surprise the Christian
camp, but they were driven off and put to flight.[813] On the 30th
Richard, “wandering about in the plain towards Ramlah,” espied a
reconnoitring party of Saracens, attacked them without hesitation,
slew several of them and scattered the rest.[814] On the 31st, having
completed his arrangements for the security of Joppa, he led the host
on the first stage of its advance towards Jerusalem.
[Sidenote: _Oct. 31_]
The stage was a very short one—only two miles, to Yazour, or as the
Franks called it, the Casal of the Plains. This place and Casal Maen,
which seems to have been the Frankish name for Beit Dejan, about
two miles further to the south-east, had been Frankish strongholds,
recently dismantled by the Saracens; it was important that they
should be restored in order to secure the command of the road leading
from Joppa into the hills. Richard undertook the restoration of
Casal Maen, and the Templars that of Casal des Plains; the host
lay encamped between the two places for [Sidenote: _Nov. 1-15_] a
fortnight while the work was in progress. The Turks did their utmost
to hinder it by sending out skirmishing parties. One of these,
having been put to flight, was pursued by Richard so far that before
he turned back he actually saw [Sidenote: _Nov. 6_] Ramlah and the
Sultan’s army there.[815] Another day a foraging party protected by
a small escort of Templars was suddenly surrounded by a numerous
body of Turks at “Bombrac,” properly Ibn Ibrak or Beni Berak, about
two miles from Casal Maen. On learning their peril Richard, who was
busy superintending the works at Casal Maen, sent some knights to
the rescue and quickly followed in person. When he reached the spot
the position of the little band looked so hopeless and the enemy’s
numbers so overwhelming that his companions besought him to retire,
“for,” said they, “if mischief should befall you, there would be
an end of Christendom!”[816] “I sent those men here; if they die
without me, may I never again be called king,” was his reply. Setting
spurs to his horse and giving him the rein, he burst “like lightning”
into the enemy’s ranks, and laid about him so furiously that they
all either fled “like beasts,” or were slain or made prisoners.[817]
Such is the Frankish version of this encounter; Bohadin, however,
describes it as a success for the Saracens,[818] and makes no mention
of Richard’s presence.
That evening Richard sent a messenger to Safadin, complaining of
these attacks as breaches of their friendly relations, [Sidenote:
_Nov. 3_] and again asking him for a personal interview.[819]
Three days before, Reginald of Sidon had come to Saladin from Tyre
with a renewal of Conrad’s proposal of an alliance against the
Crusaders. As before, Saladin gave equal encouragement to both
parties. On the 8th Safadin and Richard met in a large tent set up
for the purpose[820] “between the Casal of the Temple and that of
Josaphat”;[821] each brought with him “all such gifts as princes are
wont to give to one another,” and the special delicacies in food
and drink most esteemed among his own people, for the delectation
of the other.[822] Safadin crowned the entertainment by introducing
a singing girl, and Richard professed himself greatly pleased with
the Saracen mode of singing.[823] The rest of the day was spent in
talk, and they parted with a mutual promise of fast friendship and
a renewed request from Richard that Safadin would procure for him
an interview with the Sultan. Saladin refused to meet him, giving
the same reason as on a previous occasion.[824] Meanwhile Reginald
was in the Sultan’s camp, splendidly lodged in a tent filled with
every oriental luxury, treated with marked courtesy, and sometimes
accompanying Safadin when that prince rode out to reconnoitre the
Christian host. Saladin himself inclined to accept the offers of
Conrad. “If we make peace with the western Franks,” he said privately
to Bohadin, “it will never be a secure one; if I were to die, it
would be very difficult to get our army together again, and before
this could be done all the forces of our foes would have united. It
were wiser to fight on till we have either expelled them from our
coasts or died in the attempt.” Richard, however, anxious to prevent
an alliance between Saladin and Conrad which would undoubtedly have
been fraught with grave peril to the Christian cause, twice renewed
his proposals in a modified form, each time lowering his demands
and offering fresh concessions; so when on November 11[825] Saladin
laid the propositions of the marquis and those of the king before a
council of his emirs, they declared in favour of the latter. Saladin
yielded to their opinion. But Richard had reserved for himself a way
of escape. “The whole Christian community,” he said, “is blaming me
for proposing to wed my sister to a Mussulman without leave from the
Pope. I will therefore send an envoy to him, and in six months I
shall have his answer. If he consents, well; if not, I will give you
my brother’s daughter, in which case the Pope’s sanction will not be
needed.” To this Saladin replied: “If the alliance is to be made, let
it be made on the original terms; I will not go back from my word;
but if that marriage fail, we want no other.”[826] Thus the matter
remained in abeyance for several months. On the day (November 15) on
which he sent this last rejoinder Saladin again retired from Ramlah
to the neighbourhood of Natroun[827]; and shortly afterwards the
Christian host advanced from its encampment between the two restored
Casals into the plain between Ramlah and Lydda. Here they pitched
their tents and waited for reinforcements and supplies.[828]
[Sidenote: _Nov. 15-22_]
The rank and file were naturally puzzled and scandalized by Richard’s
diplomatic dealings with the Infidels, which seemed to them unlawful,
and of which they neither understood the purpose nor knew the real
character. The Frank chroniclers excuse him as a simple-minded
Christian duped by the cunning of the Saracens. He cleared himself in
the eyes of his accusers in a fashion of his own. “Right and left the
enemies came swarming about the camp; and the king met them and gave
practical proof of his loyalty to God and Christendom, for several
times he shewed in the host the many Turks’ heads that he had cut
off.”[829]
Besides the enemy, the Crusaders had now another obstacle to contend
with—the climate. The “former rains,” or heavy showers which open
the agricultural year in Palestine, would begin about the time
when the host left Joppa, at the end of October, and continue
through November; these would be followed by a season of constantly
increasing rainfall lasting throughout the next three months. This
great rain “pursued the soldiers of the Cross,” as one of them
says, till it drove them to take what shelter they could find
within the ruins of Ramlah and Lydda.[830] Here they remained “in
great discomfort and difficulties”[831] till the end of December or
beginning of January. Saladin held them in check by remaining in his
camp near Natroun till December 12; then he withdrew to Jerusalem
and disbanded his army[832] for the rest of the winter, trusting
for the defence of Judea to the guerilla troops who still remained
among the hills, to the weather, and above all, to the physical
character of the country. The Christian host was now on the edge of
the Shephelah, or Lowlands of Judea, so called in distinction from
the “Hills” proper, the loftier central range, or ridge, which forms
the backbone of the land, and on whose eastern side lie Jerusalem
and Bethlehem. The low, soft chalk-hills of the Shephelah are not a
range; they lie in groups and clusters interspersed with level spaces
and valleys opening into the plain on the west, and falling on the
east into the long, deep trench which runs between the “Lowlands” and
the “Highlands” like—as a modern writer says—“a great fosse planted
along the ramparts of Judea.” At the mouth of the northernmost of
these cross-valleys—Joshua’s Valley of Ajalon—Lydda and Ramlah were
frontier towns of the Shephelah and the maritime plain. Along this
vale or over the low hills on each side of it, and through the narrow
defiles which at its other end penetrate the central range, ran the
most direct lines of communication between the Holy City and the
coast. One of these was the old “way that goeth to Beth-horon” from
Gibeon on the plateau above Jerusalem. This road led to Joppa through
Lydda; so did another which crossed the fosse some three miles south
of the first. The two were linked together by a cross-road which
ran on south-westward to the ancient Nicopolis—called Amwas by the
Arabs and Emmaus by the Franks—and then divided into two branches,
one going southward by Natroun, the other to Joppa through Ramlah.
This latter way seems to have been in general use since the eighth
century, when the first Moslem conquerors overthrew Lydda and founded
Ramlah to supersede it.[833] The First Crusaders had marched by the
road from Ramlah to Emmaus and thence to Beth-horon, Gibeon, and
Jerusalem, without opposition. Richard resolved to try how far he
could follow in their steps; but he knew he could not expect such
good fortune as theirs, for the Shephelah was still full of what one
Frank writer calls “the outside Turkish army,”[834] that is, the
troops whom Saladin had left to keep guard and to prowl about among
the hills, in contradistinction to the “inner” force which was
with him at Jerusalem. In this district of tumbled hill and dale,
moorland, glen, and torrent-bed, of chalky slopes and limestone
boulders covered with thick scrub and brushwood that sheltered caves
and hiding-places innumerable, these light-armed Saracen horsemen
were at home, and had every advantage for the guerilla warfare in
which they excelled; and the ease and rapidity with which they could
move about through the intricacies of the hills enabled them to
swoop down suddenly from the most unexpected quarters, with fatal
effect, upon foraging or reconnoitring parties and convoys.[835]
One chronicler says that when the bulk of the host sought shelter
in Lydda and Ramlah, the count of Saint-Pol betook himself to “the
Casal of the Baths”; which seems to represent a place now called
Umm-el-Hummum, about twelve miles north-east of Lydda.[836] If this
statement be correct, the count’s object may perhaps have been to act
as an advanced guard on that side of the host and keep watch against
a possible gathering of the Saracens in force on the lower slopes
of the hills of Samaria—especially at Mirabel, or as the Saracens
called it Mejdel Yaba, which was close to Umm-el-Hummum and one of
the few castles which Saladin had not caused to be evacuated—and
their descent thence on the Christians at Lydda. It is at any rate
probable that Richard’s purpose was to render some such service
as this in another direction, towards the south and south-east of
Ramlah, when on December 22 or 23 he removed his own headquarters
to the “Post of Observation,” Natroun, which Saladin had quitted
ten days before.[837] On that day, however, a convoy from Joppa
was intercepted by the enemy; and similar mishaps occurred several
times in the ensuing week.[838] To this unsatisfactory [Sidenote:
_Dec._] state of affairs the leaders, having now fully ascertained
that Saladin and his main army had really “taken to the Mountains”
properly so called—the mountain-wall which shelters Jerusalem from
the world—“and left the champaign to us,” boldly decided to put an
end by advancing to the foot of the said mountains, where they told
their followers they would find a resting-place and be able to get
food for themselves.[839]
[Sidenote: 1192]
The advance was ordered for January 3. Some of the Saracen guerilla
bands which were constantly scouring the country between Joppa
and the hills had apparently discovered that a movement was in
contemplation, but were uncertain as to its object; they spent the
night of the [Sidenote: _Jan. 3_] 2nd lying hid near Casal des Plains
and at daybreak dashed forward in the direction which the host was
about to take; probably they hoped to lie hidden while it passed, and
fall at unawares on the rearguard or the slow-moving baggage-train.
Richard, however, knew of their lying in wait, and had himself, with
Geoffrey de Lusignan, been lying in wait for them all the preceding
night at the Casal of the Baths; a locality where, seeing that it
was quite as far (in a different direction) from Lydda as their own
lurking-place and double that distance from his known headquarters
at Natroun, they were not likely to suspect his presence. While they
were hurrying up from the west, he was spurring to meet them from
the north, the very opposite quarter to that where they doubtless
supposed him to be; and scarcely had they pounced upon and slain two
men-at-arms who went forth alone in advance of the host, when the
unexpected apparition of a banner which they well knew to be the
king’s, and a figure whose bearing and headlong onset were equally
unmistakeable,[840] threw them into utter confusion. Most of them
fled in the very direction whence Richard had come, towards Mirabel;
probably hoping to escape pursuit among the hills. Richard, who was
mounted on Fauvel, dashed after them and unhorsed two before any of
his own followers could rejoin him; some twenty others were slain or
brought back prisoners to the Christian camp.[841]
A march of ten miles brought the host to Beit Nuba, on a level space
of high ground close to the northern end of the natural fosse which
lies between the Shephelah and the mountain range. The hearts of
the pilgrims “were glad with the hope that they were going to the
Sepulchre”; but “their bodies were ill at ease,” for the Syrian
winter was now at its worst, and in their present exposed encampment
there was no shelter from its ravages. Stormy wind and tempest,
torrential rain and hail, beat down or tore up the tents; armour
rusted, clothes rotted, biscuits and bacon were so soaked that they
became putrid; horses died, men sickened; and in less than a week
“the wise Templars, the brave Hospitaliers, and the men of the land”
came to the conclusion that under the existing circumstances an
attempt to besiege Jerusalem could lead to nothing but disaster.
They told Richard that if the city were invested its besiegers would
be between two fires, Saladin breaking forth upon them from within
and the “outside” Turkish army cutting them off from communication
with the coast and depriving them of supplies.[842] The men who
spoke thus knew well that it was vain to dream of existing by
foraging on the barren, rocky tableland which forms the summit of
the Judean mountain-range, and that the host, if it got there at
all, would probably starve long before the defenders of the city,
which Saladin was sure to have victualled for a siege, and which
it would hardly be possible to blockade so completely as to cut it
off from all means of obtaining further provisions. Nor was this
all. Supposing—these counsellors urged—that the city were taken,
its capture would be useless unless it could be at once filled with
troops capable of holding it permanently; and this would be no
easy matter, for the western pilgrims, who formed the bulk of the
host, would return to their home-lands as soon as their pilgrimage
was accomplished, and thus when they were gone all that had been
won would be lost again.[843] Hereupon the western leaders called
a council of war at Natroun;[844] they may have retired there on
purpose to be well away from the rest of the army while discussing
the matter. However this may be, they asked “the wise folk who were
born in the land” what course they would recommend under existing
circumstances. The Templars and Hospitaliers [Sidenote: _Jan. 6-13_]
at once answered that what they would advise was not to proceed
towards Jerusalem at present, but to re-fortify and occupy Ascalon,
so as to obtain some control over the transit of provisions from
the great Saracen storehouse, Cairo, to the Holy City.[845] An
Arab historian gives, very likely from the report of some spy who
overheard the proceedings of the council, a curious account of the
way in which the final decision was reached. Richard, he says, asked
to see a plan of Jerusalem, that he might judge for himself of the
force of the arguments put forward by the Knights. They drew a plan
for him; and when he thoroughly understood the character of the site
and surroundings of the city, he pronounced them such as to make
the city, in his opinion, virtually impregnable “so long”—thus the
Arab reports the words of the western king—“as Saladin lives and the
Moslems are united.”[846] Before the middle of January the host was
back at Ramlah.[847]
Whether Richard’s verdict on the prospects of the Crusade was really
quite so pessimistic as Ibn Alathyr represents may be doubted. The
scheme now proposed by the Military Orders and accepted by the
king was simply a reversion to the original plan of campaign with
which they had all set out from Acre, and from which Saladin’s
seeming panic after Arsuf had tempted them to diverge; and there
can be little doubt that the divergence was unwise. The Frank
pilgrim-chroniclers, sharing and voicing the disappointment of the
rank and file, declare indeed that the retirement from Beit Nuba
was a blunder, and that if their leaders had but known the evil
plight—due, like their own, to the weather—of Saladin and his men
at Jerusalem, the city might, “without doubt,” have been taken
easily.[848] But those who spoke thus could have no real knowledge as
to the state of affairs in Jerusalem, and their version of it finds
no countenance in the pages of Bohadin, who was there, and who may
fairly be trusted on the subject, since he makes no mystery about
the Sultan’s perils and alarms on other occasions. The picture drawn
by the very same Frankish chroniclers of the condition in which the
host, “doleful and down-hearted,” marched back to Ramlah shows that
it was quite unfit to attempt an invasion of the hill-country. Men
and beasts were alike worn out with weakness and fever, caused by
the wet and cold, and many of the “lesser folk,” sick and helpless,
would have been left behind but for King Richard, who caused them
to be sought out and brought away in safety.[849] Among the French
Crusaders discontent took the form of wholesale desertion. Some
went to Joppa; of these, some stayed there, and others sailed back
to Acre, “where living was not dear,” sarcastically observes the
Norman poet; some joined the marquis at Tyre, whither he had long
been trying to entice them; the duke of Burgundy himself went off
in dudgeon with his followers to Casal of the Plains. Extremely
angry, but nothing daunted, Richard and the faithful remnant of the
host set out on January 19 by a road which, crossing the plain from
Ramlah, brought them back at Ibelin[850] to the main road along the
coast. The ten miles’ march through mud and mire to Ibelin was a
sufficiently [Sidenote: _Jan. 20_] hard day’s work; but “that day was
nothing compared to the next,” when nearly double that distance had
to be covered, on a road where men and horses were constantly sinking
into swamps, and beneath a ceaseless downpour of rain, hail and snow;
and when at length they arrived before Ascalon, they could only make
their way into the place by clambering over heaps of broken wall, and
find a partial shelter among the ruins within.[851]
Ascalon stood amid what the poet-pilgrim Ambrose emphatically calls
“a very good country”; but the stormy season, and the uncertainty
as to how many armed enemies might be still lurking around, made
this practically useless for foraging purposes; and the harbour was
a dangerous one, the sea being often so rough that no ship could
ride in it. This was the case for a week after the arrival of the
Crusaders, who were thus limited to what little food they had brought
with them—much of the stores with which they started from Ramlah
having been lost in the swamps on the way—till by a change in the
weather the transports coming from Joppa to meet them were enabled to
land their supplies. Scarcely was this done, however, when the storms
rose again, and barges and galleys and “all our beautiful smacks”
were dashed to pieces and some of the sailors drowned. Richard caused
all the wood that drifted ashore to be collected and employed for
the construction of some galleys, which he destined for his own use;
“but,” adds Ambrose, “it was not to be.” Towards Candlemas he sent
a message to the French, exhorting them to restore the unity of the
host by coming to rejoin their brethren and take counsel with them
as to what should be done next. They answered that they would come,
and would continue with him till Easter (April 5), on condition that
if they then wished to depart, he would give them safe-conduct by
land to Acre or Tyre. To this he agreed; whereupon they came, and—the
worst of the winter’s rages having now subsided—the reunited host by
common consent set to work to rebuild Ascalon. The task was no light
one; it was said that the fortifications had originally included no
less than fifty-three great towers, all now almost levelled with the
ground. Most of the nobles were by this time too short of money to be
able to hire workmen; so knights, men-at-arms, squires, clerks, and
laymen of all ranks set themselves to make a clearance of the ruins,
with such a will that soon they were astonished at their own success.
As the rebuilding, however, required more skilled labour than theirs,
Richard took the direction of it upon himself, and not only caused
the greater part of it to be performed at his expense, but also made
good whatever was lacking of labour and of the money to pay for it
in the parts assigned to the charge of others.[852] The English
chronicler of the Crusade says the king wrought at the building with
his own hands,[853] and we can well believe the story. Saladin was
about this time doing the same thing at Jerusalem.[854]
Another small point of resemblance between the two sovereigns was a
preference for doing their own scouting. One morning Richard, with
a handful of picked knights, rode out from Ascalon to reconnoitre
Darum. This castle, built by the late King Amalric on the site of an
earlier fortification, had been the extreme south-western outpost of
the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem; it lay three or four miles south
of the point where the coast-road crosses a watercourse which the
historians of the Crusade called the Torrent or River of Egypt,
because above that point it was in fact, in Amalric’s and Richard’s
days and long afterwards, the boundary between Syria and Egypt.[855]
Now that both these countries were under Moslem rule, Darum was the
first halting-place in Syria for the caravans which brought supplies
from “Babylon”—that is, Cairo—to Jerusalem. It chanced that when
Richard drew near the place, a thousand Christian prisoners whom the
Sultan was sending to Cairo under the charge of some of his household
guards had just arrived there. At the sight of the king’s banner the
escort, doubtless thinking the whole host from Ascalon was upon them,
left the prisoners and sought shelter for themselves in the castle;
but before they could reach it some were slain and twenty captured by
Richard and his men. Thus, says Ambrose, “God delivered His people
who were appointed to death, by sending King Richard to take the
place of Saint Leonard, the liberator of captives.”[856]
Some of the Christians, Frank and Syrian, thus rescued made, no
doubt, a welcome addition to the diminished numbers of the host.
Richard had several times already sent letters or messages to the
marquis, calling on him to come and rejoin the Crusade and render the
military service due to the Crown of Jerusalem for the fiefs which
he held of it. Conrad at first took no notice of these appeals; to
another and more urgent summons he finally answered that he would not
set foot in the camp till he had had a personal interview elsewhere
with the king of England.[857] Richard seemingly felt it necessary
to overlook his insolence and consent to a meeting at Casal Imbert,
half way between Acre and Tyre. But meanwhile a new trouble arose.
Philip of France had gone home in August 1191 without leaving his
lieutenant in Palestine, the duke of Burgundy, any money for the pay
of the French soldiers, counting for that purpose on the share due to
him of the bezants which the two kings then expected to receive in a
few weeks from Saladin. When this expectation had become hopeless,
Hugh asked Richard for a loan, and Richard, to avoid losing the
French troops altogether, lent him five thousand marks.[858] This
sum was exhausted long before February 1192; the French troops
clamoured for their dues; Hugh asked Richard for another loan. This
Richard refused. High words passed, and the duke, with the greater
part of the Frenchmen, straightway departed to Acre.[859] There they
found the Pisans and Genoese at strife. Pending the recovery of
Jerusalem, Acre served as temporary capital of the kingdom, and there
accordingly King Guy seems to have remained since his return thither
in September. His authority was upheld by the Pisans, who from
the outset of the Crusade had attached themselves to Richard; the
Genoese, having done homage to Philip Augustus, favoured the marquis,
and were intriguing to put him in possession of the city. A skirmish
between these two parties seems to have been going on when the French
arrived; they took to their arms, whereupon the Pisans set themselves
to bar their way; the duke’s horse was killed under him; then the
Pisans rushed back into the city and shut the gates against him and
his men. At this juncture Conrad, in response to the invitation of
the Genoese, arrived by sea with his forces. The Pisans “took to
the mangonels and stone-casters” and thus kept him off for three
days while they sent to call Richard to the rescue. Their messenger
found the king at Caesarea, on his way to the projected meeting with
Conrad. A hasty ride brought him to Acre at dead of night, and “when
the marquis knew that the king had come, nothing could hold him
there, but he went with all speed back to Tyre,” whither Burgundy and
the French were gone already.[860]
On the morrow Richard called together the people of [Sidenote: _Feb.
20_] the city and made peace among them.[861] Soon afterwards the
meeting with Conrad at Casal Imbert took place, but without any
practical result.[862] Next, Richard demanded repayment of the loan
which he had made to the duke of Burgundy six months before. Hugh
acquitted himself of the debt by assigning to the king the most
valuable of Philip’s Saracen prisoners, who were still in Conrad’s
custody at Tyre; but he made no sign of rejoining the Crusade. Such
a state of affairs threatened ruin to the whole enterprise, and
after long and anxious deliberation in his own mind Richard took
private counsel with the “elders and wise men of the land” as to what
had best be done. They gave their judgement that the marquis had
forfeited his rights under the settlement of July 1191, and should be
deprived of the revenues then assigned to him in the kingdom.[863]
It was doubtless to keep some sort of watch upon Conrad that Richard
remained at Acre till the end of March.[864] During the latter part
of his stay there he was again engaged in negotiations with Saladin.
When a messenger arrived at Jerusalem with a request that Safadin
might be sent to confer with the king, nothing was known there of the
Crusaders’ advance to Ascalon; Richard was believed by the Sultan
to have placed his troops in winter quarters at Joppa and gone back
thence straight to Acre.[865] Saladin [Sidenote: _Feb.-Mar._] bade
his brother go by way of the Jordan valley and Mount Tabor, collect
the troops of those parts in readiness for a renewal of hostilities,
and then—as usual—go and hear Richard’s proposals, and if they
were not acceptable, drag out negotiations till the whole Saracen
army had had time to re-assemble. A note was given him containing
the utmost concessions that Saladin was willing to make. They were
these: an equal division of the land; the Cross to be given back; the
Christians to have priests in the church of the Holy Sepulchre, and
pilgrims to have access to it, provided they went unarmed. “He was,”
says Bohadin, “driven to offer these terms, by the general weariness
of long-continued warfare, by a load of debt, and by the long absence
of his followers from their homes; for there were many who never left
him, and who dared not ask for leave.”[866]
[Sidenote: _March 20_]
Safadin set out on March 20. At Keisan he was met by Humphry of
Toron with a message to this effect: “The division of the land is
agreed upon already; but we must have the whole of the Holy City
except the Temple of the Rock,” otherwise called the Mosque of Omar.
This message Safadin transmitted to his brother, and the Sultan’s
council—so Bohadin says—actually thought its terms near enough to
their own to be “quite acceptable.” Safadin’s first messenger,
however, was followed by another who [Sidenote: _March 27_] reached
Jerusalem on the 27th with tidings that Richard had gone back to
Joppa.[867] If it be true that Richard knighted Safadin’s son on
Palm Sunday, March 29, at Acre,[868] the announcement must have been
slightly premature; but by the time that Safadin himself returned
to Jerusalem, on April 1,[869] Richard was certainly back at
Ascalon.[870]
The king was “much chafed and troubled in mind”; for Holy Week was
begun, and he knew that Conrad and Hugh had been urging the French
who were still at Ascalon to join them at Tyre, and that his promise
of a safe-conduct to those who wished to depart at Easter for home
would in all likelihood be immediately claimed by every one of
them; and so it was, on Wednesday, April 1.[871] He gave them an
escort,[872] and when they set out next day himself rode a little
way with them, “weeping, and beseeching them to stay with him at
his expense, and so keep together; but they would not.” Finding his
efforts useless, he returned to Ascalon and sent off a messenger in
haste to Acre bidding his officers in charge of that city not to
admit the French within its walls.[873] This desertion of more than
seven hundred of the finest chivalry of Christendom was a grievous
loss to the host. Richard did what he could to comfort and encourage
the faithful remnant by holding on Easter Day (April 5) a great
court outside Ascalon; his tents were thrown open to all comers, and
furnished with abundance of meat and drink and everything that could
be procured to enhance [Sidenote: _April 6_] the magnificence of the
feast. Next day he set everybody to work again on the fortifications,
taking upon himself the responsibility and the expense of completing
the portions which the French had left unfinished.[874]
The season of the “latter rains” was now almost over, and both
Christians and Saracens had to lay their plans for a new campaign.
The former had already, while Richard was at Acre, profited by the
improvement in the weather to make two brilliant raids, one on March
27 from Joppa across the plain to Mirabel, where they seem to have
intercepted a rich caravan, for they slew thirty Turks and brought
back fifty prisoners besides a number of cattle and booty said to
have been worth two thousand eight hundred bezants; the other from
Ascalon next day, when “all men who had horses” rode out by the
southern road to capture a “prey” of which the scouts had told them;
“and they did well this time, for those who were there reported that
they went right into Egypt, four leagues beyond Darum, and they
brought back great troops of horses, asses, camels, oxen, and sheep,
besides near two hundred prisoners, men, women, and children.”[875]
Saladin heard of it, and promptly despatched some troops to intercept
the raiders on their way back, but they were too quick for him.[876]
Saladin’s wisest policy clearly was to collect his forces and remain
with them in his present position till he saw what his enemies would
do. Richard as usual began by reconnoitring in person. His first
attempt to ascertain the defences of Darum had been cut short by
the necessity of bringing to the camp, or despatching in safety to
their homes, the Christians towards whom he had acted the part of S.
Leonard. On Easter Tuesday (April 7) he set out again in the same
direction; that day he viewed Gaza, where also there seems to have
been a Moslem garrison, and on the Wednesday went on [Sidenote:
_April 8_] and perambulated Darum to see on which side it could be
most easily assaulted. Its garrison vainly hurled at him missiles
which failed to reach their aim and insults in a tongue which he did
not understand.[877]
A few days later[878] there came to Ascalon a messenger from England
with tidings which filled the whole host with dismay. He brought
letters from the justiciars beseeching the king to return at once,
as John was trying, with a considerable prospect of success, to make
himself master of the realm. Richard called the barons together and
set forth the matter fully to them. He added that if he should be, as
he feared, obliged to depart from Syria, he would leave three hundred
knights and two thousand men-at-arms to continue serving there at his
expense; and he asked his own followers to let him know who among
them wished to go with him, and who wished to stay, for he would put
no constraint upon any man. The barons, after holding a consultation
among themselves, came back and told him frankly that unless he
appointed as lord over the land someone who had a knowledge of war,
and to whom all, no matter whence they came, could adhere, every
one of them would leave the country and set out for home. Richard
at once asked them which they would have of the only two possible
kings—Guy or Conrad. “And all of them, great and small, knelt down
before him and prayed that he would make the marquis their lord, for
this was the most helpful and useful thing for the realm.” Some of
them had hitherto been bitter against the marquis, and these Richard
upbraided for their sudden change of front; but when fully assured
all were now unanimous in their choice he gave it his assent, and
ordered that an honourable escort should go to fetch the king-elect
and the French, and thus all should be reunited.[879]
As head of the royal house of Jerusalem, guardian of the realm,
and commander-in-chief of the crusading host, Richard would not
have been justified in withholding his assent from the course of
action thus unanimously recommended by both the native and the
western Crusaders. Their decision was probably the wisest possible
under the circumstances. Although Conrad had done more than any
other man (except possibly Philip Augustus) to sow dissension among
the Christian forces, he was nevertheless the leader who, when
Richard was gone, would divide them the least; for when once he
was acknowledged as their chief, it would be his own interest to
keep them together and to further the object of their enterprise to
the utmost of his power; he was, unquestionably, by far the most
capable and energetic, next to Richard, of all the princes of the
Crusade; and his so-called wife and their infant daughter were the
sole surviving representatives of the royal house of Jerusalem. The
crowned king, Guy, had no following of his own, and it seems quite
clear that he had, tacitly at least, resigned all claim to authority
in the realm as well as in the host; so that no disloyalty to him
was involved in Richard’s assent to the election of a new sovereign.
Count Henry of Champagne and three other envoys of rank carried the
great news to Tyre; Conrad and all the folk there were delighted, and
began to prepare for immediate return to the host at Ascalon.[880]
But before any of them had set out, the situation was suddenly
changed again; on April 28 the marquis was assassinated.[881] The
murderers were caught red-handed, and, of course, promptly put to
death. At Saladin’s court they were reported to have declared that
they had been hired by Richard to commit the crime.[882] Saladin,
with whom Conrad had been in negotiation for several weeks past, had
at the time an agent in Tyre from whom this report was derived;[883]
and if it did not actually originate with Conrad’s friends and allies
at Tyre, its circulation among Richard’s enemies and rivals and its
transmission to Europe were certainly encouraged by them.[884] A few
years later, however, one Moslem historian gave a very different
account of the matter: Ibn Alathyr says the men were hired by Saladin
to kill Richard if they could, or, failing him, Conrad, and that
they chose the latter alternative as the easier of the two.[885]
This story is probably worthless except as an illustration of the
importance of both king and marquis in Saracen eyes. The best
confutation of the other tale lies in the simple fact that Conrad’s
death could not be of the slightest profit to Richard, but, on the
contrary, upset all his plans for his own return to Europe. The
Norman pilgrim-poet of the Crusade tells us that the men who stabbed
Conrad were “Assassins” not only in the modern conventional sense
of the word, but also in its original and etymological sense; by
their own confession, they were Hashashîn, that is, followers of the
“Old Man of the Mountain,” and acted under his orders.[886] This
is confirmed by two of our best English authorities,[887] and by
the French historians who lived and wrote in the Holy Land; one of
the earliest of these latter says that “some people” reported the
murderers to have been hired by Richard, “but,” he adds, “this was
not a bit true”;[888] while another states that the deed was done to
avenge certain other Ismaïlites whom the marquis had caused to be
first robbed and then drowned.[889] This story is at any rate more
intrinsically probable than either Ibn Alathyr’s or that which was
accepted at Saladin’s court and sent to Europe by Conrad’s friends;
indeed, the relations between these latter and Richard during the
rest of their stay in the Holy Land seem hardly compatible with a
real belief on their part in Richard’s guilt.
There were now some ten thousand Frenchmen, under Hugh of Burgundy
and other barons, lodging in tents outside Tyre. As soon as Conrad
was buried these barons called upon Isabel to surrender the city to
them to hold in trust for the king of France. She boldly answered
that “when the king returned, she would willingly surrender it to
him, unless before that time it had another lord.”[890] The closing
words of this answer were a scarcely veiled announcement of her
resolve to assert her independence as queen by right of inheritance
and bring in a new claimant to the lordship of the land by taking
another consort; and it is scarcely possible to avoid a suspicion
that she had already made her choice. Count Henry had gone back from
Tyre as far as Acre;[891] there he received the news of Conrad’s
death. He at once returned to Tyre; “and when the people saw him,
they straightway elected him as sent by God to be their ruler and
lord, and prayed him to accept the crown and wed its heiress, the
widow of the marquis.” He answered that he must first ascertain how
his uncle King Richard would regard the project. When Richard heard
the whole of the strange story, he brooded over it for a long while;
at last he said to Henry’s messengers: “Sirs, I should greatly wish
that my nephew might be king, if it please God, when the land shall
be conquered; but not that he wed the marchioness, whom the marquis
took from her rightful lord and lived with in such wise that if Count
Henry trusts my counsel he will not take her in marriage. But let
him accept the kingship, and I will give him in demesne Acre and its
port-dues, Tyre, Joppa, and jurisdiction over all the conquered land.
And then tell him to come back to the host and bring the Frenchmen
with him, as quickly as he can, for I want to go and take Darum—if
the Turks dare wait there for me!”[892]
It is strange that Richard did not see how impracticable was his
advice. The first half of the scheme proposed by the barons at Tyre
was futile without the other half. The kingdom of Jerusalem was sold,
beyond redemption, into the hand of a woman. Isabel’s hour had come;
she was now, beyond all question, the “right heir” of all the land.
Henry of Champagne, nephew to both Richard and Philip, constant
companion and faithful follower of the one, yet loyal homager of the
other, was exceptionally qualified to become a sovereign round whom
all parties could rally, and a healer of their divisions; but these
qualifications must prove useless if Isabel should give him a rival
by choosing another consort. His election would be of no avail for
himself or for the realm unless he took the queen with the crown. The
barons at Tyre were urgent that he should do so; he hesitated from
fear of Richard’s displeasure, but his personal inclination seconded
their arguments. Finally Isabel herself brought him the keys of the
city; a priest was hurriedly fetched, and there and then, on May
5, the couple were wedded. The king-elect sent representatives to
Acre, Joppa, and elsewhere, to take seisin of the royal rights, and
summoned his men to join him for an expedition against Darum.[893]
During Henry’s absence from the host Richard had been scorning the
country round Ascalon in a series of bold excursions, made sometimes
almost alone, and from which he always returned “bringing ten or a
dozen, or a score, or may be thirty, Saracens’ heads, and some live
Saracens besides.”[894] Another object of these expeditions probably
was to reconnoitre the inner border of the plain, and endeavour to
find out what were the possibilities of penetrating by some way,
other than the vale of Ajalon and its ramifications, through the
Shephelah and across the trench and the mountain-rampart of Judea.
The most direct way up from the plain to Jerusalem was by the next
valley south of Ajalon, the Wady es Surar (Valley of Sorek); but if
this were to be attempted, the base for the attempt must be some
place further north than Ascalon. The entrance to the third main
inlet into the Shephelah, the Vale of Elah or Wady es Sunt, was
guarded by a great castle set on a height called by the Arabs Tell es
Safiyeh, “the Bright Hill,” and by the Franks (who in earlier days
had built the castle) Blanchegarde; both names being derived from the
nature of the site, a solitary chalk-hill whose gleaming sides were
plainly visible from Ascalon, seventeen miles away, while the tower
on its summit commanded a wide view over the surrounding plain, as
well as of Ascalon itself, and also of the roads leading northward
to Natroun and southward to Ibelin of the Hospital and Hebron. Once
already—in December, from Ramlah—Richard had set out to explore the
neighbourhood of Blanchegarde,[895] but had turned back again without
reaching the place. When on April 22 he led his troops to attack it,
he found it deserted; the Turkish garrison had fled at his approach.
He seems to have left there in their stead the whole force that he
had taken with him, and returned to Ascalon quite alone, for on the
way back he nearly lost his life in an encounter with a wild boar
in which he was evidently single-handed.[896] Six [Sidenote: _Apr.
28_] days later—the day of Conrad’s death—Roger de Glanville, whom
Richard had left in command of the newly won fortress, made a daring
reconnaissance through the Vale of Elah, up the steep mountain-pass
which meets it on the other side of the central valley, across the
plateau, and past the very gates of Jerusalem, and returned in
triumph with [Sidenote: _Apr. 29_] a few stray Saracens whom he had
captured. On the following day the king, riding somewhere “between
Blanchegarde and Gaza,” came upon eight Saracens of whom he slew
three and captured the other five. On the night of May 1 he was at
Furbia, near the coast, between Ascalon and Gaza; here some Turks
tried to surprise him asleep at early morn, but he was the first of
his little band to awake and went forth straight from bed, stopping
for nothing but his sword and shield, to meet the assailants;
four were slain, seven made prisoners; “the rest fled before his
face.”[897] It must have been either between these two exploits or
directly after the latter of them that Count Henry’s messengers met
the king “in the plains of Ramlah, spurring across the open country
in pursuit of a band of Turks who were fleeing before him.”[898] His
restlessness was probably increased by the disturbed state of his
mind. Envoys from his own dominions were arriving one after another
with contradictory letters and messages, some giving alarming
accounts of the state of affairs there, some assuring him that all
was well; some beseeching him to come home, some exhorting him to
continue the sacred task in which he was engaged; all deepening his
perplexities till he knew not which to believe or how to act.[899]
One point alone stood out clear before him. Now that Ascalon was
lost to the Moslems, its place as the key of Egypt, the base and
storehouse which sheltered troops and supplies from the Nile valley
for transmission to Jerusalem and the other fortresses still held by
the Moslems in Syria, had been taken by Darum. Before Richard could
bring himself to quit the country, and also before Saladin’s army
reassembled, Darum must be won for Christendom.
There was no time to lose. The rains were quite over; summer was
beginning; and Saladin’s host would have been at its full strength
again ere now but for some troubles in the northern part of his
dominions. His nephew Taki-ed-Din, the lord of Hamath and Edessa,
had died in October 1191 leaving a son, El Mansour, who was inclined
to rebel against Saladin’s supremacy. On May 14 or 15 the Sultan
despatched his own son El Afdal to seize El Mansour’s lands; but
the diplomatist of the family, Safadin, fearing that this quarrel
would imperil the “Holy” War, was pleading hard for a pacific
settlement.[900] Knowing all this, Richard determined not to wait
for Henry. He had his stone-casters packed on shipboard and sent
them down towards Darum by sea; he hired men-at-arms to increase
the forces at Ascalon; some he distributed in the strong places
round about to guard the roads; then he set out with only the troops
of his own domains,[901] and on Sunday, May 17,[902] this little
band pitched their tents before Darum, a fortress with seventeen
“fine strong towers and turrets,” besides a keep of great height
and strength built against a solid rock which formed one side of
it, while the other sides were of squared stone and surrounded by a
deep fosse. Being too few to encircle such a place, the adventurers
encamped all together a little way off to wait for their machines and
consider on which side they could use them to the best advantage.
The Turkish garrison thought scorn of such an insignificant looking
force, and rode forth and made a feint of provoking them to fight,
but failing to move them, withdrew into the castle and shut the
gates. That night or next day the ships arrived with the engines of
war; “and,” says an eye-witness, “we saw the valiant king of England
himself, and the nobles who were his companions, all sweating under
the burden of the various parts of the stone-casters, which they,
like packhorses, carried on their shoulders near a mile across the
sand.” The pieces were soon put together and the machines at work,
one manned by the Normans of the party, another by the Poitevins, a
third probably by the Englishmen; this last the king took under his
own special command, and he directed its discharge solely against the
keep; a mangonel set up there by the Turks was speedily destroyed by
it. All three machines were kept in ceaseless action day and night.
Meanwhile the walls were being undermined;[903] and wherever they
began to fall they were set on fire by some men of Aleppo skilled
in wall-breaking, whom Richard had hired during the siege of Acre
and now brought with him to Darum.[904] On the fourth day of the
siege (Friday, May 22), when the castle gate had been shattered by
Richard’s stone-caster and set on fire, the garrison offered to
surrender on condition that their lives and those of their families
should be spared.[905] Richard refused the condition and bade them
defend themselves as best they could. The stone-casters worked more
vigorously than ever; presently one of the undermined towers fell
with a crash. The assailants rushed through the breach; some sixty
Turks were slain; the rest fled into the keep, and when they saw
the Christian banners waving all over the outer [Sidenote: _May 22_]
bailey and the Frank knights and men-at-arms beginning to scale
the keep itself, they “gave themselves up to King Richard as his
captives and slaves.” He kept them securely guarded in the tower for
the night; next morning they were brought out, “and their hands tied
behind their backs so tightly that they roared with pain.” There were
three hundred men; and there were also some women and children in the
place, and, moreover, forty Christian prisoners.[906]
The conquest of the seaboard was complete; the last fortress on the
coast[907] was in Christian hands; and Richard and his men were the
more delighted with their success because they had won it unaided,
before their French comrades rejoined them. Count Henry and his
followers had ridden at full speed, but they came spurring up just
too late. Uncle and nephew met with joyful greetings and mutual
congratulations, and Richard publicly made over his prize to Henry
as a kind of first-fruits of the realm. It was Whitsun Eve; so all
rested where they were on the festival day.[908] On the Monday the
castle was given in charge to constables appointed by Henry,[909]
and the rest of the party set out northward. Henry and his men went
straight on [Sidenote: _May 25_] to Ascalon; Richard and his company
stopped at Furbia,[910] where it seems the king expected to receive
the report of a scout whom he had sent to reconnoitre the approach to
the southernmost of the cross-valleys leading from the plain to the
mountains—the Wady el Hesy, “valley of the wells,” which opens from
the Shephelah about twelve miles east of Furbia and meets the central
trench about eight miles west of Hebron. The scout came and reported
that Caysac, the emir whom Saladin had placed in charge of that
district, was at the “Castle of Figtrees” with more than a thousand
men, making the castle ready for defence against the Christians.
Richard at once called out the host from Ascalon to follow him; they
set out from Furbia on May 27 and advanced up the Wady el Hesy to
a place which they called the Canebrake of Starlings; its Arabic
name was [Sidenote: _May 28_] Cassaba, meaning “the Reeds.”[911] On
the morrow they set out at sunrise and proceeded to the Castle of
Figtrees, but found in it only two Turks; the rest had fled in haste
at tidings of their approach. The Christians therefore returned to
Cassaba.[912] They were less fortunate in an expedition which they
seem to have made next day, against another fortress in the same
neighbourhood; one Moslem historian says the garrison came out and
worsted them in fight; another, that they were surprised within the
castle; and both assert that one of their chief captains or nobles
was slain.[913]
While the host lay thus at the Canebrake of Starlings there came to
the king another messenger from England, [Sidenote: _May 29-31_]
his vice-chancellor, John of Alençon, with such an alarming account
of the state of affairs in both England and Normandy that after
much anxious thought he told the other princes and barons that he
really must and would go home. They hereupon held a council among
themselves, and promptly answered this announcement by another:
whatever he might do or say, wherever he might go, they all would
proceed forthwith to Jerusalem. Someone who was present at their
council carried a report of its outcome to the pilgrims of lower
rank, “and they danced for joy till past midnight”; “there was no man
high or low, young or old, who was not wild with delight, except the
king himself; but he went to bed in a feverish state of perturbation
and perplexity”;[914] for he knew that unless he went home he was
like to lose his lands,[915] yet it was virtually impossible for him
to withdraw from the Crusade in the face of this unanimous resolve.
How the resolve should be carried into effect, was the next question.
The Christians had now secured the entrances to three of the five
natural openings from the plain into the hill-country. There was
clearly nothing to be gained by proceeding further up the Wady el
Hesy. From their present encampment they could easily reach one of
the two openings which they had not yet approached, the Wady el
Afranj. At the western end of this valley, on the border-line of the
Shephelah and the plain—“at the foot of the hills, where the fields
begin,” as William of Tyre[916] describes it—stood a fortress with a
town or village clustering round it, called by the Arabs Beit Djibrin
and by the Franks Ibelin of the Hospital; the latter title, derived
from its owners the Knights of Saint John, being added to distinguish
it from the other Ibelin, on the coast further north. Its site was
probably that of the ancient Eleutheropolis, and it was a central
point whence roads radiated in all directions, to Gaza, to Hebron,
to Blanchegarde and Toron of the Knights (Natroun), to Bethlehem and
Jerusalem. When—probably on June 1—the host left the Canebrake of
Starlings, its destination was apparently understood to be Ibelin.
The pilgrims seem to have proceeded along the border of the plain to
a point—probably Galatia—whence a road ran eastward to Ibelin and
westward to Ascalon.[917] [Sidenote: _June_] Here they halted and
spent two or three days, “suffering a fierce persecution and strange
martyrdom” from swarms of minute flies which stung them in every
exposed part with such poisonous effect that “they all looked like
lepers,” but buoyed up above all troubles by their confident hope of
reaching Jerusalem at last. One alone sat gloomily in his tent apart,
absorbed in ceaseless thought; and that one was the king.[918]
[Sidenote: _June 3_]
As Richard sat thus one day he saw a chaplain from his own land,
William of Poitiers, walking up and down before the open door of
the tent, and weeping bitterly. This man longed to remonstrate with
his sovereign for proposing to desert the Holy Land in its present
perilous condition; but he lacked a fitting opportunity, and was
afraid to use one when it came. Richard called him in and said: “For
what are you weeping? By the fealty that you owe me, tell me the
truth at once.” “Sire,” answered the priest through his tears, “I
will not tell you till you have promised not to be wroth with me.”
Richard gave his word on oath that he would bear him no grudge. Then
William spoke with the impassioned and abundant eloquence of the
south. He bade the king call to mind how all his past career had been
a series of exploits and successes so remarkable as to be manifestly
due to the special grace and protection of Heaven; his early
triumphs, when only count of Poitou, over hostile neighbours and
Brabantine hordes far outnumbering his little forces; his peaceful
and undisputed succession to the throne; his almost instantaneous
victory over the Griffons at Messina; his rapid conquest of Cyprus;
his providential encounter with the Saracen ship whose freight,
had it reached Acre, might have saved that city for Islam; his
timely arrival at Acre, and the prominent share which he had had in
effecting its surrender; his recovery from the sickness of which so
many other Crusaders had died; the deliverance of the prisoners at
Darum, and the speedy capture of that fortress, whereof he had been
the chosen instrument; and his own deliverance from the Turks who had
nearly captured him in his sleep. “Remember how God has given thee
such great honour that no king of thy age ever had so few mishaps—how
often He has helped thee, and how He helps thee still. He has done
such great things for thee that thou needest fear neither king nor
baron. Remember all this, O king, and guard this land whereof He has
made thee protector! for He placed it wholly in thy keeping when the
other king turned back; and all men, great and small, to whom thy
honour is dear, say that if thou, who wert wont to be a father and
brother to the Christian cause, shouldst forsake it now, thou wilt
have betrayed it to death.”[919]
To all this Richard listened without speaking a word, and when the
priest’s discourse was ended he made no comment or reply. But he
pondered over it; “and his thoughts were enlightened.” Next day (June
4) the host was led westward, and by the hour of nones found itself
once more in the fields around Ascalon.[920] Everybody took this to
mean that the king intended to set out for Europe at once. Instead,
he told his nephew and the other nobles that “for no other concern
or need, no messenger and no tidings, nor for any earthly quarrel,
would he depart from them or quit the land before next Easter.” Then
he called for his herald Philip, and bade him proclaim throughout
Ascalon, in God’s Name, that the king had with his own lips promised
to stay in the land till Easter, and that all men were to make
themselves ready with whatsoever means God had given them, for they
were going to Jerusalem to besiege it straightway.[921]
CHAPTER VI
RICHARD AND SALADIN
1192
Circumdate Sion et complectimini eam ... et distribuite domos ejus,
ut enarratis in progenie altera.
The abandonment of the projected expedition to Ibelin was due to more
causes than one. On the day of the [Sidenote: _May 22_] surrender
of Darum Saladin had yielded to the necessity strongly urged upon
him by his emirs, of restoring peace and unity within the borders of
Islam as the essential preliminary to a renewal of the “Holy” war,
and had despatched Safadin with full powers to make whatever terms
he might think good with his rebel great-nephew El Mansour.[922]
The settlement thus made enabled the Sultan to call out all his
forces again for action against the Franks; and so prompt was the
response to his call that two important contingents, under the Emirs
Bedr-ed-Din and Ezz-ed-Din, reached Jerusalem on the last day of May,
just as the Christian host was on its march northward from Cassaba.
Hearing that it was at the “parting of the roads” between Ascalon and
Ibelin, he despatched Ezz-ed-Din with the newly arrived forces to
intercept it, and an encounter in circumstances which would have been
highly unfavourable to the Franks was only averted by the promptitude
with which their leaders, on discovering Ezz-ed-Din’s approach,
changed their plans and retired to Ascalon.[923] Ibelin was a place
worth securing; but its capture was not essential to their present
object; for the purpose of leading an army to Jerusalem the Wady el
Afranj was as valueless as the Wady el Hesy. When once a new advance
on Jerusalem was decided on, the matter of most urgent necessity
was the restoration of the host to its fullest possible strength.
Some of the French contingent were still at Acre. Thither Count
Henry once more proceeded from Ascalon to call these recalcitrants
back to their duty,[924] and also to collect any reinforcements that
could be obtained from Tyre, Tripoli, or elsewhere.[925] Beit Nuba
was appointed as the place where he and they were to rejoin the main
body.[926] With the latter Richard on June 6 set out early in the
morning, and in a few hours was encamped before Blanchegarde.[927]
From Blanchegarde three ways into the hill-country lay open. One was
the valley of Elah (Wady es Sunt), which runs almost due east from
the place where the Crusaders now were. This way was not attractive
to invaders, because its continuation on the further side of the
central trench was very difficult for troops. North-eastward from
Blanchegarde a road ran along the border of the plain past the mouth
of the valley of Sorek (Wady es Surar) to Natroun, and thence across
the Shephelah to Beit Nuba. The valley of Sorek is the most direct
and the easiest of all the natural ways that lead up from the plain
to the mountains of Judah; but it had a great disadvantage. For an
army advancing through it there was no possible base on the coast
nearer than Ascalon or Joppa, both of them more than twenty miles
distant from its western end. The only place within easy reach of
it that could be called a coast-town was Ibelin-Yebna, and this was
not a coast-town in the proper sense; it was four miles from the sea
and had no harbour. Of all the roads that led to Jerusalem the best
for the Crusaders was unquestionably the one which they had chosen
for their first attempt—the Beit Nuba road, where they would have in
their rear a safe double line of communication through Ramlah and
Lydda with their original base at Joppa and thence, by land and sea,
with Acre. On June 9 they advanced to Natroun,[928] and that night
they intercepted a score of Turks returning from a plundering raid
on Joppa; six escaped, the other fourteen were made prisoners.[929]
Next day Richard with the men of his own domains moved on to Castle
Arnold,[930] a place whose character is expressed in its modern
Arabic name, Khurbet-el-Burj, “ruins of the Bourg,” _burh_ or
fortress; it had been built by his great-grandfather, King Fulk, on
one of the highest hills in the Shephelah, about three and a half
miles north-west of Beit Nuba, and commanded both the “way that goeth
to Beth-horon” and the lower road along the foot of the hills, from
Lydda by Beit Nuba to Jerusalem. Probably the Turks had dismantled
it; Richard pitched his tents “on a high place to the right.” He was
joined by the rest of the [Sidenote: _June 10_] army next day, when
all together proceeded to Beit Nuba and encamped there to wait for
Count Henry and his recruits.[931]
On that same day Saladin, whose scouts kept him well informed of all
the enemy’s movements, held a council to decide what course should
be taken in view of their apparent intention to attempt the siege
of Jerusalem. It was settled that the defence of the walls should
be divided among the emirs, a certain portion being assigned to
each of them, and that the Sultan himself with the rest of his army
should take the field against the invaders.[932] The latter part of
this arrangement was, however, not carried into effect: throughout
the three weeks which the Franks spent at Beit Nuba they never
encountered Saladin, and no general engagement took place, though
there were, as Ambrose says, many “adventures and skirmishes and
discomfitures,” in several of which Richard was personally engaged.
One of these counterbalanced, within twenty-four hours, an evil omen
for the Franks with which, according to Bohadin, their stay at Beit
Nuba began—the falling of a convoy from Joppa into a Turkish ambush
on June 12.[933] That night a scout sent out by Richard returned
from the hill of Gibeon—called by the Franks Montjoie, because it
was the place whence the earliest Crusaders had first seen the Holy
City—with tidings of another ambush which, he seems to have learned,
was posted near “the Fountain of Emmaus,” or Amwas, half way between
Natroun and Beit Nuba, and close to the point where the roads from
Natroun and Ramlah meet. Before dawn Richard was in the saddle; at
daybreak he was at the Fountain; the Turks were caught at unawares,
twenty were slain, one was captured and his life spared because he
was Saladin’s herald; three camels, several fine Turcoman horses, and
two good mules laden with silk stuffs, aloes, and spicery, were the
prize of the victor. The rest of the party he chased over the hills
till he overtook and slew one of them, seemingly on the “Mount of
Joy” itself, for according to Ambrose—who says he had the story of
the adventure from one who took part in it—he “saw Jerusalem plainly”
before he turned back.[934] During his absence from the camp it had
been assailed by a band of Turks, but they were driven back into the
hills.[935] An attempt of the enemies to intercept another caravan
three or four days later was equally unsuccessful, though the Turks
killed a few Christians and took some prisoners.[936]
Meanwhile the lesser folk were growing tired of waiting for Henry,
and impatiently asking whether they were or [Sidenote: _June 16-20_]
were not really going to Jerusalem this time. Some of the French
nobles urged Richard to lead the host at once to Jerusalem and begin
the siege. He refused. He pointed out the risks which such a step
would involve; he reminded them how easy it would be for Saladin,
who always knew all their movements, to swoop down with his army
into the plain in their rear and cut off their supplies and their
communication with the sea, the circuit of the walls being too
extensive to admit of the division of so small a force as theirs
into two bodies, one to form the siege and the other to protect the
besiegers and keep the ways clear for convoys. He would not, he said,
be the leader of such an undertaking, because he had no mind to incur
the blame for the disaster in which he believed it would result. He
knew well, he added, that both in Holy Land and in France there were
some persons who wished that he might wreck his reputation in some
such way, but he was not minded to satisfy their desire. Moreover,
he and the French were alike strangers in the land; it was not for
them to take the responsibility, but for the Military Orders and the
feudataries of the realm. “Let them decide whether we are to attempt
the siege, or to go and take Babylon, or Beyrout, or Damascus.
So shall there be no discord amongst us.”[937] The decision was
committed to twenty umpires representing every division of the host
except the subjects of Richard: five Templars, five Hospitaliers,
five knights of Syria, and five barons of France. The first fifteen
gave their award for an expedition against “Babylon”; but the French
would not agree to this; they declared they would go to Jerusalem
and nowhere else. Richard did his utmost to restore unity. He held
out every possible inducement to the French to accept the Cairo
project: “See, my fleet lies at Acre, ready to carry all the baggage,
equipments, and accoutrements, biscuits and flour; the host would go
all along by the shore and I would lead from here at my own charges
seven hundred knights and two thousand men-at-arms; no man of mine
should be lacking. But if they [that is, the French] will not do
this, I am quite ready to go to the siege of Jerusalem; only be it
known that I will not be the leader of the host; I will go in the
company, as leader of my own men, but of no others.” And forthwith
he bade all his men assemble in the quarters of the Hospitaliers,
“and arrange what help they would give to the siege when they got to
Jerusalem.”[938]
Before this last order was fully carried out an unexpected and most
welcome diversion occurred. Saladin was now in daily expectation of
some troops from Egypt, for whose despatch he had given orders some
time before with a warning that they must be specially cautious when
they approached the territory occupied by the Franks. These troops
waited at Belbeis for the assembling of a great caravan, in company
with which they finally set out for Jerusalem. All this was known
to Richard through his scouts, who were fully equal in efficiency
to those of Saladin; some of them were renegade Arabs[939]; others
were Syrian Christians, so well disguised and speaking the “Saracen”
tongue so perfectly as to be indistinguishable from real Saracens.
Three of these Syrian spies came into the camp—seemingly on Sunday
June 21[940]—and bade the king mount and ride with his men, and
they would lead him to the great caravan that was coming up from
Egypt. Richard, in his joy, asked Hugh of Burgundy and the other
Frenchmen to join the expedition, and they did so, on condition of
receiving a third part of the spoil. With five hundred knights and
men-at-arms the king rode by moonlight to Blanchegarde and thence to
Galatia, a town in the plain, half way between Ascalon and Ibelin of
the Hospital; there he was within easy reach of both the coast-road
and the inland road, and could also procure from Ascalon whatever
supplies he needed, whether of fresh horses or provisions.[941]
Saladin, as soon as he was informed of these movements, despatched
five hundred picked Turkish soldiers under the emir Aslam to meet
the force from Egypt and warn it of its danger.[942] He evidently
expected that the Egyptians, knowing the coast to be practically
in the hands of the Franks, would come by the inner or eastern road
which after crossing the Wady Ghuzzeh divided into two branches,
one passing over the mountains by Hebron and Bethlehem, the other
through the Shephelah across the Wady el Hesy and thence by Beit
Djibrin (Ibelin) to the valleys of Elah and Sorek. This latter route,
being the easier and shorter, was the one which the Egyptians would
naturally take and which Aslam took to meet them. His mission was
to reach them, if possible, in the desert, and guide them by the
safer though more toilsome and lengthy way over the mountain-range.
Riding as only Arabs (and possibly Richard on Fauvel) could ride,
he and [Sidenote: _June 22_] his party did meet them, late in the
evening, at what the Arabs called “the Waters of Kuweilfeh” and the
Franks “the Round Cistern.” This was no doubt a well-known stage
on the road from Egypt and Mecca; its site is at the southern foot
of the Shephelah, close to the opening from the central fosse into
the desert, and it would thus be the first watering-place for their
beasts of burden after passing the Wady Ghuzzeh and before entering
the hill-country. Aslam was urgent that the ascent to Hebron should
be made that night; but the Egyptian commander, Felek-ed-Din, fearing
lest the caravan should fail to keep together in the darkness,
decided to wait till morning.[943] Meanwhile a native Syrian scout
had come to Richard at Galatia and told him that if he made haste he
might capture the caravan at the Round Cistern. Richard, conscious
that there was no real need to hurry—since he and his horsemen
could easily overtake the slow movements of a caravan—determined to
verify the report before acting on it. He accordingly sent out three
more scouts,[944] one a real Bedouin, the others native Turcoples
disguised in Bedouin attire, to make a further reconnaissance in the
evening. Meanwhile he and his troops seem to have advanced to the
head of the Wady el Hesy, which Aslam had crossed shortly before
them.[945] Here the returning scouts met them with the news that not
only the caravan, but also the army from Egypt, was encamped at the
Round Cistern for the night. The king gave orders for all to mount
and ride, and, as they valued their honour, not to think of gain, but
devote all their energy to routing the Turkish soldiers. He took his
usual post in the van; the [Sidenote: _June 23_] French formed the
rearguard. By daybreak they were all close to their destination, and
were forming up for attack when another scout came to warn them that
their approach had been discovered and the caravan was on the alert.
Richard sent forward some archers, Turcoples, and crossbowmen, to
harass the enemies and impede their movements till he could come up
with his other troops. The caravan remained stationary; the Moslem
troops took up a sheltered position close to the hills and greeted
their assailants with a thick cloud of missiles “which fell on the
ground like dew,”[946] but it was all in vain. “Those of our men who
were reputed bravest,” confesses Bohadin, “were glad to save their
lives by the fleetness of their horses. It was long since Islam had
had such a disgraceful defeat.”[947] Aslam, to the neglect of whose
counsel the disaster was due, had before the fight began withdrawn
with his troops into the mountains. Thither the others fled, chased
by the Frank cavalry, while the infantry turned to secure the
caravan. Aslam, seeing the Christian forces thus divided, seized
his opportunity to send down by a side path a party of horsemen who
attacked the Christian foot; but the attack was beaten off, and the
caravan surrendered.[948] The booty was immense; there were more than
four thousand camels laden with precious stores of the most varied
kind, gold and silver, silks and purple cloth, grain and flour, sugar
and spices, tents, hides, arms of all sorts; the horses and mules
were “altogether beyond counting”; and besides all this, the Egyptian
contingent so eagerly awaited by Saladin had lost nearly two thousand
men[949] and suffered a most ignominious defeat. “No tidings,” says
Bohadin, “ever dealt a more grievous wound to the heart of the Sultan
than those which were brought to him at the close of that day.”[950]
Saladin at once prepared for the siege which he now felt to be
imminent. He ordered his captains to take up their appointed
positions round the walls and make all ready for their defence, and
he caused the brooks and pools round about the city to be polluted,
the wells filled up, and the cisterns destroyed, so as to leave the
assailants no means of obtaining water, for it would be impossible
for them to dig new wells in that rocky soil. When all these
precautions were taken, however, he was still very anxious; for he
knew that among the Moslems, no less than among the Christians, there
was dissension as to the conduct of the war, and jealousy and mutual
distrust between the various nationalities of which his host was
composed; for although the Sultan’s subjects were all lumped together
indiscriminately by the Frank writers as “Turks” or “Saracens,” some
of them were in reality much less closely akin and much less alike
in origin, character, and habits, than were the men of England and
France and Italy and Germany. On the night of Wednesday July 1 he
called his emirs to a solemn council. By his desire Bohadin opened it
with an impassioned exhortation to all present to persevere in the
war, and proposed that they should all take an oath on the Sacred
Stone of the Temple to hold together till death. Saladin himself
appealed to them as “the only fighting force and sole stay of Islam,”
on whom depended the safety of all Mussulmans everywhere. They all
pledged themselves to stand by him till death. [Sidenote: _Thurs.,
July 2_] Next day, however, they held a meeting among themselves,
and some of them there expressed their disapproval of the Sultan’s
strategy in shutting up “the only fighting force and stay of Islam”
at Jerusalem; they believed it would result in the capture of the
city and the destruction of the army by a fate such as that of the
garrison of Acre, and thus bring the Mussulman dominion in Palestine
to ruin, and that the wiser course would be to risk a pitched battle,
which if they were victorious would shatter the enemy’s power and
enable the Moslems to recover all that they had lost, while if they
were defeated, they would indeed lose Jerusalem, but the army of
Islam would remain, and might hope to regain the city hereafter.
These criticisms were reported to Saladin, with a further warning
that if he persisted in his plan of defence, he must either himself
remain in the city or leave one of his family to take the command
there, as the Kurdish troops would not obey a Turkish emir nor the
Turks a Kurdish one. Personally he was willing to stay, but his
friends would not sanction a course which they felt might bring upon
Islam a double disaster in the loss of the city and the Sultan both
[Sidenote: _July 2_] at once. He and his devoted secretary spent the
whole night in deliberating and praying over the problems suggested
by [Sidenote: _July 3_] this communication; on the Friday morning
Bohadin advised his master to give up all attempts at finding a
solution of them and simply commit the direction of all his affairs
to a higher Power. The counsel was followed. That evening the officer
in command of the Moslem advanced guard sent word that “the whole
army of the enemies” had—seemingly on the preceding day—ridden out
to the top of a hill, stationed itself there a while, and then
ridden back to its camp; he had sent out scouts to ascertain what
[Sidenote: _Sat., July 4_] was going on. At daybreak next morning
this announcement was followed by another; the scouts had come in and
reported that a great discussion, lasting all night, had taken place
among the Christian leaders, and had ended at dawn in a decision to
retreat.[951]
The victors of Kuweilfeh seem to have reached Beit Nuba on June 30;
they had returned by easy stages by way of Ramlah, where they found
Count Henry with the troops which he had collected at Acre.[952]
At first the camp was filled with rejoicing over the spoil, which
Richard took care to distribute fairly among all ranks of the host;
but in a day or two the lesser folk began to clamour for an immediate
advance on Jerusalem. The native umpires who a fortnight before had
given their award against the siege repeated the arguments which
they had then used, laying special stress on the impossibility of
procuring water, now that all the artificial stores of it for two
miles round the city were known to have been destroyed by the enemy,
and at a season when every drop of moisture, except the little
fountain of Siloam, would be dried up by the heat of the Syrian
midsummer.[953] There were also other difficulties. One which Richard
had urged in January—the numerical insufficiency of the host—does
not seem to have been appreciably lessened by the results of Count
Henry’s recruiting expedition. The worst difficulty of all was
internal disunion. Hugh of Burgundy’s self-will and his jealousy
of Richard were shown more openly than ever now that his share of
the caravan spoils had made him independent of Richard’s bounty. He
and his men had long been in the habit, wherever the host went, of
camping apart from their fellow-Crusaders at night as if desirous
to avoid their company; by day, when they and the men of other
nations had to associate together, there were constant bickerings and
altercations; and the duke crowned all this mischief by “causing a
song full of all vileness to be made about the king, and this song
was sung amid the host. Was the king blameworthy,” asks the Norman
poet-chronicler, “when he in return made a song upon these people
who were always thwarting and insulting him? and truly no good song
could be sung about such outrageous folk.”[954] According to one
English writer, Hugh even entered into a secret negotiation with
Saladin, which the vigilance of a scout enabled Richard to unmask,
to the utter confusion of the duke; but the details of the story are
somewhat doubtful.[955] Clearly, however, there was no exaggeration
in the report transmitted to Saladin from his advanced guard as to
dissensions in the Christian camp; and there is no reason to doubt
the correctness of Bohadin’s account—derived likewise from the
statements of a scout who was secretly present—of the final council
held on the night of Thursday-Friday, July 2-3. After much debate,
three hundred arbitrators were appointed from among the nobles and
knights; these three hundred delegated their powers to twelve others,
and these twelve chose three umpires, from whose decision there was
to be no appeal.[956] In the morning the pilgrims were, for the
second time [Sidenote: _July 3_] when at a distance of little more
than four hours’ march from their goal, told that they must prepare
for a retreat.[957]
The disappointment was perhaps all the more keenly felt because it
followed closely not only upon the victory over the Egyptians, but
also upon two incidents which had heightened the religious fervour
and thus encouraged the hopes of the Christian soldiers. Several
relics of the Holy Cross besides the famous one which had been lost
at Hattin were preserved in various places in Palestine, and had
been hidden at the time of the Saracen conquest to save them from
falling into Infidel hands. A Syrian bishop who had held the see of
Lydda is said to have come with a great company of men and women of
his flock and presented one of these fragments to Richard shortly
after the host reached Beit Nuba.[958] A little later—seemingly just
before Richard heard of the coming of the Egyptian caravan—the abbot
of Saint Elias, a monastery situated on the road from Jerusalem to
Bethlehem,[959] came and told the king that he had a piece of the
Cross hidden in a place known only to himself, which Saladin, who
knew the relic had been secreted, had vainly tried to bribe him into
revealing. Richard rode with him to the place and brought the sacred
treasure back, to the great joy of the host.[960] If we may trust
an English writer who, though he did not take part in the Crusade,
had a special opportunity of obtaining information about Richard’s
personal share in it, a third fragment of the Holy Rood came into
the king’s hands under yet stranger circumstances, one of which may
possibly have had some influence on his conduct two [Sidenote: _July
3_] months later. On the last night of the army’s sojourn at Beit
Nuba a monk brought him a message from a certain hermit who dwelt on
the “Mount of Saint Samuel”—that is, Nebi Samwîl, the Arabic name for
what the Crusaders usually called the Montjoie—bidding him, in God’s
Name, come to him without delay. Richard arose, called up an escort
of horsemen, and rode to the place. The hermit was believed to have
the spirit of prophecy; he wore no clothes, and was covered only by
his long unshorn hair and beard. Richard, after gazing for a while
in wonder at this strange-looking personage, asked him what was his
will. The hermit led his guest into an oratory, removed a stone from
the wall, and brought out a wooden cross “of a cubit’s length” which
he reverently handed to the king, telling him it was made from the
sacred Tree of Calvary. He added a prediction that the king would
not at this time succeed in winning the land, however hard he might
strive for it; and to demonstrate the reality of his own prophetic
gift, he further foretold his own death on that day week. Richard
took him back to the camp to prove whether his words would come true.
Seven days afterwards the prophet died.[961] Sixty years later, there
was a tradition in Palestine that on one occasion when the men of the
Third Crusade, on the point of marching upon the Holy City, were by
the jealousies among their leaders compelled to turn back, a knight
in Richard’s service “cried out to him, ‘Sire, sire, come here and
I will shew you Jerusalem.’ And when he heard that, he cast his
surcoat before his eyes all weeping, and said to our Lord: ‘Fair Lord
God, I pray Thee that Thou suffer me not to behold Thy Holy City,
since I cannot deliver it from the hands of Thine enemies.’”[962]
This incident, in itself quite possible, is in Joinville’s report of
the story placed in a setting of which the details are certainly not
historically accurate. If it really occurred, its true place is most
probably at the close of Richard’s nocturnal visit to the Mount of S.
Samuel, as the sunrise on July 4 lighted up the lower slopes of the
mountain-range of which that eminence was the crown, and revealed the
city on its coign of vantage at the south-eastern angle of [Sidenote:
_July 4_] the plateau. A few hours later the whole host was back at
Ramlah.[963]
The umpires at Beit Nuba had reasoned soundly from the premisses
before them; and those premisses were sound likewise, except in one
particular: the Franks did not—as we do from Bohadin—know what was
passing behind the scenes in the Saracen headquarters. They therefore
probably over-estimated the enemy’s powers of resistance. On the
other hand, there was a similar miscalculation on the Moslem side;
Saladin’s anxiety and alarm would scarcely have been so great had he
realized how completely the unity of the Christian host was broken.
Even when fully assured that the Franks had really withdrawn from the
neighbourhood of Jerusalem, he was still extremely uneasy, fearing
they might now take up again the project of an attempt on Cairo, and
feeling by no means sanguine that they might not, with the coast
of Palestine in their possession and with the supply of beasts of
burden which they had recently acquired, bring it to a successful
issue.[964] A new game of diplomacy now began. The first move in it
was made, on the morrow, if not on the very day, of the retirement
from Beit Nuba, in the name of the king-elect of Jerusalem, Henry of
Champagne; but the Saracens at once recognized that the king-elect
could be nothing more than a cipher so long as he was uncrowned and
his uncle was in the land, and that the game was not worth playing
with anyone except the king-guardian. From him overtures for peace
arrived on July 6, and negotiations continued till the 19th. It is
difficult to decide how far either the king or the Sultan was in
earnest. Richard made so many different proposals that they cannot
all have been seriously meant. He and Saladin alike seem to have been
really disposed to content themselves with a division of the land;
each of them hoping that the division would be merely temporary,
and would serve as a breathing-space enabling his own party to
recover strength for a new effort. On one point, however, both were
equally determined not to give way. Saladin, while agreeing that the
Franks should keep the sea-coast, made it an essential condition
that Ascalon should be again dismantled. This Richard persistently
refused; so on July 19 the negotiations dropped, and Saladin began to
prepare again for war.[965]
His rival was doing the like. By Richard’s orders three hundred
Knights of the Temple and Hospital had already gone from Casal Maen
(whither he and the host had retired on July 6)[966] to Darum,
dismantled that fortress, and transferred its garrison to Ascalon
to reinforce the defences of “Syria’s Summit.” As soon as the three
hundred returned, the whole host proceeded to Joppa; here the sick
folk were left, and also some of the able-bodied for the greater
security of the place; the rest set out on July 21 or 22 for Acre,
which they reached on Sunday the 26th.[967] The weary pilgrims of
lower rank grew more dispirited at every stage in this northward
journey; Richard having given orders for the whole fleet to accompany
it, whence they inferred that he intended sailing for Europe
immediately. He had, however, another purpose. The Frank re-conquest
of the coast of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem was still incomplete;
the northernmost sea-port of the realm, Beyrout, was still in Moslem
hands. An attempt on Beyrout had been one of the alternative schemes
suggested by Richard before the final retirement from Beit Nuba.
The place, though of less military importance than Tyre or Acre or
Ascalon, was well worth the winning; it had a good harbour, and
its loss would deprive the Moslems of their only remaining outlet
on the sea between Laodicea and the mouth of the Nile. As soon as
Acre was reached, [Sidenote: _Sunday, July 26_] Richard despatched
seven galleys to make a demonstration before Beyrout. On the morrow
(Monday, July 27) he took leave of the Knights of the Temple and
Hospital—with whom he had always acted in concert, and who probably
undertook the control of the host during his absence—and prepared to
follow next day with the rest of the fleet.[968] But his plans were
upset by an unexpected counterstroke on the part of Saladin.
The Sultan had been rejoined at Jerusalem on July 17 by his
son Ed-Daher, who ruled at Aleppo; and Safadin, recalled from
Mesopotamia, was close at hand with further reinforcements when
on the 22nd Saladin learned that the Christian host had left
Joppa and was on its way to Beyrout. He at once went to Beit Nuba
to reconnoitre, leaving orders for all his troops to follow him
thither. Safadin joined [Sidenote: _July 23_] him there next day.
By the 25th their united forces were [Sidenote: _July 25_] on the
old camping-ground of the Franks between Lydda and Ramlah. On the
26th—the day of Richard’s arrival at Acre—Saladin reconnoitred Joppa;
before nightfall his men were around its walls, and on Monday 27th
they assaulted the town.[969] After four days of furious fighting
Saladin’s engines made, on Friday the 31st, a breach through which
his men swarmed into the town; it was given over to pillage and
slaughter, and the garrison in the citadel promised to surrender,
on terms arranged between them and the Sultan, if they were not
relieved before three o’clock on the morrow.[970] They were in hourly
expectation of Richard’s return; for they had, as soon as the Moslem
army came in sight, despatched by sea an urgent message to recall him
from Acre.[971] The message was delivered to Richard as he sat in
his tent on the evening of Tuesday July 28.[972] He at once summoned
the host to go back with him to Joppa; but the French “declared
they would not stir a foot with him.”[973] A number of Templars,
Hospitaliers, and other “good knights,” however, set off by land to
the rescue, while Richard with another party, comprising the rest of
his own men and some Genoese and Pisans, went on board the galleys.
The land party on reaching Caesarea learned that the road between
that place and Arsuf was blocked by “the son of the Assassin”;
not daring to risk an encounter with forces of whose numbers they
knew nothing and of whose military repute all Syria stood in awe,
they made no attempt to proceed further. The ships were caught by
a contrary wind off Haïfa, detained by it for three days, and so
dispersed by its violence that only three of them at last came in
sight of Joppa, late in the [Sidenote: _July 31_] evening of Friday
the 31st, and had to wait at a safe distance for the rest to overtake
them, and also for the light of day.[974] One of the three carried
Richard, chafing sorely at all these hindrances: “God, have mercy!
Why dost Thou keep me here, when I am going in Thy service?”[975] In
the afternoon of that same Friday Saladin had received from Acre a
letter telling him that Richard had given up his intended expedition
against Beyrout and was hastening to the relief of Joppa. The Sultan
and his confidant Bohadin at once decided that the agreement with the
garrison must be flung to the winds, and an effort made to get the
garrison out of the citadel before Richard should arrive. Saladin
spent some time in haranguing his troops and exhorting them to storm
it that evening; but they were worn out with the day’s fight, and
so sullenly unresponsive to his appeal that he dared not give it
the form of a command; and at last he and his staff withdrew for
[Sidenote: _Aug. 1_] the night to their usual quarters in the rear.
At daybreak they heard a trumpet-call, and learned that the king’s
ships were in sight. Saladin despatched Bohadin with orders to “get
into the citadel and get the Franks out of it.” With a body of troops
Bohadin entered the town, went to the castle gate, and bade the
garrison come out. They answered that they would do so, and began
to make their preparations. The morning wore on to noon, and still
the relief party showed no sign of trying to disembark: Richard in
fact, while the garrison were waiting for him to land, was waiting
to ascertain what had become of them, for the shore was lined and
the town, to all appearance, filled with Mussulman troops, so that
the whole place, as seen from the sea, looked as if it were in the
enemy’s hands. On the other hand, it seems that only a small part
of the fleet was as yet visible from the castle-tower. The garrison
therefore, growing hopeless of rescue, yielded to Bohadin’s urgency
and began to march out. Forty-nine men, besides some women and some
horses, thus came forth.[976] As each man passed through the gate he
paid down the ransom appointed in the capitulation, although the hour
fixed for its fulfilment had not yet come; and a Frankish version of
the story adds that in some cases at least, as soon as the money was
paid, the payer’s head was struck off by the Turkish guards.[977]
Suddenly the procession stopped. The ships were spreading out in
line and becoming more distinguishable under the noon-tide sun; the
Moslems could see that there were at least thirty-five; the anxious
watchers on the castle-tower could probably see that there were more
than fifty. The remaining men in the citadel hastily put on their
armour, made a sally, and drove Bohadin and his followers out of the
town. They themselves, however, were quickly driven back, and the
fighting became fiercer and more confused than ever. Once more the
garrison, in despair, sent the Patriarch of Jerusalem (who chanced
to be in Joppa when the siege began) and a chaplain to renew their
offer of submission to Saladin on the terms originally proposed.[978]
Then another priest, “after commending himself to the Messiah” as
Bohadin says, leaped from the top of the tower into the harbour.
Falling in shallow water, with soft sand beneath it, he was unharmed,
and made his way to the nearest galley, whence he was transported
to that of the king.[979] “Gentle king,” said he, “the people who
await you here are lost, unless God and you have compassion on them.”
“How!” cried Richard, “are any of them still living? Where are
they?” “Before the tower, awaiting their death.” Richard hesitated
no longer. “God sent us here to suffer death, if need be; shame to
him who lags behind now!”[980] The royal galley, “painted all red,
with a red canopy on the deck, and a red flag,” shot forward;[981]
the king, without greaves or mail-shoes, sprang out, up to his waist
in the water, came first ashore, and dashed into the midst of the
Turks, cutting them down right and left. His shipmates followed close
behind him; the other vessels quickly came up, and each disembarked
its freight of men; and in little more than an hour the shore of the
harbour was cleared of Turks.[982] Bohadin, under whose eyes all
this had taken place, went round to Saladin’s tent in the rear and
whispered his tidings into the ear of the Sultan, who was writing (or
dictating) a letter for the Patriarch and the chaplain to take back
to their friends in the citadel. The envoys were present; Saladin
detained them till some flying Moslems passed the door of the tent.
Then he placed the envoys under arrest, and ordered his whole army to
retreat to Yazour.[983]
Meanwhile Richard, as soon as the harbour was cleared, had set his
men to barricade it on the land side with planks, barrels, pieces
of old ships and boats, and other wood hastily piled up to form a
rampart behind which they could safely defy the Saracens.[984] He
himself made his way “by [Sidenote: _Aug. 1_] a stair that led to
the house of the Templars” into the town, where he found a crowd of
Saracens so busy pillaging that they made no attempt to interfere
when he caused his banners to be reared on the walls as a signal
to the Christians in the tower. These latter at once sallied forth
to meet him, and the Turks, thus caught at unawares between two
fires, were slaughtered wholesale. Then the victors turned towards
the retreating army of Saladin. The crossbowmen tried to overtake
it with a volley of arrows; the king galloped after it on a horse
which he had found in Joppa; but as this and two other horses, also
found in the town, were the only ones he possessed, he soon gave up
the pursuit, and pitched his tents on the site lately occupied by
Saladin,[985] in the open ground where the Frank host had camped
in the previous October, between Joppa and S. Habakkuk’s.[986] No
sooner was Richard in his tent than several of Saladin’s emirs and
favourite Mameluks went to visit him; seemingly not as accredited
envoys from the Sultan, but to ascertain informally what was now
the king’s attitude towards the question of peace. He received them
willingly, and sent a special invitation to the chamberlain Abu Bekr,
who had previously acted as a medium of communication between him and
Safadin, to join the assembly. Abu Bekr found him talking over the
recent fight in a tone half serious, half bantering. “That Sultan of
yours is truly admirable! But why did he run away at my very landing?
I did not come prepared to fight; I am still in my boating-sandals!
Why, in God’s Name, did he retreat, when I thought he could not
take Joppa in two months, and he took it in a couple of days!” Then
he turned to Abu Bekr and spoke seriously: “Greet the Sultan from
me, and beg him to let us have peace. My country needs me, and the
state of things in this land is bad alike for you and for us.”
Saladin was still close at hand, and twice in that night proposals
and counter-proposals of terms passed between the two sovereigns.
Ascalon was still the stumbling-block; neither of them would renounce
his claim to it. To a daring suggestion of Richard’s, that Saladin
should enfeoff him after the manner of the Franks with the counties
of Ascalon and Joppa, to hold by military service including, if
required, the personal service of the king himself—“of which,” he
added, “you know the value”[987]—Saladin returned an answer in which
Ascalon was not named at all. The Sultan [Sidenote: _Aug. 2_] then
followed his army to Yazour, and thence, early next morning, went
to Ramlah.[988] Thither a messenger from Richard followed him, and
pressed for a definite cession of Ascalon. Saladin’s reply was given
instantly and finally: “It is impossible.”[989]
[Sidenote: _Aug. 2-4_]
That Sunday and the two following days were spent by Richard and
his men in repairing the walls of Joppa as well as they could by
piling up the stones without mortar or cement.[990] On one of these
three days they were joined by Count Henry, who came from Caesarea
in a galley; the rest of the troops being still detained there by
“the ambushes of the Turks” on land and the lack of ships to convey
them by sea.[991] It was seemingly to ascertain what chance there
was of intercepting these troops, of whose departure from Acre he
had only just been made aware, that Saladin on the [Sidenote: _Aug.
4_] Monday (August 4) moved northward as far as the banks of the
Aoudjeh (the River of Arsuf). There, however, he further learned
that they were safe in Caesarea, and also that a not less important
and probably easier prey lay within his reach—King Richard and his
little band, in their unprotected tents in the fields outside Joppa.
At nightfall he turned back, hoping to surround Richard’s camp in
the darkness and surprise it at break of day.[992] The first body of
Moslem troops which approached the camp, however, was discovered by a
watchful Crusader who at once aroused the king. Richard slipped his
mail-coat over his night-gear, sprang bare-legged on horseback, and
with the few knights in his company—most of them dressed and armed
in a like hasty fashion—began to array his men.[993] The Saracens,
finding they could not take him by surprise, sent a party to force an
entrance through the still uncompleted walls into the town, in order
to deprive him of a refuge there.[994] The scared townsfolk sent
word to the king that they were all lost, for “a countless host of
heathen” were taking possession of the city. Richard sternly silenced
the messenger, swore to cut off his head if he let anyone else hear
the message, and went on with his preparations for defence. Behind a
low barricade hastily made up of pieces of wood from the tents the
tiny army was arrayed with the utmost skill[995] so as to leave in
its ranks no opening for attack. Then the king addressed his men,
bidding them have no fear of the foe; he himself, he added, would go
and see what was taking place in the town.[996] His knights numbered
some [Sidenote: _Aug. 5_] three or four score,[997] but the horses
only six.[998] On these five of the knights and a “hardy and valiant”
German man-at-arms named Henry, bearing the king’s banner,[999]
mounted, and with a few crossbowmen[1000] followed the king as
with lance and sword he forced his way into Joppa. He probably
found its Turkish invaders engaged, as he had found them before, in
pillaging, and less numerous than the messenger had represented, for
he very soon drove them all out. After ordering a detachment of the
garrison to come down from the tower and guard the town against
further attack,[1001] he rode down to the shore, brought back thence
some townsfolk who had fled to the ships for refuge, and all the
sailors except just enough to take care of the ships, and with these
reinforcements, in addition to his gallant six, rejoined his little
army in the field.[1002]
Saladin meanwhile had arrayed his host in seven divisions.[1003]
While the first of these was advancing to the attack, the king issued
his final orders. “Only keep your ranks unbroken—let not the foes
make their way in. If we stand thus firm against their first onset,
we may make light of the next, and by God’s help we shall defeat
them. But if I see one of you, through fear, giving way or yielding
ground or trying to flee, I swear by Almighty God I will straightway
cut off his head!”[1004] So when the first division of the Turks
charged them the Christian ranks stood immoveable and impenetrable.
The attacking force fell back, baffled and amazed, stood for a
while within two spears’ length of them without any interchange of
hostilities except verbal ones, and then retired, grumbling, to its
original position.[1005] Richard burst out laughing: “Did not I
tell you how it would be? Now they have done their utmost; we have
only to stand firm against every fresh attempt, till by God’s help
victory shall be ours.”[1006] As he ceased speaking, another body
of Turks came forth; they, too, fell back from the living wall, now
firmer than ever, and retired to their former station. This process
was repeated five or six times, while the day wore on “from prime
almost to nones.”[1007] The Arab historians relate that in one of
the intervals between these futile charges Richard rode alone, lance
in hand, along the whole front of the Moslem army, challenging it
to fight, and not a man came forth to meet him;[1008] according to
one account, he ended by stopping his horse midway between the two
hosts, asking the Moslems for some food, and calmly dismounting to
eat what they gave him.[1009] It was not only the dread of him
that held the enemies in check; Saladin’s troops were thoroughly
discontented with their ruler’s conduct of this expedition to Joppa
and with its failure to bring them either the success or the booty
which they had expected. In vain the Sultan rode up and down among
them, promising them splendid rewards for one more charge; his son
Ed-Daher sprang forward alone, only to be hastily called back by
his father, for not another man broke the stillness of the silent,
motionless ranks.[1010] At last, it seems, they yielded a sullen
obedience to Saladin’s impassioned exhortations, and made another
attempt to advance. But this time a volley of arrows, with which
the crossbowmen had hitherto speeded their retirement, greeted
them on their approach, and under cover of this the king and his
men charged. “Brandishing his lance, and laying about him as if he
had done nothing yet that day,”[1011] Richard with his few mounted
followers burst right through the Turkish host and came out facing
the rearguard. Looking round, he saw that the earl of Leicester was
unhorsed and in danger of capture; he at once rescued him and helped
him to remount. A crowd of Turks rushed at a banner which from its
device—a lion—they probably took for the king’s, but which seems to
have been really that of Ralf of Mauléon. Ralf was surrounded, and
was actually being led away by his captors when he, too, was rescued
by his sovereign.[1012] At another moment a large body of Turks
closed in upon Richard, all alone; but he laid about him with his
sword, smiting off heads and limbs on every side, till he had slain
or disabled so many of his assailants that the rest took to flight
“as from the face of a furious lion.” His first sudden irruption had
thrown into confusion the whole array of Saladin’s host; and when the
guard which he had left in Joppa, seeing how matters were going, came
out to help their comrades, the Moslem defeat became a rout.[1013] At
the close of the long day’s fighting the victor returned “with arrows
sticking out all over him like the bristles of a hedgehog, and with
his horse in the same plight.”[1014] Saladin retired to Yazour, and
on the following day to Natroun.[1015]
The victory at Joppa was Richard’s crowning exploit in Holy Land; and
he himself very soon realized that it was to be his last. Both in him
and his men the tremendous physical and mental strain of those five
August days was followed by a sudden breakdown which was aggravated
by the unhealthiness of their surroundings. The Turks when they
evacuated Joppa had not only left in its streets the bodies of those
who had been slain in the siege, but also slaughtered all the pigs
in the town and interspersed the carcases with the human corpses,
as an insult to the Christians.[1016] No sanitary measures had been
possible during the stress of the succeeding days; the consequence of
this state of things had therefore spread beyond the walls on every
side, and the king and his men, too much exhausted to move far enough
to escape from it, lay helpless and sick almost unto death.[1017]
Nevertheless, Richard’s next message to the Sultan was practically
a defiance. The envoy whom he had despatched on August 2 to Saladin
at Ramlah had proceeded thence on a further mission to Safadin, who
was then lying sick at Gibeon, near Neby Samwîl.[1018] This envoy
returned to Joppa on the 7th or 8th[1019] with a message from Safadin
proposing a colloquy. He was accompanied by the chamberlain Abu
Bekr. Richard gave an audience to Abu Bekr outside the town and said
to him: “How far am I to put myself in the Sultan’s hand before he
will deign to receive me? Truly, I was very desirous of returning
home; but now I have decided to stay through the winter, and want no
further conferences with you.”[1020] For nearly three weeks after
this, Saladin made no move of any kind; he was [Sidenote: _Aug. 20_]
waiting for reinforcements. On the 20th the long-desired contingent
from Egypt at last arrived; and two days later the forces of the
lands beyond the Euphrates were brought up by the Sultan’s once rebel
great-nephew, El Mansour. Messengers still passed between the two
camps; Richard, exhausted by fever, asked Saladin for fruit and snow,
which the Sultan readily sent him; the friendly intercourse enabling
each party to learn how matters went with the other.[1021] Meanwhile
Richard’s sickness was increasing, and so were his anxieties.
In vain he sent Count Henry back to Caesarea to insist that the
laggards there should come and help to hold the land; they would
not stir. Then he called Henry, the Templars, and the Hospitaliers
around his bed, and begged that some of them would take charge of
Ascalon and others of Joppa, and thus set him free to seek pure air
and medical treatment at Acre, as the only chance of restoring his
health. “But they all declared they would not undertake the custody
of the fortresses without him; and they went out [of his tent]
without another word.”[1022] A [Sidenote: _Aug. 9-26_] proclamation
published throughout the coast-towns, calling upon all fit men to
come and serve under the king at his expense, brought a crowd of
foot-soldiers, but so few horsemen that he was compelled to reject
them all, both horse and foot, as useless for his purpose.[1023] As
the conviction grew upon him that he must either quit the country
or die in it, he felt also that in either case, if he left it in
its present unsettled condition, the whole labour of the Crusade
would be lost, and thus that a truce on almost any terms had become
a necessity for the realm’s sake as well as for his own.[1024]
He therefore asked that Abu Bekr might be sent to him once more.
Through this man the king intimated his willingness, if Saladin still
absolutely insisted on the restitution of Ascalon to the Moslems, to
accept a money indemnity for the expense which he had incurred in
fortifying the place, and to abide by the other conditions which he
had formerly agreed upon with Safadin.[1025]
On the morrow—Friday, August 28—Bedr-ed-din Dolderim, the emir in
command of the Moslem advanced guard, sent to ask the Sultan whether
he might accede to a request which had been made to him by five Frank
officers, one of them an intimate counsellor of Richard’s—probably
the bishop of Salisbury, Hubert Walter[1026]—for a parley. With
Saladin’s consent the parley took place; and the same night
Bedr-ed-din in person reported to his sovereign that, according to
these men, Richard now consented to give up Ascalon [Sidenote: _Aug.
28_] unconditionally. Saladin refused to proceed further without
some security that on this point the king would not go back from
his word. Next day Bedr-ed-din announced that he had received, by a
sure hand, Richard’s pledge on the subject. Saladin then called his
council together and with them drew up the details of the partition
of the land. The king was to have Joppa and its dependent territory,
except Ramlah, Lydda, Ibelin, Yebna, and Mirabel; also Acre, Haïfa,
Arsuf, and Caesarea, with all their dependencies except Nazareth and
Safforia. These terms were drawn up in writing and carried back to
Richard by an envoy who came from him on the afternoon of Saturday,
August 29, and returned to Joppa with a Moslem colleague next day.
Richard, when the terms were read to him, denied that he had ever
withdrawn his claim to compensation; but as “the persons who had gone
to Dolderim” all declared that the thing was so, he answered: “If I
did say it, I will not go back from my word. Tell the Sultan I agree
to these conditions; only I appeal to his generosity, and acknowledge
that if he grants me anything further, it will be of his own bounty.”
He then sent the envoys on to Safadin, to beg that he would obtain
from Saladin the cession of Ramlah.[1027]
Saladin was quite as anxious for a truce as Richard could be. On the
night of August 27 he had despatched several emirs on a reconnoitring
expedition to ascertain the chances of success in another attempt on
Joppa, or, failing this, a night attack on Ascalon. They came back to
him at Ramlah with tidings that there were at Joppa scarcely three
hundred mounted troops, most of whom had only mules for chargers.
Yet against this small and ill-mounted force Saladin dared not pit
his great army, “because,” says Bohadin, “he knew that his men were
weakened and wearied and longing for their homes, and he feared that
they would refuse, as they had refused once already at Joppa, to
attack the foe, or would desert him altogether.”[1028] He therefore
drew up his final terms on Monday, August 31. The truce was to last
for three years, beginning on Wednesday, September 22. Ramlah or
Lydda was to be added to the king’s share of the land, or even both
places, unless he would be content with half of each; and Ascalon
was to be dismantled again. All the Moslem territories were to be
included in the truce, and also the princes of Antioch and Tripoli.
When on September 1 the schedule was brought to Richard, he said he
was too ill to read it, but he added: “I have already confirmed the
agreement by giving my hand on it.” Count Henry and the other leaders
were then informed of its details, and accepted them all, including
the proposed partition of Lydda and Ramlah. Next day (Wednesday,
September 2) they and Saladin’s envoys all met in Richard’s tent.
Richard again confirmed the truce by giving his hand to the Moslems;
they asked him for his oath, but he explained that it was not
customary in the West for a king to swear on such occasions, and they
accepted the explanation. The other Frank leaders then took the usual
oath, and several of them went back with the Moslems to Saladin’s
camp to witness his ratification of the treaty.[1029] Immediately
afterwards Richard despatched to Saladin a special message setting
forth his own purpose in making the truce. That purpose, he said, was
first to revisit his home-lands and see how they did, and next, to
collect there men and money wherewith he hoped to return and to wrest
from the Sultan the whole “Land of Jerusalem.” Saladin answered in
the spirit of true chivalry: if he were to lose the Land, he would
rather it were won by Richard than by any prince whom he had ever
known.[1030]
The dismantling of Ascalon was a precaution on which Richard had
insisted when he found himself compelled to cede the place; if the
Moslems must have it, they should at any rate be unable to make any
military use of it till they had had the expense and trouble of
rebuilding it again. The work of demolition was entrusted to the
joint superintendence of a party of Moslems and one of Franks, who
all set out for Ascalon on September 5, and who were also to bring
back its Frankish garrison.[1031] As under the terms of the truce
Christian pilgrims were to have free access to the Holy Sepulchre,
the rest of the Franks at Joppa and many from Acre and elsewhere now
began crowding to Jerusalem to fulfil their vow of pilgrimage.[1032]
An English writer tells us that some of them urged the king to do
likewise; “but his lofty spirit would not suffer him to accept from
the grace of a heathen ruler a privilege which he had been unable to
obtain as a gift of God.”[1033] On the night of Tuesday, September
9, he set out on his northward journey.[1034] Haïfa, in its quiet,
sheltered corner between the foot of Carmel and the mouth of the
Kishon, and with its outlook northward across the sea to Acre at the
opposite end of the bay, offered probably a better resting-place
for an invalid than Acre itself, to which it was near enough for
medical aid to be easily available. At Haïfa the king stayed a while
to recover his strength.[1035] Then he went on to Acre and completed
his preparations for departure. He ransomed William des Préaux, who
had been made a voluntary prisoner in his stead in September 1191, by
exchanging for him ten valuable Saracen captives.[1036] He called, by
public proclamation, all his creditors to come and claim whatever he
owed them, that they might all be paid in full, “and even overpaid,
lest there should be any complaints or disputes after he was gone
about anything that they had lost through him.”[1037] He had some
months before made provision for the future of Cyprus, and also for
that of his earliest friend among the Franks in Holy Land, Guy of
Lusignan, who had so greatly helped him to conquer that island. He
had conquered it not for his own benefit, but for the benefit of
the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem, to which its preservation in
friendly hands was a matter of great importance. He at first agreed
to make it over to the Order of the Temple for twenty-five thousand
marks;[1038] but this agreement came to nothing; and when Henry of
Champagne was chosen King of Jerusalem in April 1192, Richard made
substantial compensation to the displaced King Guy by giving him the
island realm of Cyprus.[1039] The grant was perhaps put into legal
form during Richard’s last days at Acre.[1040] The two queens sailed
on Michaelmas day,[1041] the king on October 9.[1042]
* * * * *
The causes of the comparative failure of the third Crusade have been
much discussed; yet after following in detail the story of that
expedition one is led to marvel not at its so-called failure, but
at the extent of its success. The truce restored to the Christians,
for the period of its duration, the whole coast of Palestine from
Haïfa to Joppa, left the southern remainder deprived of its chief
stronghold, Ascalon, and secured to the pilgrims the right of free
and safe access to the holy places of Jerusalem. If at its expiration
Richard had been able to return—as he hoped and intended—to take up
again his task in Holy Land, he would have done so with far other
prospects of success than those with which he and his followers had
set out from Acre in 1190. Saladin himself regarded the position of
the Moslem power in Holy Land with grave misgiving. His own health
was failing, and he confessed to Bohadin his fears that in case of
his death the Franks would come forth from the strongholds which the
truce had placed in their hands, and once more become masters of the
country.[1043] It was to Richard that the measure of success gained
by the Crusade was mainly due; and this fact was fully recognized
by the Moslems. A writer of the next generation reports that “the
fear of him was so constantly in the hearts and on the lips of the
Saracens that when their children cried they said to them, ‘Be quiet!
England is coming!’ and when their horses started with affright, they
mocked at them saying, ‘What is the matter? Is England in front of
us?’”[1044] “England,” in the sense in which they used the word—as
representing England’s king—was destined never to confront them
again. But seven centuries later the attainment of the goal was to be
granted to “England” in another form, that of an army which, having
set out from what Richard had once proposed to secure as the fittest
starting-point for the purpose—Egypt—finally closed round the Holy
City by ways in every one of which it was almost literally treading
in the footsteps of the Lion-Heart.
BOOK III
RICHARD AND EUROPE
1192-1199
—Thy harvest, fame;
Thy study, conquest; war, thy game.
CHAPTER I
RICHARD AND THE EMPIRE
1192-1194
There was I beaten down by little men,
Mean knights, to whom the moving of my sword
And shadow of my spear had been enow
To scare them from me once.
After a last visit to Cyprus[1045]—perhaps for the purpose of
removing the officers whom he had placed there and transferring the
custody of the island to representatives of Guy—Richard directed
his course straight for Marseille, and in less than a month was off
the coast of Barbary, within three days’ sail of his destination.
Disquieting rumours had, however, reached him; from passing ships,
or at sea-ports where he had touched, there had come to him repeated
warnings that the count of Toulouse, so long his determined enemy and
now his unwilling vassal, was in league with some of the neighbouring
princes and nobles to seize him as soon as he should land. He could
not but suspect that [Sidenote: _Oct.-Nov._] Philip Augustus was
either an accomplice in the plot or would at least be only too
ready to support the plotters; he therefore suddenly altered his
course, and sailed to Corfu.[1046] It is difficult to guess why he
did not proceed through the Pillars of Hercules direct to England.
Instead, he seems to have deliberately chosen the much more hazardous
adventure of a voyage up the Adriatic and an overland journey through
the territories of the Empire. His motives for this strange choice
can only be conjectured. He may have counted on a personal meeting
with Henry VI as a means of renewing and cementing the old alliance
of England with the Empire, and thus securing a valuable support in
the struggle with France for which he knew he must prepare himself in
every possible way. But if so, the moment and the circumstances were
extraordinarily ill chosen. Richard indeed could not fully know how
untoward the circumstances really were. That the young Emperor was as
unscrupulous and false as his father had been upright and honourable;
that he was just then making an attempt—destined to failure—to obtain
possession of Naples; that on his way back to Germany Philip would
meet him; and that there were symptoms of coming trouble in the
Empire from the party of Richard’s brother-in-law Henry of Saxony, to
whom Richard, like his father, had given shelter and protection, and
at whose return to Germany in violation of an oath to set foot there
no more Richard was said to have connived[1047]—all these things
Richard could not know. But he did know, or ought to have known, that
the German contingent had been a source of constant disturbance in
the crusading host; that his own alliance with Tancred, the Emperor’s
successful rival for the crown of Sicily, had made the Emperor his
natural enemy; and that he had also a personal enemy—again of his
own making—in Duke Leopold of Austria, who, though his territorial
possessions were insignificant, was of considerable importance in
German politics by reason of his close family connexion with the
imperial house and with several of the chief feudataries of both the
German and Italian realms.
Richard’s scheme seems, in fact, to have been prompted by the spirit
of sheer adventure and knight-errantry; and in the same spirit he
set out to carry it into effect. On reaching Corfu he saw three
galleys lying off the coast of the mainland; he at once put off in
a little boat to hail them.[1048] [Sidenote: _Nov._] Their crews
were pirates, and instantly attacked the boat; but Richard, through
one of his sailors, entered into a parley with them, “and for their
laudable bravery and boldness” made a bargain that they should carry
him, with a few attendants,[1049] for two hundred marks of silver, to
Ragusa.[1050] Probably, and not unreasonably, he preferred to embark
with a crew as familiar with the intricacies of the Dalmatian coast
as they were hardened to its perils. So furiously, however, did the
wind drive the ships up the gulf that a wreck seemed imminent; and
the king made a solemn vow to spend a hundred thousand ducats in
building a church on whatever spot he should come safe to land.[1051]
He found refuge on a little rocky island called Lacroma, lying half a
mile south of Ragusa, and at that time forming part of the territory
of that city, which was an independent republic. The rulers of
Ragusa, on hearing of his arrival, begged him to accept a lodging
in their city, and gave him a respectful and hospitable welcome.
The chief inhabitants of Lacroma were a community of Benedictine
monks; Richard at once proposed to fulfil his vow by rebuilding their
monastic church. The rulers of the republic, however, represented to
him that the sum which he had vowed was out of all proportion to the
size of the monastery and the requirements of the monks, and would
be far better employed in rebuilding the cathedral church of Ragusa
on a scale befitting its metropolitan dignity. To this he agreed,
on condition that the republic should obtain the Pope’s sanction to
this deviation from the terms of his vow, and should at its own cost
rebuild the little church on the island; and that, further, the abbot
of Lacroma, assisted by his monks, should have in perpetuity the
privilege of celebrating Mass in the cathedral church once a year,
on the feast of the Purification of our Lady. Hereupon, it seems,
“the good king having borrowed a large sum of money for the purpose,”
the work was begun immediately. The zeal of the pilgrim king fired
that of the people of the diocese, and his gift, supplemented by
contributions from them, resulted in the erection of a church which
for nearly five centuries stood without a peer in Illyria for the
stately grace of its proportions and the beauty of its architectural
details.[1052] An earthquake destroyed it in 1667; but Richard had,
all unknowing, laid in a nation’s heart the foundation of something
more precious and more lasting than any material edifice. The little
republic of Ragusa kept her independence till 1810, when she was
conquered by Napoleon. Four years later she was annexed to Dalmatia
under the yoke of Austria. Although never before incorporated into
any of the Slavonic states which surrounded her, she had a natural
affinity with them; the greater part of her inhabitants were, like
theirs, of Serbian blood. Her cause thus became bound up with that of
the whole Serb race in its aspirations after freedom and a national
existence. When there came upon that sorely tried race the darkest
hour it had ever yet known, a Serbian statesman publicly appealed, as
the ground of his confidence in England’s help, to the memory of the
mutual obligations formed more than seven centuries before between
Ragusa and Richard the Lion Heart.[1053]
At Ragusa the king took ship again. What port he really made for
we cannot tell; for he was wrecked a second time, and came finally
ashore somewhere between Aquileia and [Sidenote: _Nov.-Dec._]
Venice.[1054] Stranded in this remote corner of the Italian
border-land, where almost every local magnate was a connexion or a
dependent of either the house of Montferrat, the duke of Austria, or
the Emperor, or of all three, Richard suddenly awoke to his danger.
He despatched one of his followers to ask Count Mainard of Gorizia,
the most powerful noble of the district,[1055] for a safe-conduct
for the little party; he bade the messenger describe them as Baldwin
de Béthune (who really was one of them), a merchant called Hugh,
and their companions, all pilgrims returning from Jerusalem; and
he also—most unwisely—sought to gain the favour of the count by
sending him, in the name of the “merchant Hugh,” a valuable ruby
ring. Mainard, who was a nephew of the marquis of Montferrat, gazed
intently at the ring, and then said: “His name is not Hugh; it
is Richard, the king. I have sworn to seize all pilgrims coming
from those parts and to accept no gift from any of them; but for
the worthiness of this gift, and of him who has honoured me, a man
unknown to him, by sending it, I return it and give him free leave
to depart.” On receiving this message the terrified pilgrims bought
some horses and set off in the middle of the night,[1056] Richard,
according to one account, disguised in the habit of the Temple,[1057]
of which Order there were several in the little company.[1058]
Their fears were well founded; Mainard and his men pursued them and
captured eight of the party.[1059] The rest made their way through
Friuli[1060] to Freisach in Carinthia;[1061] but Mainard had sent
spies to dog their steps all the way, and warned his brother,
Frederic of Pettau, to lie in wait for them there. Frederic chanced
to have in his household a Norman from Argenton, named Roger, who
had been in his service twenty years and whom he trusted implicitly.
He bade this man search the houses where pilgrims were wont to
lodge, if haply he might recognize the king by his speech or other
token; promising Roger half of the town if the prize were captured.
Roger soon penetrated his native sovereign’s disguise, and instead
of delating him, besought him with tears to flee at once, gave him
an excellent horse for the purpose, and then returned and told his
lord that the reports about Richard were all false. Frederic flew
into a rage and ordered all the pilgrims to be arrested. Meanwhile,
however, Richard with two companions had slipped out of the town.
For three days and three nights they rode without food; then hunger
[Sidenote: _Dec._] compelled them to halt at a little inn close to
Vienna.[1062] To pay for his lodging Richard was obliged to send one
of his attendants, who could speak German, into the city to change
some bezants. The lad made too much display of his commission and
of his self-importance; detained and questioned by the citizens, he
said that he was in the service of a rich merchant who was coming
to the city in three days. They let him go, and he hurried back to
his master and urged him to instant flight. Richard, however, was
so exhausted by his adventures by sea and land that he determined
to risk a few days’ longer stay, and sent the lad into the town
again several times to make purchases. Once—on December 20 or
21—the messenger was careless enough to go with his master’s gloves
stuck in his belt. He was seized by the authorities, beaten, and
tortured till he confessed who his master really was. The duke of
Austria, who was in the city, was immediately informed and the king’s
lodging [Sidenote: _Dec. 20-2_] surrounded. Richard, feeling himself
helpless among such a crowd of “barbarians,” managed to make them
understand that he was willing to surrender, but only to the duke in
person. Leopold came; Richard went forth to meet him and gave up his
sword.[1063] Leopold sent him to “Dirmstein,”[1064] Dirnstein or
Dürrenstein, a remote castle in the mountains near Krems, and placed
him in charge of a strong guard who were to keep watch over him with
drawn swords [Sidenote: _Dec. 28_] day and night.[1065] A week later
the Emperor triumphantly announced to Philip of France the fate which
had overtaken “that foe of our Empire and disturber of your realm,
the king of England.”[1066]
[Sidenote: _1193 Jan. 6_]
Henry was anxious to get Richard into his own keeping; but Leopold
was not disposed to part unconditionally with such a valuable
prize. On January 6 he brought his prisoner before the Emperor at
Ratisbon.[1067] “The evil counsels of Duke Leopold’s rivals,” says
an Austrian chronicler, “prevented an immediate conclusion of the
matter”; Richard was taken back to his Austrian prison,[1068] and
it was not till February 14 that the Emperor and the duke came to
terms. They began by laying down conditions to be required of the
king for his release. They decided that he should give the Emperor a
hundred thousand marks of silver, whereof Leopold should have half as
the dowry of Richard’s niece Eleanor of Britanny, who should marry
Leopold’s son; the marriage to take place and half the ransom to be
paid and divided at Michaelmas, the other half in the following Lent.
Richard was to set free, without ransom, Leopold’s relations Isaac
of Cyprus and his daughter. He was to give the Emperor fifty galleys
manned and furnished at his own cost, and carrying a hundred knights
and fifty crossbowmen; he was also to go in person, with another
hundred knights and fifty crossbowmen, with Henry to Sicily and
help him to conquer it. In other words, the king of England was to
be brought down to the level of the dukes of Austria and Suabia and
Bavaria as a vassal of the Empire, within which neither he nor any of
his predecessors, English, Norman, Angevin, or Poitevin, had ever
held a particle of land. For the fulfilment of these conditions he
was to give Henry two hundred hostages, who were not to be released
till he had, furthermore, obtained for Leopold absolution from
Rome—for the Pope on hearing of the capture of the royal Crusader had
at once excommunicated his captor.[1069] If Richard did not fulfil
all these conditions within a year, fifty of his hostages or he
himself, as Leopold might choose, should be restored to the latter.
The Emperor had to give his Austrian vassal two hundred sureties
for the fulfilment of two further stipulations exacted by Leopold
[Sidenote: _Feb._] before he would part with his prize. In case of
Henry’s death while Richard was in his custody, Richard was to be
given back to Leopold; and in case of Leopold’s death his son was to
step into his place for all the purposes of the treaty.[1070]
Henry of Hohenstaufen was a political visionary, obsessed, more
strongly perhaps than any other German ruler before our own day, by
the German dream of world-dominion; yet even he can scarcely have had
any real hope of extorting Richard’s consent to the terms laid down
in this curious document. Leopold of Austria was a practical-minded
person, and moreover knew Richard too well to have any illusions
on the subject; hence the strong safeguards by which he secured
his claims as the original captor of the prize—safeguards which
Henry dared not refuse to grant him. The Emperor could not afford
to forfeit either the friendship of the duke of Austria or the
advantages which the possession of Richard’s person would involve.
In the autumn of 1191 Henry had made an attempt to take possession
of Naples, and it had failed. The Guelfs had profited by his absence
from Germany to stir up discontent and prepare a rising there. In
November 1192 the bishop of Liége was murdered; the malcontents
ascribed the sacrilegious crime to the instigation of the Emperor.
The dukes of Brabant and Limburg (one of whom was brother and the
other uncle to the murdered prelate) and the archbishop of Cologne
were soon up in arms; the archbishop of Mentz, the duke of Bohemia,
and other feudataries quickly followed their example; and at the back
of the whole disturbance was King Richard’s brother-in-law, the old
Saxon “Lion.” Nearly half Germany was in revolt.[1071] It was thus a
matter of the utmost importance for the Emperor to secure the support
of the duke of Austria, whose power and influence already extended
considerably beyond the limits of the little territory from which he
took his chief title. Outside his own realm Henry of Germany had now
one ally, though the alliance was a secret one. Philip of France had
travelled home from Palestine very leisurely[1072] by way of Italy;
early in December 1191 he had met the Emperor at Milan,[1073] and
their meeting had resulted in an agreement, private and informal,
but well understood between them, to make common cause for the ruin
of Richard. The capture of the English king gave them an opening
for joint action sooner than they could have expected; and it also
gave Henry an opportunity of posing before his malcontent vassals
as supreme ruler, judge, and arbiter of all Europe. The actual
transfer of Richard from Leopold’s custody to Henry’s did not take
place till more than a month after the Würzburg compact was made;
it was evidently thus arranged that it might coincide with the
gathering of the imperial court for the Easter festival. On the
Tuesday in Holy Week, probably at Spire, Richard was brought before
the Emperor. Henry seems to have begun by demanding the full terms
drawn up at Würzburg; we are told that he “required many things to
which the king felt he could not consent, were it to save his very
life.” Next, the Emperor brought against his captive a string of
accusations, charging him with betrayal of the Holy Land,[1074]
complicity in the death of Conrad, and violation of some agreement
or compact said to have been made with Henry himself. Finally, some
envoys from France, whose appearance at this opportune moment must
surely have been pre-arranged, came forward and publicly “defied”
the English king in their sovereign’s name. Richard, however, was
ready with an answer to everything; he offered to stand to right in
Philip’s court concerning the matters in dispute between Philip and
himself, and met the Emperor’s charges with a fearless readiness
which enhanced the general admiration already won for him by his
frank yet dignified bearing. Henry saw that the feeling of the
assembly was with the prisoner; so he suddenly changed his tone,
assumed the character of Richard’s protector and friend, undertook
to make agreement between him and Philip, and while “the people who
stood around wept for joy,” showered upon him tokens of honour and
promises of aid and publicly gave him the kiss of peace. Hereupon
Richard, “through the mediation of the duke of Austria,” promised
the Emperor a hundred thousand marks by way of ransom and reward.
Henry answered that if his arbitration should not be successful he
would be satisfied without any payment at all; but according to some
envoys from England who were present, he on Maunday Thursday formally
accepted Richard’s offer with the addition of a promise on Richard’s
part to furnish him with fifty fully equipped galleys and two hundred
knights for a year’s service.[1075] The show of friendliness was
maintained, it seems, till the Easter festivities were over; then,
when the court broke up, Henry despatched his prisoner to Triffels, a
strong fortress on the highest point of the mountains between Suabia
and Lorraine. The castle was said to have been built specially to
serve as a prison for traitors to the Empire,[1076] and the imperial
insignia were also kept in it.[1077] Here the king was placed under a
strong guard of soldiers “picked out from among all the Germans for
strength and bravery.” Girt with swords, they kept watch on him, as
Leopold’s soldiers had done, day and night, and formed round his bed
a ring which none of his own servants who shared his captivity were
ever allowed to penetrate.[1078]
As soon as the justiciars in England heard of their sovereign’s
captivity they took what steps they could in his behalf. They sent
Bishop Savaric of Bath, who claimed some kinship with the house of
Hohenstaufen, to negotiate with the Emperor for his release,[1079]
and they endeavoured to ascertain where he was confined. All the
world knows the story, put into its earliest and most charming
literary shape by a French minstrel some seventy years later, which
has for all after-time linked the name of its hero Blondel with that
of the royal _trouveur_.[1080] Blondel de Nesle, a _trouveur_ of some
distinction, was a contemporary of Richard, and the story in itself
is not impossible. The minstrel of Reims represents Blondel as having
found Richard in the custody of the duke of Austria; if so, he must
have set out at the very first tidings of the capture. The searchers
officially sent from England, the abbots of Boxley and Robertsbridge,
evidently went after the object of their search was known to have
been transferred into the hands of the Emperor. They “wandered over
all Alemannia” (western Germany or Suabia) “without finding him,”
till they met him on Palm Sunday (March 21) at Ochsenfurt on his
way to Spire. His guards evidently allowed them to confer with him
freely; he was naturally delighted at the meeting, and questioned
them eagerly about the state of his realm and the attitude of his
vassals.[1081] The tidings they had to give him were not altogether
satisfactory. England was tranquil and loyal, in spite of John’s
efforts to make it otherwise. In Aquitaine a rising of the count
of Périgord, the viscount of La Marche, and “nearly all the Gascon
barons,” had been crushed by the seneschal of Gascony with the help
of Richard’s brother-in-law, the son of the king of Navarre, and the
victors had swept the country almost to the gates of Toulouse.[1082]
But the Norman and Angevin lands sorely [Sidenote: 1191 _Dec._]
needed the presence of their lord. At the close of 1191 King Philip
had reached Paris, and invited or summoned the seneschal and magnates
of Normandy to a meeting which [Sidenote: 1192] took place at Gisors
on January 20, 1192.[1083] He demanded the restitution of Aloysia
(who was in the tower at Rouen) [Sidenote: _Jan._] and of Gisors, and
the cession of the counties of Eu and Aumale, in virtue, seemingly,
of a document which he exhibited as “the agreement made between
himself and the king of England at Messina.” They answered that they
had no orders from Richard on the subject and would not act without
them.[1084] Philip then invited John to come over from England and
receive investiture of all Richard’s continental territories, and
the hand of Aloysia. John was nothing loth, but was detained in
England by a threat from his mother and the justiciars to seize all
his castles there if he crossed the sea. Next, Philip summoned his
host for an invasion of Normandy; but his barons refused to attack
[Sidenote: 1193] the lands of an absent Crusader.[1085] Early in
the following year—as soon as Richard was known to be safely out of
the way in a German prison—John made another attempt to seduce the
Norman barons from their allegiance. Failing in this, he proceeded
into France and did homage to Philip on the conditions which had been
proposed a year before.[1086]
Thus matters stood when the two English abbots set out on their
quest. They were present at the Maunday Thursday assembly at Spire,
and on their return home reported that “peace” had been there made
between the Emperor and the king.[1087] If Richard was under the
same delusion, he must have been speedily undeceived when he found
himself shut up within the gloomy walls of Triffels and denied all
further access to Henry’s presence.[1088] On the other hand, Henry
was in all likelihood quite as much disappointed by the failure of
all attempts to break the spirit of his prisoner. If we may trust
an English chronicler whose information was probably derived from
an eye-witness, Richard never gave his jailers the satisfaction of
seeing a cloud on his brow; he was “always cheery and full of jest in
talk, fierce and bold in action, according to circumstances. He would
tease his warders with rough jokes, and enjoy the sport of making
them drunk, and of trying his own strength against that of their big
bodies.”[1089] His deeper feelings were expressed in a song,[1090]
addressed to his half-sister Countess Mary of Champagne, which he
seems to have composed in two languages, French and Provençal, in
the autumn or early in the winter of 1193, and which may be roughly
translated thus:
“Feeble the words, and faltering the tongue
Wherewith a prisoner moans his doleful plight;
Yet for his comfort he may make a song.
Friends have I many, but their gifts are slight;
Shame to them if unransomed I, poor wight,
Two winters languish here!
“English and Normans, men of Aquitaine,
Well know they all who homage owe to me
That not my lowliest comrade in campaign
Should pine thus, had I gold to set him free;
To none of them would I reproachful be—
Yet—I am prisoner here!
“This have I learned, here thus unransomed left,
That he whom death or prison hides from sight
Of kinsmen and of friends is clean bereft;
Woe’s me! but greater woe on these will light.
Yea, sad and full of shame will be their plight
If long I languish here.
“No marvel is it that my heart is sore
While my lord[1091] tramples down my land, I trow;
Were he but mindful of the oath we swore
Each to the other, surely do I know
That thus in duresse I should long ago
Have ceased to languish here.
“My comrades whom I loved and still do love—
The neighbour-lords who were my friends of yore—[1092]
Strange tales have reached me that are hard to prove;
I ne’er was false to them; for evermore
Vile would men count them, if their arms they bore
’Gainst me, a prisoner here!
“And they, my knights of Anjou and Touraine—
Well know they, who now sit at home at ease,
That I, their lord, in far-off Allemaine
Am captive. They should help to my release;
But now their swords are sheathed, and rust in peace,
While I am prisoner here.”
Two other visitors besides the abbots seem to have found their way
to Richard before his incarceration at Triffels; the English Bishop
Hubert of Salisbury, who, learning in Sicily on his way home from
Palestine what had befallen his sovereign, changed his own course
and hurried to seek him out;[1093] and a Norman chaplain, William
of Sainte-Mère-Eglise. This latter Richard, before his own removal
from Spire, despatched to England on business connected with the
arrangements for the fulfilment of his promises to Henry, and also
for the elevation of Hubert to the see of Canterbury.[1094] Hubert
followed about the middle of April.[1095] Meanwhile Bishop William
of Ely had also come to the help of his royal master and friend. He
had been exiled from England by the queen-mother and the justiciars
in 1191 for misgovernment; but his personal loyalty to the king seems
never to have failed, and was certainly not doubted by Richard, who
had never deprived him of his office of chancellor. Through his
diplomacy the Emperor was induced to let his prisoner be brought to
meet [Sidenote: _April 19_] him at Hagenau. On April 19 Richard,
writing thence to his mother and his lieges in England, related that
the Emperor and Empress and their court had welcomed him with all
honour and loaded him with gifts, and that “an indissoluble mutual
bond of love” had been formed between him and Henry, each promising
to help the other to obtain and retain his rights against all men;
and that he was “staying with the Emperor”[1096] till some other
matters should be settled between them and seventy thousand marks
of the ransom paid. He urgently desired that this sum and hostages
for the rest should be collected with all speed and sent over under
the care of the bishop of Ely, whom he was apparently despatching to
England for that purpose. “Know ye for certain,” he added, “that were
we in England and free, we would give as great a sum, or a greater,
to secure the conditions which by God’s grace we have obtained, and
if we had not the money to our hand we would give our own person in
pledge for it to the Emperor rather than leave uncompleted that which
has been done.”[1097]
Richard evidently anticipated a speedy release, for he sent to
England not only for money and hostages, but also for ships, and for
the captain of his own ship, Alan Trenchemer; and bade Robert of
Turnham proceed thither “with his” (_i. e._ the king’s) “military
accoutrements”—as if he expected soon to require them there.[1098]
He seems to have really believed that the new agreement secured
for him the Emperor’s active support in the matter about which he
was most anxious—the impending struggle with Philip. The seneschal
and baronage of Normandy, as a body, had rejected the treasonable
proposals of John; but there was one traitor among them; on April
12[1099] Gilbert of Vacoeil, the constable of Gisors and Néaufle,
surrendered these two castles to the king of France. With these keys
of the border in his hands, Philip had no difficulty in entering
the duchy. In a few weeks he was master of the whole Vexin, the
county of Aumale, and the lands of Vaudreuil, Neufbourg, [Sidenote:
_April-May_] Evreux, and Gournay.[1100] He was thus in full career
of success when on hearing of the Hagenau agreement he urgently
besought the Emperor either to hand Richard over to him free “as his
homager,” or to keep him in a German prison as long as possible;
and he backed his request with a heavy bribe in money.[1101] Henry
saw that he could not make friends of both kings, and he was in
doubt which of the two would be the most useful friend or the
most dangerous foe; so he staved off the decision for a time,
placed Richard in confinement at Worms,[1102] and arranged to hold
a conference with Philip at Vaucouleurs on June 24 or 25.[1103]
Before that day came, however, the French alliance had ceased to be
of much consequence to Henry; for the matter in which he had been
most anxious to obtain Philip’s support, his quarrel with his own
feudataries, had been settled by other means. Richard, fearing that
if Henry and Philip should meet he would be given up to the latter,
“exerted himself greatly” that the meeting should be prevented, and,
to this end, that the Emperor and the German magnates should come
to an agreement; which, “owing to his urgency,” they did.[1104] The
result was that instead of a conference with Philip at Vaucouleurs,
Henry on June 25 opened at Worms a great Court[1105] which sat for
five days, and at which there were present, besides a crowd of his
own vassals, spiritual and temporal, four representatives of King
Richard—the bishops of Bath and Ely, and two of the justiciars from
England[1106]—and on the 29th the whole assembly confirmed by an oath
“on the soul of the Emperor” a new agreement between Henry and his
royal prisoner.[1107] The money total for the ransom was now raised
to a hundred and fifty thousand marks, of which a hundred thousand
were to be fetched from England by envoys who were to be despatched
thither by both sovereigns immediately. Richard was to give sixty
hostages to Henry for thirty thousand marks more, and seven hostages
to Leopold for the remaining twenty thousand. When these hostages
and the first hundred thousand marks were all received, Richard was
to be set free. There was, however, an alternative: “If the king
should fulfill the promise which he formerly made to the Emperor
concerning Henry sometime Duke of Saxony, the Emperor, letting the
king off fifty thousand marks, shall pay for him twenty thousand to
the Duke of Austria”; no hostages would then be required, and Richard
should be liberated as soon as the hundred thousand [Sidenote: _June
29_] marks were paid and his promise fulfilled. Furthermore, Richard
took an oath that in either case he would within seven months of his
return home send his niece to Germany to be married to Leopold’s
son.[1108]
What was the promise which Richard had made to the Emperor concerning
Henry the Lion, when it was made, and whether or not it was ever
fulfilled, we cannot tell; the only known mention of the matter is
the passage quoted above. From the fact that Richard did on his
release leave some hostages in Germany we might infer that he had
not done what he had promised; but this inference is doubtful,
for we shall see that the conditions of his release were altered
again before Henry let him go. Richard’s next step was to seize
his opportunity, while negotiations between Henry and Philip were
at a standstill, to make overtures to Philip. Immediately after
the council at Worms he despatched William of Ely to France with
orders to make “some sort of a peace” for him with the king. This
William did at Mantes on July 9. The terms consisted of a promise
in Richard’s name that he would leave to Philip’s discretion the
disposal of whatever territories within the Angevin dominions
were then occupied by Philip himself or by his men; that he would
perform the homages and services due for all and each of his French
fiefs, would grant an amnesty and restitution of their lands to
certain of his vassals[1109] who had incurred forfeiture, and would
clear off the debt which, it seems, Philip still claimed under the
treaty of 1189, by paying him twenty thousand marks in half-yearly
instalments of five thousand marks each, the first instalment to be
paid within six months after the payer’s release from captivity,
and Philip meanwhile to hold in pledge the castles of Loches,
Châtillon-sur-Indre, Driencourt and Arques; one of these to be
restored to Richard on the payment of each instalment of the money.
Philip promised that meanwhile, as soon as the castles were placed in
his custody, he would “receive the King of England into his favour
and make request to the Emperor for his liberation.”[1110]
In less than six months the German envoys returned from England,
bringing with them “the greater part” of the ransom—seemingly the
stipulated hundred thousand marks, for the Emperor wrote on December
20 to the English prelates, barons, and people, and Richard on
December 22 to the new archbishop of Canterbury, Hubert Walter,
announcing that the captive’s liberation was to take place on
Monday, January 17; adding that on the following Sunday (January
23, 1194) he was to receive the crown of the kingdom of Provence
which the Emperor had granted to him.[1111] Richard’s place of
confinement at this time was probably Spire. There, on the appointed
day, Henry held [Sidenote: 1194 _Jan. 17_] a council which “after
long discussion” was adjourned to [Sidenote: _Feb. 2_] re-assemble
at Mentz on Candlemas Day.[1112] At this adjourned meeting Richard
was present, with his mother, Archbishop Walter of Rouen, and the
bishops of Ely and Bath, who had all come to witness his release. To
the amazement of all parties, Henry proposed a yet further delay,
and shamelessly avowed his motive for the proposal. He had received
in a private audience at Spire, in January, some messengers charged
with letters from Philip and John. He now brought these messengers
before the council, and handed the letters to Richard. In them the
Lion-Heart’s overlord and his brother made to the Emperor three
alternative offers. He should receive from Philip fifty thousand
marks and from John thirty thousand if he would keep Richard prisoner
till Michaelmas; or a thousand pounds of silver (seemingly from
the two jointly) every month, so long as he chose to keep him; or
a hundred thousand marks from Philip and fifty thousand marks from
John if he would either keep him another twelvemonth or deliver him
up to them. Richard, in utter desperation, appealed to the prelates
and princes who had stood surety for the Emperor’s fulfilment of
the treaty drawn up at Worms.[1113] Two of them—the archbishops of
Mentz and Cologne—protested strongly against a breach of so solemn an
agreement; the other members of the council seem to have taken the
same side; and after a [Sidenote: _Feb. 4_] two days’ struggle Henry
yielded.[1114]
The day was a Friday; “an unlucky day,” remarks an English chronicler
of the time.[1115] There was a special reason for the remark. Henry,
as we have seen, had promised to invest Richard on his release with
the kingdom of Arles or Burgundy. This kingdom, as such, had ceased
to exist more than a century and a half before, and over a great
part of the lands which had composed it the German Emperors had
now no practical authority or control. It seems that at the last
moment Henry suddenly required his prisoner to do him homage, not
for Burgundy—of which we hear no more—but for all the possessions of
the Angevin house, including the kingdom of England; and Richard,
seeing no way of escape, and urged by his mother, went through a
ceremony of surrender, investiture and homage Which, if it had been
binding, would have made him a vassal of the Empire for the whole
of his dominions.[1116] Such a transaction was, however, void in
law, on two grounds. Firstly, no account was taken in it either
of the French king’s rights as overlord of Richard’s continental
territories, or of the immemorial right of the English Crown to
absolute independence. Secondly, Richard had been driven to it under
compulsion, as the only means of regaining his freedom and rescuing
his dominions from imminent peril—for a refusal would certainly have
resulted in an immediate alliance between Henry and Philip. Homage
done under such conditions was a mere empty form, a concession to the
vanity of the Emperor, who was ready to clutch at any expedient for
magnifying himself in the eyes of his own vassals and inflicting as
much outward degradation as he dared on the captive whom he—seeing
that he could now wring out of him no further profit, financial or
political—thereupon set at liberty.[1117]
Richard’s first act was the despatch of a messenger to Henry of
Champagne and the other Christian nobles in Syria to tell them that
he was free, “and that, if God would avenge him of his enemies
and grant him peace, he would at the appointed time come to help
them against the heathens.” [Sidenote: _Feb. 4_] On the same day
the Emperor and his magnates wrote to Philip and John bidding them
deliver up immediately whatever they had taken from Richard during
his captivity; otherwise restitution would be enforced by the writers
to the uttermost of their power.[1118] Protected by an imperial
safe-conduct to Antwerp, and accompanied by his mother and his
chancellor, Richard set out on a leisurely progress down the Rhine.
At Cologne he was sumptuously [Sidenote: _Feb. 20-22_?] entertained
for three days in the archbishop’s palace, and on the third day
was asked to attend Mass in the church of S. Peter. The day was
probably the festival of S. Peter’s Chair at Antioch (February 22);
Archbishop Adolf chose to act as precentor, and began the Mass not
with the proper introit, but with that of the feast of S. Peter in
Chains—“Now know I of a surety that the Lord hath sent His Angel and
hath delivered me out of the hand of Herod.” The choice was doubtless
made in compliment to the royal guest; whether the archbishop failed
to notice, or deliberately ignored, the comparison of the Emperor to
Herod which it involved, we are not told. Adolf indeed was only one
of a crowd of imperial feudataries who were eager to make a friend
of the English king. By the time Richard arrived at Antwerp not only
Adolf but also the archbishop of Mentz, the bishop-elect of Liége,
the dukes of Austria, Suabia, Louvain, and Limburg, the count of
Holland, the son of the count of Hainaut, the marquis of Montferrat,
and many others, were bound to him by homage and fealty—saving, of
course, their fealty to the Emperor—for certain revenues which he
granted them by charter, on condition of their help against the
king of France.[1119] Possibly the Emperor may have taken alarm
at [Sidenote: _Feb._] these alliances between his vassals and his
late captive, for one English chronicler tells us that he sent out
some men to overtake and recapture him.[1120] Richard, however,
under the personal escort of Archbishop Adolf, passed through the
lands of the duke of Louvain to Antwerp, where some of his own
ships awaited him.[1121] The wind being unfavourable for a direct
passage to England,[1122] he slowly made his way by sea to a port
which Roger of Howden calls “Swine in Flanders, in the lands of the
Count of Hainaut”—either Swyn, between Breeden and Ostend, in the
present West Flanders, or Zwin, on the Belgian frontier of the Dutch
province of Seeland—coasting along by day in Alan Trenchemer’s galley
“because in that it was easier to pass through among the islands,”
and spending the nights on “a large and splendid ship which had
come from Rye.” Swine was [Sidenote: _March 4-7_] reached in three
days; five more were spent in waiting there for a wind; at last, on
March 12 or 13, the king landed at Sandwich, and straightway went
to offer up his thanksgivings at the shrine of S. Thomas the Martyr
at Canterbury.[1123] On [Sidenote: _March 16_] March 16 he entered
London in a triumphal procession to S. Paul’s.[1124] Clergy and
people gave him a rapturous welcome; and the sumptuous decorations
of the city were beheld with amazement by some German nobles who
accompanied him, and who had supposed the wealth of England to be
exhausted by his ransom. One of them, it is said, actually told him
that he would not have been released without a much heavier payment
if the Emperor could have known that such riches existed in the
island realm.[1125]
The welcome was mainly a clerical and popular one, because most of
the lay barons were occupied in trying to put down a revolt stirred
up by John. They had made some progress towards this end before
Richard’s arrival; most of John’s castles had been captured, but two,
Nottingham and Tickhill, were still holding out. Richard went to work
leisurely. He spent “scarcely a day” in London; but he left it to
make another pilgrimage, to S. Edmund’s.[1126] He knew that he could
afford to wait. Both castles were closely besieged, the one by the
earls of Huntingdon, Chester, and Ferrars, the other by the bishop
of Durham. Another great rebel stronghold, Mount Saint Michael’s in
Cornwall, had surrendered before the king’s return because at the
tidings of his coming its commandant died of fright. The garrison
of Tickhill now sent two knights to ascertain whether the king was
really home, and if he were, to offer him the castle. He refused to
receive it unless they would all surrender at discretion. While
the envoys carried this message back to Tickhill, he marched upon
Nottingham,[1127] and on March 25 arrived there “with such a numerous
force and such a noise of trumpets and horns” as greatly alarmed the
garrison; nevertheless, hoping that all this was merely a display
contrived by the nobles to make them believe the king had returned,
they continued to shoot from the walls, and shot down some of his men
almost at his feet. At this he waxed wroth and assaulted the castle.
One rebel knight was killed by a bolt from Richard’s own crossbow;
the barbicans were taken and the outer gates burnt.[1128] The place
was, however, of such strength as to appear, if well defended,
impregnable except by starvation; and it was amply supplied with
provisions as well as with men.[1129] Next morning Richard began to
prepare his stone-casters, and also set up in view of the castle a
gallows on which he hanged some of John’s men-at-arms who had been
captured outside it. Meanwhile Tickhill had been surrendered to
Bishop Hugh on his assurance that the lives of the garrison should
be spared; and on March 27 he, with his prisoners, joined the
king.[1130] That day, while the king was at dinner, the constables
of Nottingham castle sent two men “to see him” and report “what they
saw and heard.” Till then the Nottingham constables had not believed
that their sovereign was really in England. Their messengers “looked
at him well, and recognized him. ‘Am I the king? What think you?’
he asked them. They said ‘Yes.’ ‘Then you may go back; go free, as
is right; and do the best you can.’”[1131] [Sidenote: _March 28_]
On their report the two constables, with twelve followers, went and
placed themselves at Richard’s mercy; and on the morrow the castle
was surrendered on the same terms by the rest of the garrison,[1132]
of whom some were imprisoned and others put to ransom.[1133]
Richard spent the next day in visiting two royal Forests [Sidenote:
_March 29_] “which he had never seen before,” Clipstone and Sherwood;
“and they pleased him well.” At night he returned to Nottingham,
where he had summoned a council to meet on [Sidenote: _March 30_] the
following day. It was a great assembly, at which the queen-mother,
the two archbishops, and a number of prelates and magnates were
present.[1134] The king opened the proceedings by disseising two
of John’s chief partizans, Gerard de Camville and Hugh Bardolf, of
the sheriffdoms and royal castles which they held—Lincoln shire and
castle, held by Gerard; Yorkshire and Westmorland by Hugh—all of
which he put up for sale and sold to the highest bidder.[1135] On the
second day of the council (March 31) he “asked for judgement upon
Count John and upon Hugh of Nonant,” the bishop of Coventry, John’s
chief ally. “And it was judged that they should be peremptorily
cited, and that if they failed to come and stand to right, Count John
should be declared to have forfeited all claim to the crown and the
bishop be subjected to the judgement of his fellow-prelates as bishop
and that of the lay barons as sheriff.” On the third day (April 1),
the king ordered that for every carucate of land throughout England a
contribution of two shillings should be made to him; and “that every
man should render to him the third part of the military service due
from his fee, to go with him” (the king) “into Normandy.” He also
demanded of the Cistercians all the year’s wool of their flocks: but
for this they compromised by a fine. The [Sidenote: _April 2_] fourth
day was employed in hearing appeals from Archbishop Geoffrey of York
and Gerard de Camville; in neither case did the council arrive at any
decision. Lastly, the king “appointed his crowning to take place at
Winchester at the close of Easter” (April 17), and ordered that on
the day after that event all the prisoners taken in John’s castles
should be brought before him.[1136]
King William of Scotland was now on his way to a conference with
his English overlord. They met at Southwell on the Monday before
Easter and travelled together on [Sidenote: _April 4_] the Tuesday to
Malton; there William “asked for the [Sidenote: _April 5_] dignity
and honours which his predecessors had had in England,” and also
for the restoration of Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmorland, and
Lancaster, which he claimed “by right of his ancestors.” Richard
answered that he would act according to the counsel of his barons.
The two kings spent the rest of Holy Week together in a progress
[Sidenote: _April 10-12_] by Geddington to Northampton, where they
kept Easter. On Easter Monday Richard laid William’s requests before
the council, and gave his reply. “He told the king of Scotland that
he ought on no account to have made his demand about Northumberland,
especially in those days, when nearly all the nobles of the French
kingdom had become his (Richard’s) enemies; for if he were to
grant this, it would look as if he did it more from fear than from
favour.” About the other counties he seems to have said nothing;
but they were doubtless understood to be included in his refusal.
William apparently made no remonstrance and was pacified by a charter
providing minutely for the proper escort and entertainment of the
Scot kings when summoned to the English court.[1137] He accompanied
or followed Richard to Winchester for the coronation on Low Sunday,
when he carried one of the swords of state before his overlord in the
procession.[1138]
The precise significance of this so-called “coronation” is not easy
to determine. Richard, we are told, “when he had called together the
prelates of England, asked and received from them counsel that he
should renew his kingship[1139] and permit the crown to be placed on
his head by the archbishop of Canterbury at the Easter festival. He
followed this counsel of the prelates; and as there was not time to
prepare for so great a solemnity by Easter Day, it was deferred until
the octave. And because the manner of a crowning of this sort had
for many years passed away from the minds of men, the directions for
it were sought and found in the church of Canterbury, where Stephen
had been thus crowned with his queen.”[1140] These directions clearly
apply not to a coronation in the usual sense of the word—a ceremony
of which the pattern for all after-time in England had been set less
than five years before—but to the old English custom, obsolete since
1157, of “wearing the crown” in public on certain high festivals. The
king was arrayed in his full robes, the sceptre and verge were placed
in his hands, and the crown set upon his head by the archbishop, not
in the church, but in the royal chamber; thence he was conducted in
procession to the church, where he was enthroned with special prayers
and suffrages; after which the Mass was celebrated and he made his
offering and his Communion. When the service was ended the procession
returned to the royal apartments, and the king, after changing his
heavy crown for a lighter one, sat down with his magnates to a
banquet, held on this occasion in the refectory of the cathedral
monastery.[1141] “Thus,” says Gervase of Canterbury, “by the counsel
of the prelates was King Richard crowned on the octave [Sidenote:
_April 17_] of Easter at Winchester, because being set free from
captivity he had unexpectedly returned to his kingdom.”[1142] The
revival of the old custom which Henry II had abandoned thirty-seven
years before seems to be thus sufficiently explained as an expression
of the joy and thankfulness of king, Church, and nation at a
deliverance of which they had almost despaired, and which promised
the beginning of a new era in his reign. There are, however,
indications of something behind this. One phrase used by Gervase,
and two other phrases used by other writers of the time, suggest
that during Richard’s captivity something had taken place, or was
supposed or suspected in England to have taken place, derogatory
to his regal dignity and making it advisable for that dignity to
be publicly re-asserted or “renewed.”[1143] That something, if not
altogether imaginary, could hardly be anything else than his alleged
homage to the Emperor; and if that homage were, or were understood
to be, merely for the kingdom of Burgundy, it could scarcely be
regarded as affecting his position or his dignity as king of England.
The evidence is, however, too scanty and too vague to warrant any
definite conclusion on the point.
Little was now needed to complete such a re-settlement of affairs in
England as would enable Richard safely to leave the government of
the kingdom in Archbishop Hubert’s hands and devote himself to the
more anxious task which [Sidenote: _April 19_] he knew awaited him
across the Channel. Two days after the coronation the old bishop of
Durham resigned the sheriffdom of Northumberland, whereupon William
of Scotland offered Richard fifteen thousand marks for the county
and its appurtenances. Richard, after consulting his ministers,
said that for this sum William might have the county, but without
its castles; William refused this offer, and “went home grieved and
humbled,” after another vain attempt to make his overlord change his
mind; Richard was immoveable on the point for the moment, though he
held out a hope that he might yield it “on his return from Normandy.”
The prisoners taken at Nottingham and Tickhill and in John’s other
castles were disposed of by putting the wealthier of them in prison
till they should ransom themselves, and letting the rest go free on
their giving security that they would come up for judgement whenever
summoned.[1144] John himself was in France. On April 25 the king
went to Portsmouth, where a fleet of a hundred ships was assembled
to carry him and his fighting men over sea; but their crossing was
delayed by bad weather for more than three weeks. Once, on May 2, the
king in his impatience to be gone caused the whole fleet to be loaded
up ready for departure, and himself, in defiance of the counsel of
his sailors, went on board a “long ship” and put to sea; “and though
the wind was against him he would not turn back, so while the other
ships remained in port, the king and those who accompanied him were
tossed about by the waves, for there was a great storm.” Next day he
was compelled to land in the Isle of Wight and return to Portsmouth.
On May 12 he was at last able to get across with all his fleet to
Barfleur.[1145]
CHAPTER II
RICHARD AND FRANCE
1194-1199
The King must guard
That which he rules.
—Sad stories of the deaths of kings.
Richard’s journey through the Cotentin and the Bessin was a triumphal
progress. Everywhere the people crowded round him with presents
and acclamations, processions, dances, and songs: “God has come
to our aid with His might; the king of France will go away now!”
they said.[1146] Philip was just then besieging Verneuil, but as
usual he withdrew at Richard’s approach.[1147] He had already lost
his most valuable ally in the duchy; Richard and John had met, and
Richard had accepted John’s submission and sent him to recover
Evreux from the French, a charge which John fulfilled promptly and
successfully.[1148] Richard himself, after dashing into Maine to
besiege and capture Beaumont-le-Roger (whose lord had apparently gone
over to Philip), proceeded to secure his lines of communication along
the left bank of the Seine by fortifying Pont-de-l’Arche, Elbœuf,
and La Roche d’Orival, and then turned upon Philip who was besieging
Vaudreuil. A conference between the kings had just been arranged when
the mines dug by the French under the keep suddenly resulted in its
fall. Richard vowed vengeance, and Philip hastily withdrew.[1149]
Before leaving Verneuil Richard had received intelligence that
Montmirail was being besieged by some “Angevins and others”;[1150]
an English chronicler says “Angevins and Cenomannians,”[1151] and
another simply “Angevins.”[1152] Whether the lord of Montmirail,
William of Perche-Gouet, [Sidenote: _June_] was a partizan of
Philip and the besiegers were acting on their own initiative in
Richard’s interest, does not appear; Richard now hastened to the
place, but before he reached it the besiegers had levelled it to
the ground.[1153] He pushed on into Touraine, where an excellent
opportunity of recovering [Sidenote: _June 1-13_] Loches was offered
to him by his wife’s brother, Sancho of Navarre, who had collected
a band of Navarrese and Brabantines and set out with them to act
against Philip. Sancho himself was very soon called home by the death
of his father; but his troops went on and laid siege to Loches.[1154]
Richard stopped on his way thither to gather some money at Tours,
or rather at Châteauneuf, by turning the canons of S. Martin’s out
of their abode and seizing their goods,[1155] and also receiving
a “voluntary” gift of two thousand marks from the burghers.[1156]
Then he went on to Beaulieu[1157] and joined the Navarrese force in
assaulting Loches; on June 13 it surrendered.[1158]
Meanwhile a meeting between some of the counsellors of the two kings
had been arranged to take place at Pont-de-l’Arche; but the Frenchmen
failed to keep tryst, and instead, Philip “with a considerable force”
appeared before Fontaines, four miles from Rouen. After four days’
siege he took the castle and destroyed it.[1159] On his way back
into France he captured a valuable English prisoner, the earl of
Leicester.[1160] Three days later—on June 17—a conference of Norman
and French prelates and magnates met, with the sanction of the two
kings, near Vaudreuil, to arrange a truce. They failed because Philip
insisted that all his own adherents and all those of Richard should
be precluded from molesting one another during the truce between
their sovereigns, and to this Richard would not consent, “because he
would not violate the laws and customs of Poitou and of his other
lands where it was customary from of old that the magnates should
fight out their own disputes among themselves.” Philip next made
a dash at Evreux and “nearly destroyed it.”[1161] Thence he moved
southward through the county of Blois, and was encamped somewhere
between Fréteval and Vendôme when Richard, hurrying up from Loches,
pitched his tents outside the little unfortified town of Vendôme and
there, “as confidently as if he were surrounded by a wall,” waited
for further tidings of his enemy. They came in the form of a message,
bidding him expect on that very day a hostile visit from the French
king; to which he answered that he was ready, and that if the visit
were not made as announced, Philip might look for one from him on
the morrow. The day passed; [Sidenote: _July 4_] early next morning
Richard called up his men and set forth to seek the enemy, who
hurriedly retired upon Fréteval. Richard dashed after him through the
woods, fell unexpectedly upon his rear, and captured the whole of his
baggage-train; many Frenchmen were slain, many made prisoners, and
the spoil included not only a large quantity of arms and treasures,
but also the whole bundle of the charters given to Philip by the
Norman traitors who had transferred their allegiance to him.[1162]
Richard himself sought a loftier prize; he pursued the French host in
search of its king, resolved to have him alive or dead. A Flemish
soldier told him that Philip was far ahead in the van; in reality,
that cautious monarch had turned aside and taken shelter in a church.
Richard, mounted as usual on a charger as fiery as himself, spurred
on across the frontier of Normandy and France till the animal could
go no further, and Mercadier, having somehow contrived to overtake
his master, managed also to furnish him with another horse on which
he rode back to Vendôme.[1163]
Richard’s next task was to recover control of Aquitaine. He had
in 1190 left that country to the joint care of its duchess and of
a tried serjeant-at-arms, Peter Bertin, whom he had early in that
year made seneschal of Poitou.[1164] In or about 1192, Eleanor
being no longer in the duchy, Aimar of Angoulême attacked Poitou
“with horse and foot,” but was defeated and taken prisoner by the
Poitevins.[1165] About the same time nearly all the barons of Gascony
took advantage of the illness of the seneschal of that county to
rise in rebellion under the leadership of Count Elias of [Sidenote:
c. 1192] Périgord[1166] and the viscount of La Marche. The seneschal
tried in vain to make terms with them; on recovering his health,
however, he attacked Périgord, captured or destroyed nearly all
the fortresses of its count, and then dealt in like manner with La
Marche, “which he thus brought once for all under the control of the
king.” Sancho of Navarre then joined him with eight hundred knights,
and their united forces harried the county of Toulouse up to the
very gates of its capital city, and spent a night almost under its
walls before they went their several ways home.[1167] After this
Aquitaine seems to have been comparatively quiet [Sidenote: 1194
_March_] till March 1194, when the old arch-troubler of the land,
Geoffrey of Rancogne, threw off his allegiance and with [Sidenote:
_June_] Bernard of Brosse did liege homage to Philip.[1168] In June
Sancho, on his way to join Richard before Loches, led his men through
the lands of Rancogne and Angoulême and ravaged them “from one end
to the other.”[1169] All this timely help from Navarre resulted in
making Richard’s march into Aquitaine after the affair of Fréteval
a progress of unbroken triumph. On July 22 the king wrote to his
justiciar in England that he had captured Taillebourg, Marcillac,
“all the castles and all the land” of Geoffrey of Rancogne, the city
and suburb of Angoulême—“which we took in one evening”—and all the
castles and lands of its count, with some three hundred knights and
forty thousand men-at-arms.[1170] From Verneuil to “Charles’s Cross”
he was master once more.[1171]
Negotiations for a truce with France were now again in progress. On
July 23 some officers of the two royal households met, by mutual
consent of their sovereigns, between Verneuil and Tillières to
treat of this matter, and “came to terms.” The only extant account
of these terms—a proclamation addressed by the French king’s
constable and chamberlain and the dean of S. Martin’s “to all whom
it may concern”[1172]—shows them to have been extremely favourable
to Philip; and from this fact, together with Richard’s subsequent
action, we may probably infer that their acceptance by the English
negotiators was merely a blind to restrain Philip from aggression
in Normandy while Richard was still occupied in the south. When he
returned to Normandy he, according to a contemporary English writer,
repudiated them indignantly, and took away the Great Seal from his
chancellor, on whom he cast the responsibility for them.[1173] The
king’s wrath and the chancellor’s disgrace were, however, alike only
momentary; William of Ely retained his office to the end of Richard’s
reign; and a month after the conference at which the truce had been
arranged Richard himself was sojourning peaceably within the Royal
Domain of France, issuing an ordinance to his subjects in England
from Bresle near Beauvais.[1174]
The duration of the truce had been defined as “a year from All
Saints’ Day next.”[1175] During this breathing-space Richard’s chief
concern was the collecting of money for a renewal of the war. England
had been so drained for his ransom that he, or his justiciar who
acted for him, did not venture on demanding a “scutage of Normandy”
till the following year (1195).[1176] Nor did the king attempt to
carry out at this time—if indeed he had momentarily entertained
it—the project ascribed to him by Roger of Howden, of annulling all
grants made under the existing Great Seal, of course for the purpose
of compelling their holders to pay for a renewal of them.[1177]
But on his way northward from Aquitaine he had called together at
Le Mans “all the magnates under his jurisdiction,” and made them a
speech in commendation of the “willing, unbroken, and well-proved
fidelity shewn to him by the English in his time of adversity,”[1178]
seemingly in contrast to the feeble support which he had received
from his Angevin dominions; for we are told that he compelled all
his bailiffs in Anjou and Maine to pay him a fine for retaining
their offices.[1179] The device which he actually employed at this
juncture for obtaining more money from England, though it sowed the
seeds of later mischief there, was not likely to provoke discontent
nor to inflict any hardship on the people; on August 22 he issued
an ordinance authorizing the holding of tournaments in England—from
which they had hitherto been rigidly excluded—at certain specified
places, on condition that every man who took part in them should make
a certain payment to the Crown for a licence, the sum payable being
regulated by the rank of the payer.[1180] The Church’s prohibition of
tournaments had been renewed in a specially severe form only a year
before; but on the continent it still was, as it always had been,
set at defiance. Richard, who had spent the greater part of his life
in lands where the mimic warfare of the tourney was regarded almost
as part of the necessary education of a gentleman, could not fairly
be expected to realize its evil side, and might well count upon its
finding among the nobles and knights of his island realm such favour
as would make the sale of licences a profitable business for the
Crown.
[Sidenote: 1195]
Early in the next year a certain hermit came to the king and said:
“Be mindful of the ruin of Sodom, and put away thy unlawful doings;
else the vengeance of God will come upon thee.” Five years before,
Richard had publicly confessed and done penance for his private sins,
seemingly without being urged by anyone. Now he was in a different
mood; he resented the admonition as coming from a person of no
importance, and could not make up his mind to obey it unless it were
enforced by a sign from above. The sign [Sidenote: _April 4_] came
on Easter Tuesday when he was struck down by a violent illness. Then
he called the clergy around him, confessed and did penance for his
sins, and at once set about the amendment of his private life by
recalling his wife, whom he had for a long time practically deserted.
“Then,” says the chronicler, “God gave him health of body as well
as of soul.” He began a practice of rising early to attend Mass
“and not leaving the church till the Divine Office was completely
ended.”[1181] A famine had for three years past been gradually
spreading over western Europe[1182] [Sidenote: _April_] and had now
reached Normandy; Richard caused a number of poor persons to be
fed daily at his court and in the cities, towns, and villages, and
multiplied these benefactions as the need increased. He also ordered
the making of a large number of chalices for presentation to churches
which had sacrificed their holy vessels for his ransom.[1183]
[Sidenote: 1194 _Nov.-Dec._]
During the past five months the truce had been very ill kept. In
less than two months from its commencement the homagers of both
kings were ravaging each other’s lands,[1184] and Philip proposed to
Richard a new expedient for ending their strife: a judicial combat
between picked champions, five on either side, to take place in
public, “so that the issue should make manifest to the people of both
realms what was the mind of the Eternal King as to the rights of the
two earthly sovereigns.” This scheme “pleased the king of England
greatly, provided that each of the kings should be one of the five
combatants on his own side and that they should fight each other on
equal terms, armed and equipped alike”[1185]—whereupon the project
fell to the ground. According to one English chronicler of the time,
the next step taken by some of Richard’s enemies seems to have been
an attempt to assassinate him. While he was staying at Chinon,
early in 1195, there came to his court certain “_Accini_”—that is,
“Assassins,” followers of “the Old Man of the Mountain”—or persons
calling themselves such, to the number of fifteen. Some of them,
seeking to approach the king’s person too closely, were arrested, and
then stated that the king of France had sent them to kill his rival.
Richard delayed passing sentence on them till their companions, who
appear to have meanwhile made their escape, should be captured; of
the part which they ascribed to Philip in the matter he took no
notice.[1186] There the story abruptly ends. Whether these men were
really “Assassins” in either sense of the word—whether, if so, they
acted on orders from the “Old Man,” or from someone else, or on their
own initiative, or what their motives or those of their instigator
may have been—there is nothing to show. Their alleged charge against
Philip, at any rate, can hardly deserve more consideration from
history than it received from Richard.
At the end of June or early in July Richard received from the Emperor
a present of “a great golden crown, very precious, as a token of
their mutual friendship.” The gift was accompanied by a letter or
message, bidding him “by the fealty which he owed to Henry, and as
he cared for his hostages, to invade the French king’s land with
an armed force,” and promising that Henry “would send him help
sufficient to avenge the injuries done by Philip to both of them.”
Richard knew the Emperor too well to be tempted into acting hastily
on this mandate. He was aware that Henry “desired above all things to
bring the kingdom of France under subjection to the Roman Empire,”
and he had no mind to become the cat’s paw in a plot which might
result in uniting the forces of Germany and France for his own ruin.
He therefore sent his trusty chancellor, Bishop William of Ely, to
inquire of the Emperor “in what manner, how much, and where and when”
Henry would help him against the French king. Philip, hearing that
the bishop was to pass through France, tried to intercept him, but
failed, and thereupon sent word [Sidenote: _July_] to Richard that
the truce was at an end.[1187]
At this moment Christendom suddenly found itself threatened by
an urgent peril. The emperor of Morocco, “taking occasion by the
dissension between the French and English kings,” invaded Spain,
marched into Castille, [Sidenote: _July 18_] defeated its king
Alfonso in a great battle, and besieged him in Toledo. The danger to
southern Gaul was near enough to alarm both Richard and Philip; and
before the end of July they had another conference, at which Richard
restored Aloysia to her brother, and a treaty of peace was drawn
up.[1188] The draft was, however, fated to be nothing more than a
draft. The meeting was held near Vaudreuil, which for the period of
the truce had been left in Philip’s hands. The two kings, each with a
body of armed followers, seem to have encamped on opposite banks of
the river which flows through the valley whence the place took its
name. While discussion was in progress Philip, fearing an attack on
the fortress, caused its walls to be secretly undermined. Suddenly
a part of them fell down. Richard instantly denounced the truce as
ended on his side, and with his men dashed across the stream into
the French camp. Philip, anticipating this movement, had already
arrayed his followers and was leading them towards the nearest bridge
over the Seine, when (according to one account) it broke down, and
he and they narrowly escaped drowning. Richard was this time wise
enough not to [Sidenote: _End July_] attempt pursuit, and contented
himself with capturing some of Philip’s servants who had been left
behind in the hasty retreat, and setting to work immediately on the
restoration of the recovered fortress[1189] and on preparations for a
renewal of hostilities. He was, however, not inclined to begin these
last till he had received more definite information from Germany;
so another treaty was drafted on September 23, between Issoudun and
Charroux,[1190] to be ratified by the two kings on November 8 at
Verneuil. Before that date William of Ely returned from Germany,
bringing word that the Emperor disapproved of the proposed terms,
and was willing to quit-claim to Richard seventeen thousand marks of
his ransom, to enable him to recover the territory which he had lost
through his imprisonment.[1191] Nevertheless, [Sidenote: _Nov. 8_]
Richard went to Verneuil at the appointed date. On his way he was met
by the archbishop of Reims with a message purporting to come from
Philip, bidding him not to hurry, as the king of France was still
engaged in consultation with his ministers. Richard withdrew to his
[Sidenote: _Nov. 9_] own quarters and stayed there till the following
afternoon; then, resolved to wait no longer, he went to Philip’s
quarters and demanded an interview. He was admitted into Philip’s
presence, but the bishop of Beauvais spoke for his sovereign: “Our
lord the King of France accuses thee of broken faith and perjury,
in as much as thou didst plight thy word and swear to come to a
conference with him this morning at the third hour, and didst not
come; and therefore he defies thee.” Both kings hastened back into
their own territories.[1192] Within two days Richard was laying
siege to Arques,[1193] and Philip burning Dieppe.[1194] Richard seems
to have quitted his siege for the purpose of trying to intercept
the French king on the way back to Paris; but he only succeeded in
overtaking a few men of the French rearguard.[1195] He appears to
have spent the next few weeks in restoring Vaudreuil.[1196]
While these things were happening in northern Gaul, Mercadier, at
the head of his Brabantines, made a dash for Issoudun, destroyed its
suburbs, captured the castle, and garrisoned it for Richard.[1197]
Thence the mercenaries spread themselves over Berry, and crowned
their successes by capturing the count of Auvergne and thus gaining
possession of his castles.[1198] Philip, however, proceeded against
them in person, recaptured the town of Issoudun, and fired the
castle. He thought Richard was too intent on restoring the defences
of Normandy to pursue him; but no sooner did the tidings reach
Vaudreuil than Richard, “casting all other business aside,” achieved
in one day what was reckoned a three days’ ride, and appeared before
Issoudun so unexpectedly that he had no difficulty in entering the
town.[1199] Reinforcements came up rapidly, and the French, seeing
themselves outnumbered, urged their sovereign to make overtures for
peace. Richard had arrayed his men for battle and placed himself, as
usual, [Sidenote: _Dec. 5_] at their head. Philip rode forward to
meet him, and the two kings, on horseback and in armour, parleyed
alone together while their followers stood around awaiting the
result. At last they were seen to dismount, bare their heads, and
exchange the kiss of peace.[1200] According to Philip’s biographer,
Richard there and then renewed his homage to Philip.[1201] At any
rate, the colloquy ended in an appointment for another meeting,
to take place at Louviers (or as Rigord expresses it, “between
Vaudreuil and Gaillon”) on the octave of Epiphany, to make a “final”
peace.[1202]
[Sidenote: 1196 _Jan. 3-13_]
The meeting did take place, and a treaty was made, consisting of a
quit-claim from Philip to Richard and his heirs [Sidenote: _Jan.
13-15_] of all the rights of the French crown in Berry, Auvergne,
and Gascony, and an undertaking to make restitution of certain
portions of Norman territory then in Philip’s hands, in exchange for
a similar quit-claim from Richard to Philip and his heirs of Gisors
and the whole Norman Vexin except the fief of Andely,[1203] which
belonged to the metropolitan see of Rouen. The little town of Andely
was insignificant and unfortified, but its command of the traffic
up and down the Seine, from which its holder was entitled to take
toll, made it a valuable possession from a financial point of view,
and its geographical position and surroundings offered strategical
advantages which had already caught the attention of one, if not
both, of the rival kings. Philip tried to get Andely included in
the territory ceded to him; “but this could on no account be done.”
Nor did he succeed in obtaining Archbishop Walter’s fealty for
the other lands in the Vexin belonging to the see of Rouen.[1204]
Walter’s own narrative of the scenes which took place between himself
and both the kings with reference to his suretyship for Richard’s
fulfilment of the treaty[1205] seems to indicate that Richard was
really desirous for peace with France at the moment, but that neither
he nor Philip intended the peace to last any longer than it suited
their own convenience. It was in fact merely an expedient for giving
both parties a breathing-space in which to gather fresh forces and
make fresh plans for war. Within three months Richard was [Sidenote:
_April 15_] sending to England for reinforcements “because”—so he
wrote to Hubert Walter—“we think we are nearer to war than to peace
with the king of France.”[1206]
Richard was at that moment striving to subdue Britanny. Ever since
the death of Henry II the wardship of little Arthur and of his duchy
had been in dispute between Richard and Philip; but the boy’s mother,
Constance, supported by the Breton people, had hitherto managed to
keep both her child and her country under her own control. In the
spring of 1196 Richard summoned, or invited, her to a conference
with him in Normandy; at the frontier she was met, captured, and
imprisoned by her husband, Earl Ranulf of Chester.[1207] The Bretons
at once rallied round their child-duke, in his name threw off
all allegiance to Richard, and began to make raids on the Norman
border.[1208] Richard set out to punish them[1209] in the ruthless
fashion habitual to him when dealing with rebels, “sparing neither
grown man [Sidenote: _Good Friday April 19_] nor child, not even on
the day of our Lord’s Passion.”[1210] They fled before him, carrying
Arthur with them, to the remoter fastnesses of their country, and
thence conveyed the boy to the court of France.[1211] Thereupon
the treaty of Louviers was flung to the winds. Richard infringed
it in the Vexin by building a castle on an island in the Seine at
Porte-Joie, between Louviers and Pont-de-l’Arche, and in Berry by
calling the lord of Vierzon to account to him on a matter which
(according to Philip’s historiographer) belonged to the jurisdiction
of the French Crown, and when the man refused to obey him, making a
raid on Vierzon and levelling it to the ground.[1212] Philip again
laid siege to Aumale. Richard ordered all property held within his
dominions by four abbots who had been Philip’s sureties for the
treaty to be seised into his own hands,[1213] bribed the French
garrison of Nonancourt to give up that fortress to him, and then
went to relieve Aumale. He was, however, repulsed in an attack on
Philip’s camp, and went off to lay siege to Gaillon, which was held
for Philip by a famous mercenary captain, Cadoc. A bolt from Cadoc’s
crossbow struck the king’s knee as he was reconnoitring the place.
The wound disabled him for a month; before he had recovered, Aumale
had surrendered after a seven weeks’ siege, and Philip had razed its
walls and regained Nonancourt.[1214]
Richard arose from his sick-bed in a towering rage,[1215] and with
a grim determination which gave a new character to the war. The
successes achieved by the French while he lay helpless had borne in
upon him the fact that if he was to retain what was still left to him
of Normandy—nay, if the House of Anjou was to retain its continental
power at all—some better plan of campaign and of diplomacy must
be devised than the alternation of border-fighting and treaties
or truces, made only to be broken, in which his personal energies
as well as his material and military resources had been frittered
away during the last two years. He must by some means bar the way
to Rouen, laid open to Philip by the cession of the Vexin. He must
shield and supplement his military resources, consisting as they
did only of mercenary troops stiffened by a small band of loyal
Normans, by securing at least the neutrality, if not the direct
active assistance, of France’s other feudataries and neighbours. From
England there was no help to be got. No action seems to have been
taken by Archbishop Hubert on the king’s demand addressed to him in
the spring for troops from that country. In November the demand was
renewed in another form; Richard bade Hubert send him either three
hundred knights to serve beyond sea at their own expense for a year,
or money wherewith to pay three hundred mercenaries three English
shillings a day for the same period. A great council was convened
at Oxford on December 7; Hubert, instead of laying before it the
alternatives offered by the king, simply proposed that all the barons
and bishops should furnish three hundred knights for a year’s service
over sea. This Bishop Hugh of Lincoln at once refused on behalf of
his own see; its tenants being bound to military service only in
their own country. The bishop of Salisbury followed Hugh’s example.
The justiciar lost his temper and broke up the assembly; and all
that Richard gained was a heavy fine paid by Herbert of Salisbury
in redemption of the property of his see, confiscated by the king’s
order on Hubert’s report. The property of the see of Lincoln was
confiscated likewise, but in this case the order remained a dead
letter owing to the profound reverence universally felt for the
bishop.[1216]
The king himself was meanwhile already carrying into effect, with
his eyes fully open to the consequences, a project which brought him
into collision with the highest ecclesiastical authority in Normandy.
Of all the approaches to the Norman capital the most important was
the broad valley through which the Seine winds its course from Paris
across the old battle-ground of the Vexin to the heart of the duchy,
while on either side of this water-way roads from north and east
and south converge to meet beneath the walls of Rouen. Philip was
now master of this valley and its surroundings up to a distance of
about twelve miles from the city. The key of the position, however,
was neither in his hands nor in Richard’s, but in those of the
archbishop of Rouen; it was Andely. The town of Andely stood at
the meeting-point of several roads, on the north side of a stream
called the Gambon, in a valley opening from the eastward upon the
Seine through the chalk cliffs on its right bank, near the middle
of a great curve to the northward in its course between Gaillon and
Louviers. To the west of Andely the Gambon and another rivulet
became merged in a lake or mere whence they issued again to fall into
the great river by two distinct openings separated by a tract of
marshland, at the south-east corner of which stood the toll-house.
Nearly opposite the mouth of each streamlet was an island in the
Seine; the more northerly and larger one was known as the Isle of
Andely. The valley was sheltered on its southern side by a thickly
wooded plateau extending several miles to a point nearly opposite
Gaillon, and called the Forest of Andely. Opposite the toll-house,
at the angle formed by the junction of the Gambon with the Seine,
this plateau terminated abruptly in a mass of limestone rock three
hundred feet high, with its western face, nearly perpendicular,
looking down upon the Seine, its northern front, almost as steep,
towering above the Gambon, and only a narrow neck of rocky ground
at its south-eastern corner connecting it with the plateau, from
which its other sides were separated by deep ravines. The military
possibilities of such a position were obvious, and would doubtless
have been utilized long before they attracted the rival kings if
Andely had been a lay fief. For Philip it would have made an ideal
base for attack upon Rouen; Richard saw in it a matchless site for
the construction of an almost impassable barrier between Rouen and
Paris. Philip had tried in vain to win it by diplomacy. Richard took
advantage of a temporary absence of the archbishop from Normandy to
seize the Isle of Andely and begin to build a fort upon it. Walter
protested strongly, but in vain; Richard’s sole answer was to take
possession of the low ground enclosed between the three rivers and
the lake and begin to cover it with the foundations of a walled town
with trenches and barbicans on every side. The primate then told the
king in person that unless he made restitution and paid compensation
within three days, he must expect the ecclesiastical penalties due to
sacrilege. The warning was ignored; so Walter fulfilled his threat
by laying Normandy under Interdict and setting out for Rome.[1217]
Thither he was followed by envoys from Richard who were charged to
appeal to the Pope and endeavour to compose the dispute. Meanwhile
the king pushed on his work without intermission. In a few months
there arose on the Isle of Andely a tall octagonal tower encircled
by a ditch and rampart, on the western side of the island a bridge
giving access to the left bank of the Seine, and on the eastern side
another bridge linking the tower with the “New” or “Lesser” Andely
whose walls, standing four-square within the natural moat formed by
the surrounding waters, were likewise accessible from the mainland
only by two bridges, one at their northern corner and one on their
south-eastern side. The southern corner of the new town directly
faced the great “Rock of Andely”; and for that rock Richard was
designing a crown such as no other western architect had ever yet
dreamed of. His first act on the site, however, was of evil omen. It
seems that to protect his workmen at the New Andely against attack
from the French troops he had brought over a host of wild [Sidenote:
1196-7] Welshmen who harried the French border in a fashion scarcely
equalled by the worst ravages of the Brabantines; at last a large
body of them were intercepted by the French at the opening of the
Vale of Andely, surrounded, and slaughtered, to the number, it is
said, of three thousand four hundred. Richard was then at Andely, and
had there eighteen French prisoners in a dungeon. In his fury he had
three of them dragged to the top of the rock[1218] and flung down to
be dashed to pieces at its foot; the fifteen others he caused to be
blinded, and sent under the guidance of a one-eyed man to Philip,
who, “lest he should be thought inferior to the English king in power
or spirit, or to be afraid of him,” retaliated by causing three
English prisoners to be thrown down from a rock in like manner, and
blinding and sending back to Richard fifteen others, the wife of one
of them acting as guide.[1219]
[Sidenote: =1196-7=]
Meanwhile Richard was, through his agents at Rome, bargaining with
Archbishop Walter for an exchange of lands. At last he made an
offer which was distinctly advantageous to the metropolitan see of
Rouen; it was [Sidenote: _May_] accepted, and the Interdict was
raised.[1220] A year later the [Sidenote: 1198 _May_] king’s work at
Andely was complete. Round the foot of the great rock the ravines
which parted it from the surrounding lesser heights were dug out to
such a depth that access to it was impossible except by one narrow
neck of ground at its south-eastern end. A “fair castle”—as Richard
himself justly called it[1221]—whose general outline was determined
by that of its site occupied the top of the rock. The outer ward
was a walled-in triangle with sides of unequal length, and with its
apex facing south-eastward towards the natural junction left between
the rock and the plateau; at this point and at each of the other
two angles stood a round tower with walls ten feet thick; each of
the two longer sides of the curtain wall was strengthened with a
smaller tower; and the whole enclosure was surrounded by a ditch more
than forty feet deep, hewn out of the rock, with a perpendicular
counterscarp. Beyond this ditch on its north-western side lay the
inner ward. On three sides of this second enclosure were walls eight
feet thick; one wall, flanked by towers like those of the outer ward,
faced the north-western wall of the latter across the ditch; on the
other and longer sides the steep incline of the rock itself formed a
natural rampart and ditch below the walls which ran along its edge.
The line of the curtain on the side nearest to the river was broken
by a tower, round externally, octagonal within, and terminated at its
northern end by two rectangular bastions behind one of which stood
another round tower forming the base of the third ward or citadel.
A rampart, roughly elliptical in outline, was made by [Sidenote:
=1196-7=] excavating a ditch some fifteen to twenty feet wide, with
a perpendicular counterscarp. In one part of this ditch casemates
were cut in the rock. Two-thirds of the rampart were surmounted by
a series of seventeen semicircular bastions with about two feet of
curtain wall between every two; on the eastern side the line was
broken by a bridge leading from the rampart of the outer ward into
the inner enclosure, to which there was no other means of ingress
above ground; and directly opposite this bridge the bastions abutted
on a mighty keep-tower with walls twenty feet thick at the angles
and nowhere less than twelve feet, and with a wide outlook from the
windows in its upper stages over the river valley and the woodlands
of the Vexin. Between the keep and the round tower at the end of the
curtain wall were buildings for dwelling and storage; from these an
underground stair and passage beneath the rock gave access to some
outworks near its foot, where from a small tower a wall was carried
down to the river-bank; and from a point close to the termination of
this wall the river itself was barred by a double stockade across
its bed. “Behold, how fair is this year-old daughter of mine!” Thus
Richard is said to have exclaimed as he saw the last touches put
to the “Castle on the Rock.”[1222] Contemporary writers distinctly
imply that the whole scheme of the fortifications at Les Andelys was
devised and planned by the king himself; it was certainly carried
out under his constant personal supervision and direction. Some
of the peculiar features of the citadel or keep may probably have
been suggested to him by the fortresses which he had seen in Holy
Land, where the nature of the country and the circumstances of the
Frank settlers had led to the development of the science of military
architecture in forms hitherto unknown to western builders. However
this may be, the opportunity presented by the natural advantages of
the site was utilized to the uttermost in the construction of the
group of buildings crowned by the “Saucy Castle,” Château-Gaillard,
as Richard appropriately called it, which from the summit of the rock
seemed to look down in defiance and [Sidenote: =1196-7=] derision
upon the French king and his schemes for the conquest of Normandy.
The royal architect was further strengthening alike his military
and his political position by alliances with his most important
neighbours both to north and south. Count Baldwin of Flanders had for
six years been chafing under the loss of the southern half of his
county, annexed by the French king on the plea that the late Count
Philip had given it to Elisabeth of Hainaut, Baldwin’s sister and
the king’s first wife. In June 1196 Baldwin and Count Reginald of
Boulogne promised to support Philip Augustus “against all [Sidenote:
1197 _May-Sept._] men”;[1223] but in the following summer Baldwin
threw off his allegiance and became Richard’s sworn ally.[1224]
About the same time the guardians of Arthur of Britanny exchanged
pledges with Richard that neither they nor he would make peace with
France without each other’s consent; and a like agreement was made
between Richard and Count Theobald of Champagne,[1225] brother and
successor to the Crusader Count Henry, nephew by the half blood to
both the kings, and brother-in-law to Richard’s queen. The western
and northern sides and a considerable part of the eastern side of the
French Royal Domain were thus completely ringed in by the territories
of Richard and his allies, except in two places. These exceptions
were the united counties of Blois and Chartres and the little county
of Ponthieu. Louis of Blois still adhered to Philip; but as he stood
in the same degree of relationship to the two kings as did his cousin
Theobald of Champagne, there was always a possibility that he might
some day follow Theobald’s example. As for Ponthieu, Philip had given
Aloysia in marriage to its count, probably thinking he was driving a
wedge between Normandy and Flanders; but the wedge was too small and
too insignificant to be of any real use in keeping them apart. On the
other hand, the count of Flanders was on his northern and eastern
frontiers in direct touch with Richard’s German allies; and one at
least of these, the count of Hainaut, was also in direct touch with
Champagne. Richard was in fact gradually drawing round the Royal
Domain of France a circle which was already more than half completed;
and he was now politically in a position to bring almost the whole
of his own military resources to bear upon some of its uncompleted
sections in the west and south without fear of danger in his rear.
The voluntary adhesion of Britanny promised at least a temporary
respite from trouble in that quarter. In Aquitaine his determined
efforts to enforce order and tranquillity were at last beginning to
bear fruit. In 1195 he had granted the county of Poitou to his sister
Matilda’s son, Otto of Saxony;[1226] but Otto does not seem to have
ever actually taken possession of the county, and the government of
Poitou and its dependencies, and also of Gascony, continued to be
carried on as before, by seneschals appointed by the king. If these
officers needed assistance to quell internal revolt, they could
safely depend for it on Navarre; and the one remaining vassal of the
duchy with whom they might still have been unable to cope was won
over to the interests of his suzerain by the offer of a brilliant and
wealthy matrimonial alliance and a substantial increase of territory.
The count of Toulouse with whom Richard had fought of [Sidenote:
1196] old died in 1196, and the widowed Queen Joan of Sicily was
given in marriage by her brother to the new Count Raymond VI;[1227]
Richard renounced the old claim of the Poitevin counts to the
possession of Toulouse, restored the Quercy to its former owner, and
granted him the county of Agen as Joan’s dowry, with the stipulation
that it should always be held as a distinct fief of the duchy of
Aquitaine and should furnish the duke with five hundred men-at-arms
for a month when required for war in Gascony.[1228]
[Sidenote: 1197]
In the spring of 1197 hostilities re-commenced with a raid made by
Richard on the coast of Ponthieu; he set fire to the castle of S.
Valery, harried the surrounding country, seized five ships which
were bringing food into the harbour, hanged their skippers, and
appropriated their cargoes to feed his own men.[1229] A month later
Mercadier made a raid [Sidenote: _April 15_] on Beauvais and captured
its Bishop.[1230] Early in the summer [Sidenote: _May 19_] there came
an indication that the Vexin was not altogether contented under its
new ruler; Dangu, an important castle on the Epte, was voluntarily
surrendered to Richard by its lord, William Crispin. Philip at once
led an army to retake it and succeeded in so doing, but only after
a siege which occupied him so long that meanwhile Richard had time
to dash into Auvergne and capture ten of the French king’s castles
there,[1231] and Baldwin of Flanders to make himself master of
Douay and some neighbouring towns and lay siege to Arras. Philip
hurriedly razed Dangu and went to relieve Arras; at his approach
Baldwin withdrew into northern Flanders; Philip pursued him hotly,
but presently found himself entangled in a network of streams which
cut off him and his troops from either advance or retreat, provisions
or reinforcements, for the bridges over all the rivers in front and
rear and round about him were broken down by Baldwin’s orders. He was
reduced to sue for mercy and entreat Baldwin “not to sully the honour
of the French Crown,” declaring himself ready to make an amicable
settlement with Flanders and restore all its lost territory, “if the
king of England were excluded from the peace.” This condition Baldwin
rejected, and Philip was obliged to purchase release from his awkward
position by a compromise: Baldwin undertook to act as intermediary
between the two kings and invite Richard to a conference between them
“for the settlement of an honourable peace” which should include
his own confirmation by both in the restitution of his ancestral
possessions.[1232] The conference [Sidenote: _Sept. 8 or 17_] took
place early in September. As usual, the proposed peace dwindled to
a truce. Even this was won only by the influence of Archbishop
Hubert of Canterbury, who was then in attendance on his sovereign.
Its duration was fixed for a year from the ensuing Christmas or
Hilary-tide;[1233] [Sidenote: _Sept._] and its sole condition seems
to have been that each party should for that period continue holding
what he held at the moment[1234]—a condition which enabled Philip to
postpone indefinitely the promised restitution of southern Flanders.
The conference had been held “between Gaillon and Andely,”[1235] or
as another writer puts it, “at the Isle,”[1236] most likely the Isle
of the Three Kings, whose name suggests that it had been the scene
of meetings between Philip and the two Henrys, and which lies in the
Seine almost under the shadow of the Rock of Andely. Probably this
was the occasion on which Philip first saw the castle, then fast
rising on that rock, and the completed square of walls enclosing the
Lesser Andely, with the bridges and fortified outpost on the smaller
island, barring the river. His courtiers—so runs [Sidenote: 1197?]
the story told by Gerald of Wales—could not refrain from expressing
their admiration of this wonderful piece of military architecture.
Irritated by their praise of his rival’s work, he swore aloud that
he wished the new fortifications were built wholly of iron, for if
they were, he would none the less bring all Normandy, and Aquitaine
as well, under his rule. The boast was reported to Richard: “By God’s
throat!” swore the Lion-heart, “if yon castle were built of neither
iron nor stone, but wholly of butter, I would without hesitation
undertake to hold it securely against him and all [Sidenote: _Oct.
16_] his forces.”[1237] A month after the conference the exchange of
lands between duke and primate was formally completed at the Castle
on the Rock, by a charter in which Richard set forth his motive for
the transaction: “The town of Andely and certain adjacent places
which belonged to the see of Rouen being insufficiently fortified,
the way through the same into our land of Normandy was open to our
enemies.”[1238] That way was now so effectually barred that six years
were to elapse before the enemy, notwithstanding his boast, made
any attempt to cross or break the barrier; and when it fell at last
after a six months’ siege, its fall was due less to the skill of its
assailant than to the apathy of Richard’s successor in its defence.
The truce was scarcely made when politics of a wider range began
to claim the attention of both the rival kings. The Emperor Henry
VI was still under sentence of excommunication for his treatment
of the captive king of England and for other violations of
international right and justice committed in his pursuit of a dream
of world-conquest in which he seems to have curiously anticipated a
much later bearer of the Imperial title. The aged Pope Celestine had
warned him in 1195—“What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole
world and lose his own soul?”[1239] and the warning came back to him
when on his way to Holy Land in autumn 1197 he fell sick unto death
at Messina. He hurriedly restored to the Roman See the property of
which he had robbed it, and despatched an envoy to Richard, offering
to refund his ransom in the form of either money or lands. Before
an answer could be received he died, on Michaelmas eve. The Pope
ordered that he should not be buried, unless with Richard’s expressed
consent, until this offer was fulfilled. While Richard was keeping
Christmas at Rouen, envoys from the archbishops of Cologne and Mentz
and other German princes came to tell him that all the magnates
of Germany were to assemble at Cologne on February 22 to elect an
Emperor; “and they bade him, in virtue of the oath and fidelity by
which he was bound to the Emperor and to the Roman Empire, come
to Cologne at the aforesaid time without fail, in order that he,
as a chief member of the Empire, might be with them to elect, by
God’s help, an Emperor fit for the imperial office.” After some
consideration and consultation Richard sent back with the envoys some
bishops and nobles to be present at the election in his stead. “He,”
says Roger of Howden, “greatly feared to go there himself, lest he
should again fall into their hands, unless security were given him
of a safe-conduct for the journey there and back; and no wonder, for
he had not yet paid to the German magnates all that he had promised
them for helping to his liberation; and it was on account of him that
the Emperor’s body was still unburied.”[1240] The German electors
were much divided among themselves. The late Emperor’s only son was
already, by the Pope’s consent, crowned king of Sicily;[1241] but he
was a child; nobody wanted an infant Emperor. Some of the magnates
seem to have thought that jealousy and rivalry among themselves might
be best appeased by setting, or at least proposing to set, over all
of them a sovereign of another nationality; certain of them nominated
King Richard of England. It was probably merely in opposition to
this party that some others—“but they were few”—proposed Philip
of France.[1242] The majority inclined to Duke Henry of Saxony,
Richard’s sister’s son, who by birth was head of the most illustrious
of the princely houses of Germany, and had in 1196 succeeded his
father-in-law as Count Palatine. For Henry Richard, [Sidenote:
1197-8] through his representatives at Cologne, threw all his
influence into the scale. But Henry himself was absent in Holy Land,
and it was felt that to leave the Empire without a head till his
return might involve grave danger; his partizans, including Richard,
therefore transferred their support to his brother Otto, whose life
had been spent almost entirely in Normandy and England, at the court
first of his grandfather Henry II and afterwards at that of his
uncle Richard, and who was perhaps the more acceptable to the German
electors because he neither held nor could claim any territorial
possessions in Germany;[1243] his sole personal connexion with it was
his marriage with a daughter of the duke of Louvain, one of the North
German [Sidenote: =1197-8=] feudataries with whom Richard had made
alliance in 1194. Otto was accordingly elected, and on July 12, 1198,
he was crowned at Aix.[1244]
One of the warmest advocates of the election of Otto was Count
Baldwin of Flanders, chiefly because the king of England was known
to be on the same side.[1245] The king of France, on the other hand,
naturally took alarm at a choice which promised to strengthen the
alliance between Richard and Baldwin and give to both these princes
the countenance, if not the active support, of the greater part
of the German feudataries and of their sovereign. There was one
disappointed candidate for the imperial crown who openly refused to
acknowledge the authority of his successful rival. This was Philip,
duke of Suabia, the late Emperor’s brother. Between him and his royal
French namesake an alliance was concluded on S. Peter’s day.[1246]
It could, however, be of little avail to either of them against the
coalition by which in a few weeks they were confronted. Henry of
Saxony, returned from Holy Land, was welcomed by his English uncle
at Les Andelys,[1247] and thence proceeding to his homeland gave his
unqualified assent and approval to the election of his brother as
Emperor.[1248] Before the end of August, the duke of Louvain, the
counts of Brienne, Flanders, Guines, Boulogne, Perche, Blois, and
Toulouse, with Arthur of Britanny (or rather the nobles who governed
the duchy in his name) “and many others,” made a confederacy with
Richard, swearing to him and he to them that neither they nor he
would make peace with the king of France without the common consent
of them all.[1249] On September 6 Baldwin of Flanders laid siege
to St. Omer; its surrender, three weeks later, was followed by
that of [Sidenote: _Sept. 27_] Aire and several other neighbouring
towns.[1250] At the same time the truce was broken on the Norman
border. One contemporary English writer represents Philip as the
aggressor; but his story seems to be only a confused enlargement
[Sidenote: =1197-8=] on the contents of a letter written by Richard
in which there is no suggestion of any such thing. Richard, according
to his own account, on Sunday, September 27, crossed the Epte by the
ford near Dangu, surprised and captured two neighbouring castles with
their garrisons and contents, and [Sidenote: _Sept. 28_] returned
at night by the same way. Next day he learned that Philip, having
heard of this inroad, was setting out from Mantes with some five or
six hundred men. Richard at once went forth with a few attendants,
but left the main body of his troops on the river-bank, thinking the
French would cross the ford and encounter them on the other side.
Philip, however, turned towards Gisors. Before he could reach it
he was almost surrounded by the troops of Richard and Mercadier.
They chased him so hotly and pressed him so closely that the bridge
at Gisors broke down under the weight of horses and men crowding
upon it. The French king himself was reported to have “swallowed
some water,” as his rival jestingly expressed it; he escaped,
however, unharmed, but twenty of his knights were drowned; three
were prostrated by Richard’s own lance, a hundred captured by his
men, and a hundred others fell into the hands of Mercadier and his
Brabantines; there were countless prisoners of lower rank, and the
captured destriers numbered two hundred, “of which one hundred were
covered with iron.”[1251]
This affair was one of Richard’s most daring personal adventures;
he himself acknowledged that he had “staked his own head and his
kingdom to boot, overriding the advice of all his counsellors”—“but,”
he added, “it was not we who thus defeated the king of France, but
God and our right did so by our means.”[1252] These words and the
action on which they are a comment are alike characteristic of the
Lion-heart. Amid all the overwhelming political, diplomatic, and
financial cares of his latter years, he was still knight-errant
enough to glory in a wholly [Sidenote: =1197-8=] unnecessary
adventure which might have cost him his life, and which had, after
all, failed of its practical object, the capture of Philip. It may,
however, have been partly prompted by another motive than the spirit
of mere knightly daring. Richard was literally at his wits’ end
for money; and without money the league which he had been forming
against Philip was certain to break up ere long. His alliances with
Flanders and the other feudataries of the Empire and with some of the
French king’s own subjects rested on a basis of subsidies, revenues,
or substantial rewards of some kind, promised to the nobles in
consideration of their pledge to assist him against Philip. To none
of them had he as yet been able to fulfil his plighted word in this
respect. Château-Gaillard was well worth the cost of its building,
but the cost was great. “You know there is not a penny at Chinon”
(where the Angevin treasure was kept), he wrote in a _sirventes_
addressed to the brother-counts of Auvergne some time in the years
1197-9.[1253] His means were, in fact, insufficient for the payment
of even the troops absolutely necessary to guard the Norman frontier.
When he found himself so close to Philip on the road to Gisors there
may have flashed across his excited brain the dream of a capture
which should not only place his rival in his power, but lead to the
filling of his coffers as those of the Emperor had so recently been
filled, with the ransom of a king. He had already been reduced to
the expedient of a change of his royal seal, the repudiation of all
grants made under the old one, and the exaction of heavy payments for
their confirmation or renewal.[1254] On his new seal the three lions
passant-gardant appeared for the first time as the armorial bearings
of the king of England. Its earliest impression now known is attached
to a charter dated May 22, 1198[1255]; and the process of cancelling
old grants [Sidenote: =1197-8=] and selling new ones went on till
the very eve of his death eleven months later.[1256]
Neither Richard nor Philip, in fact, was in a position to make war
on a scale large enough to bring it to a decisive issue. The raids
and counter-raids therefore continued. [Sidenote: _Sept._] Philip
burned Evreux, ravaged the country as far as Beaumont-le-Roger, and
would have burned Neufbourg, had not John anticipated him by firing
it at the moment of the French attack. Mercadier raided Abbeville at
fair-time, and returned with a mass of plunder taken from the French
merchants there. The earl of Leicester made an attempt on Pacy.[1257]
Richard built a new fort on an island in the Seine and gave it the
provocative name of Boutavant, “Push-forward”; Philip began to build
one facing it, which in a like spirit of bravado he called Gouletot,
“Swallow-all.”[1258] An obscure entry in the Norman Exchequer Roll
for the year seems to imply that the kings reverted for a moment to
a scheme which four years before had been proposed and rejected,
for the settlement of their quarrel by a fight between selected
champions, to be held in presence of both at Les Andelys[1259]; but
again the proposal led to nothing. At length Archbishop Hubert, being
in Normandy, went at Philip’s desire and with Richard’s consent to
the French court to discuss terms of peace. Philip offered to restore
all the territory and castles which he had seized except Gisors,
concerning the rightful ownership of which he declared himself
willing to accept the decision of six Norman barons to be chosen by
himself and six French barons to be chosen by Richard. The English
king, however, would make no peace save on condition of its including
the count of Flanders and all the other feudataries of France who had
transferred their homage to himself; so the negotiations resulted
only in another truce till S. Hilary’s day.[1260] At the appointed
time the kings [Sidenote: _Jan. 13_] came to a meeting between Vernon
and Les Andelys; Richard on the Seine in a boat, from which he
refused to land, Philip on horseback on the river-bank. The colloquy
was adjourned, seemingly to give opportunity for the intervention
of a mediator, Peter of Capua, a cardinal [Sidenote: _Jan._] whom
the new Pope Innocent III had recently sent to France as legate. By
the advice of Peter and of some magnates on both sides, the truce
was prolonged for a term of five years; it was confirmed by oath,
and both kings dismissed their troops, bidding them return to their
homes.[1261]
The biographer of Philip Augustus says that “through the trickery of
the king of England” the agreement was not confirmed by an exchange
of hostages.[1262] It may have been on this plea that four French
counts through whose territories Mercadier and his men had to pass
on their way southward ventured to ignore the truce and set upon the
Routiers, many of whom they slew. Philip swore that this outrage had
no sanction from him. Presently afterwards, however, when Richard,
thinking Normandy was safe for a while, was on his way to visit
his southern dominions, Philip not only resumed the fortification
of Gouletot, but also destroyed the neighbouring forest. At these
tidings Richard hurried back to Normandy, and sent his chancellor to
the French court to declare the truce dissolved unless Philip would
pull down the new fortress. Philip, urged by the legate, promised to
do so. Then Richard declared he would have either a full settlement
of all their disputes or no peace at all. A form of peace was drawn
up; its provisions were that the king of France should restore to
the king of England all the lands which he had taken from him either
in war or by any other means, except Gisors, in compensation for
which he granted to Richard the gift of the archbishopric of Tours;
Philip’s son Louis was to marry Richard’s niece, the daughter of the
king of Castille; and furthermore, Philip was to swear that he would
to the utmost of his power assist Richard’s nephew Otto to obtain the
imperial crown. Richard on his part was to give to Louis of France,
with the hand of his niece, twenty thousand marks of silver and the
castle of Gisors as her dowry. The execution of the treaty, however,
was postponed till Richard should return from Poitou.[1263]
The word “Poitou” had in recent years acquired another meaning
besides its original one. Richard had never styled himself count of
Poitou since his accession to the Crown[1264]; it is doubtful whether
he had ever done so since its restoration to his mother in 1185. The
title by which he asserted his rights over his southern dominions was
that of “Duke of the Aquitanians.” His grant of the county of Poitou
to Otto in 1195 seems to have been merely verbal, ratified by neither
charter nor investiture, and carrying with it no permanent authority
and no legal claim to the higher dignity of the Aquitanian dukedom;
and on Otto’s return to Germany in June 1198 Richard resumed full
possession of the county.[1265] The word “Aquitaine” was dropping out
of use. The administration of all the king-duke’s dominions south of
the Loire was carried on by seneschals appointed by and acting for
him, one for “Gascony” and one for “Poitou”; the former appellation
representing the country south of the Garonne, the latter embracing
the county of Poitou proper and all its dependencies or underfiefs
between the Garonne and the Loire.[1266] Richard’s last visit to
any part of these dominions had been a flying one in December 1195,
when he kept Christmas at Poitiers.[1267] A double motive seems now
to have urged him southward. The troublesome half-brothers Aimar of
Angoulême and Aimar of Limoges were, it appears, again plotting or at
least credibly suspected of plotting treason against him.[1268] He
had also been informed of a wonderful treasure-trove on the land of a
baron in the Limousin. A peasant ploughing near Châlus had met with
an obstacle which, when disinterred, proved to consist of something
which is described [Sidenote: _March_] as “an Emperor with his wife,
sons, and daughters, all of pure gold, and seated round a golden
table,” and also, it appears, some ancient coins.[1269] The lord of
Châlus was one Achard[1270]; from him the treasure was claimed by the
viscount Aimar as overlord. Richard, as Aimar’s overlord, claimed it
in his turn,[1271] and by the law of treasure-trove his claim seems
to have been justified. According to one account, Aimar actually
sent him no small portion of what had been found; but Richard would
be content with nothing short of the whole.[1272] He seems to have
suspected that the remainder was still hidden at Châlus, for it was
to Châlus that he laid siege, on Wednesday, March 4.[1273] Achard
himself had fled to the viscount of Limoges for protection.[1274] In
vain he begged for a truce till after Easter, and offered to submit
to a sentence of the royal court of France.[1275]
The castle of Châlus, whose ruined keep-tower still stands on a
low hill above the little river Tardoire, contained at the moment
about forty persons; only two of these were knights, and some of the
others were women.[1276] For three [Sidenote: _March 24-6_] days
Richard’s miners dug under the walls while he with his crossbowmen
rode round about them, discharging a [Sidenote: _Friday March 26_]
shower of missiles into the enclosure.[1277] On the third day the
little garrison offered to surrender on condition of safety for
life and limb and the retention of their arms; but Richard refused,
swearing he would capture and hang them all.[1278] That afternoon he
again rode forth, accompanied by Mercadier, round about the castle,
shooting with his crossbow at any man whom he saw on the wall; and
this time he rashly went without any defensive armour except an
iron headpiece and a buckler. His daring was more than equalled by
one man among the besieged, who with a crossbow in one hand and
a frying-pan in the other had stood nearly all day on a bastion
of the tower, dexterously turning aside with his makeshift shield
every missile aimed at him, and carefully scanning the ranks of the
besiegers,[1279] evidently in the hope of discovering their leader.
From one account it appears that when at last his opportunity came,
he had discharged all his quarrels, and the bolt which he shot at the
unprotected figure was one of the enemy’s own which he snatched from
a crevice in the wall where it had stuck just within his reach.[1280]
Richard, hearing the sound of the missile in the air, looked up and
greeted the bowman with a shout of applause. That look cost him his
life. He bent down to shelter himself under his shield, but too late
to avoid the arrow; it struck his left shoulder at the joint of the
neck, glanced downward, and became fixed in his side.[1281] No one
but Mercadier was near enough to see exactly what had occurred. To
him Richard gave orders for a general assault to be made on the
castle[1282]; then, quietly and alone, he rode back to his tent.
There he tried to pull out the arrow; the shaft broke, leaving the
barb imbedded in the wound, and he was compelled to send for a
surgeon to extract it. One was found, says an English chronicler,
“among that accursed tribe, the followers of the impious Mercadier,”
and it is to this man’s handling of the case that the same writer
ascribes its fatal termination; but this is sufficiently accounted
for by his own description of the drawbacks attending the operation,
performed hurriedly by lantern-light on a patient so fat that the
steel, buried in his flesh, was extremely difficult to find, and when
found, still more difficult to remove[1283]; a patient, moreover,
whose character combined with his physical constitution to make him
an extremely unmanageable invalid. A second doctor seems to have been
afterwards called in;[1284] but in spite of all the remedies that
were applied the wound grew daily more painful and its swelling and
discoloration more ominous.[1285]
A furious assault made by Mercadier on Châlus after the king was
wounded had resulted in the capture of the castle and its defenders.
Richard caused them all to be hanged, except the man who had shot
him.[1286] He then despatched some of his troops to besiege two
neighbouring castles, Nontron and Montagut, “for he purposed in
his heart to destroy all the castles and towns of the viscount of
Limoges.”[1287] Soon, however, he began to realize that his days
were numbered. He wrote to his mother, who was at Fontevraud, asking
her to come to him. Every precaution had been taken to prevent his
condition becoming known outside the little group of four trusted
nobles who alone were admitted to his presence;[1288] from these he
now exacted an oath of fealty to John as his destined successor, to
whom he devised the kingdom of England and all his other lands. He
ordered that all his castles and three parts of his treasure should
likewise be delivered to John; he bequeathed all his jewels to his
nephew Otto of Germany, and the remaining fourth part of his treasure
to be distributed among his servants and the poor.[1289] He sent
for the captive crossbowman and questioned him: “What evil have I
done to thee? Why hast thou slain me?” “Thou didst slay my father
and my two brothers with thine own hand; thou wouldst have slain me
likewise. Take on me what vengeance thou wilt; freely will I suffer
the greatest torments thou canst think of, now that thou, who hast
brought so many and so great evils on the world, art stricken to
death.” Richard answered, “I forgive thee my death,” and ordered that
the man should be liberated and sent away safely with a gift of a
hundred English shillings.[1290] Then he called for a chaplain, made
his confession and received the Holy Communion.[1291] By this time
probably his mother was with him; she herself records that she was
present at his death, and that he “placed all his trust, after God,
in her, that she would make provision for his soul’s welfare with
motherly care to the utmost of her power.”[1292] He made his own
arrangements for the disposal of his body, ordering that his brain
and some internal organs should be buried in the ancient Poitevin
abbey of Charroux, his heart at Rouen, and the embalmed corpse at his
father’s feet in the abbey church of Fontevraud.[1293] He [Sidenote:
_April 6_] received Extreme Unction on April 6, the Tuesday in
Passion week, “and as the day was closing, he also ended his earthly
[Sidenote: _April 11_] day.”[1294] On Palm Sunday his body, wrapped
in the robe in which he had been attired at his crown-wearing at
Winchester five years before,[1295] was buried by his father’s old
friend Bishop Hugh of Lincoln and his mother’s friend Abbot Luke
of Torpenay in the place which he had chosen for it.[1296] His
heart—said to be remarkable for its great size[1297]—was enclosed in
a casket of gold and silver and placed, as a most precious treasure,
among the holy relics in the cathedral church of Rouen.[1298]
NOTES
NOTE I
_Richard and Leopold of Austria at Acre_
The German account of the quarrel between Richard and the duke of
Austria after the taking of Acre is as follows:
“Capta igitur civitate, rex Anglorum signa triumphalia sui exercitus
turribus affigi praecepit, titulum victoriae ex toto sibimetipsi
satis arroganter adscribens. Hacque de causa cum per civitatem
transiret, vexillum ducis Leopoldi turri quam ipse cum suis
obtinuerat affixum vidit, suumque non esse recognoscens, cujusdam sit
percontatur. Qui Leopoldi ducis Orientalium esse accepto responso,
eumque ex parte civitatem obtinuisse comperiens, maxima indignatione
permotus vexillum turre dejici lutoque conculcari praecepit; insuper
ducem verbis contumeliosis affectum sine causa injuriavit.” Otto of
S. Blaise, Pertz, xx. 323.
The English accounts are two:
(1) “Dux Austriae, et ipse unus ex veteribus obsessoribus Accaronis,
regem Anglorum secutus a pari in suae sortis possessionem, quia
praelato coram se vexillo visus fuit sibi partem vindicare
triumphi; et si non de precepto, de voluntate tamen regis offensi,
dejectum est vexillum ducis in coenum, et in ejus contumeliam a
derisoribus conculcatum.” R. Devizes, 52. (2) “Cum enim civitatem
Accon irrumperent Christiani, et diversi diversa civitatis hospitia
caperent, in nobilissimo civitatis palatio signum ducis [Ostrici]
elevatus est. Quod intuens rex et invidens, manu militum valida
vexillum dejecit, ducemque tam grato spoliavit hospitio.” Gerv.
Cant., i. 514.
Rigord (118) says: “Ducis Austriae vexillum circa Accon cuidam
principi [rex Ricardus] abstulit et in cloacam profundam, in
opprobrium ducis et dedecus, vilissime confractum dejecit.”
Otto is the only German authority on the subject: for the brief
mention of it in _Ann. Colon._ (Pertz, xvii. 802), which is
practically in agreement with him, cannot be considered as such,
and Magnus of Reichensperg’s version (_ib._ 519) is of no value,
because it places the incident not at Acre, but at the rebuilding of
Ascalon, in January 1192, after Leopold had left Palestine (Kellner,
_R. Löwenherz Deutsche Gefangenschaft_, 47-8). It is curious that
the writer who gives the fullest details about Leopold’s Crusade
and about the later relations between Leopold and Richard gives
no account of the affair at all, merely saying with reference to
Leopold’s capture and imprisonment of the king “Una et efficiens
causa fuit quod eum in obsidione Aconae quasi abjectum reputavit”
(Ansbert, in Appendix to Preface to R. Howden, iii. cxl). It is also
noticeable that Otto writes as if Richard had claimed possession of
the whole of Acre for himself alone; there is no mention of Philip.
Probably the tower to which Leopold’s banner was affixed stood in
Richard’s half of the city.
NOTE II
_The Capitulation of Acre_
The terms on which Karakoush and El-Meshtoub agreed to surrender
Acre are given, in various forms, by nine contemporary or almost
contemporary authorities.
(1) King Richard, in a letter to the Abbot of Clairvaux, R. Howden,
iii. 131.
(2) Bohadin, _Rec. Hist. Orient._, iii. 237; Schultens’s edition, 179.
(3) _Estoire de la Guerre Sainte_, ll. 5199-224, and _Itin. Reg.
Ric._, 231, 232; these two are here practically identical and may be
counted as one.
(4) _Gesta Ric._, 178, 179.
(5) R. Howden, iii. 120, 121.
(6) R. Diceto, ii. 94.
(7) R. Coggeshall, 32.
(8) R. Devizes (ed. Stevenson), 51, 52.
(9) Ibn Alathyr, _Rec. Hist. Orient._, II. 46.
All these writers mention, among the conditions promised by the
Moslems, the restoration of the relic of the Cross; and all except
one—R. Devizes—mention also the release of a number of Christian
prisoners: the king and R. Diceto say fifteen hundred; R. Coggeshall
says seven hundred, some of whom the kings were to select; Ambrose
and the _Itinerarium_ say two thousand prisoners of distinction and
five hundred of lower rank; the _Gesta_ say fifteen hundred ordinary
prisoners and two hundred knights, these latter to be specially
selected by the kings; R. Howden follows this latter account, but
reduces the first number to a thousand; Ibn Alathyr mentions only
the “selected” prisoners, whose number he gives as five hundred. The
earlier of the two extant redactions of Bohadin (_Recueil_, iii.
237) has “five hundred prisoners of ordinary condition, and one
hundred others of rank, whom the Franks might ask for by name”; but
in the later redaction (represented by Schultens’s edition) the
figures are fifteen hundred and one thousand. This later redaction,
of which the only known MS. was written in the year after Bohadin’s
death, is considered not to be his own work (_Recueil_, iii. 374);
but its variations from the earlier recension seem entitled to some
consideration, as they are so nearly contemporary and may have the
force of corrections; this may be the case in the passage under
consideration here.
Neither King Richard, R. Diceto, nor R. Devizes, mentions a money
payment. The _Estoire_, _Itinerarium_, _Gesta Ricardi_, R. Howden,
Bohadin, and Ibn Alathyr make the promised sum two hundred thousand
“bezants” (_Est._), “talentorum Saracenicorum” (_Itin._), “dinars”
(Bohadin and Ibn Alathyr). R. Coggeshall absurdly says seven hundred
thousand bezants. The only authorities for the special payment
promised to Conrad are the two Moslem ones, and as to its amount
the two recensions of Bohadin again differ; the earlier says four
thousand gold pieces, the later fourteen thousand, viz. ten thousand
to Conrad himself and four thousand to his knights. Ibn Alathyr also
says Conrad was to have fourteen thousand; and the later recension
of Bohadin is followed by Abu Shama in his extract from that author
(_Recueil_, v. 25, 26), as to both the number of prisoners and the
amount of money.
The _Estoire_ and _Itinerarium_ say that “the chief men among the
Turks in Acre” were to be held as hostages by the Franks till the
conditions of the treaty were fulfilled. Richard and Bohadin say, and
the _Gesta_, R. Howden, and R. Coggeshall imply, that the hostages
were to comprise the whole garrison. The _Estoire_ and _Itinerarium_
assert that the conditions were offered by the Turks in Acre with
Saladin’s knowledge and consent; and the _Itinerarium_ adds that
the term appointed for their fulfilment was that day month, _i. e._
August 12. The king says “Pactione etiam ex parte Saladini plenius
firmata ... diemque ad haec omnia persolvenda nobis constituit.” R.
Diceto says “Qui” (_i. e._ the Saracens in Acre) “communicato cum
suis consilio coeperunt tractare de pace talibus pactionibus quod
Saladinus Sanctam Crucem certo die restitueret,” etc. The _Gesta_ and
R. Howden make the term forty days from the surrender, _i. e._ August
20. Bohadin (238) represents Saladin as ignorant of the whole matter
till after the surrender, and Ibn Alathyr and R. Coggeshall do the
same; the latter says that Saladin “nimium ex animo consternatus,
facturum quod petebatur se esse spopondit,” while the two Arab
writers represent the Sultan as at first refusing to confirm the
treaty and afterwards accepting its conditions, but, according to
Bohadin, with a modification as to the term for payment which brings
the date for the first instalment practically to the time named in
the _Itinerarium_, viz. a month after the surrender.
NOTE III
_The Advance from the Two Casals to Ramlah_
The Frank writers give no precise date for the advance of the host in
1191 from “between the two Casals” to the neighbourhood of Ramlah.
Ambrose says they reached the former position on the eve of All
Saints, and stayed there “full fifteen days or more” (_Est._, ll.
7199-209). The _Itin._, 289-90, agrees with him. This should mean
that they set out again on November 15 or 16. Ambrose, according
to the printed text of the _Estoire_, says the journey to the next
encampment took two days: “L’ost erra par mi la plaine, Sor les
biaus chevals peus d’orge; _Vint en deus jors_ entre Seint Jorge e
Rames; la s’allerent tendre Por plus gent e vitaille atendre” (ll.
7464-8). Thus they would arrive there—_i. e._ between Lydda and
Ramlah—on November 17 or 18. The poet further says that the weather
afterwards compelled them to take shelter within the two towns, “e
fumes la bien sis semaines” (ll. 7471-7; _Itin._, 298-9, says the
same). We presently find that they made their next advance—to Beit
Nuba—on January 3. Thus we arrive at November 22 as the date of
entering Lydda and Ramlah, and the encampment “in the plain” appears
to have lasted five or six days (November 17 or 18-22). Our best
Arab authority, Bohadin, unluckily does not mention the matter. Ibn
Alathyr (_Rec. Hist. Or._, II. i. 54) says “the Franks set out from
their camp at Jaffa for Ramlah on 3 Dulkaada” = November 22; the same
date is given for their “advance in the direction of Ramlah” by Abu
Shama (_ib._, v. 48), but without any clue to his authority for the
statement. Ibn Alathyr gives this same date, 3 Dulkaada, as that on
which “the Franks advanced from Ramlah to Natroun” (_l.c._); this
is doubtless a confusion, made either by author or scribe, between
“Dulkaada” and “Dulheggia,” as Richard—though, indeed, not the
host—did remove to Natroun on December 22 or 23 (= 3 or 4 Dulheggia).
The Frankish and the Arab authorities may be partially reconciled by
taking the “six weeks” of Ambrose and the _Itinerarium_ as covering
the whole period spent not only within the towns, but also “between”
them. In that case, however, the stay between the two Casals must
have been more than fifteen days; it could not have been less than
twenty days, indeed twenty-two seems a more reasonable reckoning,
for it is hard to see how two days can possibly have been spent in
marching even from Casal of the Plains (the more remote of these two
Casals) to either Lydda or Ramlah, a distance of less than eight
miles. One writer does expressly mention “twenty-two days” in his
account of this part of the Crusade; but he does so in connexion with
the sojourn, not between the Casals, but between Lydda and Ramlah.
Ambrose’s lines, 7464-8, quoted above, are in the _Itinerarium_ (298)
represented as follows: “Exercitus noster fixis tentoriis _inter
S. Georgium et Ramulam sedit viginti et duobus_ diebus, ut gentem
expectaret venturam et annonam.”
To me this passage in the _Itinerarium_ suggests a possibility of
reconciling practically all the dates and notes of time given by all
our authorities, Arab and Frankish, relating to this matter. It is
not inconceivable that the original authority—whoever he may have
been—for the “twenty-two days” had through a confusion of memory
substituted the duration of the stay between the two Casals for
that of the stay near and in Lydda and Ramlah, and _vice versa_.
In that case the correct dates would stand thus: Between the two
Casals, twenty-two days, November 1-22; in the plain between Lydda
and Ramlah, “full fifteen days,” November 23-December 8; retirement
into the two cities December 8, and further advance (to Beit Nuba)
on January 3, “six weeks” from the date of encampment between them.
Whether these coincidences are merely accidental, and the “twenty-two
days” a sheer blunder due to the Latin “translator” having misread
“vint _en_ deux jors” as “vint _e_ deus jors,” in Ambrose’s line
7466, or whether in that line as we now have it _en_ is a scribe’s
error for _e_, and ll. 7464-6 should be read as a single sentence,
with a parenthesis stuck into the middle of it for the sake of
rime—“E l’ost erra par mi la plaine (Sor les biaus chevals peus
d’orge) Vint e deus jors entre Seint Jorge e Rames”—whether the
“translator” rendered _erra_ in l. 7464 by _sedit_ because he thought
thus to make better sense of his version of l. 7466, or whether the
poet meant that the host roamed about the plain in which its camp
was set, and perhaps even shifted the camp about, in vain efforts to
avoid the enemies and the rain (see ll. 7469-75, especially l. 7473,
“Iceles pluies _nos chacerent_”); these are questions involving too
many other questions for a discussion of them to be attempted here.
NOTE IV
_Casal des Plains and Casal des Bains_
I have ventured, in defiance of the printed text of the _Estoire_,
to follow the writer of the _Itinerarium_ in giving to Richard’s
lurking-place on the night of January 2-3, 1192, the name of Casal
of the Baths. “Casellum Balneorum” occurs in the _Itinerarium_
twice. In p. 298 we read that while the host lay between Lydda and
Ramlah “pluviae a sedibus nostris nos exturbabant, intantum ut rex
Jerosolimorum et gens nostra infra S. Georgium ad hospitandum se
transferrent et in Ramulam, _comes vero de S. Paulo ad Casellum
Balneorum_.” The last eight words are not represented at all in
the _Estoire_. In pp. 306, 307, of the _Itinerarium_ we are told:
“Tertia post Circumcisionem Domini die, cum exercitus noster ad
progrediendum” [from Lydda and Ramlah to Beit Nuba] “se sollicitus
expediret, deformium multitudo Turcorum qui eadem nocte praeterita
juxta Casellum de _Planis_ in insidiis delituerant inter frutecta
prosiliit diluculo in viam observandam per quam noster transiturus
erat exercitus.... Rex quippe Ricardus, cui prius innotuerat
de praedictis Turcorum insidiis, propterea quaque eadem nocte
ad Casellum _Balneorum_ consederat in insidiis, ut videlicet
insidiantibus insidiaret, mane progrediens,” etc. In the _Estoire_
the corresponding passage runs thus: “Tier jor d’an noef, la matinee,
Esteit une ovre destinee; Sarazins, les laides genz brunes, Sor le
Casal des Plains as dunes Le seir devant ja se bucherent, E tote
nuit illoc guaiterent Desqu’al matin que il saillirent Al chemin de
l’ost.... Le rei d’Engletere aveit, Qui cel embuchement saveit, Por
ço al Casal des _Plains_ geu,” etc. (ll. 7717-24, 7729-31).
It has been suggested that the “Casellum Balneorum” of _Itin._, 298,
may represent Amwas (= “Fountains”), otherwise called Nicopolis (see
Stubbs’s note to _Itin._, _l.c._). This identification is possible;
but it seems very unlikely that a small fraction of the host should,
for no apparent reason, put itself so nearly into the lion’s mouth by
going to camp eight or nine miles in advance of the rest, and less
than two miles from the encampment of Saladin, which at that time
was at Natroun. Moreover, in a later passage common to _Estoire_ (l.
9846) and _Itinerarium_ (369) we find “la fontaine d’Esmals,” “ad
fontem Emaus,” in a context which plainly shows that these names
stand for Amwas-Nicopolis; but in p. 307 of _Itinerarium_ the context
seems to preclude an identification of Casellum Balneorum with Emaus
= Amwas, and to point to some place much further north or north-west;
and later commentators have found such a place, bearing a name which
translates the Latin one more exactly than Amwas, in Umm-el-Hummum,
near Mirabel. On the other hand, the extant text of the _Estoire_, as
we have seen, has nothing at all answering to “Castellum Balneorum”;
it makes the Turkish ambush and the king spend the night of January
2-3 at, or close to, one and the same place, the Casal of the Plains.
Whence, then, did the Latin writer get his “Casal of the Baths”? He
can hardly have invented it for himself. If his work be really a
translation of that of Ambrose, he must either have made it from a
copy which had _Bains_, not _Plains_, in l. 7731, or he must have
had some other source of information which made him deliberately
substitute “Baths” for “Plains” in his rendering of that line. The
substitution cannot be explained as a misreading on his part, since
“Casal des Plains” in l. 7720 is correctly represented in his text
by “Casellum de Planis.” That he knew, from a source other than the
_Estoire_, something about the Casal of the Baths is clear from his
earlier mention of that place, in p. 298. A different theory as to
the relation between the two books suggests that that source may have
been personal knowledge. However this may be, his second mention of
“Casellum Balneorum” certainly makes the passage in which it occurs
far more intelligible than the corresponding passage in the existing
text of the _Estoire_. Ambrose’s story, as it stands there, is
scarcely credible. The Turks and the king lie in wait for one another
all night, the former “on the sandhills above the Casal of the
Plains,” the latter at the Casal of the Plains itself, yet neither
party catches the other till, evidently to the utter surprise of the
Turks, they meet before the camp at Ramlah or Lydda, to which they
must, if this version of the affair be correct, have ridden at almost
the same time, parallel with and in close proximity to each other for
about eight miles, and almost from one and the same starting-point!
Surely, by the light—whencesoever derived—of the Latin version, we
can see that either Ambrose himself or the scribe of the extant MS.
of his work has erroneously written _Plains_ instead of _Bains_ in
l. 7731; a mistake which might very easily be made, owing to the
occurrence of “Plains” only eleven lines above, and the absence of
any mention of Casal des Bains elsewhere in the poem.
NOTE V
_Richard’s Homage to the Emperor_
Seven contemporary or nearly contemporary writers state that Richard,
to purchase his freedom, did homage to Henry VI. Three of these—one
English and two German—assert distinctly that the kingdom of England
was included in this homage; two of the others—one German and one
French—imply the same.
(1) “Ricardus rex Angliae in captione Henrici Romanorum imperatoris
detentus, ut captionem illam evaderet, consilio Alienor matris suae
deposuit se de regno Angliae et tradidit illud imperatori sicut
universorum domino; et investivit eum inde per pilleum suum; sed
imperator, sicut praelocutum fuit, statim reddidit ei, in conspectu
magnatium Alemanniae et Angliae, regnum Angliae praedictum, tenendum
de ipso pro quinque millia librarum sterlingorum singulis annis de
tributo solvendis; et investivit eum inde imperator per duplicem
crucem de auro.” R. Howden, iii. 202, 203.
(2) The _Annals of Marbach_ (Pertz, xvii. 165) say Richard was
released “tota terra sua, Anglia et aliis terris suis propriis,
imperatori datis et ab eo in beneficio receptis.”
(3) “Legium ipsi [imperatori] faciens hominium, coronam regni sui ab
ipso recepit,” _Gesta Episc. Halberstad._ (Pertz, xxiii. 110).
(4) “Terram propriam ... imperatori tradidit et a manu imperatoris
sceptro investitus suscepit. Juravitque fidelitatem Romano
Imperatori et Romano Imperio et privilegio exinde facto propria
manu subscripsit. Tantam itaque devotionem regis intuens imperator
sceptrum regium quod in manu sua tenebat regi contulit, ut hoc
insigni dono in posterum uteretur.... Acta sunt haec apud Maguntium.”
_Ann. Salsburg. Additamenta_, Pertz, xiii. 240.
(5) William the Breton represents Richard as offering to give the
Emperor a hundred thousand marks, and adding: “Meque sceptrumque meum
subjecta fatebor.... Rex igitur dictum re firmat, et inde recedit
liber.” _Philippis_, lib. iv., vv. 419, 426-7.
(6) “Accepta infinita summa pecuniae et hominio ejus ... [imperator
regem] absolutum permittit abire.” _Reineri Ann._, Pertz, xvi. 651.
(7) “[Richardus] Imperio postquam jurans se subdidit, inquit: ‘Vivat
in aeternum lux mea, liber eo.’”—_P. de Ebulo_, ll. 1087-8.
Of all these authorities, only the first is of any real value.
The German sources for this period are all mere monastic or
ecclesiastical chronicles; the Annals of Marbach are among the best.
The Acts of the Bishops of Halberstadt date from the thirteenth
century. Reiner’s Annals are a section, ending in 1230, of a group of
Chronicles of Liége; Reiner himself was born in 1155. The Additions
to the Salzburg Annals are absolutely worthless; they are full of
absurdities; and some of their statements about Richard are so
obviously unhistorical that their German editor in his footnotes
twice denounces them as “fables”—“Hoc jam fabulis plena de Richardi
regis gestis” (p. 238)—“Iterum fabulae sequuntur prioribus pejores”
(p. 240). Peter of Ebulo and William of Armorica can only have had
their information at—to say the least—second hand, and from sources
hostile to Richard; Peter was the panegyrist of Henry VI, William
the historiographer of Philip Augustus; both, too, wrote in verse,
and are open to the suspicion of a liberal use of poetic licence to
exalt their respective heroes and diminish the glory of him who was
the most illustrious rival of those two sovereigns. Had we only these
six writers to deal with, we might be justified in treating the whole
story as a misunderstanding or misrepresentation of an act of homage
done to Henry by Richard for the kingdom of Burgundy, although, oddly
enough, not one of them so much as mentions Burgundy at all. But
Roger of Howden is not so easy to dispose of. He was a sober-minded
and well-informed English historian, whose work in many places shows
that he had access to the best official sources of contemporary
information; in his case misunderstanding and misrepresentation on
the subject are both alike almost inconceivable; and, moreover, his
version of the matter is indirectly corroborated by another writer
whose general accuracy and correct information rank as high, and
whose facilities for learning the truth on this particular point
were probably even greater than those of Roger himself. Ralf de
Diceto (ii. 113) writes as follows: “Pactiones initae sunt plures
inter imperatorem et regem, ad persolvendam non spectantes pecuniam,
sed ad statum regis intervertendum; inter quas quicquid insertum est
ab initio vitiosum, quicquid contra leges, contra canones, contra
bonos mores indubitanter conceptum, licet ex parte regis et suorum
fidelium ad hoc observandum fuerit jusjurandum adauctum, emissa
licet patentia scripta, licet in mundum universitatis recepta,
licet a partibus absoluta, quia tamen contra jus elicita robur
firmitatis obtinere non debent in posterum, nec ullo tractu temporis
convalescere.” These words seem distinctly to point to something more
than homage merely for the kingdom of Arles, a homage which there
could surely be no reason for Ralf or anyone else to denounce as so
“vicious from the outset, so contrary to law, morality, and right” as
to be utterly null and void. We must also remember that Ralf was a
close friend of Archbishop Walter of Rouen, who was in correspondence
with him at this very time, and who was present at the whole ceremony
of Richard’s release.
NOTE VI
_Richard, William of Longchamps, and the Great Seal_
Roger of Howden in his account of the year 1194, after giving the
terms of the truce made between the representatives of the two kings
on July 23 in the form of a proclamation addressed “to all whom it
may concern” by Drogo de Merlo the Constable of France, Anselm the
Dean of S. Martin’s at Tours, and Urse the French king’s chamberlain
(iii. 257-60), diverges to English affairs (260-7) and then returns
to continental ones as follows:
“Deinde [Ricardus Rex] veniens in Normanniam moleste tulit quicquid
factum fuerit de supradictis treugis, et imputans cancellario suo
hoc per eum fuisse factum, abstulit ab eo sigillum suum, et fecit
sibi novum sigillum fieri, et mandavit per singulas terras suas quod
nihil ratum foret quod fuerat per vetus sigillum suum; tum quia
cancellarius ille operatus fuerat inde minus discrete quam esset
necesse, tum quia sigillum illud perditum erat quando Rogerus Malus
Catulus, vice-cancellarius suus, submersus erat in mare ante insulam
de Cipro. Et praecepit rex quod omnes qui cartas habebant venirent ad
novum sigillum suum ad cartas suas renovandas.” R. Howden, iii. 267.
This story is certainly not strictly accurate; it was not till 1198
that Richard changed his seal, and if the seal was withdrawn from
William of Ely in 1194, it was restored to him almost immediately,
and he remained the king’s chancellor and trusted friend to the end
of Richard’s life. Nevertheless, it seems clear that Richard did
momentarily contemplate in 1194 a change of seal and the consequent
requirement of confirmation of charters issued under the old seal.
When this actually took place four years later, he himself stated
his reasons for it as follows: “Quod” [sc. primum sigillum nostrum]
“quia aliquando perditum erat, et dum capti essemus in Alemannia
in aliena potestate constitutum, mutatum est.” (Confirmation of a
charter to Ely, July 1, 1198, printed in _Ramsey Cartulary_, ed. Hart
and Lyons, i. 115, and also in Round’s _Feudal England_, 542). Mr.
Round dismisses Roger’s story as sheer fiction, on the ground that
the second reason here given by Richard is “wholly and essentially
different” from the first reason given by Roger. Even if this be so,
it does not necessarily follow that the whole of Roger’s story is
either a fiction, or a delusion, or misdated. Richard’s own statement
of his motives is obviously a mere excuse; the self-evident fact that
while he was in prison the seal was necessarily “in the power of
another” might be a ground for annulling acts passed under it during
that time, but could be no genuine reason for revoking likewise all
other acts passed under it. One at least of his excuses, however,
is far more likely to have been invented in 1194 than in 1198. The
king’s temporary loss of control over the seal in 1193-4 might be a
colourable pretext for getting rid of the discredited instrument at
the earliest possible moment, but could in no way account for its
repudiation after it had been, without necessity, suffered to remain
in use for four years.
INDEX
Abou Bekr, 251, 256
Achard of Châlus, 325
Acre, Philip arrives at, 145;
siege of, 154, 161-162;
negotiations for surrender, 162-164;
surrender of, 164;
discussions about terms, 169-171;
slaughter of garrison, 172;
disturbances at, 211;
capitulation of, 331-332
Aixe taken by Richard, 20
Alfonso II, King of Aragon, 11, 56
Aloysia of France, betrothed to Richard, 9;
her promised dowry, 22;
disputes about, 25, 62, 67, 72;
betrothal renewed, 65, 82;
marriage with John proposed, 86;
engagement to Richard finally broken off, 136-137;
sent back to France, 302;
married, 313
Amalric I, king of Jerusalem, 158
Amwas, 233
Andely, 305, 308, 309;
disputed between archbishop and king, 309;
Richard’s building at, 310-311
Angoulême, disputed succession to, 39-41
Angoulême, Aimar, count of, 39, 41 note 4, 44-45, 74, 297
Angoulême, Elias, count of, 41 note 4
Angoulême, Maud, heiress of, 39
Angoulême, Vulgrin III, count of, 19, 20, 29, 31, 38
Angoulême, William IV, count of, 5, 7, 15, 20, 29, 38
Angoulême, William V, count of, 39, 41 note 4
Anjou, Stephen, seneschal of, 93
Aquitaine, Ralf de Diceto’s description of, 3;
its extent and boundaries, 4;
risings in, 5, 7, 8;
Richard made duke of, 9;
its feudal position in 1169, 10;
rebels in, 15, 40-44;
ravages of Routiers in, 51, 53;
end of rebellion, 55-56;
Henry proposes to transfer it to John, 50, 60;
invaded by John and Geoffrey, 62;
Henry II’s dealings with, 65;
revolts in, 276, 297;
disuse of the name in Richard’s later years, 324
Aragon, Alfonso, king of, _see_ Alfonso
Arras besieged by Baldwin of Flanders, 315;
relieved by Philip Augustus, _ib._
Arsuf, battle of, 185-188
Arthur of Britanny, _see_ Britanny
Ascalon, 177;
its importance, 190;
razed by Saladin, _ib._;
rebuilding of, 209;
Richard at, 214;
negotiations concerning, 257-259;
again dismantled, 260
Aslam, Emir, 235-237
“Assassins,” 301
Athlit, 179
Austria, Leopold, duke of, 166, 330
Auvergne, rival claims upon, 7, 26-27, 94;
Richard’s successes in, 315
Bagnara, La, 126
Baldwin IV, king of Jerusalem, 158
Baldwin V, king of Jerusalem, 158
Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury, _see_ Canterbury
Barres, William des, 78, 79, 135, 138, 179, 187
Bath, Savaric, bishop of, 275
Beauvais, bishop of, captured by Mercadier, 315
Bedr-ed-Din, 230, 257-258
Beit Nuba, 205, 232, 240
Berengaria of Navarre, 62, 64;
joins Richard in Sicily, 136;
sails for Acre with Joan, 139;
their adventures at sea, 141-142;
marriage and coronation, 145
Berry, feudal position of, 4;
Henry II in, 26
Bertin, Peter, seneschal of Aquitaine, 297
Béthune, Baldwin of, 93
Bigorre, count of, 21
Blanchegarde, 220, 221, 231
Blondel, 275
Bombrac, 198
Bonmoulins, meeting of kings at, 81-83
Bordeaux, Richard at, 21;
burnt by Routiers, 38
Bordeaux, William, archbishop of, 15
Born, Bertrand de, 40-42, 45-47, 56
Born, Constantine de, 40
Boulogne, Reginald, count of, 313
Bourges, promised as Aloysia’s dowry, 22
Boutavant, 322
“Brabantines,” 15, 38
Britanny, revolt in (1173), 14;
submits to Henry II, _ib._;
Richard’s relations with, 306, 313
Britanny, Arthur, duke of, 306
Britanny, Geoffrey, duke of, _see_ Geoffrey
Burgundy, Hugh, duke of, 55, 130, 207, 211, 218, 241
Burgundy or Provence, kingdom of, 283, 284
Cadoc, 307
Caesarea, 180, 181
Camville, Richard de, 148
Canebrake of Starlings, 225
Canterbury, Baldwin, Archbishop of, 120
Canterbury, Hubert, Archbishop of, _see_ Hubert
Canterbury, Richard at, 107
Capharnaum, Crusaders at, 179
Casal of the Baths, 203-204, 334-336
Casal Imbert, 212
Casal Maen, 198
Casal of the Plains (Yazour), 198, 204, 207, 334-336
Casal of the Straits, 179
Casals, the Two, 333-334
Castillon-sur-Agen, taken by Richard, 19
Castle Arnold, 232
Catania, meeting of Richard and Tancred at, 137
Celestine III, Pope, his warning to the Emperor, 317
Chabot, Theobald, 19
Châlus, treasure-trove at, 325;
besieged by Richard, _ib._;
taken by Mercadier, 327
Champagne, Henry, count of, _see_ Henry
Champagne, Theobald, count of, 313
Château-Gaillard, 312, 316
Châteauroux, dispute about, 21, 22;
taken by Henry II, 26;
besieged by Philip of France, 68;
truce made at, 69, 70;
taken by Philip, 77;
Richard’s attempt to regain it, 78
Châtillon, conference at, 80
Chinon, conference at, 7
Clairvaux, castle of, 46, 48
Cologne, election of emperor at, 318
Cologne, Adolf, archbishop of, 285-286
Colombières, meeting of kings at, 89
Comnenos, Isaac, _see_ Isaac
Conrad of Montferrat, 145, 151;
character, 159;
marries Isabel, _ib._, 160;
rivalry with Guy, 160, 167;
negotiations with Saladin, 194-195, 199;
negotiates with Richard, 210;
goes to Acre, 211;
returns to Tyre, _ib._;
declared to have forfeited the crown, 212;
again chosen king, 215;
slain, 216
Constance of Britanny, 306
Constance, heiress of Sicily, 124
Corfu, Richard at, 264, 266
Crispin, William, 315
Crocodiles, River of, 180, 181
Cross, relics of, 242
Curbaran, leader of Routiers, 53, 60
Cyprus, 141;
adventures of Joan and Berengaria off, 142;
English fleet reaches, 142-143;
conquest of, 143-148;
given to Guy of Lusignan, 261
Dangu surrendered to Richard, 315;
razed by Philip, _ib._
Darum, 209, 222-223, 245
“Dead River,” the, 182
Déols, Ralf of, 21
Dirnstein or Dürrenstein, Richard imprisoned at, 271
Drincourt, siege of, 14
Durham, Hugh of Puiset, bishop of, 103, 113
Eleanor, Queen, prophecy concerning, 1;
regent in Aquitaine, 8;
at Limoges, 11;
left guardian of Richard and Geoffrey, 12, 13;
joins the French party, 13;
imprisoned by Henry, 14;
released, 63;
receives surrender of Poitou from Richard, _ib._;
joins him in Sicily, 136;
returns to England, 138;
at Richard’s death, 328
El-Meshtoub, Seiffeddin, 163
Ely, William of Longchamps, bishop of, chancellor, 85, 113;
negotiates for Richard’s release, 279;
with Philip, 282;
deprived of the Seal, 298;
sent to Germany, 302-303
Emma, countess of Poitou, 5
Emmaus, _see_ Amwas
Emperors, _see_ Frederic, Henry
Excideuil, 43
Ezz-ed-Din, 230
Famagosta, Richard at, 146
“Far,” the, of Messina, 123
Fauvel, 146, 147, 187, 204
Felek-ed-Din, Emir, 236
Ferté-Bernard, La, meeting of kings at, 85
Figtrees, castle of, 225
Flanders, Baldwin VIII, count of, alliance with Richard, 313;
besieges Arras, 315;
arranges a conference between the kings, _ib._;
supports Otto’s election to the empire, 319;
takes St. Omer, _ib._
Flanders, Philip, count of, 68
Fleet, Richard’s, its adventures from England to Messina, 121-122;
at Messina, 138-139;
voyage to Rhodes, 139-141
Fontevraud, Henry II buried at, 91, 92;
Richard buried at, 329
France, kings of, _see_ Louis, Philip
Frederic Barbarossa, Emperor, his death, 155
Fréteval, battle at, 296-297
Gascony, 4, 324
Genoa, Richard and Philip at, 121
Geoffrey, son of Henry II and Eleanor, 13, 14, 49-51, 62, 66
Germany, condition of, under Henry VI, 272-273
Gisors, conferences at, 14, 16, 79, 94;
disputes about, 67;
surrendered to Philip, 280;
ceded to him, 305;
encounter between Richard and Philip at, 320
Glanville, Ranulf de, 102-103, 120
Gorizia, Mainard, count of, 268-269
Gouletot, 322
Graçay, 94
Grandmont, Henry II at, 7, 44
“Griffons,” 125-126, 131
Gué Saint Rémi, 111
Guy of Lusignan, 15, 71;
king of Jerusalem, 158;
his character, 159;
rivalry with Conrad of Montferrat, 160, 167;
on the march to Arsuf, 182;
goes to fetch troops from Acre, 194;
Cyprus given to, 261
Haïfa, Crusaders at, 179
Hainaut, count of, 313
Hautefort, castle of, 40, 56
Heraclius, Patriarch of Jerusalem, 158
Henry VI, emperor, his relations with Philip of France, 265, 273;
with Leopold of Austria, 271-272;
with Richard, 274, 283-4;
sends Richard a crown, 301;
excommunicated, 317;
death, _ib._;
Richard’s homage to, 336-338
Henry II, king of England, 2;
at Limoges, 5, 6;
war with Toulouse, 6;
conference with Aquitanian nobles, 7;
with Raymond, _ib._;
relations with Louis VII of France, 6, 8, 9;
relations with Aquitaine, 10;
conference with Louis at Gisors, 14;
goes to Poitiers, 16;
recovers Saintes, _ib._;
meets Louis at Gisors, _ib._;
reconciled to Richard, 17;
receives homage of his sons, _ib._;
returns to England, 18;
plans for his sons, 23;
demands Aloysia’s dowry, 25;
marches on Berry, 26;
takes Châteauroux, etc., _ib._;
subdues the Limousin, _ib._;
meets Louis at Graçay, _ib._;
buys La Marche, 27;
joins Richard in Aquitaine, 44;
meets Aquitanian rebels at Grandmont, _ib._;
relations with his sons, 48, 49;
besieges Limoges, 52-54;
Limoges surrendered to, 55;
restores Hautefort to Bertrand de Born, 56;
proposes to transfer Aquitaine to John, 56-58, 62;
does homage to Philip, 61;
summons his sons to England, _ib._;
sends Geoffrey to Normandy, 63;
releases Eleanor, _ib._;
changes in his treatment of Richard, 65;
relations with Philip Augustus, 65-69;
schemes for John, 69;
takes the Cross, 72;
dispute with Richard about his Crusade, 73;
war with Philip, 78;
meets Philip at Gisors, 79;
at Châtillon, 80;
truce with Philip, 83;
meets him at La Ferté, 85, 86;
last struggle, 86;
submission at Colombières, 87;
last meeting with Richard, 90;
death, _ib._;
burial, 91-92
Henry, son of Henry II, his homage to Louis in 1169, 9;
conspires against his father, 12, 13;
goes to England with him, 18;
returns to Normandy, 19;
joins Richard, 20;
takes Châteauroux, 22;
in Aquitaine, 44, 45;
joins league against Richard, 46, 48;
relations with Richard, 49, 50;
with Aquitaine, _ib._;
at Limoges, 51;
takes Angoulême, 53;
repulsed from Limoges, 54;
death, 55
Henry, count of Champagne, 155, 156, 216;
chosen king of Jerusalem, 219;
marries Isabel, 220;
joins Richard at Darum, 224;
goes to collect reinforcements, 231;
rejoins Richard at Joppa, 252
Hodierna, Richard’s nurse, 2
Hubert, bishop of Salisbury, visits Richard in Germany, 279;
archbishop of Canterbury, _ib._;
his demands for the king refused in England, 307-308
Hugh, Saint, bishop of Lincoln, 308, 329
Interdict in Normandy, 309;
raised, 311
Isaac Comnenus, tyrant of Cyprus, 141-144, 146-148
Isabel of Jerusalem, 158, 159, 218-220
Issoudun, 94, 304
Jerusalem, Heraclius, patriarch of, 158, 159
Jerusalem, kingdom of, claimants to, 158;
settlement of their claims, 167
Jerusalem, kings of, _see_ Amalric, Baldwin, Conrad, Guy, Henry
Jerusalem, roads to, 189, 202
Jews, riot against, 97, 98
Joan, queen of Sicily, 124-125;
disputes about her dowry, 130;
her claims settled, 132;
sails for Acre with Berengaria, 139;
their adventures at sea, 141-142;
proposal for her marriage with Safadin, 197;
second marriage, 314
John of Anagni, legate in France, 85-86
John “Lackland,” Henry’s plans for, 58, 69, 70;
marches into Aquitaine, 62;
proposal for his marriage with Aloysia, 86;
relations with Richard, 93, 94;
Richard’s grants to, 102, 104-105;
meeting with Rees of South Wales, 106;
marriage, 104, 107;
plots with Philip, 277;
submits to Richard, 294
Joppa, struggle for, 247-255
Karakoush, 162-163
Kuweilfeh, 236
Lacroma, 266-267
Latroun, _see_ Natroun
Leicester, Robert, earl of, captured by Philip, 296
Lieu-Dieu, 116
Limasol, 141-146
Limoges, Aimar V, viscount of, defeated by Richard, 20;
goes on pilgrimage, 38;
wars with Richard, 40, 41, 44;
joins young Henry, 51;
surrenders to Henry II, 55;
war with Richard, 61;
claims treasure-trove at Châlus, 325
Limoges, rival jurisdictions at, 5, 6;
Richard proclaimed duke at, 11;
meeting of kings and nobles at, 11, 12;
taken by Richard, 20, 28;
settlement between Richard and rebels at, 44;
its walls destroyed, _ib._;
young Henry at, 51-52;
besieged by Henry II and Richard, 52-54;
surrendered, 55
“Lion Heart,” origin of the epithet, 34
“Lo Bar” (Lupicar), 60
Lomagne, Vézian, viscount of, 39
“Lombards” at Messina, 125-126, 131
London, Richard crowned at, 97;
anti-Jewish riot in, 98
Louis VII of France, his relations with Henry II, 6, 8, 9;
receives homage of Henry and his sons, 9;
league with the sons, 13;
meets Henry at Gisors, 14, 16;
knights Richard, 15
Lusignan, family of, 8 note 2
Lusignan, Geoffrey of, 15, 42-43, 74, 160, 191, 204
Lusignan, Guy of, _see_ Guy
Lusignan, Hugh of, 128
Lydda, 193
Malcolm IV, king of Scots, 107
Mandeville, William de, 79, 103, 112
Mans, Le, Henry’s flight from, 87, 88
Mantes attacked by Richard, 79
Marche, La, Adalbert, count of, 7, 27
Marche, La, county of, 4, 27, 43
Margarit, 127, 131
Markab, 148
Marshal, William, 79, 88, 92
“Mategriffon,” 131, 134, 156
Mercadier, 61;
takes Issoudun, 304;
captures the count of Auvergne, _ib._;
captures the bishop of Beauvais, 315;
raids Abbeville, 322;
attacked by French in time of truce, 323;
with Richard at Châlus, 326;
takes the castle, 327
Merle, 180, 181
Merlin’s prophecy, 1
Messina, English fleet reaches, 122;
Philip arrives at, 123;
“Far” of, _ib._;
Richard arrives at, 124;
Joan arrives at, 125;
mixed population of, _ib._;
hostility to the English, 125-126;
taken by Richard, 127-128;
treaty of, 137-138, 276 note;
Richard’s departure from, 139;
Emperor Henry VI dies at, 317
Mileto, Richard’s adventure at, 123
Mirabel, 203, 204
Montferrat, Conrad of, _see_ Conrad
Montferrat, William of, 158
Montjoie, 233, 243
Montlouis, treaty of, 17
Montmirail, conference of kings at, 9
Morocco, Emperor of, invades Spain, 302
Mortain, county of, granted to John, 104
Natroun, 195, 206, 232
Navarre, kings of, _see_ Sancho
Neckam, Alexander, Richard’s foster-brother, 2
Nonancourt surrendered to Richard, 307
Normandy, interdict in, 309;
raised, 311;
scutage of, 299
Nottingham, siege of, 287-288;
council at, 289
“Oc e No,” nickname of Richard, 34 note 6
Oxford, Richard born at, 2
Palestine, condition in 1190, 152-153
“Peace-makers,” 60
Périgord, Elias, count of, 43, 44, 297
Périgueux, 44
Peter, Cardinal, legate in France, 25, 323
Philip Augustus, king of France, receives homage of count of
Angoulême, 45;
sends Routiers into Aquitaine, 53;
receives homage of Henry II, 61;
demands homage of Richard, 67;
besieges Châteauroux, 67, 68;
truce with Henry, 70;
demands Gisors, 72;
takes the Cross, _ib._;
intervenes in quarrel of Richard and Raymond of Toulouse, 76, 77;
takes Châteauroux, 77;
overruns Berry and Auvergne, 78;
burns Trou, _ib._;
meets Henry, 79-81;
quarrel with Richard at Châtillon, 80;
truce with Henry, 83;
meets him at La Ferté, 85-86;
captures Tours, 89;
treaty with Richard, 94-95;
meets him at Vézelay, 117;
crosses the Rhône, 119;
goes to Genoa, 121;
reaches Messina, 123;
conduct there, 127-128, 131, 136-137;
relations with Tancred, 137;
treaty with Richard, 137-138;
sails for Acre, 138;
at Acre, 145, 155-157;
disputes with Richard, 161, 165, 167;
goes home, 168;
relations with the Emperor, 273;
attempt on Normandy during Richard’s captivity, 276, 277;
conquers the Vexin, etc., 280;
negotiates with Henry VI, _ib._;
with Richard, 282-283;
his offers to Henry VI, 283-284;
besieges Verneuil, 294;
Vaudreuil, _ib._;
takes Fontaines, 295;
captures Earl of Leicester, 296;
defeated at Fréteval, _ib._;
truce with Richard, 298;
negotiates with him, 302-303;
burns Dieppe, 304;
takes Issoudun, and meets with Richard there, _ib._;
treaty with Richard, 305;
besieges Aumale, 306;
his allies, 313;
recovers Dangu, 315;
relieves Arras, _ib._;
makes terms with Flanders, _ib._;
meets Richard at Les Andelys, 315-316;
boast about Château-Gaillard, 316;
alliance with Philip of Suabia, 319;
burns Evreux, 322;
builds Gouletot, _ib._;
negotiates for peace, _ib._;
meets Richard again, 323;
makes truce for five years, 323;
breaks it, 324
Pilgrims’ Castle, 179
Pin, Jordan du, 127, 131
Pipewell, council at, 106
Poitiers, Richard at, 11, 324
Poitiers, William of, chaplain of Richard, 227
Poitou, county of, 4, 9;
granted to Otto of Saxony, 314;
use of the name in Richard’s later years, 324
Poitou, Otto, count of, _see_ Saxony
Pons besieged by Richard, 29;
surrendered, 31
Ponthieu, county of, 313
Préaux, William des, 196, 261
Provence, kingdom of, 283
Quercy conquered by Henry II, 6;
by Richard, 66;
restored to Toulouse, 314
Ragusa, Richard at, 266-267
Ramlah, 189, 193, 206-207
Rancogne, Geoffrey of, 8, 15, 29, 31, 74
Raymond “Brunus or Brenuus,” 51, 60
Reggio, 138
Rhodes, Richard at, 141
Richard the Lion Heart born, 2;
first betrothal, 6;
goes to Normandy, 7;
betrothed to Aloysia of France, 8, 9;
does homage to Louis for Poitou and Aquitaine, 9;
invested as duke at Poitiers and at Limoges, 11;
receives homage of Raymond of Toulouse, 12;
joins his rebel brothers, 13;
knighted by Louis VII, 15;
returns to Aquitaine, _ib._;
dealings with La Rochelle, 16;
seizes Saintes, _ib._;
expelled by Henry, _ib._;
submits to his father, 17;
does homage to him, _ib._;
deprived of his territories, 17, 18;
takes Castillon-sur-Agen, 19;
goes to England, _ib._;
returns to Aquitaine, _ib._;
subdues rebels in Poitou, defeats Brabantines at St. Maigrin, takes
Aixe and Limoges, and captures the count of Angoulême, 20;
keeps Christmas (1176) at Bordeaux, 21;
successes in Gascony, _ib._;
takes castle at Limoges from the viscount, 28;
marches on Gascony, _ib._;
dealings with Bigorre, 29;
keeps Christmas (1178) at Saintes, _ib._;
besieges Pons, _ib._;
his successes in Angoumois, _ib._;
siege of Taillebourg, 29-31;
goes to England, 31;
reinstated as count of Poitou, _ib._;
returns, _ib._;
relations with people of Aquitaine, 32;
person and character, 33-37;
oaths, 34 note 6;
subdues Lomagne, 39;
claims wardship of Angoulême, _ib._;
strife with Aimar of Limoges, 40;
conspiracy against, 42;
takes Puy-St.-Front, 43;
takes Excideuil, 44;
builds a castle at Clairvaux, 45-46;
in Normandy, 47, 48;
relations with Bertrand de Born, 47;
surrenders Clairvaux, 48;
relations with his father, 49;
with his brothers, 49, 50;
quarrel with young Henry, 50;
routs rebels in the Limousin, 51;
joins Henry at siege of Limoges, 54;
drives Routiers out of Angoumois and Saintonge, _ib._;
refuses to give up Aquitaine to John, 58-60, 62;
holds court at Talmont, 60;
attachment to Berengaria of Navarre, 62;
returns to Aquitaine and attacks Geoffrey, 63;
surrenders Poitou to Eleanor, _ib._;
betrothed to the emperor’s daughter, 64;
to Berengaria, _ib._;
to Aloysia again, 65;
again sent to Aquitaine, _ib._;
invades Toulouse and conquers Quercy, 66;
negotiations with Philip at Châteauroux, 68, 69;
visits Philip at Paris, 70;
does homage again to Henry, 71;
takes the Cross, _ib._;
with Henry at Le Mans, 72;
dispute with his father about the Crusade, 73;
quells revolt in Aquitaine, 74;
quarrels with Raymond of Toulouse, 75, 77;
makes attempt on Châteauroux, 78;
takes Les Roches, _ib._;
attacks Mantes, 79;
captures William des Barres, _ib._;
quarrel with Philip at Châtillon, 80;
betrothal to Aloysia renewed, 82;
in pursuit of Henry from Le Mans, 88;
encounter with William the Marshal, _ib._;
besieges Tours with Philip, 89;
last meeting with Henry, 90;
at Henry’s funeral, 91, 92;
sends the Marshal to England, 92;
confirms Henry’s grants, _ib._, 93;
first acts as king, _ib._;
relations with John, 93-94;
invested as duke of Normandy, 94;
meets Philip, _ib._;
treaty with him, _ib._, 95;
returns to England, 95;
received at Winchester, _ib._;
first proclamation, _ib._, 96;
welcomed in London, 96;
crowned, 97;
tries to protect Jews, 98;
his financial difficulties, _ib._, 99;
preparations for Crusade, 99-105;
holds council at Pipewell, 106;
dealings with Wales, _ib._;
agrees to meet Philip at Vézelay, _ib._;
goes to S. Edmund’s, 107;
to Canterbury, _ib._;
dealings with Scotland, 109-111;
goes to Normandy, 111;
meets Philip, _ib._;
goes to Aquitaine, 112;
appoints justiciar, 112-113;
fleet, 113-115;
founds abbey at Talmont, 115-116;
at Gourfaille, 116;
takes Chis, _ib._;
receives scrip and staff at Tours, 117;
meets Philip at Vézelay, 117, 118;
crosses the Rhône, 119, 120;
goes to Marseille, 120;
to Genoa, 121;
coasting voyage to Naples, 121-122;
adventure at Mileto, 123;
crosses the “Far,” _ib._;
enters Messina, 124;
seizes the “Griffons’ Minster,” 126;
captures Messina, 127-128;
dispute with Philip, 129, 130;
negotiations with Tancred, 130-133;
builds “Mategriffon,” 131;
penance, 134;
quarrel with William des Barres, 135, 138;
relations with Tancred, 137;
engagement to Aloysia finally broken off, _ib._;
treaty with Philip, 137-138;
meets Eleanor and Berengaria at Reggio, 138;
sails from Messina, 140;
voyage to Rhodes, 140-141;
reaches Limasol, 142-143;
dealings with Isaac Comnenos, 143;
takes Limasol, 143-145;
marriage, 145;
meeting with Isaac, 146;
takes Nicosia, 147;
receives Isaac’s surrender, 147-148;
sails for Palestine, 149;
encounter with a Turkish ship, 149-150;
refused admittance to Tyre, 151;
at Acre, 155-157;
disputes with Philip, 161, 165, 167;
quarrel with duke of Austria, 166, 330-331;
leads the host towards Ascalon, 177-178;
advance to Haïfa, 179;
reconciled with William des Barres, _ib._;
advance to Caesarea, 180-181;
to the “Dead River,” 182;
wounded, 183;
parley with Safadin, 184;
victory at Arsuf, 185-188;
goes to Joppa, 189;
negotiations with Safadin, 191;
restores Joppa, 191-192;
his letters on the Crusade, 193, 194;
goes to Acre, 195;
saved from capture by William des Préaux, 195;
returns to Joppa, 196;
negotiations with Safadin, _ib._;
with Saladin, _ib._, 197, 199, 200;
advances to Casal of the Plains, 198;
conference with Safadin, 199;
encampment between Ramlah and Lydda, 201;
goes to Natroun, 203;
advance to Beit Nuba, 204-205;
returns to Ramlah, 206-207;
goes to Ibelin, 207-208;
to Ascalon, 208;
to Darum, 209;
releases Christian prisoners, 210;
negotiates with Conrad, _ib._;
quarrel with Burgundy, 211;
goes to Acre, _ib._;
meets Conrad, 212;
reconciled to Burgundy, _ib._;
reopens negotiations with Saladin, 212-213;
difficulties with the French, 213;
holds court at Ascalon, 214;
goes again to Darum, 215;
plans for returning to England, _ib._;
charged with Conrad’s death, 217;
opinion on marriage of Isabel and Henry, 219;
excursions round Ascalon, 220;
takes Blanchegarde, _ib._, 221;
adventure at Furbia, 221;
takes Darum, 222-224;
goes to the Canebrake of Starlings, 225;
goes towards Ibelin, 226, 227;
his perplexities, _ib._;
returns to Ascalon, 229;
decides to advance on Jerusalem, _ib._;
goes again to Blanchegarde, 231;
to Natroun, Castle Arnold, and Beit Nuba, 232;
excursions, etc., from Beit Nuba, 233;
capture of caravan from Egypt, 235-238;
quarrel with Burgundy, 241;
receives relics of the Cross, 242-243;
story of his refusal to look at Jerusalem, 243, 244;
returns to Ramlah, 244;
reopens negotiations, 245;
goes to Joppa and Acre, _ib._;
plans attack on Beyrout, 246;
recovers Joppa from Saladin, 248-250;
negotiates with Saladin through Abou Bekr, 251-257;
second recovery of Joppa, 253-255;
negotiations through Bedr-ed-Din, 257, 258;
final agreement with Saladin, 259-260;
refuses to visit Jerusalem, 260-261;
goes back to Haïfa, 261;
ransoms William des Préaux, _ib._;
gives Cyprus to Guy, _ib._;
sails for Europe, 262;
Moslems’ impression of him, _ib._;
homeward voyage, 264-268;
adventures in Italy, etc., 268-269;
captured in Austria, 270;
transferred to the emperor, 273;
negotiations for his release, 274-276;
confined at Triffels, 274;
behaviour in captivity, 277;
song written in prison, 278;
writes to England about ransom, 279-280;
imprisoned at Worms, 281;
reconciles Henry with the German magnates, _ib._;
agreement with Henry, _ib._, 282;
negotiates with Philip, 282-283;
terms of his release, 284;
homage to the emperor, _ib._, 336-338;
journey home, 285-286;
goes to Canterbury, 287;
to London, _ib._;
to S. Edmund’s, _ib._;
Nottingham surrendered to him, 288;
holds a council at Nottingham, 289;
meets William of Scotland at Southwell, _ib._;
agreement with him, 290, 292;
“second coronation,” or crown-wearing, 290-291;
goes to Normandy, 292-293;
pardons John, 294;
recovers Verneuil, Loches, etc., 294-295;
victory at Fréteval, 296-297;
recovers control of Aquitaine, 297-298;
withdraws the Seal from William of Ely, 298;
truce with France, _ib._, 299;
financial measures, 299;
does penance, 300;
attempt to assassinate him, 301;
meets Philip, 302, 304;
relations with Henry VI, 303;
treaty with Philip, 305;
sends to England for troops, _ib._;
conquers Britanny, 306;
builds castle at Porte-Joie, _ib._;
wounded at Gaillon, 307;
his demands refused in England, 307-308;
dispute with Archbishop Walter about Andely, 309-311;
continental alliances, 313;
grants Poitou to Otto of Saxony, 314;
agreement with count of Toulouse, _ib._;
raids Ponthieu, _ib._;
successes in Auvergne, 315;
conference with Philip at “the Isle,” 315, 316;
truce with Philip, 316;
his boast about Château-Gaillard, _ib._;
agreement with Walter, 316-317;
invited to election of emperor, 317;
sends representatives, 318;
nominated for election, _ib._;
his allies, 319;
encounter with Philip at Gisors, 320;
his want of money, 321;
change of seal, _ib._;
builds Boutavant, 322;
negotiates with Philip, _ib._;
meets him again, 323;
makes truce for five years, _ib._;
makes treaty of peace, _ib._, 324;
claims treasure-trove at Châlus, 325;
besieges Châlus, _ib._;
wounded, 326;
sends for his mother, 327;
testamentary arrangements, 327-328;
interview with his slayer, 328;
death and burial, 329
Rochelle, La, Richard’s dealings with, 16
Roches, Les, taken by Richard, 78
Rouen, Walter, archbishop of, 133, 136, 305, 309, 311
“Round Cistern,” the, 236-237
Routiers, 51, 53, 60, 61;
_see_ Brabantines
Safadin, 157, 184, 191, 196-197, 199, 256
St. Edmund’s, Richard at, 107
St. Elias, monastery of, 242
St. Maigrin, Richard defeats Brabantines at, 20
St. Pierre de Cize, Richard at, 21
Saint-Pol, count of, 203
Saintes seized by Richard, 16;
retaken by Henry, _ib._
Saladin, extent of his dominions, 152-154;
relations with Richard, 157;
attitude on surrender of Acre, 163-171;
defeat at Arsuf, 185-188;
goes to Ramlah, 189;
razes Ascalon, 190;
razes citadel of Ramlah, 193;
negotiations with Conrad, 194-195;
goes to Natroun, 195;
at Ramlah again, 198;
negotiations with Richard and Conrad, 199, 200;
at Natroun, 201;
retires to Jerusalem, _ib._;
receives reinforcements, 230;
prepares for siege of Jerusalem, 238-240;
his difficulties, 244;
renews negotiations, 245;
takes Joppa, 247-248;
loses it, 250;
regains it, 252;
again driven out, 253-255;
final agreement with Richard, 259, 260
Saladin tithe, 72
Salisbury, Herbert, bishop of, 308
Salisbury, Hubert Walter, bishop of, _see_ Hubert
Salisbury, Patrick, earl of, 8, 9
Sancho VI, king of Navarre, 11, 12 note 1, 136
Sancho VII, king of Navarre, 295, 297-298
Sancho of Sérannes, 53, 60
Saxony, Henry the Lion, duke of, 265, 273, 282
Saxony, Henry the younger of, 318-319
Saxony, Matilda, duchess of, 47
Saxony, Otto of, 318-319, 324
Scotland, Henry II’s dealings with, 107-108;
Richard’s, 109-111;
kings of, _see_ Malcolm, William
Seal, the Great, 298;
Richard’s change of, 338-339
Seilhac, Robert of, 8
Seilun, Peter, 75
Sibyl, queen of Jerusalem, 158, 159
Sicily, Constance of, _see_ Constance
Sicily, Joan, queen of, _see_ Joan
Sicily, kings of, _see_ Tancred, William
Sidon, Reginald of, 199
Spain invaded by Moors, 302
Stephen, seneschal of Anjou, 93
Suabia, Philip of, 319
Taillebourg, siege of, 29-31
Talmont, 60, 115-116
Tancred, king of Sicily, 124, 130-133, 137
Tell-Ayadiyeh, 163
Thouars, viscount of, 7
Toron, Humphrey of, 159, 184, 213
Torpenay, Luke, abbot of, 329
Toulouse, county of, invaded by Richard, 66
Toulouse, Raymond V, count of, 6, 7, 11, 12, 55, 66, 75-77
Toulouse, Raymond VI, count of, 314
Tournaments, licensed by Richard, 299
Tours taken by Philip and Richard, 89;
Richard receives scrip and staff at, 117
Trenchemer, Alan, 280
Trou burnt by Philip Augustus, 78
Turnham, Robert of, 148, 280
Turnham, Stephen of, 93, 142
Tyre, 151-153, 159
Valeria, Saint, 11
Vaudreuil, 294, 302
Vendôme, Burchard, count of, 78
Verneuil besieged by Philip, 294;
meeting of kings at, 303
Vexin, the, disputes about, 23;
the Norman, ceded to France, 305
Vézelay, Richard and Philip at, 118
Vienna, Richard captured near, 270
Vigeois, Geoffrey of, 37
Wales, scutage of, 106
Wales, South, Rees, prince of, 106
William the Lion, king of Scots, relations with Henry II, 108;
with Richard, 109-111, 289-290, 292
William, king of Sicily, 121, 124
Worms, agreement of Henry VI and Richard at, 281-282
York, Geoffrey, archbishop of, 103, 107, 113
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,
BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] R. Diceto, ii. 67, and Rog. Wendover (ed. Coxe), iii. 3. Both
the prophet and his commentator ignore the fact that what they call
Eleanor’s “third nesting” was really her sixth, as she had already
had, besides her two elder sons, two daughters by her first marriage
and one by her second.
[2] Rog. Howden, iii. 215.
[3] _Chron. Anon._ in _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._ xii. 121. She had joined
him before the end of August; _Chron. de Bello_, 76.
[4] R. Torigni, a. 1157; Pipe Roll 3 Hen. II, 107.
[5] R. Torigni, a. 1157.
[6] W. Newburgh, lib. ii. c. 4.
[7] Place from R. Diceto, i. 302; day from _Chron. S. Albini Andeg._,
a. 1157.
[8] “MS. in Lord Arundel’s collection,” as quoted by James,
Collections, vii. 34 (Bodl.); Stubbs, preface to R. Howden, iii.,
xviii. note 2.
[9] In 1220 Henry III granted to another person “septem libratas
redditûs in Chippenham quas Hodierna nutrix domini Regis Ricardi
avunculi nostri habuit,” _Close Rolls_, ii. 416 b. That the grant
to Hodierna was made by Richard may be inferred from there being no
trace of the payment in the Pipe Rolls of his father’s reign. Stubbs
notes that “this could not have been the whole of her property, for
her land in 30 Hen. III” [1246-7], “was talliaged at 40_s._”; also
that “the parish of Knoyle Hodierne in Wiltshire still preserves her
name.” Pref. to R. Howd. iii., xviii. note 2.
[10] R. Diceto, i. 293.
[11] See especially _Chron. S. Maxent._, a. 1060 and 1110, and _Hist.
Pont. et Com. Engolism._, Labbe, _Thesaurus_, ii. 268 (a. 1070-1101).
[12] Geoffrey of Vigeois, Labbe, _Thes._, ii. 304. This was in
1136-7. M. Richard (_Comtes de Poitou_, ii. 51) thinks Emma was only
betrothed, not married, to the duke. His arguments are not strong
enough to convince me against the distinct statement of Geoffrey of
Vigeois.
[13] “Lemovicæ comes” (_sic_) “habet feudum de abbate S. Martialis
castellum de Petra Buffiera et turrim de castello quod est super
Charnix, Lemovicense castrum, vicariam de turre, Bernardii
castellum de Cambono S. Valeriæ. Pro his omnibus debent hominium
facere abbatibus cunctis omnes vicecomites qui feudum istud
tenuerunt”—Geoffrey, the writer, had twice seen it performed—“...
Abbas tamen dominium totius castri Lemovicini habere debet, vicecomes
vicariam tantum.... Burgenses vero argenti pondere fulti vicecomiti
vix obtemperant, quando minus monachis” Geoff. Vigeois, 333. For the
significance of “castrum Lemovicense,” see the next footnote.
[14] “Lite mota inter cives et hospites, Dux irritatus est; tunc
muros castri, qui non multo tempore fuerunt constructi, funditus
evertit, pontemque disrupit.... Procurationem noluit Albertus Abbas
in urbem facere Duci, dicens non debere extra septa reddere castri.”
Geoff. Vigeois, 308. Limoges in those days, and long after, was a
sort of double town of which one part, comprising the cathedral
church and its precincts and seemingly called the “city,” belonged to
the bishop, and the other part to the abbot of S. Martial’s, under
homage to whom it was governed by the viscount. Each part had its own
enclosure. There was no castle in the ordinary sense of that word;
but the abbot’s part, which was the more populous and important part
of the town, seems to have taken the title of _castrum_. The case was
somewhat like that of the city of Tours and the _Castrum S. Martini_,
or Châteauneuf.
[15] Geoff. Vigeois, 308-10.
[16] R. Torigni, a. 1159.
[17] Treaty in Lyttelton, _Henry II_, iv. 174.
[18] “Ad corredium Ricardi filii Regis £10 6_s._ 8_d._ per breve
Regis,” Pipe Roll 9 Hen. II (1162-3) 71. Cf. an entry, _ib._, 72; “in
porcis et ovis et minutis rebus contra festum filii Regis 100_s._”
Henry was in London that year in the first week of March (Eyton,
_Itin._ Hen. II, 59), and again on October 1 (_Mater. for Hist.
Becket_, iv. 201). It is possible that the royal family may have been
there also in September, and that the “festum filii Regis” may have
been Richard’s birthday; but it is perhaps more likely to have been
that of young Henry, February 28.
[19] R. Torigni, a. 1165.
[20] Gerv. Cant., i. 205.
[21] _Mater. for Hist. Becket_, Ep. ccliii., vi. 74.
[22] R. Torigni, a. 1167. Cf. _Mat. for Hist. Becket_, Ep. cclxxvii.,
vi. 131.
[23] R. Torigni, _l.c._ Cf. _Chronn. S. Albini_ and _S. Sergii_, a.
1166.
[24] R. Torigni, _l.c._
[25] Geoff. Vigeois, 318; R. Torigni, a. 1168; _Mat. for Hist.
Becket_, vi. 456.
[26] _Mat. for Hist. Becket_, _l.c._
[27] “Robertus de Silli,” _Mat. for Hist. Becket_, vi. 456; “Robertus
de Selit,” Geoff. Vigeois, 318; “Robertus et frater ejus de Silleio,”
R. Torigni, a. 1167. The name appears as “de Silliaco” in _Mat. for
Hist. Becket_, vii. 165, 178, 247, 606, 610, 616. It cannot be Sillé
in Maine as I suggested in _Angevin Kings_, ii. 137; it can hardly be
anything else than Seilhac.
[28] R. Torigni, _l.c._, names “Haimericus de Lizennoio”; the writer
of Ep. 434 in _Mat. for Hist. Becket_, vi. 456, names “Gaufridus de
Lezinniaco” and “Haimericus de Rancone.” There seems to be no other
trace of an Aimeric de Rancogne, if indeed Rancogne be the place
intended here and not Rancon in La Marche, as to the ownership of
which I can discover nothing. There was an Aimeric de Lusignan, and
also a Geoffrey de Lusignan, and there was furthermore a Geoffrey de
Rancogne of whom we shall hear again. To me it seems most probable
that the Lusignan here referred to was Aimeric, and that his
Christian name has (owing to a confusion between him and his brother)
been transposed with that of the lord of Rancogne.
[29] R. Torigni, a. 1168.
[30] _Mat. for Hist. Becket_, vi. 456.
[31] R. Torigni, a. 1168.
[32] _Mat. for Hist. Becket_, vi. 409.
[33] _Mat. for Hist. Becket_, vi. 409.
[34] R. Torigni, a. 1168.
[35] _Hist. G. le Mar._, ll. 1615-52. According to R. Torigni,
_l.c._, Patrick was killed “circa octavas Paschae,” _i. e._ April 7,
the very day of the conference.
[36] “Rex Henricus senior filio Richardo ex voluntate matris
Aquitanorum tradidit Ducatum.” Geoff. Vigeois, 318.
[37] Cf. John of Salisbury’s letter in _Mat. for Hist. Becket_, vi.
506-7, R. Torigni, a. 1169, and Gerv. Cant., i. 208.
[38] R. Torigni, a. 1169.
[39] Geoff. Vigeois, 318. Bernard Itier, ed. Duplès-Agier, 58.
[40] “Novusque dux ab omnibus proclamatur,” Geoff. Vigeois, 318-19.
Geoffrey does not give the year explicitly, but he does so implicitly
by saying that Raymond of Toulouse did homage to Richard “anno
sequenti.” S. Valeria’s body was at S. Martial’s abbey at Limoges;
_ib._, 285. According to Geoffrey and the Chronicle of S. Martial’s
(ed. Duplès-Agier), 209, she was the protomartyr not only of
Aquitaine but of Gaul.
[41] _Gesta Hen._, i. 35-6. The presence of Eleanor and the date of
the homage—“Dominica qua cantatur Invocavit Me,” _i. e._ February
25—are mentioned only by Geoff. Vigeois, 319, who adds: “Feria
quarta, alias sexta, heroes qui per dies septem concilium celebravere
Lemovica discedunt ab urbe”; _i. e._ the kings and counts were at
Limoges either from Thursday, February 22, to Wednesday, 28, or
from Saturday, February 24, to Friday, March 2. This assembly of a
week’s duration at Limoges is clearly to be identified with the one
described by the local chronicler, Bernard Itier, in a very corrupt
passage which his latest editor, M. Duplès-Agier, has printed (p.
58) from the much mutilated MS. with conjectural emendations, thus:
“Anno gracie MCLXXII ... [Alienor Regina] et filio Ricardo et com ...
[et regibus de] Arragonia et de Navarra [venerunt] ... Lemovicas et
per viii dies in ca[stro Lemovicensi moram] fecerunt.” February 1173
in our reckoning would be February 1172 in Bernard’s reckoning, as
in the kingdom of France the year began at Easter. I think that for
“Alienor Regina” we should substitute “Rex cum Regina,” and supply
“[ite Tolosæ]” after “com.” What the king of Navarre—Sancho VI,
father of Berengaria whom Richard ultimately married—had come for,
there is nothing to show. Count Gerard of Vienne, whom R. Diceto (i.
353) adds to the list of those present, was a Provençal subfeudatary
of Raymond of Toulouse, and so may have been concerned in Raymond’s
dispute with Alfonso. The statement of R. Diceto (i. 353-4) that
“quia Ricardus Dux Aquitaniæ, cui facturus esset homagium comes
Sancti Ægidii, presens non erat, usque ad octavas Pentecostes negotii
complementum dilationem accepit,” is clearly erroneous.
[42] _Gesta Hen._, i. 41-2. R. Diceto, i. 355.
[43] Geoff. Vigeois, 319.
[44] _Gesta Hen._, i. 42.
[45] _Ib._, 44.
[46] W. Newb., lib. ii. c. 27.
[47] Gerv. Cant., i. 242.
[48] Gerv. Cant., i. 242.
[49] _Gesta_, i. 49; but R. Torigni, a. 1173, mentions only young
Henry and the counts of Flanders and Boulogne.
[50] Cf. _Gesta_, _l.c._; R. Diceto, i. 373, etc.
[51] R. Howden, ii. 52.
[52] _Gesta_, i. 59. Cf. R. Howden, ii. 53.
[53] _Gesta_, i. 63.
[54] _Ib._, 46-7.
[55] Geoff. Vigeois, 320-3.
[56] Richard, _Ctes. de Poitou_, ii. 173, from _Archives historiques
de la Gironde_, i. 388.
[57] Richard the Poitevin, _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, xii. 420, 421, a
passage which M. Richard, _Ctes._, ii. 174, note 2, says relates to
1173-4, not 1186-8 as formerly supposed.
[58] R. Diceto, i. 380. Cf. _Chron. S. Albini_, a. 1174.
[59] _Gesta_, 71.
[60] Gir. Cambr., _De Instr. Princ._, lib. iii. dist. 8 (Anglia
Christiana Soc. edition, 106).
[61] Cf. _Gesta_, i. 76, and R. Howd., ii. 66.
[62] _Gesta_, _l.c._
[63] R. Howd., ii. 67.
[64] _Gesta_, i. 77-9.
[65] See _Angevin Kings_, ii. 165, note 7.
[66] R. Diceto, i. 398.
[67] _Ib._ and R. Howd., ii. 71.
[68] _Gesta_, i. 78.
[69] See this clause in the treaty, _ib._, 77.
[70] _Ib._, 82-4.
[71] _Gesta_, i. 101. The place is there called “Castellum super
Agiens.” M. Richard, _Ctes. de Poitou_, ii. 183, calls it “le château
du Puy de Castillon”; cf. _ib._, 134, “Castillon sur Agen, place
extrêmement forte,” from R. Torigni, a. 1161, “Castellionem super
urbem Agennum, castrum scilicet natura et artificio munitum,” taken
by Henry after a week’s siege in 1161. It seems to be identical with
Grand-Castel, on the river, a little above Agen.
[72] _Gesta_, i. 114.
[73] _Ib._, 115.
[74] “In liberatione esnecce quando rex junior transfretavit
£7 10_s._ per breve regis. Et in liberatione iiii navium que
transfretaverunt cum eo ... £7 15_s._ per breve regis. Et item
in passagio esnecce quando Ricardus filius regis transfretavit
vii_l._ and x_s._ per breve regis. Et in liberatione iiii navium que
transfretaverunt cum eo vi_l._ per breve regis.”—Pipe Roll 22 Hen. II
(1175-6), 199.
[75] R. Diceto, i. 407.
[76] _Gesta_, i. 121. I am uncertain whether “Montigernac” is meant
for Montignac, or Jarnac, or for both; very likely the latter, as the
two places are close together, and the writer not being familiar with
the country may easily have run two names into one.
[77] Cf. _Gesta_, 120, 121, with R. Diceto, i. 414.
[78] _Gesta_, i. 131-2. The writer’s chronology is obviously
confused, but the closing date of the series may be correct.
[79] R. Torigni, a. 1177.
[80] _Gesta_, i. 127.
[81] _Ib._, 195-6.
[82] _Ib._, 131, 132.
[83] _Ib._, 132.
[84] _Ib._, 168.
[85] Alex. III Ep. in _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, xv. 954, 955. Cf.
_Gesta_, i. 180, 181.
[86] _Gesta_, i. 168.
[87] Cf. _Gesta_, i. 180-1 with the Pope’s letter, _Rer. Gall.
Scriptt._, xv. 954-5.
[88] _Gesta_, i. 181, 182.
[89] _Ib._, 190, 191; place from R. Diceto, i. 422.
[90] R. Howden, ii. 143.
[91] _Gesta_, i. 191-2; place and date from R. Diceto, i. 422.
[92] _Gesta_, i. 195.
[93] R. Torigni, a. 1177.
[94] Cf. _Gesta_, i. 195-7, R. Diceto, i. 425, and R. Torigni, a.
1177.
[95] _Gesta_, i. 196.
[96] R. Torigni, a. 1177.
[97] I infer this from the fact that neither she nor her husband,
Guy of Comborn, seem ever to have put forth any claim to the county.
Geoff. Vigeois, 324, speaks as if she were still living at the time
of its sale. She may have died soon after, and as she was childless
(_ib._, and Chron. MS. printed in Duplès-Agier, _Chron. de Limoges_,
188), whatever rights she might have claimed would die with her.
[98] _Gesta_, i. 197; R. Howden, ii. 147-8; and cf. Geoff. Vigeois,
324, and _Chron. S. Mart. Limoges_, 188, which gives the date October
7, but Adalbert’s own charter (_Gesta_ and R. Howd., _ll.cc._) says
“mense Decembri.” G. Vigeois gives the sum paid as 5000 marks;
the _Chron. S. Mart._, 189, R. Torigni a. 1177, and R. Diceto, i.
425, make it 6000 marks of silver, and R. Torigni adds “terram ...
valentem, ut idem rex dixit, viginti millia marcas argenti.” The
_Gesta_ and R. Howden both insert a copy of Adalbert’s charter, but
the writer of the former must have copied the figures wrongly, for
he makes the sum only fifteen pounds Angevin; in Roger’s version it
is 15,000 pounds Angevin. Both versions add twenty mules and twenty
palfreys.
[99] R. Torigni, a. 1177.
[100] He was with his father and brothers at Angers at Christmas,
1177; R. Torigni, _ad ann._
[101] “Cum magno exercitu _in Pictaviam_ profectus,” says our
authority, _Gesta_, i. 212; but clearly he must mean either “in
Gasconiam” or “ex Pictavia.”
[102] _Gesta_, i. 212, 213.
[103] _Ib._, 212.
[104] R. Diceto, i. 431, 432. The _Gesta_, i. 212, say the siege
began on May 3 and lasted only three days.
[105] _Gesta_, _l.c._; cf. R. Torigni, a. 1179, who evidently did not
know that Pons belonged to Geoffrey.
[106] R. Diceto, i. 432; _Gesta_, i. 213.
[107] R. Torigni, a. 1179.
[108] R. Diceto, i. 432.
[109] “Ricardo comiti Pictaviae l.m.,” Pipe Roll 25 Hen. II
(1178-9), 101. “In passagio esneccae quando Ricardus comes Pictaviae
transfretavit,” _ib._, p. 107.
[110] _Itin. Ric._, 144.
[111] Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 8.
[112] _Itin._, _l.c._
[113] “Species digna imperio,” _ib._; “formae dignae imperio,” Gir.
Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, _l.c._
[114] _Itin._, _l.c._
[115] “Hic leo noster plusquam leo.” Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._,
dist. iii. c. 8.
[116] _Ib._
[117] An obvious instance is Richard’s great-grandfather, King
Henry I, who was called “the Lion of Justice.” Two of Richard’s
own contemporaries are known as Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony,
and William the Lion, king of Scots; though in this last case the
appellation was probably derived merely from the cognizance on his
shield.
[118] Cf., _e. g._, _Coronement Loois_, l. 1807—“C’est Fierebrace qui
cuer a de lion.”
[119] “Le preuz reis, le quor de lion,” _Estoire de la Croisade_, l.
2310.
[120] Bertrand de Born in his sirventes often speaks of Richard by
a nickname—“Oc e No,” “Yea and Nay.” Its use seems to be peculiar
to Bertrand. Some modern writers have taken it as intended to imply
that Richard was light of purpose, or of a wavering disposition.
As Clédat points out (Bertran de Born, 101-2), such an explanation
would be quite out of harmony not only with Richard’s real character
as displayed in his actions from the very outset of his rule in
Aquitaine, but also with every other indication of Bertran’s opinion
of him. We might almost more reasonably conjecture that although
when Richard did swear he used some very extraordinary oaths (“Per
gorgiam Dei,” Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._ dist. iii. c. 25, on
which Gerald comments “quoniam his et similibus sacramentibus uti
solet”; “Par les gambes Dieu,” _Hist. G. le Mar._ ll. 8839, 9367),
his usual practice was to “swear not at all,” but so to act that a
simple statement from him of his will and purpose, “yea” or “nay,”
was recognized as being no less positive and final than if he had
confirmed it with an oath.
[121] Cf. the character given by a Flemish chronicler, “Richard ...
ke otre toz les boins estoit preus e vaillans.” _Hist. des Ducs_, 84.
[122] Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 8.
[123] _Ib._
[124] Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 8. Cf. Bertrand
de Born, “Ar ve la coindeta sazos,” ll. 33-5:
Bom sap l’usatge qu’a’l leos Qu’a re venenda non es maus, Mas contra
orgolh es orgolhos.—
where the context shows that the “lion” stands for Richard.
[125] Gir. Cambr. _De Instr. Princ._, _l.c._
[126] _Ib._; Gerv. Cant. i. 303; and cf. R. Diceto, ii.
19—“Pictaviensibus ... quos Ricardus indebitis vexationibus et
violenta dominatione premebat.”
[127] His brutal treatment of his Breton and “Basque” prisoners in
1183 is a wholly different matter. Those prisoners were not his
own subjects; they were foreign invaders; the charge of cruelty
mentioned above had no reference to them. Moreover, even their fate
does not necessarily indicate that Richard was of a specially cruel
disposition, for that fate does not appear to have outraged the
public opinion of their day, at any rate in Aquitaine.
[128] _Gesta_, i. 292.
[129] Geoff. Vigeois, 317. It is a pity that Geoffrey’s rime,
“Richardus, qui ad probitatis opera nunquam exstitit tardus,” cannot
be reproduced in an English translation; and also that “prowess”
in its modern use conveys such an imperfect idea of the medieval
_probitas_. The rime may be unintentional; but it is far more likely
to be derived from some vernacular couplet current at the time “...
En Richartz, Qu’ad obras de proesa ja n’estet tartz,” or something
similar.
[130] R. Torigni, a. 1179. See the various names applied to these
“malignants,” “whose teeth and arms had nearly devoured Aquitaine,”
in Geoff. Vigeois, 328, 334.
[131] _Ib._, 325; for date see Clédat, _B. de Born_, 42, note.
[132] See B. de Born’s _sirventes_, “Ges no me desconort,” ll. 22-3,
where he speaks of “the three counts of Angoulême”—“li trei comte fat
Engolmesi.”
[133] Geoff. Vigeois, 326.
[134] In p. 327 Geoffrey says in reference to a period which from
the context seems to be about the end of January 1181: “Tunc genus
inimicitiarum Richardi et Alienoris in speciem amicitiae vertitur.”
As there is no indication elsewhere of “unfriendliness” between
Richard and his mother, nor of anything which might have given
rise to it, nor of anything likely to produce a change in their
feelings towards each other at this time; and as, moreover, their
intercommunications must for the past seven years have been extremely
limited if not altogether non-existent, seeing that Eleanor had
been throughout that time in confinement in England, I cannot but
suspect that this passage is corrupt. Possibly “Alienoris” may be a
transcriber’s mistake for “Ademari,” and the person really meant may
be Aimar of Limoges.
[135] Geoff. Vigeois, 327.
[136] R. Diceto, ii. 9; cf. Gerv. Cant., i. 297.
[137] Geoff. Vigeois, 326; for the year see Clédat, _B. de Born_, 42,
note.
[138] “Qui” (_i. e._ the Duke) “cum puella terram obtinere tentavit,”
says G. Vigeois, 326. A statement made by some modern writers that
Richard wanted to marry the girl and thus annex her county seems to
be without authority.
[139] G. Vigeois, 326.
[140] Gerv. Cant. i. 303.
[141] Hautefort was in the diocese of Périgord, but in the viscounty
of Limoges; cf. the two biographies of Bertrand de Born, Thomas, _B.
de Born_, li., Stimming (ed. 1892), 51; the “contradiction” which
Stimming (3) finds on this point exists only in his own imagination,
and he is mistaken in branding as “false” the second biographer’s
statement that Bertrand “fu de Lemozi,” for Bertrand himself speaks
of “Nos Lemozi” in his sirventes “Eu chant,” l. 44, Thomas, 21,
Stimming, 69.
[142] _Razo_ of “Un sirventes cui motz no falh,” Thomas, 7; Stimming,
6-7.
[143] Provençal biography of B. de Born, No. I, Thomas, li.
[144] _Sirventes_, “Lo coms m’a mandat,” ll. 45, 46, Thomas, 6.
[145] See “Un sirventes cui motz no falh,” ll. 9-14.
[146] Another Aimar, William, and Elias. It was the two former
who tried to get possession of Angoulême in succession to their
eldest brother Vulgrin (G. Vigeois, 326). Elias was still
living in January-February 1183, when “Helias et Sector Ferri”
are coupled together by G. Vigeois (332) as “Vulgrini defuncti
comites Engolismensis fratres.” It is doubtful whether “Sector
Ferri”—Taillefer, a surname used by all the counts of Angoulême at
this period—here represents William or Aimar. Some modern writers
date William’s death in 1181. He was at any rate still alive in June
of that year; G. Vigeois (326) says definitely “_Guillermus_ et
Ademarus defuncto inhiabant succedere fratri,” _i. e._ to succeed
Vulgrin who died in June 1181, see Clédat, _B. de Born_, 42, note.
[147] “Ges no mi desconort,” ll. 35-8.
[148] “Tals me plevi sa fe No feses plait sens me,” _ib._ ll. 39-40.
Obviously this “pledging of faith” could not apply to Bertrand alone.
Nor was he the only one towards whom it was broken, as we shall see.
[149] Cf. “Pois Ventadorn,” ll. 1-3, with “Ges no mi desconort,” ll.
18-25.
[150] _Razo_ of “Un sirventes cui motz no falh,” Thomas, 7. Bertrand
himself mentions some of these lesser barons in “Pois Ventadorn,” ll.
2, 9, 10.
[151] “Pois Ventadorn,” ll. 17-30.
[152] _Gesta_, i. 197.
[153] G. Vigeois, 324.
[154] He was there in February or March 1181, and again in May and on
June 24, 1182; _ib._ 326, 330.
[155] “Pois Ventadorn,” l. 4.
[156] G. Vigeois, 330, 331.
[157] _Ib._, 320.
[158] “Quod protinus adimpletur,” says G. Vigeois, 326.
[159] See the last six lines of “Pois Ventadorn,” with the note of M.
Thomas, _B. de Born_, 15. I venture to think M. Thomas is mistaken
in assuming that “Talhafer” represents either Elias or William. We
know from John’s treaty with Philip in 1193 that at some time or
other Aimar had done homage to Philip (“Comes Engolismensis tenebit
terram suam a Rege Franciae, illam scilicet de qua fecit se hominem
[illius?]; a me,” _i. e._ John, “vero tenebit aliam terram quam a
me debet tenere,” _Fœdera_ I. i. 57); there is nothing to show that
he was the youngest of the family; it seems more likely that he was
the next to Vulgrin in age, and therefore, if Maud’s claim was to be
ruled out, next to Vulgrin also in the line of succession.
[160] G. Vigeois, 331.
[161] The district in which Clairvaux stood—the Loudunais—had
originally belonged to Poitou; it was annexed to Anjou towards the
end of the tenth century by Geoffrey Greygown, who held it under
homage to the Poitevin Count William III. This homage became obsolete
after Geoffrey Martel’s victory over William VIII in 1033. Richard
may possibly have had some idea of reviving the Poitevin claim to
the overlordship of the Loudunais; but it is more likely that he
simply did not know, and did not care to ascertain, exactly where the
frontier line ran.
[162] “Pois Ventadorn,” ll. 33-40.
[163] _Gesta_, i. 294; R. Diceto, ii. 18, where young Henry is made
to say that Richard fortified Clairvaux “contra suam” (_i. e._ young
Henry’s) “voluntatem.”
[164] G. Vigeois, 332; Bern. Itier, a. 1182.
[165] G. Vigeois, 332—“Olivarus frater Petri vicecomitis de
Castellone,” _i. e._ Castillon in Périgord. A month earlier Aimar
of Limoges had taken and destroyed the “Burgum S. Germani”; _ib._
Probably this means S. Germain-les-Belles, near Limoges, and Aimar
was merely chastising a vassal of his own; at any rate there is
nothing to imply that the matter concerned Richard in any way.
[166] Cf. “Ges de disnar,” ll. 27, 28, and “Chazutz sui,” ll. 29-31.
[167] “Chazutz sui,” ll. 25-36.
[168] “Ges de disnar,” ll. 27, 28.
[169] See “No posc mudar,” ll. 13-16, and Thomas, Introd. xv. I
venture, however, to think that “Rancon” probably stands not for the
place now so called, in Haute-Vienne (Thomas, 77, note 4), _i. e._
in the Limousin, but for Rancogne in the Angoumois, the home of the
well-known Geoffrey, lord also of Pons and of Taillebourg.
[170] See “Ges no mi desconort,” ll. 11-14, with the reference to
“quem disses [el coms, _i. e._ Richard] antan.”
[171] _Gesta_, i. 291.
[172] _Ib._, 294, 295.
[173] _Ib._, 295.
[174] _Gesta_, i. 295.
[175] R. Diceto, ii. 18—“homagium et ligantiam.” Cf. _Gesta_, i.
291-2.
[176] R. Diceto, _l.c._
[177] _I. e._, probably, to an explanation that the homage was not
meant to take effect till young Henry should be in his father’s place.
[178] _Gesta_, _l.c._
[179] _Ib._, 295.
[180] “Vehementer excanduit, incongruum esse dicens, ut dicitur, cum
eodem ex patre, cum eadem ex matre, traxisset originem, si fratrem
primogenitum aliqua specie subjectionis superiorem agnosceret; sed
sicut ipsi fratri suo regi lege primogenitorum bona debebantur
paterna, sic in bonis maternis aequa lance successionem legitimam
vindicabat,” R. Diceto, ii. 18, 19. That is to say, in fact, he
claimed to hold Aquitaine, _after his father’s death_, as a direct
underfief of the kingdom of France, and not as a part of the Angevin
dominions at all. In other words, he claimed the right to break up
the Angevin empire; which was precisely what Henry II was trying to
prevent.
[181] _Gesta_, i. 292.
[182] R. Diceto, ii. 19.
[183] Cf. _Gesta_, i. 292 and 295.
[184] “Transacta Purificatione B. Mariae,” G. Vigeois, 332. Geoffrey
dates the quarrel between the king’s sons “tertio idus Decembris,
celebrata Domini Nativitate.” Can he mean “tertio idus Januarii,”
January 11? This might very well be the date of the final quarrel
between young Henry and Richard.
[185] _Gesta_, i. 296.
[186] G. Vigeois, _l.c._; _Gesta_, i. 292, 293.
[187] _Gesta_, i. 293. It is hardly possible that Geoffrey can have
had time to go in person into Britanny as the _Gesta_ imply; but
it is clear from Bertrand de Born’s poem “D’un sirventes nom chal”
that he was deep in the Aquitanian plot before his eldest brother’s
adhesion to it was known; no doubt, therefore, he had secretly made
his preparations beforehand for the crisis which had now come.
[188] G. Vigeois, 332.
[189] G. Vigeois, 332.
[190] _Gesta_, i. 292. G. Vigeois, _l.c._, mentions among the
“barones et principes” who “tunc temporis conspiraverunt adversus
Ricardum,” besides young Henry and Geoffrey of Britanny, Elias, and
“Taillefer” of Angoulême, Aimar of Limoges, Raymond of Turenne, Peter
viscount of Castillon and his brother Oliver of Chalais, Fulcaud of
Archiac (in Saintonge) and Geoffrey of Lusignan. This last was now
at Limoges, and in the most intimate counsels of the young king; see
_Hist. G. le Mar._, ll. 6408-13.
[191] R. Howden, ii. 274.
[192] G. Vigeois, _l.c._
[193] Saint Pierre du Queiroix, “de Quadrivio,” situated near the
north-east angle of the old town or Castrum S. Martialis; _ib._
[194] “Santius de Sarannas et Curbanus seu Curbaranus,” G. Vigeois,
333; in all other places where Geoffrey mentions the latter he
uses the longer form of the name. “Curbaran” is the name of a
Saracen prince in the _Chanson d’Antioche_. In the printed editions
of Geoffrey’s history the other leader figures as _Sautius_ and
_Saucius_, but these are probably misreadings of _Santius_ and
_Sancius_, Latin for Sancho or Sanchez. Sérannes or Serranes is the
name of a cluster of hills in what is now the department of Héraut;
most likely this bandit chief had a favourite lurking-place there;
cf. “Willekin of the Weald.”
[195] G. Vigeois, 333, 334.
[196] _Ib._, 333-4.
[197] “Citramarinos principes.”
[198] G. Vigeois, 335-6.
[199] _Gesta_, i. 299.
[200] G. Vigeois, 335.
[201]
“Tost l’agral reis joves matat, Sil coms nol [nos, Stimming] n’agues
ensenhat; Mas aissils clan els enserra Qu’Engolmes a per fort cobrat
E tot Saintonge delivrat Tro lai part Finibus Terra.”
—“Eu chant,” ll. 7-12. Bertrand’s modern commentators have assumed
that the nominative to “a cobrat e ... delivrat” is “lo reis joves,”
and understood ll. 9-12 as referring to the invasion of the Angoumois
and Saintonge by the Routiers in behalf of young Henry. I venture
to suggest that the true nominative is “lo coms”—_i. e._, the count
of Poitou. There could be no “recovery” of the Angoumois either
by or for young Henry, who had never had any authority there. The
whole structure and context of the lines indicate that they refer to
Richard. “Finibus Terra,” Finisterre, doubtless stands here, like
“Broceliande” in another of Bertrand’s poems (“D’un sirventes nom
chal,” l. 33), simply for Britanny.
[202] “Eu chant,” ll. 5-12, 16-18. On l. 8, “Sil coms,” etc., see
Stimming’s note, 155.
[203] G. Vigeois, 336.
[204] “Eu chant,” ll. 37-42.
[205] G. Vigeois, 338.
[206] _Ib._, 337.
[207] _Ib._, 336, 338.
[208] _Ib._, 337; cf. _Gesta_, i. 302, 303.
[209] G. Vigeois, 337.
[210] On comparing the words of G. Vigeois, _l.c._—“Castrum ...
dux jure praelii cepit”—with those of Bertrand himself—“Autafort,
Qu’eu ai rendut Al senhor de Niort, Quar l’a volgut” (“Ges no mi
desconort,” ll. 5-8), I think this must be the real meaning of both.
[211] “Ges no mi desconort,” ll. 9-14.
[212] G. Vigeois, _l.c._
[213] “Nom chal d’Autafort, Mais far dreit ni tort, Qu’el jutjamen
crei Monsenhor lo rei”; last four lines of “Ges de far sirventes.”
[214] “Ges de far,” ll. 9, 10.
[215] Literally “as true as any silver”—“fi com us argens,” “Ges no
mi desconort,” l. 50.
[216] _Gesta_, i. 308.
[217] A. Richard, _Comtes de Poitou_, ii. 373, from a document in
the cartulary of Fontevraud. The “five years” which John is there
stated to have spent in the abbey must be prior to February 1173;
this appears from later notices of his whereabouts cited in my _John
Lackland_, pp. 7, 8.
[218] _Gesta_, i. 308.
[219] G. Vigeois, 342.
[220] _Ib._, 338.
[221] Cf. _ib._, 338, 339, Rigord (ed. Delaborde), i. 36, and on
the “Pacifici,” R. Torigni, a. 1183, Gerv. Cant., i. 300, 301, and
Rigord, i. 37-39.
[222] G. Vigeois, 338.
[223] “Lobar seu le Bar,” _ib._, 323, 324, 326, 342. In a Life
of S. Stephen of Grandmont which seems to date from the time of
Pope Clement III (1187-91) or soon after, the same man is called
“Lupardus.” Labbe, _Biblioth._, ii. 676.
[224] G. Vigeois, 342.
[225] _Gesta_, i. 306.
[226] _Gesta_, i. 306.
[227]
“E li reis l’aveit mult amee; Des que il esteit coens de Peitiers, La
coveita sis covestiers.”
_Est. de la Guerre Sainte_, ll. 1150-2.
“A multo tempore quo comes erat Pictavensis ... plurimum desideravit
eam,” _Itin._, 175.
[228] _Gesta_, i. 311.
[229] _Ib._, 319.
[230] _Gesta_, i. 319-21.
[231] _Ib._ 333, 334.
[232] _Ib._, 337.
[233] _Ib._, 313.
[234] _Ib._, 337, 338.
[235] _Gesta_, i. 338.
[236] _Ib._, 318, 319; R. Howden, ii. 288.
[237] _Gesta_, i. 322.
[238]
“Membrelh [Felip] sa sor el maritz orgolhos Que la laissa e no la vol
tener; Aquest forfaitz mi sembla desplazer, E tot ades que s’en vai
perjuran, Quel reis Navars l’a sai dat per espos A sa filha, per que
l’anta es plus gran.” B. de Born, “Seu fos aissi senher,” ll. 22-8.
Thomas (73) and Stimming (36) are agreed that this _sirventes_ dates
from 1188. Stimming seems to think the lines quoted above refer to
an event of quite recent occurrence; but anything like an avowed
troth-plight between Richard and Berengaria at any time except
between December 1183 and March 1186 would have been an insult to
France so flagrant that neither Richard nor Sancho is likely to have
run the risks which it would have involved. During that period,
however, such a betrothal would give Philip no lawful ground for
complaint, although a mischief-maker might easily use it, either at
the time or some years later, to excite the French king’s resentment
against a man who had thus failed to appreciate the honour of
becoming his brother-in-law and preferred a daughter of Navarre to a
daughter of France.
[239] _Gesta_, i. 343, 344; date from R. Diceto, ii. 40.
[240] _Gesta_, i. 345.
[241] R. Diceto, _l.c._
[242] _Gesta_, _l.c._
[243] _Gesta_, i. 345.
[244] _Ib._, 347, 350.
[245] Cf. R. Diceto, ii. 43, 44, with _Gesta_, i. 353.
[246] _Gesta_, ii. 5.
[247] Rigord, _l.c._
[248] Gerv. Cant., i. 346; cf. Rigord, _l.c._, who mentions only the
dowry, not the bride.
[249] Rigord, _l.c._
[250] _Ib._, 78.
[251] Cf. Rigord, 78, _Gesta_, ii. 6, and Gerv. Cant., i. 369.
[252] Gerv. Cant., i. 371-3.
[253] Gir. Cambr., _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 2.
[254] “Johannes ... cujus promotionis causa haec omnia mala
sustinui.” Gir. Cambr., _De. Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 25.
[255] R. Diceto, ii. 49. Gerald, _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c.
2, says one year; but Ralf is more to be trusted on this point. On
the other hand, Ralf’s date—Tuesday, the eve of S. John—is a day too
early to be compatible with the circumstantial narrative of Gervase.
[256] Rigord, i. 79.
[257] _Gesta_, ii. 7.
[258] Gerv. Cant., i. 373.
[259] _Gesta_, ii. 7.
[260] _Ib._, 9.
[261] Gir. Cambr., _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 5.
[262] _Ib._, R. Diceto, ii. 50; W. Newb., lib. iii. c. 23.
[263] Gerv. Cant., i. 389.
[264] W. Newb., lib. iii. c. 23.
[265] _Gesta_, ii. 29. This writer, Roger of Howden (ii. 334), and R.
Diceto (ii. 51) date the conference January 21; Gervase (i. 406) says
“about S. Vincent’s day” (January 22); Rigord (83) and William the
Breton (_Gesta Ph. Aug._, 187) say January 13. Probably it began on
S. Hilary’s day, was suspended owing to the arrival of the archbishop
of Tyre, and was resumed on January 21.
[266] _Gesta_, ii. 29-30. W. Newb., lib. iii. c. 23, represents the
conference as held in consequence of the archbishop’s coming, and
for no other purpose than to consult as to what could be done for
Palestine. Rigord (_l.c._), Gir. Cambr. (_De Instr. Princ._, dist.
iii. c. 5), Gerv. Cant. (i. 406) and R. Diceto (_l.c._) say merely
that the kings held a conference and took the Cross.
[267] Gir. Cambr., _l.c._
[268] _Gesta_, ii. 30.
[269] Gir. Cambr., _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 7.
[270] _Ib._
[271] On January 30; _Gesta_, ii. 33.
[272] Gir. Cambr., _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 7.
[273] R. Diceto, ii. 54, 55.
[274] _Gesta_, ii. 34.
[275] Gir. Cambr., _l.c._
[276] Gir. Cambr., _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 7.
[277] Cf. R. Diceto, ii. 55, and _Gesta_, ii. 34.
[278] Gir. Cambr., _l.c._
[279] _Gesta_, _l.c._; cf. R. Diceto, _l.c._, Rigord (ed. Delaborde,
90) dates this invasion of Toulouse “inter Pentecosten et festum S.
Johannis,” _i. e._ between June 5 and 24; we shall, however, see that
it must have taken place some considerable time before June 16. In
my _Angevin Kings_ I adopted Rigord’s date, but I now recognize that
this was an error, and that the editors of Vic and Vaissète are right
in following William the Breton, who (ed. Delaborde, i. 187) places
the expedition “a short time after” (_modico post elapso tempore_) a
council which according to Rigord (_ib._, 84) was held at Paris in
March. Otherwise there would not have been time for all the captures,
negotiations, etc. “Toulouse” here evidently means the county of
Toulouse proper; the Quercy was already in Richard’s hands, annexed
by him to his ducal domains in 1186.
[280] Rigord, 90; cf. R. Diceto, _l.c._, _Gesta_, ii. 36, and Gerv.
Cant., ii. 432.
[281] _Gesta_, ii. 34, 35.
[282] Rigord, 90.
[283] _Gesta_, ii. 35, 36.
[284] R. Diceto, ii. 55.
[285] Gir. Cambr., _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 7.
[286] _Ib._
[287] _Gesta_, ii. 40. It is noticeable that the Angevin princes
are at this period always represented as describing their Toulousan
rival only by his ancestral title derived from the little county of
S. Gilles which was the cradle of his family, thus tacitly reserving
their own claim to be the rightful holders, not merely overlords, of
his greater possession, Toulouse.
[288] Montrichard, Montrésor, Coulangé; Rigord, 91, 92.
[289] Date from R. Diceto, _l.c._ Cf. _Gesta_, ii. 39, and Rigord,
_l.c._
[290] Gerv. Cant. i. 432, 433; cf. _Gesta_, ii. 40.
[291] Rigord, 92.
[292] _Gesta_, _l.c._
[293] _Ib._, ii. 45.
[294] “Ne nihil ageretur,” Gerv. Cant., i. 434.
[295] Gerv. Cant., i. 434.
[296] Rigord, _l.c._
[297] _Gesta_, ii. 45; cf. _ib._, 39, 40.
[298] R. Diceto, ii. 55; cf. W. Armor., _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (ed.
Delaborde), 188, 189.
[299] _Hist. G. le Mar._, ll. 7389-405, 7610-40.
[300] _Gesta_, ii. 46. William the Breton in his _Philippis_, lib.
iii. ll. 410-624, gives a much longer account of this affair, with
a minute description of the personal struggle between Richard and
William des Barres, and no mention at all of the capture of William.
There can hardly be a doubt that the English prose writer’s brief
version is more trustworthy than the French poet-historiographer’s
lengthy elaboration. The latter has, however, one interesting touch;
in ll. 445-6 the poet makes William des Barres say of Richard:
“Rictus agnosco leonum Illius in clypeo.”
[301] _Gesta_, ii. 46.
[302] This is an inference from the fact that Philip is said to have
taken Palluau after the conference in October, _Gesta_, ii. 49.
[303] _Gesta_, ii. 49.
[304] _Ib._
[305] “Fo ordenatz per lor us parlamens ou foron ensems en la marcha
de Torena e de Beiriu, els reis Felips si fetz mains reclams d’en
Richart, dont amdui vengron a grans paraulas e a malas, si qu’en
Richartz lo desmenti el clamet vil recrezen, e sis desfieron e sis
partiron a mal.” _Razo_ of B. de Born’s _sirventes_ “Al dous nous,”
Thomas, 69, 70. Cf. Bertrand’s own words in the same _sirventes_, ll.
28-31: “Guerra sens fuoc e sens sanc De rei ni de gran poesta Cui
coms laidis ne desmenta Non es ges paraula genta.”
[306] _Gesta_, ii. 49.
[307] R. Diceto, ii. 57.
[308] Gerv. Cant., i. 435.
[309] _Hist. G. le Mar._, ll. 8116-39. This writer’s story is
here somewhat confused; he gives to the conference a date which
is certainly wrong—“a cluse Pasque, le mardi” (l. 8069), _i. e._,
Tuesday, April 18, 1189, instead of November 18, 1188.
[310] “Proposuit rex Francorum quod ea quae post crucem susceptam
ceperat Anglorum regi restitueret, et post, omnia manerent in eo
statu quo fuerunt ante crucem susceptam.... Comes Pictavorum penitus
contradixit; sibi quidem videbatur incongruum quod hac servata
conditione Cadurcum redderet et totum comitatum, et alia multa ...
pro feodo de Castro Radulfi et de castello de Hissoudun et Crazai,”
etc., R. Diceto, ii. 58. The two kings took the Cross in January
1188. The date of Richard’s annexation of the Quercy is not certain,
but it must be either 1186 or spring 1188. Philip took Châteauroux in
June 1188; but he had won Issoudun and Graçay in the spring of 1187,
therefore these two places would not be included in a restoration
of “ea quae post crucem susceptam ceperat.” The only possible
explanation of the discrepancy seems to be that Ralph de Diceto
momentarily confused the conference at which Philip and Henry took
the Cross, at Gisors in January 1188, with their meeting at the same
place on March 10, 1186.
[311] Cf. R. Diceto, ii. 58, Rigord, 92, 93, Gerv. Cant., i. 435,
and _Gesta_, ii. 50. The biographer of William the Marshal gives
(ll. 8089-175) a somewhat different account of the conference; he
says nothing of any request made there by Richard to his father,
but represents Philip as urging Henry to increase Richard’s actual
possessions by giving him Anjou, Touraine, and Maine, and asserts
that before the conference Philip had won Richard over to him by
promising “qu’il li dorreit en demeine” those three counties, and
Richard had privately done him homage for them. If we accept this
story, we must regard the whole conduct not only of Philip but also
of Richard at Bonmoulins as a piece of utterly shameless acting,
performed with the deliberate purpose on Richard’s part of breaking
finally with his father; for no sane person could expect any other
answer than a refusal to such a request as this. The whole story of
the relations between Henry, Richard, and Philip is, however, only
touched upon in a very meagre and perfunctory way by the Marshal’s
biographer, whose subject it did not directly concern, and who
has almost certainly made one positive mistake with regard to the
Bonmoulins conference, in giving it a date which is five months too
late; I think therefore that the version of Rigord, Ralph de Diceto,
and Gervase of Canterbury is to be in every way preferred to his.
[312] R. Diceto, ii. 58.
[313] Gerv. Cant., i. 435.
[314] R. Diceto, _l.c._; _Gesta_, ii. 50. Cf. Rigord, 93.
[315] _Gesta_, _l.c._
[316] _Ib._, R. Diceto, ii. 58.
[317] “Eissi commensa la meslee Qui unques ne fu desmelee,” _Hist. G.
le Mar._, ll. 8185-6.
[318] Gerv. Cant., i. 435, 436.
[319] R. Howden, ii. 355.
[320] _Hist. G. le Mar._, ll. 8189-254.
[321] Cf. Gerv. Cant., i. 436.
[322] _Hist. G. le Mar._, ll. 8285-9.
[323] Gerv. Cant., i. 439.
[324] Gir. Cambr., _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 10.
[325] _Gesta_, ii. 61. Probably they joined forces in Berry and
thence made an incursion into Touraine.
[326] Gerv. Cant., i. 439.
[327] _Hist. G. le Mar._, ll. 8311-30.
[328] R. Diceto, ii. 62.
[329] Gir. Cambr., _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 13.
[330] He visited Henry at Le Mans on Ascension Day, May 18; _Epp.
Cant._, 90.
[331] Reims, Bourges, Rouen and Canterbury; _Gesta_, ii. 61.
[332] _Ib._, 66, with date “adveniente Pentecoste.” Rog. Howden, ii.
362, says “in octavis Pentecostes,” which agrees better with Gerald’s
statement (_l.c._ c. 14) that the war began “about June 1.” Gervase
of Canterbury (i. 446) is of course doubly wrong in placing the
assembly “apud Cenomannum quinto Idus Junii.”
[333] _Gesta_, R. Howden, and Gerv. Cant., _ll.cc._
[334] Gerv. Cant., _l.c._
[335] _Gesta_, ii. 66.
[336] R. Howden, ii. 363.
[337] _Ib._, 362.
[338] _Ib._, 363.
[339] _Gesta_, ii. 67.
[340] _Hist. G. le Mar._, ll. 8349-50.
[341] _Ib._, 8357-74.
[342] “Rex Francorum et Comes ... intra paucos dies Feritatem
praedictam, Baalum, Bellummontem ... occupaverunt. A municipalibus
circumquaque _Comiti_ fit deditio castellorum.” R. Diceto, ii. 62,
63. Cf. _Gesta_, ii. 67, where Maletable—“Malum Stabulum”—is probably
a mistake for Bonnétable, about half way between La Ferté and
Beaumont. The Marshal’s biographer (ll. 8362-68), like the _Gesta_,
does not mention Richard, and names only three castles as falling
into Philip’s hands—La Ferté, Ballon, and “Montfort le Retrot, qui
gaires n’ert fort, E li fust tantost rendu, Unques ne fust defendu.”
He, however, certainly knew of Richard’s presence with the French
host, for we shall see that he expressly mentions him as engaged
in the pursuit from Le Mans on June 12. If Beaumont was given up
without resistance, its constable, not its owner the viscount, was
probably answerable for the surrender, since it was at another of
the viscount’s castles, La Frênaye, that Henry found shelter soon
afterwards.
[343] _Gesta_, ii. 67.
[344] Cf. _Hist. G. le Mar._, ll. 8835-46 with ll. 9321-37, and the
brief summary of Gir. Cambr., _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 25:
“Cessante vero demum persequentium instantia per Comitis Pictaviensis
casum, equum ejusdem militari lancea perfosso.”
[345] _Hist. G. le Mar._, ll. 8847-64.
[346] _Gesta_, ii. 68, 69.
[347] Gir. Cambr., _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 25.
[348] Cf. _Gesta_, ii. 69, Gir. Cambr., _l.c._, W. Armor., _Gesta
Phil. Aug._, 190, and _Philippis_, lib. iii. ll. 735-8 (the poet
gives the date of the meeting by implication in l. 748), and Stubbs’s
preface to R. Howden, ii. lxvii, note 2.
[349] _Gesta_, ii. 70, 71.
[350] _Hist. G. le Mar._, l. 8957.
[351] Gir. Cambr., _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 26.
[352] _Ib._, 25; _Hist. G. le Mar._, ll. 9068-78.
[353] _Gesta_, ii. 69.
[354] _Hist. G. le Mar._, ll. 9245-8.
[355] The statement in _Gesta Ricardi_ (_Gesta Hen. et Ric._, ii.),
71, that he met the funeral procession on the way and accompanied it
“flens et ejulans” is at variance with a better authority for the
details of the burial—the _Hist. G. le Mar._—and is improbable for
geographical reasons.
[356] _Hist. G. le Mar._, ll. 9294-8.
[357] Disfigured, “sicut perhibent qui presentes fuerunt et
viderunt,” by a bleeding from the nostrils which began as soon as
Richard entered the church and ceased only when he went out again;
Gir. Cambr., _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 28.
[358] _Hist. G. le Mar._, ll. 9299-303.
[359] Gir. Cambr., _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 28.
[360] _Hist. G. le Mar._, ll. 9304-41.
[361] Gilbert Pipard, a well-known officer of the Exchequer; _Hist.
G. le Mar._, ll. 9347-51.
[362] The _Hist. G. le Mar._, ll. 9350-1, says Richard bade the
envoys themselves “Si pernez garde de ma terre E de trestot mon autre
afaire”; but the English chroniclers know nothing of this, and one
of them distinctly asserts that Eleanor was made regent: “Alienor
regina ... statuendi quae vellet in regno potestatem accepit a
filio. Datum siquidem est in mandatis regni principibus et quasi sub
edicto generali statutum ut ad reginae nutum omnia disponerentur.”
R. Diceto, ii. 66. (This passage is immediately followed by the one
about “aquila rupti fœderis.”) Cf. _Gesta_, 74.
[363] _Hist. G. le Mar._, ll. 9361-408. Châteauroux, it will be
remembered, had been in Philip’s hands since June 1187.
[364] His very identity is a puzzle; under Henry II we read of
Stephen de Matha, Stephen de Marzay, Stephen of Turnham, and Stephen
“de Turonis,” all bearing the title of “Seneschal of Anjou,” and it
is doubtful whether or not all these names represent the same man. In
the passage now before us the _Gesta_ (71) call him “de Turonis,” but
it is clear from other evidence that this means Turnham, not Tours.
The _Gesta_ continue (71, 72): “Et uxorem filii praedicti Stephani
propter ignobilitatem mariti ab ipso separari fecit [rex] et alii
marito dari; minans se hujusmodi nobilium puellarum vel viduarum cum
ignobilibus contubernia sua auctoritate secundum leges separare.” Is
it possible that Stephen’s crime consisted in having contrived or
connived at a ceremony of marriage, without licence from the Crown,
between his son and some royal ward who had been committed to his
custody? Such a marriage, if merely formal and if the parties were
under age, might be voidable by a sentence of the king. According to
R. Devizes, 6, 7 (ed. Stevenson), Richard brought Stephen over with
him, in chains, to England, and kept him in prison at Winchester till
he redeemed himself by a heavy fine. This fine may have been either
for the misdemeanour which I have suggested, or in remission of a vow
of Crusade—which vow, however, Stephen fulfilled after all.
[365] _Gesta_, 72.
[366] Gerv. Cant., i. 451.
[367] R. Diceto, ii. 66, 67.
[368] _Gesta_, 73; R. Diceto, ii. 67.
[369] Rigord, 97.
[370] Date from _Gesta_, 73, 74; place from R. Howden, iii. 4.
[371] _Gesta_, 74.
[372] _Ib._; R. Howden, iii. 4; Gerv. Cant., i. 450, 451 (who seems
to have got confused between Auvergne and Berry); and Rigord, 97,
whose statement is of course conclusive as to the final terms so far
as the lands are concerned.
[373] Gerv. Cant., i. 451.
[374] _Ib._, 450.
[375] _Ib._, 457; _Gesta_, 75, with a self-contradictory date.
[376] Gerv. Cant., _l.c._, says Southampton; the _Gesta_, _l.c._, say
Portsmouth.
[377] Gerv. Cant., i. 453, 454, 457; R. Diceto, ii. 67; cf. _Gesta_,
76. The first gives date August 14, the second August 15.
[378] _Gesta_, 75.
[379] _Gesta_, 74, 75.
[380] W. Newb., lib. iv. c. 1.
[381] _Gesta_, 75-6.
[382] Gerv. Cant., i. 457.
[383] The _Itin. Ric. Reg._, 142, says “die S. Ægidii receptus est
cum processione apud Westmonasterium, et die tertia sequenti ...
unctus est in regem.” Gervase, i. 457, dates the arrival in London
September 2. The _Hist. G. le Mar._, ll. 9568-9, says, “A mult riche
procession Fu receuz dedenz Seint Pol,” without any date.
[384] _Itin._, 142; Gerv. Cant., i. 457; R. Diceto, ii. 68; _Gesta_,
78, 79.
[385] Ralph de Diceto, who as dean of S. Paul’s handed the ampulla to
the Primate, the bishop of London, to whom this duty belonged, being
absent through illness. R. Diceto, ii. 69.
[386] Cf. R. Diceto, ii. 68, _Gesta_, 81, 82, and R. Howden, iii. 10.
[387] _Gesta_, 82; R. Howden, iii. 10, 11.
[388] _Estoire de la Croisade_, ll. 205, 206; the writer implies that
he was there.
[389] _Gesta_, 83.
[390] _Gesta_, 83; cf. W. Newb., lib. iv. c. 1.
[391] W. Newb., _l.c._
[392] _Ib._
[393] _Gesta_, 84.
[394] W. Newb., _l.c._
[395] _Gesta_, 84.
[396] So at least we should gather from the treasurer’s apparent
inability to find any money for King Henry’s funeral; _Hist. G. le
Mar._, ll. 9173-200. Of course we must remember that Richard himself
had emptied that treasury two years before. This again implies that
he was at that time short of money in Aquitaine, and therefore not
likely to have since then accumulated anything in the way of a
reserve fund there.
[397] _Gesta_, 76, 77; R. Howden, iii. 8.
[398] “Nongenta millia librarum,” _Gesta_, 77; “Thesaurus ... magnus
valde, excedens numerum et valentiam centum millia marcarum” (=
£66,666 13_s._ 4_d._), R. Howden, _l.c._ There can be little doubt
that the _Gesta’s_ figure is, as Dr. Stubbs suggested it might be,
an error for “nonaginta.” We know that the royal revenue for the
financial year which ended three weeks after Richard’s coronation
amounted to somewhat less than fifty thousand pounds (£48,781;
Stubbs, preface to _Gesta_, ii. xcix).
[399] R. Howden, iii. 17.
[400] _Gesta_, 90.
[401] W. Newb., lib. iv. c. 5.
[402] R. Devizes (ed. Stevenson), 10.
[403] _Gesta_, 90, 91.
[404] R. Howden, iii. 13.
[405] W. Newb., lib. iv. c. 5; cf. R. Devizes, 10.
[406] R. Howden, ii. 302.
[407] R. Devizes, 7.
[408] _Gesta_, 87; W. Newb., lib. iv. c. 4. Elsewhere the former
writer includes Ranulf among the officers whom he represents as
compulsorily deposed and held to ransom: “Eodem mense Ricardus Rex
deposuit a balliis suis Ranulfum de Glanvilla justiciarium Angliae et
fere omnes vicecomites,” etc. (_Gesta_, 90); but his own statement in
p. 87, confirmed by William of Newburgh, suffices to contradict this
so far as Glanville is concerned.
[409] W. Newb., lib. iv. c. 4.
[410] _Epp. Cantuar._, 329.
[411] _Gesta_, 87, 90, 91; see also Stubbs’s preface to R. Howden,
iii. xxviii, note 3.
[412] Gir. Cambr., _Vita Galfr._, lib. i. c. 6 (_Opera_, iv. 374).
[413] R. Devizes (ed. Stevenson), 9.
[414] _Gesta_, 72; see also Stubbs’s preface to R. Howden, iii. xxiv,
note 1.
[415] _Gesta_, 78.
[416] See _John Lackland_, 26-8, and the references there given in
footnotes.
[417] The gross total of the ferms and other profits of the six
counties for the year ending Michaelmas 1189 was £4,081 9_s._ 8_d._;
Stubbs, pref. to R. Howden, iii. xxv, note 4. The greater part of
this sum was derived from the miscellaneous profits, which were
liable to fluctuation. The £500-£600 worth of other lands given to
John would no doubt insure that this fluctuation should not reduce
John’s total annual income from his English possessions (irrespective
of his Gloucester earldom and honour) below £4000. Stubbs (_l.c._,
xxiv, note 2) thought that “this promise of £4000 a year in land was
not regarded as fulfilled by the bestowal of the counties.... We
find that in 1195 when John had been removed from the government of
the counties, his income from the Exchequer was £8000 (Howden, iii.
286), but ... in Angevin money and only equal to £2000 sterling.”
Howden’s words in the place here cited are “Eodem anno Ricardus rex
Angliae remisit Johanni fratri suo omnem iram et malivolentiam suam,
et reddidit ei comitatum de Moretonia et honorem de Eia, et comitatum
Glocestriae, cum omni integritate eorum, exceptis castellis; et pro
omnibus aliis comitatibus et terris suis dedit ei rex per annum
octo millia librarum Andegavensis monetae.” To me these words seem
to imply nothing definite as to the relative value of the counties
and other lands of which John had been deprived and of the money
compensation given to him in their stead in 1195. Nor does Bishop
Stubbs’s further remark, “However, it is clear that whilst he was
in charge of the counties he was receiving a large sum from the
Exchequer; R. Devizes, 26,” seem to me borne out by the passage to
which he here gives a reference, and which runs thus: “Colloquium
primum inter comitem de Moretonio, fratrem regis, et cancellarium,
de custodiis quorumdam castellorum et de pecunia comiti a fratre de
scaccario concessa, apud Wintoniam ad Laetare Hierusalem” (_i. e._,
March 4, 1191).
[418] Or Geddington; R. Diceto, ii. 69. Geddington was a royal manor;
the king lodged in his own house there, but the council meetings were
held in Pipewell Abbey, which stood within the boundaries of the
manor. _Monasticon_, v. 431.
[419] Stubbs, note to _Gesta_, 97.
[420] _Ann. Cambr._, 57.
[421] _Gesta_, _l.c._
[422] _Ib._, 92, 93; R. Howden, iii. 20. Richard was in London
November 8, 9, 12, 14, 15, 18 (Stubbs, _Gesta_, 97, note 3).
According to the _Gesta_, the person who swore for Richard was
William de Mandeville; according to R. Howden, William the Marshal.
If the former be right the date must be before November 14, for on
that day William de Mandeville died; R. Diceto, ii. 73.
[423] _Itin._, 145.
[424] _Ib._; Gerv. Cant., i. 474. The precise dates are November 26
to December 5; Stubbs, notes to _Gesta_, 97, 98.
[425] _Gesta_, 97, 99.
[426] Cf. R. Diceto, ii. 72, and Gerv. Cant., i. 474.
[427] R. Diceto, ii. 72, 73; cf. _Gesta_, 99.
[428] Chron. Mailros, a. 1157.
[429] _Gesta Hen._, i. 96, 98.
[430] _Ib._ 351; W. Newb., lib. iv. c. 5.
[431] R. Howden, ii. 338, 339.
[432] _Gesta Hen._, ii. 44.
[433] £6,666 13_s._ 4_d._, W. Newb., lib. iv. c. 5; R. Diceto, ii.
72. The _Gesta_, 98, make the sum 10,000 marks sterling, _i. e._,
£6,600. The charter in which Richard’s concessions to William are
embodied contains no mention of money.
[434] _Fœdera_, I. i. 50. Date, December 5, 1189.
[435] “Pactiones quas ... Henricus rex per novas cartas et per
captionem suam” (_i. e._, Willelmi) “extorsit.”
[436] William had been captured, with some sixty of his men, when
the bulk of the force with which he was besieging Alnwick was out of
reach, by a body of several hundred English knights who had ridden to
the place through a thick mist which prevented them from seeing where
they were and the Scots from discovering their approach till a sudden
clearing of the air surprised both parties alike by revealing their
presence to each other, and the little band of Scots, though they
made a splendid fight, were easily surrounded. W. Newb., lib. ii. c.
33; Jordan Fantosme, ll. 1731-1839.
[437] This is the date of Richard’s charter as printed from an
original copy in _Fœdera_, I. i. 50. “He,” says Richard, “became our
liegeman for all the lands for which his ancestors were liegemen of
our ancestors, and he swore fealty to us and our heirs.” See also
_Gesta_, 104.
[438] _Gesta_, 100.
[439] R. Diceto, ii. 73, makes the date December 14 and the
landing-place Gravelines; the _Gesta_ writer, 101, says “xi^o die
Decembris, in vigilia S. Luciae,” which is self-contradictory, S.
Lucy’s day being December 13. For “in vigilia S. Luciae” Roger of
Howden (iii. 28) substitutes “feria secunda,” which would be right
for December 11, 1189. Both these latter writers say that Richard
landed at Calais, and that the Count of Flanders met him on his
landing and escorted him “cum gaudio” into Normandy.
[440] At Bures, according to _Gesta_, 104; at Lions, according to
_Itin._, 145.
[441] _Est. de la Guerre Ste._, ll. 247-50.
[442] The proclamation inserted by R. Diceto, ii. 73, 74, is dated
Nonancourt, December 30; the _Gesta_, 104, places the meeting at the
Ford of S. Rémi. This was the usual place for conferences, and is
close to Nonancourt.
[443] The _Gesta_, 105, and R. Diceto, ii. 74, say that S. John
Baptist’s day was the date fixed at the second conference, which was
held on January 13 (_Gesta_, _l.c._). R. Diceto, however, elsewhere
(ii. 77) gives Midsummer as the date fixed at the third conference,
which he says took place on the day on which the Queen of France
died, or was buried; it is not clear which he means. She died on
March 15; Rigord, 97. This is clearly the conference at which the
_Estoire_, ll. 259-86, and _Itin._ 146, tell us the kings received
the news of her death (she died unexpectedly, in childbirth), and
agreed to set out each from his own dominions on S. John Baptist’s
day and meet at Vézelay for the final start together on the octave.
The _Estoire_ and _Itinerarium_ place this conference “at Dreux.”
Richard was at Nonancourt on March 14 (_Fœdera_, I. i. 51); the Gué
St. Rémi is midway between these two towns and was no doubt the real
meeting-place.
[444] _Gallia Christ._, i. 988.
[445] Richard, _Comtes._, ii. 263.
[446] R. Diceto, ii. 73. R. Coggeshall, 26, says December 12, but
there are several indications that Mandeville was dead before Richard
left England.
[447] _Gesta_, 101. Roger of Howden, iii. 28, says: “Hugo Dunelmensis
et Willelmus Eliensis Episcopi remanserunt in Anglia summi
justiciarii”; but the _Gesta_ and R. Devizes (11) distinctly imply
that at this time William of Ely, though practically viceroy, was
not titularly chief justiciar. He was, however, added to the number
of assistant justiciars (_Gesta_, _l.c._), and probably this is what
Roger really means.
[448] _Gesta_, 105, 106. R. Howden, iii. 32.
[449] _Gesta_, 106.
[450] After March 27; see _Fœdera_, I. i. 51.
[451] _Gesta_, _l.c._
[452] _Ib._
[453] R. Howden, iii. 8.
[454] There is one rather curious-looking case of a ship which the
king seems to have originally bought for £100, given to the Knights
of the Hospital (in England), and bought back from them for £9.
Archer, _Crusade of Richard I_, 13. But I do not feel quite sure of
the meaning of the passage.
[455] See extract from Pipe Roll 2 Ric. II in Archer, _Crusade of
Richard I_, 11-13. A captain’s pay was double that of a common
sailor; _ib._ The total of ships enumerated in this passage,
exclusive of smacks, whose number is not given, is forty-seven. The
total of the fleet when it set out was 107 or 108 “besides some
others which followed”: _Est._, ll. 311-13, _Itin._ 47.
[456] _Gesta_, 110, 111; R. Howden, iii. 36, 37. These ordinances are
dated “apud Chinonem.” As in both the writers who record them they
are inserted after some events which took place in England in June,
and as Richard is known, from several sources, to have been at Chinon
on June 20, this is the date usually assigned for their issue. But
it cannot be correct; for both our authorities say that the fleet
sailed “statim post Pascha” (March 25), and that a part of it entered
the Bay of Biscay on Ascension day (May 6); _Gesta_, 116; R. Howden,
iii. 42. These ordinances, and the sailing order issued at the same
time with them, must therefore have been issued before Easter. We
have seen that Richard met Philip on the Norman border on March 15,
the Thursday before Palm Sunday; after that, we have no notice of his
whereabouts till April 17, when he was at Chinon (Richard, _Comtes_,
ii. 263, 264). In all likelihood he had been there for a month,
almost ever since his meeting with Philip.
[457] _Gesta_, 111, 116. The _Itin._, 147, and _Est._, ll. 307-10,
represent this order for immediate departure as issued much later
still, from Tours, just before the king himself set out thence for
Vézelay, _i. e._, at the end of June; but as has been shown in the
preceding note, this is quite incompatible with the date at which the
fleet actually sailed.
[458] Endowment charter, dated Luçon, May 5 (1190); witnesses, Peter
Bertin, seneschal of Poitou (appointed not before February 21, 1190,
Richard, _Comtes_, ii. 263, 265), Stephen de Marzay, Brother Miles
the duke’s almoner, Ralf FitzGeoffrey his chamberlain, and John of
Alençon his vice-chancellor, who sealed the deed. Richard, _Comtes_,
ii. 265; from Tardif, _Archives du Poitou_ (Trésor des Chartes), xi.
408.
[459] _Gesta_, 99. The earlier queen referred to is there called
Matilda, but as the writer calls Stephen’s wife “Alicia,” it is
possible that he has reversed the names and that the other queen whom
he intended to mention was not Maud of Scotland but Henry’s second
wife, Adeliza of Louvain.
[460] “Gourfaille, canton de Pissotte, Vendée,” Richard, _Comtes_,
_l.c._, from _Archives du Poitou_, i. 120.
[461] _Gall. Christ._, ii. instr. 388. On the 7th he was at S.
Jean d’Angély; Richard, _Comtes_, ii. 266, from _Arch. Hist. de
Saintonge_, xxviii. 140.
[462] June 6; letter in R. Diceto, ii. 83.
[463] R. Howden, iii. 35. Roger calls this man William of “Chisi”;
Richard, _Comtes_, ii. 263, says “Chis, Hautes Pyrénées,” and seems
to date this expedition earlier, between February 21 and April 17;
but he gives no reason for so doing, and it seems therefore better to
accept the sequence of events given by Roger, with which Richard’s
presence at Bayonne on June 6 fits in very well.
[464] Stapleton, _Norm. Exch. Rolls_, i. cxlv.
[465] R. Devizes, 15.
[466] R. Howden, iii. 36—miscalling the archbishop “William” as usual.
[467] _Ib._, 37. There is documentary evidence of Richard’s presence
at Tours on June 27, 1190; Teulet, _Layettes_, i. 158. Probably he
was there several days earlier, as otherwise Philip would hardly have
had time to visit him there and then go to Paris before setting out
for Vézelay.
[468] _Est._, ll. 324-34.
[469] On June 27 Richard went from Tours to Montrichard (_Fœdera_, I.
i. 48) by way of Azay (on the Cher, close to Tours); _Itin._, 149.
In the next four days he passed through Selles (on the Cher) and La
Chapelle [d’Anguillon, in Berry] to Donzy, in the Nivernais (_Itin._,
_l.c._), where he was on July 1 (_Fœdera_, _l.c._). He may have gone
from Donzy to Vézelay on that day. He was certainly at Vézelay on
July 3 (_Monast._ VI. i. 327). Rigord (i. 99) says: “Feria quarta
post octavas S. Johannis Baptistae” [= Wednesday, July 4] “cum rege
Anglorum Ricardo apud Vizeliacum venit [rex Francorum],” which looks
as if the kings had met on the way and arrived together; but if so,
Rigord’s date is, as we have just seen, at least a day too late. The
_Gesta Ric._ (111) say the two kings stayed at Vézelay two days,
and the _Itinerarium_ (151) enumerates seven places through which
they passed “distinctis dietis” from there to Lyons (M. Gaston Paris
accepts this passage in the _Itinerarium_ as authentic, believing
it to be derived “from an official source”). This would mean their
leaving Vézelay on July 6 and reaching Lyons on the 13th; but from
certain words in the _Gesta_ it seems possible, and I think even
probable, that the true dates are the 3rd and the 10th. The whole
sentence in the _Gesta_ runs thus: “Ibi [sc. apud Vizeliacum] moram
fecerunt [reges] per duos dies _in octavis S. Iohannis Baptistae_.”
Strictly interpreted, this should mean “within the octave”; it might
mean “beginning on the octave,” _i. e._, July 1-3; but it cannot
correctly represent July 4-6. Either it is a blunder, or Rigord is
wrong in dating Philip’s arrival on the 4th. I venture to think
the latter alternative the likelier of the two, as the English
chroniclers appear to have followed their sovereign’s travels with
great care, while Rigord is certainly far from being a specially
accurate chronologist.
[470] _Est._, ll. 365-75; _Itin._, 150.
[471] _Gesta_, 111.
[472] _Est._, ll. 377-8.
[473] The stages are given in _Itin._ 151. See note 7 to p. 117 above.
[474] _Est._, ll. 413-28; _Itin._, _l.c._
[475] _Est._, ll. 429-36.
[476] It is said to have numbered 100,000; _Est._, l. 419, _Itin._,
_l.c._
[477] _Gesta_, 112; _Est._, ll. 449-65; _Itin._, 152.
[478] _Est._, ll. 466-90. “Le Rogne, l’eve crestee,” l. 414.
[479] _Ib._, ll. 491-7.
[480] The two kings having agreed to separate their forces because
they found them too numerous to travel in one body; _Gesta_, 112.
[481] _Itin._, 152.
[482] _Ib._, _Est._, ll. 499-510.
[483] _Itin._, _l.c._
[484] We get this date from the _Gesta_, 112, where it is said that
Richard stayed at Marseille eight days and left on August 7. The
author of the _Itinerarium_ enumerates (153) fifteen places which he
says “_we_ went through” (_transivimus_) from Lyons to Marseille;
but he does not (as in his account of the journey from Vézelay to
Lyons) specify how many days’ travelling these stages represent;
and moreover, he is evidently here not describing Richard’s journey
at all, for he ends “apud Marsiliam, ubi moram fecimus per tres
hebdomadas; postea mare intravimus, scilicet die proxima post
festum Assumptionis Beatae Mariae,” _i. e._, August 16; that is, he
represents himself as having reached Marseille on July 26. Supposing
his narrative to be authentic, he must therefore have travelled from
Lyons to Marseille not with the king, but in advance of him. On the
other hand, if he was an impostor and not a Crusader at all, his
evidence on this point is of no account. In either case, however, it
is probable that the route he gives would occupy about a fortnight;
Richard may therefore have set out from Lyons on July 17 or 18.
[485] R. Howden, iii. 51.
[486] _Ib._, 42.
[487] _Epp. Cantuar._, 328.
[488] _Gesta_, 15.
[489] The date of the death, November 1189, is given in _Gesta_, 101,
102.
[490] “Mare nauseans,” R. Devizes, 16.
[491] _Ib._
[492] _Gesta_, 112. R. Diceto, ii. 84, says “in vigilia S.
Laurentii,” _i. e._, August 9; but in the _Gesta_ the date is the
first of a whole series evidently derived from an official record of
some kind, so it seems best to follow this authority.
[493] _Gesta_, _l.c._
[494] _Gesta_, 112-14.
[495] R. Diceto, ii. 84.
[496] _Gesta_, 114, 115.
[497] _Ib._, 124.
[498] _Gesta_, 115-22. 124; R. Howden, iii. 42-50. 53, 54.
[499] _Gesta_, 124; R. Diceto, ii. 84.
[500] Rigord, 106.
[501] Placed at his disposal by the new king of Sicily, Tancred;
_Gesta_, _l.c._
[502] _Est._, ll. 573-80; _Itin._, 156.
[503] _Gesta_, 124, 125.
[504] _Est._, ll. 588-93.
[505] _Gesta_, 126; R. Howden, iii, 55. These and R. Diceto, ii. 84,
give the date, September 23.
[506] _Gesta_, _l.c._
[507] _Est._, ll. 594-7.
[508] _Gesta_ and R. Howden, _ll.cc._
[509] The settlement is given at length in _Gesta_, i. 169, 170.
[510] Cf. _Gesta_, 132, 133, and R. Devizes, 19. According to the
former authority the cups and dishes were of gold, according to the
latter of silver.
[511] R. Devizes, 18.
[512] _Gesta_, 132.
[513] R. Devizes, 19. The _terrino_ was a small gold coin weighing
twenty grains.
[514] _Gesta_, 126; date confirmed by R. Diceto, ii. 85.
[515] _Est._, ll. 549-58.
[516] _Est._, ll. 615-19.
[517] R. Devizes, 18.
[518] Cf. R. Devizes, 20, _Est._, ll. 547-58, 607-24, and _Gesta_,
138, 139.
[519] Cf. R. Devizes, 19, R. Diceto, ii. 85, _Gesta_, 127, and R.
Howden, iii.
[520] It seems to have been really another beacon-tower or pharos,
placed on the island—like the tower on the Sicilian mainland opposite
Scylla, where Richard had first landed—to give warning of the
proximity of Charybdis; see _Gesta_, 158.
[521] _Gesta_, 127; R. Devizes, 19.
[522] Cf. _Gesta_, _l.c._, and _Est._, ll. 627-44; the date is from
the former. R. Devizes, 22, seems to make it October 2, but his whole
account of the matter is fantastic, while that of the _Gesta_ is in
close accord with the eye-witness Ambrose, the poet of the _Estoire_.
[523] _Gesta_, _l.c._
[524] _Ib._, 138; see Archer’s note on them, _Crusade of Richard I_,
31.
[525] _Gesta_, 128; R. Devizes, 22, 23; _Est._, ll. 649-53.
[526] _Est._, ll. 654-67.
[527] _Gesta_, 128; for Hugh the Brown cf. R. Diceto, ii. 85, _Est._,
ll. 717-20, _Itin._ 161, and R. Devizes, 23.
[528] _Est._, ll. 683-5.
[529] _Ib._, ll. 721-36.
[530] _Ib._, ll. 689-701, 779-84.
[531] _Gesta_, 129.
[532] “Li reis fud un des premerains Qui osast entrer en la vile;
Puis i entrerent bien dis mile,” Est., ll. 801-4. The _Itinerarium_,
163, says: “Primus civitatem intravit ipse dux et praevius,” and
describes the entrance as effected “per posternam quandam quam rex
Anglorum, secunda die adventus sui ad cautelam futurorum circuiens
cum duobus sociis, quasi neglectam a civibus perpenderat” (162,
163). This is quite in accord with the character of Richard, who
as we shall see later was in the habit of doing his own scouting;
and the attack could hardly have been so successful unless some
preparations for it had been made beforehand. Still, as the writer
of the _Itinerarium_ does not in this part of his work speak as
an eye-witness, and the one writer who does so speak—Ambrose—does
not give this detail, I prefer to place it only in a footnote.
Richard of Devizes, 23, says the town gates were broken down “admoto
ariete dicto citius.” But he was certainly not there, and his whole
account of the doings at Messina is too full of long speeches to be
altogether trustworthy.
[533] “Plus tost eurent il pris Meschines C’uns prestres n’ad dit ses
matines,” _Est._, ll. 809, 810. Cf. _Itin._, 163.
[534] R. Devizes, 24.
[535] _Est._, ll. 811-18.
[536] _Ib._, ll. 823-61; R. Howden, iii. 58. Howden’s phrase “rex
Angliae signa sua deposuit” probably means only that Richard’s
banners were placed beneath Philip’s in token of the feudal relation
between the kings.
[537] _Est._, ll. 844-8.
[538] _Ib._, ll. 827-30.
[539] _Itin._, 166.
[540] _Gesta_, 129.
[541] _Ib._, 132.
[542] _Est._, ll. 867-86; _Itin._, 165, 166.
[543] _Est._, ll. 913-32; cf. _Itin._, 167.
[544] _Gesta_, 133.
[545] _Ib._, 138.
[546] _Est._, ll. 937, 938.
[547] _Gesta_, _l.c._; R. Devizes, 25; _Est._, ll. 939, 940.
[548] “Que ja a lui [_i. e._ Tancred] ne plaideroit, E que il se
porchaceroit.” _Est._, ll. 941-50.
[549] _Est._, ll. 951-73.
[550] _Ib._, ll. 891-5.
[551] Rigord, 106.
[552] _Est._, ll. 977-1000; _Gesta_, 133-6; _Itin._, 169; R. Diceto,
ii. 85; R. Devizes, 24, 25.
[553] Letter of Richard in _Gesta_, 133.
[554] Letters of Richard to Tancred and to the Pope, in _Gesta_,
133-8.
[555] _Gesta_, 136.
[556] Richard in both his letters cited above acknowledges the
receipt of 20,000 ounces of gold as the dowry of Arthur’s betrothed.
We shall see that the other sum, though the letters do not mention
it, was paid also.
[557] _Est._, ll. 1049-52; _Itin._, 169, 170. Rigord (106), on the
other hand, declares it was “thanks to King Philip’s intervention and
efforts” that Tancred and Richard were reconciled—which is perhaps
true in a sense, but not the sense in which Philip’s panegyrist meant
it—and complains that of the forty thousand ounces of gold Philip
“had only the third part, when he ought to have had half.”
[558] _Gesta_, 129-32.
[559] _Est._, ll. 1053-74; _Itin._, 171, 172. In the printed edition
of the _Estoire_, line 1062 reads thus: “Richarz qui n’est aver
ne chinches.” If _est_ be really the reading of the MS., it of
course places beyond all doubt the correctness of M. Gaston Paris’s
assertion that the poet “a certainement écrit avant la mort de
Richard” (introd., p. 1.). But M. Paris does not cite this line in
support of his assertion, and in his modern French version of the
poem he renders the line “Richard, qui _n’était_ pas chiche ni avare”
(p. 347). We are therefore at present left in doubt whether _n’est_
be not here a misprint for _n’ert_.
[560] _Gesta_, 157.
[561] _Ib._, 146, 147.
[562] _Est._, ll. 1080-1108; cf. _Gesta_, 150.
[563] _Gesta_, 150, 151.
[564] See above, p. 79.
[565] _Gesta_, 155-7.
[566] Rigord, 107.
[567] _Est._, ll. 1145-8.
[568] _Gesta_, 157; they are there said to have gone to Brindisi.
February 27 that year was Ash Wednesday; possibly Richard had hoped
they would arrive in time for the marriage to take place before Lent.
[569] Rigord, 107.
[570] So says _Itin._, 170, 171; in the _Gesta_, 158, he is said to
have gone “per consilium regis Franciae,” which from the sequel does
not seem very likely.
[571] _Gesta_, 158, 159.
[572] _Ib._, 159, 160.
[573] Charter of Philip, in _Fœdera_, I. i. 54, dated “March 1190,”
the French year beginning on Lady day.
[574] “Tertio kalendas Aprilis, sabbato,” _Gesta_, 161; “die Sabbati
post Annunciationem B. Mariae,” _Itin._, 175; _i. e._, Saturday,
March 30. In p. 177, however, the author of the _Itinerarium_ says
Richard sailed on the seventeenth day after Philip’s departure;
which, as all authorities (this same writer included, _l.c._) date
Richard’s departure from Messina on the Wednesday before Easter, _i.
e._, April 10, ought to mean that Philip sailed on Lady day itself.
R. Diceto, ii. 91, makes him sail “quarto kalendas Aprilis,” _i. e._,
March 29; or, according to another MS., “tertio kalendas Aprilis,”
agreeing with _Gesta_. This latter authority says (161) that Philip
reached Acre on the twenty-second day of his voyage, viz. Saturday in
Easter week, _i. e._, April 20. Rigord, 108, dates his arrival Easter
Even (April 13).
[575] _Gesta_, 157.
[576] Cf. _ib._, 161, and _Est._, ll. 1135-40, 1153-9.
[577] _Gesta_, 162; _Est._, ll. 1186-90; _Itin._, 177; R. Diceto, ii.
91.
[578] One hundred “naves” and 14 “buccae,” R. Devizes, 17. This
writer, it must be remembered, supposed the king to have joined his
fleet at Marseille and coasted along with it thence to Messina,
picking up more ships as he went; but as we have seen, this is an
error.
[579] R. Diceto, ii. 86, makes it 219, viz. 156 “naves,” 24 “buccae,”
and 39 “galeae”; the _Gesta_, 162, make it 203, being 150 “magnae
naves” and 53 “galeae”; R. Devizes, 46, reckons the fleet at its
leaving Messina as comprising 180 “naves,” “buccae,” and “dromundi”
(thus tallying with R. Diceto), besides the “galeae” of which he does
not state the number.
[580] Cf. the description of twelfth century _galeae_ in W. Tyr.,
lib. xiv. c. 20, with that in _Itin._, 80.
[581] R. Devizes, 17.
[582] R. Devizes, 46.
[583] _Est._, ll. 1179-85, 1200; _Itin._, 176, 177.
[584] “Devant siglot li reis meismes,” _Est._, l. 1259.
[585] _Itin._, 177.
[586] “Prés de Vïaires,” _Est._, l. 1216; probably, as M. Gaston
Paris says, Cape Spartivento, the eastern point of Calabria.
[587] _Est._, ll. 1202-28.
[588] R. Devizes, 46.
[589] _Itin._, 178.
[590] _Est._, ll. 1233-60.
[591] _Ib._, ll. 1261-7.
[592] _Ib._, ll. 1268-1312.
[593] _Ib._, ll. 1377-1400.
[594] Cf. R. Howden, iii. 105, _Est._, ll. 1401, 1402, and _Itin._,
184, which alone gives the date.
[595] R. Devizes, 47.
[596] _Itin._, 184-7; cf. _Est._, ll. 1403-25.
[597] _Itin._, 187, 188.
[598] _Est._, ll. 1315-34, 1349-51.
[599] _Ib._, ll. 1449-72. Cf. _Itin._, 189. We need not trouble
ourselves about the speeches in _Gesta_, 163, and R. Howden, ii. 106.
[600] _Est._, ll. 1479-95; _Itin._, 189. Cf. R. Howden, iii. 107.
[601] R. Devizes, 47.
[602] “Estions mis es bargettes Qui esteient mult petitettes” _Est._,
ll. 1505, 1506.
[603] _Est._, ll. 1473-4, 1495-1564; _Itin._, 180-91.
[604] _Itin._, 191.
[605] _Est._, ll. 1565-1700; cf. _Itin._, 192-4, _Gesta_, 163, 164,
and R. Howden, iii. 107, 108.
[606] _Est._, ll. 1335-45. Philip reached Acre April 13 according to
Rigord, 108; Saturday in Easter week, April 20, according to _Gesta_,
161.
[607] “Rex ad omnia promptissimus, ne dicam praesumptuosissimus,”
_Itin._, 195.
[608] _Ib._
[609] _Est._, ll. 1701-45; _Itin._, 195, 196.
[610] _Est._, ll. 1749-53, and _Itin._, 196, say Richard had now
forty galleys, including the five Cypriotes.
[611] _Est._, ll. 1761-75, 1791-97; cf. _Itin._, 196, 197.
[612] _Itin._, 197, 198.
[613] _Est._, ll. 1777-90, 1813-18.
[614] Called “Ebetines” by Ambrose, _Est._, l. 1967.
[615] The later Deudamours, now Audimo, in the interior.
[616] See _Gestes des Chiprois_, 514.
[617] _Est._, ll. 1833-2056; cf. _Itin._, 199-203, _Gesta_, 166, and
R. Howden, iii. 109-11.
[618] The “fifteen days” come from _Est._, ll. 2061-4, and _Itin._,
203. The _Gesta_, 167, and R. Howden, iii. 110, lengthen the
campaign, placing Richard’s marriage, May 12, in the middle of it
instead of before its beginning. They date Isaac’s surrender Whitsun
Eve, June 1; the _Itin._, 203, makes it Friday, May 31.
[619] _Est._, ll. 2065-82.
[620] See the complaints of a contemporary Cypriote (Greek) writer,
in _Itin._, introd. clxxxvi.
[621] _Gesta_, 168; cf. R. Howden, iii. 111, 112.
[622] _Est._, ll. 2067-8.
[623] _Gesta_, 167.
[624] _Est._, ll. 2101-5.
[625] _Ib._, ll. 2087, 2088; _Itin._, 204.
[626] _Est._, ll. 2089-92; _Itin._, _l.c._
[627] _Gesta_, 168; R. Howden, iii. 112. The latter absurdly says
the queens with the Maid of Cyprus and the greater part of the fleet
reached Acre on the day of Isaac’s submission, _i. e._, June 1. It is
quite clear that the whole fleet, with king, queens, and all, sailed
on June 5.
[628] R. Diceto, ii. 93.
[629] _Est._, ll. 2129-41; cf. _Itin._, 208.
[630] R. Devizes, 49.
[631] _Est._, ll. 2140-60.
[632] “Come si ço fust ovre de fee,” _Est._, l. 2162.
[633] _Est._, ll. 2185-275; cf. _Itin._, 205-9, and the brief
accounts in _Gesta_, 168, 169, R. Howden, iii. 112, and R. Diceto,
ii. 93, 94. R. Devizes, 94, absurdly says Richard had 1300 men
drowned, “reservando ducentos.”
[634] _Est._, ll. 2142-9; _Itin._, 205; R. Diceto, ii. 93; Bohadin
(_Recueil Hist. Croisades, Hist. Orientaux_, iii.), 220, 221.
[635] Bohadin, _l.c._
[636] _Est._, ll. 2165-84; _Itin._, 206. The brief accounts in
_Gesta_ and R. Howden say nothing of the serpents; R. Diceto, _l.c._,
mentions among the contents of the ship “serpentium ignitorum plena
vasa plurima”; I have thought it right to adopt the interpretation of
the “serpents” which these words imply, although a curious question
seems to be suggested by comparing the story with an account in the
_Morning Post_ of August 14, 1914, of a captured German liner whose
cargo is there said to have included “about sixty alligators and
reptiles.”
[637] Bohadin, 221.
[638] _Est._, ll. 2194-5.
[639] Bohadin, 221.
[640] _Est._, ll. 2305-8.
[641] _Gesta_, 168; R. Howden, iii. 112. These writers say Richard
camped outside the city, and place the affair of the dromond on the
next day, June 7. But the _Estoire_ distinctly locates the meeting
with the dromond between Beyrout and Sidon. R. Diceto, ii. 94, dates
it June 6, which is doubtless correct. Bohadin’s date, June 11 (p.
220), is impossible. Ambrose goes on to say that after the wind
changed the king “jut devant Sor cil nuitie” (l. 2308); for which
the _Itin._ has “proxima nocte ante Tyrum fixis anchoris classis
persistebat” (p. 210).
[642] _Est._, ll. 2309-12.
[643] Ibn Djobeïr, _Recueil, Hist. Orientaux_, iii. 450.
[644] _Ib._
[645] See descriptions in Archer, _Crusade of Richard I_, 373, and
_Crusades_, 317, 318.
[646] The _Est._, ll. 2753, 2754, says four hundred knights and seven
thousand foot. The _Itin._, 61, says seven hundred knights, besides
other fighting men, and that with these “non prorsus ad novem millia
robur numeratum excrevit.”
[647] “Un samedi al seir,” _Est._, l. 2372; date from _Itin._, 211,
R. Diceto, ii. 94, _Gesta_, 169.
[648] “Le preuz reis, le quor de lion,” _Est._, l. 2310.
[649] _Est._, ll. 2312-24; cf. _Itin._, 210, 211.
[650] _Gesta_, 169; R. Howden, iii. 113.
[651] _Itin._, 211.
[652] _Est._, ll. 4575-88; _Itin._, 213, 214.
[653] R. Devizes, 50.
[654] _Gesta_, 170.
[655] R. Devizes, _l.c._
[656] _Est._, ll. 4610-16; _Itin._, 214, 215.
[657] R. Devizes, 50, 51.
[658] _Est._, ll. 4605-8; _Itin._, 214; cf. _Gesta_, 170, and see M.
Gaston Paris’s remarks in his introduction to _Est._, p. lxxiii.
[659] _Est._, ll. 4609-88, _Itin._, 215, 216, Bohadin, 222. The
dates are from Bohadin, whose narrative is by far the clearest; the
western writers have confused the two assaults, and the date in the
_Itinerarium_ is impossible.
[660] _Gesta_, 170; R. Howden, iii. 113.
[661] _Est._, l. 4808; _Itin._, 220.
[662] Bohadin, 222-4, 227, 228.
[663]
“Car nus reis n’iert mielz entechies Fors d’une teche qu’il aveit,
Cele que _nul mal ne saveit_; Cele que l’em clame simplesse.” _Est._,
ll. 9112-15.
[664] Ibn Alathir; _Recueil des Hist. des Croisades, Hist. Orient._,
II, i. 58. Cf. Ernoul, _Chronique_, 181-3.
[665] “Vir Leviannigena,” R. Devizes, 52; the reference is evidently
to Isaiah xxvii. 1.
[666] _Gesta_, 170. Bohadin, 225, gives the date of Conrad’s
departure for Tyre as “Monday 30 Jomada 1.” As 30 Jomada 1 (_i. e._,
June 25) that year was Tuesday, he must mean either Monday 24 or
Tuesday 25.
[667] _Gesta_, 170, 171.
[668] _Itin._, 122.
[669] “Post multum vero temporis,” _Gesta_, 171; but as we have seen
that Conrad went to Tyre on June 24 or 25, and we shall see that he
was back again at Acre early in July, the writer must surely have
meant “non multum.”
[670] _Gesta_, 171; R. Howden, iii. 114.
[671] See lists in _Est._, ll. 4705-35, and _Itin._, 217, 218.
[672] _Gesta_, 173; _Est._, ll. 4815-34, 4867-71; _Itin._, 222.
[673] _Gesta_, 173; R. Howden, iii. 117.
[674] Bohadin, 229, 230; _Est._, ll. 4841-63.
[675] _Gesta_, 174; Bohadin, 230.
[676] Bohadin, _l.c._
[677] According to one version, they implicitly refused it by
requiring, in addition, other conditions such as the garrison had not
power to accept without Saladin’s consent, which he was quite certain
not to give; _Gesta_, _l.c._, followed by R. Howden, iii. 171. Cf.
Bohadin, 233.
[678] Cf. Bohadin, 234, with _Gesta_, _l.c._
[679] _Est._, ll. 4927-42; cf. _Itin._, 224, 225.
[680] _Gesta_, 175; cf. _Est._, ll. 4943-7, and _Itin._, 225.
[681] _Est._, ll. 4948-5040; _Itin._, 225-8; date from _Gesta_, 174.
[682] _Gesta_, 175.
[683] “Le Balafré.”
[684] See the conflicting accounts in _Itin._, 229, _Gesta_, 175, and
R. Howden, iii. 118, 119.
[685] Bohadin, 230, 235.
[686] See the various accounts of these negotiations in Bohadin,
235-7; Ibn Alathyr, _Recueil des Hist. des Crois., Hist. Orient._,
II, i. 44-7; other Arab authorities collected in Abu Shama, _ib._, V,
22-5; _Gesta_ and R. Howden, _ll.cc._
[687] _Gesta_, 177, 178.
[688] _Ib._, 178.
[689] See Note II at end.
[690] _Itin._, 233.
[691] R. Devizes, 52.
[692] _Itin._, 233, 234. According to Bohadin, French ed. p. 238,
this duty was entrusted to Conrad; the passage is omitted in the
Leyden MS. edited by Schultens, but is reproduced in an emphatic form
by Abu Shama (_Recueil, Hist. Orient._, V, 26).
[693] _Gesta_, 179, 180; _Itin._, 234.
[694] Bohadin, 237, 242; _Gesta_, 179. The _Estoire_, ll. 5217-19,
says the Franks were to have as hostages “Les plus hauz Turs e les
plus sages Que l’em poreit en Acre eslire,” and does not specify what
was arranged as to the garrison. But from the sequel it is quite
clear that the hostages really consisted of the whole body of the
garrison.
[695] Bohadin, 238. Cf. Ibn Alathyr, 47.
[696] He had sent his baggage thither on the night of the 12th,
Bohadin, 239; a fact which misled the author of the _Itinerarium_
(234) into saying that Saladin himself retired “eadem nocte sequenti
proxima post ingressionem nostram.” The _Gesta_, 181, agrees with
Bohadin in placing Saladin’s own removal on July 14.
[697] Bohadin, _l.c._
[698] _Ib._, 239, 240; cf. _Gesta_, 180.
[699] _Gesta_, 181, 182.
[700] _Ib._, 182. Cf. _Itin._, 234.
[701] See Note I at end.
[702] Otto of S. Blaise says of Richard: “Praeda communi universorum
sudore adquisita inter suos tantum distributa reliquos privavit, in
seque odia omnium concitavit. Omnibus enim fortiori militum robore
praestabat, et ideo pro velle suo cuncta disponens reliquos principes
parvipendebat” (Pertz, xx. 323). “Reliquos” seems here to include
Philip. Even Rigord does not go so far as this. It is certain that
Philip got his due share of the prisoners; and there is no reason to
doubt that he also got, as the English writers say, his due share of
the city and its contents.
[703] _Gesta_, 182, 183.
[704] _Ib._, 184; _Est._, ll. 5050-61; _Itin._, 235, 236.
[705] _Gesta_, _l.c._
[706] _Itin._, 236.
[707] _Gesta_, _l.c._; _Est._, ll. 5054, 5055.
[708] _Gesta_, _l.c._; _Est._, ll. 5056, 5057, 5062, 5063; _Itin._,
235. Geoffrey only “held” his fiefs in the sense that he was legally
seised of them; they were Joppa, Caesarea, and Ascalon, all in the
enemy’s hands. Conrad’s were Tyre, Sidon, and Beyrout.
[709] _Gesta_, 184.
[710] R. Diceto, ii. 95.
[711] _Est._, ll. 5305-28; _Itin._, 238; _Gesta_, _l.c._; in this
last authority the clause about forty days’ notice after Richard’s
return is omitted, and the date of the oath is given, July 29.
[712] _Gesta_, _l.c._
[713] Rigord, 118.
[714] _Est._, ll. 5333-4; _Itin._, 239; _Gesta_, 185. The latter make
the date July 31; the _Itinerarium_ makes it August 1.
[715] Rigord, 117; date from R. Howden, iii. 126.
[716] Otto of S. Blaise, Pertz, xx, 323.
[717] _Gesta_, 185, 186.
[718] Bohadin, 238-40.
[719] _Gesta_, 180.
[720] _Itin._, 232.
[721] A certain number of the captive Christians of rank were to be
chosen by name by the two kings. See Note II at end.
[722] Bohadin, 240.
[723] From 17 Jomada II (= July 12) to 18 Rajab.
[724] The writer of the _Gesta_, 187, gives the appointed day as
August 9; no doubt imagining the “month” to mean four weeks.
[725] Rigord, 116.
[726] _Gesta_, 185. If the prisoners were really as numerous as our
authorities represent, the whole of Philip’s share could hardly have
gone, with him and his suite, in two galleys. Probably he took the
picked ones only.
[727] _Ib._, 186, 187; _Est._, ll. 5414-86; _Itin._, 242, 243.
[728] _Gesta_, 187.
[729] Bohadin, 241, 242.
[730] The writer of the _Gesta_, 187, who gives the date for the
original first term as August 9, says it was on that day postponed
“in diem undecimum post illum.” It is, however, clear from Bohadin
that the postponement cannot have been agreed upon till after the
11th; and it is equally clear from the sequel that the term as
ultimately fixed cannot have been later than the 20th. This would be
the fortieth day from the surrender—which is what the writer of the
_Gesta_ asserts in p. 179 to have been the term originally fixed for
payment of the whole ransom. Evidently he is correct in his implied
date, and wrong only in his mode of arriving at it.
[731] _Gesta_, 188, 189. “Sui cum eo” in p. 189 must surely be an
error for either “sui cum me,” or, much more probably, “mei cum eo.”
[732] The _Est._, ll. 5613-46. and _Itin._, 245, place Richard’s
encampment outside the walls and the skirmish or skirmishes which
followed it after the slaughter of the garrison, _i. e._ after
August 20. But the whole narrative of the surrender of Acre and
the proceedings there is in the _Gesta_ arranged with such minute
chronological order that it can hardly fail to be founded on
documentary authority so far as its dates are concerned, while the
chronology of both _Estoire_ and _Itinerarium_, just at this period,
is vague and confused in the extreme.
[733] Bohadin, 242, 243; cf. _Gesta_, 189; R. Howden, iii. 127, 128;
_Est._, ll. 5513-39; _Itin._, 243; R. Diceto, ii. 94; R. Devizes, 52.
All the authorities, Bohadin included, who give a date at all make
it Tuesday, August 20, except the _Itinerarium_, which unaccountably
says “die Veneris proximo post Assumptionem Beatae Mariae,” _i. e._
Friday, August 16.
[734] Letter of Richard in R. Howden, iii. 131.
[735] Bohadin, 243. As to the way in which the Frank soldiers had
treated the corpses, the statements in _Gesta_, 189 (copied in R.
Howden, iii. 128) must be compared with Bohadin, _l.c._, whence it
appears, first, that whatever was done to the bodies did not shock
him, for he makes no comment on it; and secondly, that the Saracens
who went to look at them next morning could quite well have taken
them away then, if they had chosen to do so.
[736] Bohadin, 242.
[737] “Quibus sub hac conditione vita concessa est, si Saladinus pro
redemptione eorum 70,000 bisantiorum dare vellet,” R. Coggeshall, 32.
“Qui [Caracois et Mestocus] ... cum per interpretes deditionem urbis
promitterent et capitum redemtionem, rex Anglorum volebat viribus
vincere desperatos, volebat et victos pro redemtione corporum capita
solvere, sed agente rege Francorum indulta est eis tantum vita cum
indemnitate membrorum, si post deditionem civitatis et dationem
omnium quae possidebant Crux Dominica redderetur.” R. Devizes, 51.
[738] _Gesta_, 179, followed by R. Howden, iii. 121.
[739] See the curious statement in a letter written about this time
by El-Fadhel, one of Saladin’s secretaries, to the Divan at Bagdad:
“The number of barbaric tongues among these people from the west is
outrageous, and outdoes everything that can be imagined. Sometimes,
when we take a prisoner, we can only communicate with him through a
series of interpreters—one translates the Frank’s words to another,
who translates them again to a third.” Abu Shama, _Hist. des Crois._,
iv. 15.
[740] “Si fud la chose esguardee A un concile ou assemblerent Li
halt home, qui esguarderent Que des Sarazins ocireient Le plus,”
etc., _Est._, ll. 5524-7; cf. _Itin._, 243. The _Gesta_, 189, and R.
Howden, iii. 128, say expressly that the duke of Burgundy caused the
French king’s share of the prisoners to be slaughtered likewise.
[741] “E dont furent li cop vengie De quarels d’arbaleste a tor, Les
granz merciz al Creator!” _Est._, ll. 5540-2; cf. _Itin._, _l.c._
[742] Extract from Imad-ed-Din, in Abu Shama, _Hist. des Crois._,
iv. 277, 278. It is probably to this that Bohadin alludes when he
speaks of “reprisals” as one of the motives to which the massacre at
Acre was attributed; and it is he who adds (p. 243) that it was also
ascribed to Richard’s sense of the risk of leaving so many prisoners
behind him. The story told in the _Gesta_, 189, and R. Howden, iii.
127, that Saladin had wantonly provoked the retaliation by beheading
on August 18 all the Christian prisoners who should have been
exchanged for his own men next day, is obviously a fiction; and it is
clear that the leaders of the host were not even misled by a false
report, for the _Estoire_ and the _Itinerarium_ make no mention of
any such thing.
[743] _Est._, ll. 5543-5, _Itin._, 244.
[744] _Est._, ll. 5384-7; _Itin._, 240; cf. Bohadin, 244.
[745] _Gesta_, 190.
[746] _Est._, ll. 5550-65; _Itin._, 244.
[747] _Est._, l. 5675; _Itin._, 247, 248. This would include three
hundred (or five hundred, R. Howden) Christian prisoners who were in
Acre when it was surrendered. _Gesta_, 178; R. Howden, iii. 120.
[748] _Gesta_, 190; R. Howden, iii. 128. Bohadin, 244, gives the date
of the departure, 29 Rajab (= Thursday, August 22).
[749] _Est._, ll. 5677-702; _Itin._, 248.
[750] _Est._, ll. 5704-14; _Itin._, _l.c._
[751] Bohadin, 244-6.
[752] This is the date given by the _Est._, ll. 5721-33, and
_Itin._, 249. Bohadin (244), Ibn Alathyr (_Recueil_, II. ii. 48),
and Imad-ed-Din (in Abu Shama, _ib._, iv. 33) say 1 Jaban (= August
24). From this point to the Crusaders’ departure from Caesarea, I
follow Bohadin’s reckoning for the movements of Saladin, on whom he
was in attendance, and the reckoning of the two Frank chroniclers
of the Crusade (the writers of _Estoire_ and _Itinerarium_) for
the movements of the host, of which one of them is universally
acknowledged to have been a member, and I personally believe the
other to have been so likewise. We shall find that from August 30 to
September 6, 1191, Bohadin’s dates are confused; a like confusion may
have affected them for the whole period from August 24, but of this
we cannot be sure.
[753] _Est._, ll. 5751-95; _Itin._, 249-51; cf. Bohadin, 244-5.
[754] _Itin._, 251.
[755] _Est._, ll. 5800-60; _Itin._, 251-2.
[756] The difficulty is complicated by the contradictory descriptions
of the site in _Est._, ll. 5889-90, and 5935, and in _Itin._, 253,
254. The present native name of Athlit is Khirbet Dustrey. One is
tempted to suggest that “Destreitz” might be an attempt to reproduce
the sound of, and give a meaning to, this native appellation; but
as an Arabic scholar has been good enough to answer a question on
the subject by informing me that “it is quite impossible to trace
the word Dustrey” in that language, one is driven to conclude that
the corruption has taken place in the opposite direction, and that
“Dustrey” is a modern Arab form of the old French “Destreitz” (Latin
“Districtum).”
[757] _Est._, ll. 5863-92, 5935-42; _Itin._, 253, 254.
[758] Bohadin, 245, 246.
[759] Its Arabic name is Nahr es Zerka, “blue” or “grey river.”
[760] Bohadin, 247-50.
[761] _Est._, ll. 5981-4; _Itin._, 256.
[762] _Est._, ll. 5944-6004; _Itin._, 255-6. The date of the arrival
of the host at Caesarea has to be made out by counting the days’
marches and halts, as given by these two writers, since the departure
from Acre. A question arises whether Ambrose’s “deus jours de
sejour” (l. 5936) at Casal des Destreitz means two whole days and
three nights, _i. e._, August 27-30, or two nights and one whole day
besides the day of arrival there, _i. e._, August 27-29. The word in
the _Itinerarium_—“biduo”—does not help to a decision; but Bohadin
does help, though indirectly. He says (250) the Franks reached
Caesarea on “Friday 6 Jaban.” This date is self-contradictory; the 6
Jaban (= August 29) was Thursday, and from this point to 14 Jaban (=
September 6) all Bohadin’s days of the week are one day in advance
of his days of the month. On reaching the last date of the series,
however, we shall find from other evidence that the day of the week,
not that of the month, is the correct one all through; therefore the
“two days” are to be taken in the widest sense, and the entry into
Caesarea was on Friday, August 30.
[763] Bohadin, 250, 251; for the date, which he gives as 8 Jaban (=
August 31), see preceding note. Imad-ed-Din, in Abu Shama, 34, gives
it correctly, 9 Jaban = September 1.
[764] Bohadin, 251, 252.
[765] Bohadin, 253.
[766] _Est._, ll. 6039-46; _Itin._, 257.
[767] Bohadin, 255.
[768] _Est._, ll. 6047-64; _Itin._, 258. Oddly enough, Richard soon
afterwards forgot the date of his own wound, for in a letter inserted
in R. Howden, iii. 130, he says it occurred on the third day before
Saladin’s defeat (at Arsuf), _i. e._ on September 5. We shall see
that this date is impossible, because on September 5 there was no
fighting at all.
[769] _Est._, ll. 6071-90; _Itin._, 258, 259.
[770] Bohadin, 255-7.
[771] _Est._, ll. 6092-111; _Itin._, 259. Bohadin, 257, describes the
site as “a place called Birka” (the Pond, or Marsh), “whence the sea
was visible.” It is probably one of the streamlets which, when not
dried up or choked up with sand, run into the Nahr el Falik, a little
creek about eight miles south of the mouth of the Salt River.
[772] _Est._, ll. 6114-17; _Itin._, _l.c._
[773] Bohadin, 258, calls it “Saturday 14 Jaban” (= September 6), but
all the Frank writers show that the date of the battle was really
Saturday September 7 = 15 Jaban.
[774] _Est._, ll. 6191-4, 6204-8; _Itin._, 261.
[775] Cf. Bohadin, 258, _Est._, l. 6211, and _Itin._, 262 and 274;
the passage “Sicque et in parte ... fixere tentoria” in this latter
page seems to be out of place, and to represent Bohadin’s words
(_l.c._) “the foremost of the Frank footmen reached the gardens of
Arsuf.”
[776] _Est._, ll. 6212-51; _Itin._, 262, 263.
[777] _Est._, ll. 6157-64; _Itin._, 260, 261.
[778] According to _Est._, ll. 6427-30, he was a “compainz” of
Richard from England.
[779] _Est._, ll. 6255-472; _Itin._, 264-9.
[780] Bohadin, 258.
[781] _Est._, ll. 6475-92; cf. _Itin._, 269, 270.
[782] Cf. _Est._, ll. 6532-616, _Itin._, 273, 274, and Bohadin,
259-60.
[783] Cf. _Est._, ll. 6621-38, _Itin._, 274, 275, Richard’s letters
in R. Howden, iii. 130-2, and Bohadin, 261. Other accounts of the
battle are in _Gesta_, 191, and R. Howden, iii. 128, 129; both with a
wrong date and some other obvious errors.
[784] Letter in R. Howden, _l.c._ 131.
[785] Bohadin, 261.
[786] _Ib._
[787] Cf. _Est._, ll. 6895-902, and _Itin._, 281, with Bohadin, 261.
[788] _Est._, ll. 6683-734, 6903-25; _Itin._, 276, 277, 281, 282;
Bohadin, 261-2—the last again with wrong days of the month.
[789] _Est._, ll. 6925-35; _Itin._, 281, 282.
[790] Bohadin, 262, gives the date of Saladin’s arrival at Ramlah
as 17 Jaban (= Monday, September 9); Imad-ed-Din (in Abu Shama,
_Recueil_, v. 40) makes it 19 Jaban (= September 11).
[791] Bohadin, 263; cf. Imad-ed-Din, in Abu Shama, v. 40-1, 43.
[792] Bohadin, 263-7. He says (266) that he heard one of the men
engaged in the demolition tell Saladin that they had dug through
a wall “a spear’s length” in thickness. What was the length of a
Saracen spear?
[793] Bohadin, 265, says 20 Shaban = September 12; but probably he is
a day behind as usual.
[794] _Ib._, 265, 266.
[795] _Est._, ll. 6941-7034; cf. _Itin._, 283.
[796] Letter in R. Howden, iii. 130.
[797] Bohadin, 267.
[798] Letter in R. Howden, iii. 132.
[799] The salutation of the letter is merely “N. dilecto et fideli
suo,” without any name.
[800] Letter in R. Howden, iii. 131, 132.
[801] _Est._, ll. 7038-58.
[802] _Ib._, ll. 7051-60; _Itin._, 285. For locality see note in
index to _Estoire_, _s.v._ “Seint Abacuc.”
[803] _Est._, ll. 7061-6; _Itin._, _l.c._
[804] Bohadin, 270.
[805] Natroun is the form used by Bohadin; but Quatremère, _Hist. des
Sultans Mamelouks de l’Egypte_, t. ii, I^{ère} partie, p. 256, no.
10, says, “La forme la plus régulière de ce nom est Alatroun,” and
quotes a MS. Arabic geographical lexicon which gives the name thus.
It is better known in the corrupt form Latroun. The place seems to
be identical with a ruined castle which the Christian inhabitants of
the land told early pilgrims was the abode of the Penitent Thief.
This raises a question whether the story was derived from Alatroun
by way of _Latroun_ and _latro_, or _latro_ gave rise to Alatroun.
Quatremère inclines to the latter view.
[806] Bohadin, 270, 271.
[807] On October 13; Bohadin, 273.
[808] _Est._, ll. 7067-82; _Itin._, 286.
[809] Cf. _Est._, ll. 7075-7, with Bohadin, 279, who says some
Frankish ships with, “it was said,” five hundred men on board were
captured by the Turkish fleet on October 26.
[810] _Itin._, _l.c._
[811] _Est._, ll. 7083-175; _Itin._, 286-8.
[812] Bohadin, 274, 275.
[813] Bohadin, 277-80.
[814] _Itin._, 289.
[815] _Est._, ll. 7207-32; _Itin._, 290.
[816] “Car si a vos mescheiet E qui issi fust escheiet, Cristente
sereit tuee,” _Est._, ll. 7341-3.
[817] _Est._, ll. 7233-66; _Itin._, 291-4.
[818] Bohadin, 284, 285.
[819] _Ib._, 286.
[820] _Ib._
[821] _Itin._, 296.
[822] Bohadin, _l.c._; cf. Ibn Alathyr, 53.
[823] Ibn Alathyr, _l.c._
[824] Bohadin, 286, 287.
[825] In the French edition of Bohadin the date is given as “le 11
Chouwal,” _i. e._ November 1. But evidently this is impossible; it
must mean 21 Shawal = November 11.
[826] Bohadin, 287-91. The accounts of these negotiations given
in _Est._, ll. 7370-428, and _Itin._, 295-7, are obviously less
trustworthy.
[827] Bohadin, 292, says he went to Tell el Jezer, _i. e._ “the Hill
of the Bridge,” Stubbs, note 1 to _Itin._, 298; possibly a bridge
over the little river that runs through the Wady Ali, between Natroun
and Amwas. The Frank chroniclers say he went “dreit al Toron as
Chevalers,” _i. e._ Natroun, _Est._, ll. 7456-62; “versus Darum,”
_Itin._, 298. Stubbs in a note suggested that “Darum” here was a
phonetic error for “Toron”; this the _Estoire_ practically proves;
and I venture to think the passage furnishes a little bit of evidence
on another question, for if the Latin “translator” had “al Toron
as Chevalers” before his eyes, how came he to misrender it “versus
Darum”? whereas if Ambrose found “Darum” in his friend’s notes, and
noticed that it was a mistake, he would of course correct it in his
own version of the story.
[828] See Note III at end.
[829] _Est._, ll. 7429-41; cf. _Itin._, 297.
[830] _Est._, ll. 7471-6; cf. _Itin._, 298.
[831] _Est._, ll. 7477-8; _Itin._, 299, “verum non in deliciis.”
[832] Bohadin, 292.
[833] The later high road to Jerusalem from Joppa goes by Ramlah, but
not by Amwas and Beit Nuba; it passes further south, through the Wady
Ali.
[834] _Itin._, 305.
[835] See, _e. g._, the story of the fight in which the Earl of
Leicester was nearly lost, _Est._, ll. 7480-604, _Itin._, 300-3.
[836] See Note IV at end.
[837] Cf. R. Howden, iii. 17, with Ibn Alathyr, 54, who makes the day
December 22, while Roger makes it the 23rd.
[838] Abu Shama, _Recueil_, V., 49; seemingly from “récit du Cadi,”
_i. e._ Bohadin, but the passage does not occur in either the French
or the Dutch edition of Bohadin’s work.
[839] _Est._, ll. 7617-25; cf. _Itin._, 303.
[840] “E li Turc qui bien conisseient Le rei Richart e sa baniere E
sa vistece e sa maniere,” Est., ll. 7738-40. For “e sa baniere” the
_Itin._, 307, has “_ex_ ejus imminente baneria.” Probably _e_ in l.
7739 should be _a_.
[841] _Est._, ll. 7717-60; _Itin._, 306, 307. On the localities
mentioned in this incident see Note IV at end.
[842] _Est._, ll. 7627-704; cf. _Itin._, 305.
[843] _Est._, ll. 7705-16; cf. _Itin._, 305, 306.
[844] Place from R. Howden, iii. 179, who gives the date as S.
Hilary’s Day, January 13. The _Est._, _l.c._, and _Itin._, 308, say
merely that it was after Epiphany.
[845] _Est._, ll. 7761-80; _Itin._, _l.c._
[846] Ibn Alathyr, _Recueil Hist. Orient._, II. i. 55, 56. The
comments on the difficulties in the way of an effective blockade
which he ascribes to Richard are almost verbally identical with those
of the Knights as reported in _Estoire_ and _Itinerarium_.
[847] Ibn Alathyr, _l.c._, 55; _Est._, ll. 7841-2; _Itin._, 310.
The exact date of the retirement is questionable, owing to the
doubt as to the date of the council. Ibn Alathyr (_l.c._) says the
host withdrew from Beit Nuba on 20 Dulheggia = January 8; Abu Shama
(_Recueil_, V. 49) quotes from “_Récit du Cadi_” a statement that the
withdrawal was on 22 Dulheggia (= January 10), but there is no such
thing in the printed editions of Bohadin. Perhaps Ibn Alathyr and
Roger of Howden may have erred in different ways from making one and
the same mistake, viz., assuming that the return to Ramlah took place
on the same day as the council, which is not necessarily implied in
any of the chronicles, Frank or Mussulman.
[848] _Est._, ll. 7799-810; _Itin._, 309.
[849] _Est._, ll. 7811-42; _Itin._, 310.
[850] Otherwise called Yabneh, Jafna, in older days Jamnia, and,
earlier still, Jabneel (Joshua xv. 2).
[851] _Est._, ll. 7843-95; _Itin._, 311, 312. Both these writers say
the host spent a night at Ibelin on its way to Ascalon. Imad-ed-Din
(_apud_ Abu Shama, 51) says “the Franks marched upon Ascalon on 3
Moharrem,” _i. e._ January 20, the date given in _Itin._, 312, as
that of the arrival there. I venture to think that the difficulty
suggested by Stubbs (_Itin._, _l.c._, note 2), as to reconciling
these dates with the statement in _Itin._, 311, that the duke of
Burgundy stayed eight days at the Casal des Plains, is an imaginary
one. Those eight days need not be crowded in before the setting out
of the rest of the host; the two parties may have gone in opposite
directions almost at the same time, since we shall find that they did
not come together again until several weeks later.
[852] _Est._ ll. 7967-8077; _Itin._, 315-17.
[853] “Ipse manibus aedificando,” _Itin._, 317. We shall presently
find an unimpeachable eye-witness testifying to having seen the king
performing a no less arduous manual labour at Darum.
[854] Imad-ed-Din, _apud_ Abu Shama, 50.
[855] See William of Tyre’s description of Darum: “Castrum in Idumaea
(ipsa est Edom) situm, trans torrentem illum qui dicitur Ægypti,
qui etiam terminus est Palestinae et praedictae regionis,” lib. xx.
c. 19. The earlier frontier—like the later one—was further to the
south-west, and the “river of Egypt” then was the Wady el Arish, or,
earlier still, another stream yet further westward.
[856] _Est._, ll. 8092-141; cf. _Itin._, 318, 319.
[857] _Est._, ll. 8143-54; _Itin._, 319, 320.
[858] _Est._, ll. 5329-50; _Itin._, 239. R. Coggeshall, 37, says
30,000 bezants.
[859] _Est._, ll. 8160-77; _Itin._, 320, 321.
[860] _Est._, ll. 8177-224; _Itin._, 321, 322.
[861] _Est._, 8225-34; _Itin._, 322, 323. The latter gives the date:
“Rex ... postquam Achon pervenerat in crastino Cinerum, postera die,”
etc. The morrow of Ash Wednesday 1192 was February 20.
[862] _Est._, ll. 8238-46; _Itin._, 323.
[863] The _Estoire_, ll. 8247-60, has in this passage a hiatus which
has to be supplied from _Itin._, 323, 324.
[864] _Itin._, 324; cf. _Est._, ll. 8265-70, where again there is a
hiatus.
[865] This is the version of Richard’s proceedings given by Bohadin,
293, who was with Saladin at Jerusalem all the time.
[866] Bohadin, 292, 293.
[867] _Ib._, 293, 294.
[868] _Itin._, 325.
[869] Bohadin, 294.
[870] The _Itin._, 324, says he left Acre on the Tuesday before
Easter, _i. e._, March 31.
[871] _Est._, ll. 8325-35; _Itin._, 326.
[872] “De ses Peitevins E de Mansels e de Angevins E des barons de
Normandie,” _Est._, ll. 8336-9; of Templars and Hospitaliers, with
Count Henry “and many others,” _Itin._, _l.c._
[873] _Est._, ll. 8340-52; _Itin._, 326, 327.
[874] _Est._, ll. 8429-42; _Itin._, 329, 330.
[875] _Est._, ll. 8287-304; _Itin._, 325.
[876] Bohadin, 293. He reckons the captured sheep at a thousand.
[877] _Itin._, 330.
[878] “Post Pascha completum,” _i. e._, after April 12; _Itin._, 333.
[879] _Est._, ll. 8519-646; _Itin._, 333-5.
[880] _Est._, ll. 8650-6, 8715-66; _Itin._, 336, 338.
[881] Bohadin, 297; R. Diceto, ii. 104. Roger of Howden, iii. 181,
gives the date as April 27.
[882] Bohadin, 297; Imad-ed-Din, _apud_ Abu Shama, 53.
[883] Bohadin, _l.c._
[884] _Est._, ll. 8879-99; _Itin._, 341; R. Coggeshall, 35.
[885] Ibn Alathyr, 58.
[886] _Est._, ll. 8788-814; _Itin._, 339-41.
[887] R. Coggeshall, _l.c._; R. Howden, iii. 181.
[888] “Encore ne fu çou mie voirs,” Ernoul, 290.
[889] _Livre d’Eracle, Rec. Hist. Croisades, Hist. Occid._, ii.
190-3. William of Newburgh, lib. v. c. 16, and Roger of Wendover,
ed. Coxe, iii. 74, 75, give a letter purporting to have been
written by the “Old Man” to exculpate Richard from the charge of
having contrived Conrad’s death. In William’s version the letter is
addressed “principibus et omni populo Christianae religionis,” and
professes to have been written spontaneously; in Roger’s version
it is addressed to Duke Leopold of Austria, and Roger says (though
the letter itself does not say) that it was written at the request
of Richard during his imprisonment in Germany. William says, “Has
[literas] nimirum se vidisse atque legisse vir fide dignus mihi
protestatus est cum regi Francorum Parisius constituto solemniter
fuissent oblatae”; he adds that Philip formally accepted the document
as proof of Richard’s innocence; and he dates this transaction 1195.
The contents of the letter differ slightly in the two versions, but
both are substantially in agreement with the accounts in Ernoul and
Eracle of the circumstances which led to Conrad’s death. The letter
is unquestionably a forgery. It may have been circulated in the East
as well as in the West, and the “ultramarine” chroniclers may have
taken their story from it; there is, however, also a possibility that
both they and the composers of the letter—whoever these may have
been—all alike derived their information from a genuine source.
[890] “Li baron de France esteient En lor tentes hors de la vile,
Que haut que bas, plus que dis mile; E li haut ensemble parlerent
E a la marchise manderent Qu’ele lor rendist la citie Trestut en
peis e en quitie En guarde a l’oes le reis de France; E el respondi
sanz dotance Que quant li reis la revendreit Que mult volenters
li rendreit, Si ainz n’i ad autre seignor.” _Est._, ll. 8912-23.
For the last four lines the _Itinerarium_ (342) has: “Quibus ipsa
respondit quod quando rex Ricardus ipsam visere veniret, ipsi potius
redderet civitatem et nulli alii, sicut dominus suus moriens ei
praeciperat.” The context in _Estoire_ clearly shows that by “li
reis” in l. 8921 Ambrose meant not Richard but Philip; and it seems
most likely that this version is the correct one, although Ambrose,
as well as the Latin chronicler, has previously stated that Conrad
when dying had bidden Isabel “que la citie ne rendist Fors al cors le
rei d’Engleterre Ou al dreit seignor de la terre” (ll. 8858-64)—“ut
civitati Tyro conservandae vigilanter intenderet, nec cuiquam hominum
resignaret nisi regi Ricardo sive illi quem regnum jure contingebat
haereditario,” _Itin._, 340. Whom Conrad can have meant by the last
seven words (if indeed he really spoke them) is a puzzle of which I
can suggest no solution.
[891] _Est._, ll. 8774-7; _Itin._, 338.
[892] _Est._, ll. 8928-50, 8973-9016; _Itin._, 342, 343, 346, 347.
[893] _Est._, ll. 9021-62; _Itin._, 348, 349. The date of the wedding
is given by R. Diceto, ii. 104.
[894] _Est._, ll. 8961-70; _Itin._, 343.
[895] _Itin._, 299.
[896] _Ib._, 344, 345.
[897] _Ib._, 343, 346.
[898] _Est._, ll. 8956-9.
[899] _Est._, ll. 9127-45; _Itin._, 351.
[900] Bohadin, 295, 296, 298.
[901] The _Est._, ll. 9323-4, and _Itin._, 355, however, mention some
Genoese and Pisans as taking part in the final storming.
[902] The authorities say merely “un diemaine,” _Est._, l. 9175;
“quadam dominica,” _Itin._, 352; but we shall see later that it must
have been May 17.
[903] _Est._, ll. 9173-240; _Itin._, 352-4.
[904] Bohadin, 301.
[905] Bohadin’s version (_l.c._) of this is that they asked for time
to communicate with Saladin.
[906] _Est._, ll. 9174-368; _Itin._, 354-6; cf. Bohadin, 301. This
last, Ibn Alathyr (60), and Imad-ed-Din (in Abu Shama, 54), date the
surrender May 23; as it seems to have been made late in the evening,
and the Mohammedan day begins at sunset, this date really agrees with
that given by the western writers.
[907] We hear nothing of a taking of Gaza; but Gaza had long ceased
to be a place of any military importance. Richard and his companions
passed through it on their way back to Ascalon (_Est._, l. 9389,
_Itin._, 356), so its Moslem garrison, if it had had one, had
evidently been withdrawn.
[908] _Est._, ll. 8369-86; _Itin._, _l.c._
[909] _Itin._, _l.c._
[910] _Est._, ll. 9387-94; _Itin._, 356, 357.
[911] Cf. _Est._, ll. 9395-407, and _Itin._, 357, 358. For Cassaba,
see G. Paris, note in Glossary to _Estoire_, _s.v._ “Canoie as
Estornels.”
[912] _Est._, ll. 9408-32; _Itin._, 358.
[913] The first version is Bohadin’s, 301, 302; the second, that
of Imad-ed-Din, _apud_ Abu Shama, 54. Bohadin calls the castle
Mejdel Yaba; in Abu Shama’s compilation the name appears as Mejdel
Djenab, but the compiler adds: “This is the name given by El Imad
in the _Book of the Conquest_, but in _The Lightning_ we find
‘Mejdel Yaba’”; while the text of Imad-ed-Din published by Count
Landsberg has “Mejdel el Habab” (footnote to Abu Shama, _l.c._). Of
these Arabic names only one has been located—Mejdel Yaba, called by
the Franks Mirabel, which is so far from the Wady el Hesy that it
cannot possibly be the place meant (G. Paris, Glossary to _Estoire_,
_s.v._ “Fiier”). I am indebted to a distinguished Arabic scholar
for the information that Mejdel Yaba means “Glory of Yaba,” Mejdel
Djenab “Glory of the district,” Mejdel el Habab “Glory of the
lover”; and that the Arabic for Castle of Figs or Figtrees would be
Kalat-el-Tinat. It is possible that a place bearing one of the three
former Arabic names might be called Fig or Figtree Castle by the
Franks for some reason quite independent of its native appellation,
and that the narratives of the Christian and Moslem writers may be
only two different versions of one event; but there is also another
possibility. Imad-ed-Din dates the disaster of the Franks at Mejdel
Djenab (or Yaba, or El Habab) 14 Jomada I, _i. e._ May 28, the date
given by Ambrose and the _Itinerarium_ for the capture of Figtree
Castle; but Bohadin says it occurred “when the host had spent the
fourteenth day of Jomada I” at El Hesy. This should apparently mean
that it took place on the following day, _i. e._ 15 Jomada I = May
29. To me it seems more probable that this version is the correct
one, and that the Frank and the Moslem writers are here relating two
distinct events, one of which took place on May 28 and the other on
May 29. If so, it would not be unnatural that of two expeditions made
within such a short period, each party should record only the one
which terminated in their own favour.
[914] _Est._, ll. 9433-508; _Itin._, 358-61.
[915] “E dist a sei: S’or ne retornes, Veirement as terre perdue.”
_Est._, ll. 9464-5.
[916] Lib. xiv. c. 22.
[917] “Ço fu en juin” (“intrante jam mense Junio,” _Itin._) “Lors
s’esmut l’ost de la Canoie Par mi les plains tut contre val Vers
Ybelin de l’Ospital, Joste Ebron,” _Est._, ll. 9509-14; _Itin._, 360.
Bohadin places this movement a little earlier; after mentioning an
event which he dates 17 Jomada I (= May 31) he continues “The enemy
meanwhile had moved from El Hesy, and was at the diverging-point
of the ways of which one leads to Ascalon, one to Beit Djibrin,
another to the tents of Islam” (303). Stubbs (note to _Itin._, 360)
suggests Galatia, in Arabic Keratieh, as the place indicated. As
Bohadin frequently antedates by a day or two the movements of the
Franks, he may have done so in this instance. “El Hesy” here, as in a
later passage, seems to stand for the Wady el Hesy as a whole; thus
including of course the Canebrake.
[918] _Est._, ll. 9519-52; _Itin._, 361.
[919] _Est._, ll. 9553-680; cf. _Itin._, 361-4. On one passage,
omitted in my summary of William’s speech, one would like to have
more light. “Remembre te de l’aventure De la riche descomfiture E de
Haltfort que rescussis, Que li cuens de Seint Gile assis Aveit, que
tu desbaretas E vileinement l’en jetas” (ll. 9609-14). The editors of
Bertrand de Born and of the _Estoire_ know nothing of the event here
alluded to, and there seems to be no mention of it elsewhere and no
clue to its date.
[920] _Est._, ll. 9681-90. The last line is: “Devant les barons
d’Escalone.” _Barons_ here is nonsense. G. Paris suggests “bailles,”
a possible equivalent for the Latin, “extra pomoeria Ascaloniae
foris,” _Itin._, 365.
[921] _Est._, ll. 9692-720; _Itin._, _l.c._, giving the date, June 4.
[922] Bohadin, 299, 300.
[923] _Ib._, 303.
[924] _Est._, ll. 9817-21; _Itin._, 369.
[925] Bohadin, 310.
[926] _Est._, ll. 9813-17; _Itin._, _l.c._
[927] _Est._, ll. 9748-88; _Itin._, 367. “A close Pentecoste,
mien escient le samedi,” says Ambrose, l. 9748; the _Itinerarium_
says “Die Dominica, scilicet in octavis Sanctae Trinitatis”; but
Bohadin, 303, says 23 Jomada I, which agrees with Ambrose. The French
translation of Bohadin has erroneously “8 juin.”
[928] _Est._, ll. 9797-802; Bohadin, 304.
[929] _Itin._, 368; Bohadin, _l.c._
[930] _Est._, ll. 9806-10; _Itin._, _l.c._
[931] _Est._, ll. 9809-13; _Itin._, 368, 369. Bohadin, 304, says the
Franks left Natroun and advanced to Beit Nuba on Wednesday, 27 Jomada
I; _i. e._ June 10.
[932] Bohadin, 304, 305.
[933] Bohadin, 305. The French translation gives the date as “le
19 de Jomada premier,” which would be June 2. Possibly “19” is a
misprint for “29.”
[934] _Est._, ll. 9835-64; _Itin._, 359.
[935] Cf. _Est._, ll. 9885-922, and _Itin._, 371, 372.
[936] _Est._, ll. 9947-10088; Bohadin, _l.c._; Imad-ed-Din, _apud_
Abu Shama, 55; all with date June 16; _Itin._, 373, with date June 17.
[937] _Est._, ll. 10140-210; _Itin._, 379-81.
[938] _Est._, ll. 10213-59; _Itin._, 381, 382.
[939] Bohadin, 306.
[940] Imad-ed-Din, _apud_ Abu Shama, 55, says Saladin heard on 9
Jomada II (= Monday, June 22) that the Franks had set out in the
night. Ambrose (l. 10304) says merely “Sunday.”
[941] _Est._, ll. 10265-312; _Itin._, 383-5; cf. Bohadin, 306.
[942] Bohadin, 306, 307; cf. Imad-ed-Din, 55, _Est._, ll. 10313-23,
and _Itin._, 385.
[943] Bohadin, 307.
[944] Among the Saracens, according to Bohadin (_l.c._), it was
reported that one of this second party of scouts was Richard
himself, who, disguised as an Arab, made a circuit of the Egyptians’
encampment and then, having found them all sound asleep, rode back
and called up his men. Such a thing is by no means impossible; but
if it were a fact, it would probably have been known to the Franks,
whereas it was evidently not known even as a rumour to Ambrose, who
would surely have made the most of it in his poetic story.
[945] Bohadin, 306, 307.
[946] _Itin._, 385-7; cf. _Est._, ll. 10329-421.
[947] Bohadin, 307, 308.
[948] Cf. Bohadin, 308, 309, with _Est._, ll. 10435-511, and _Itin._,
387-90.
[949] _Est._, ll. 10512-64; _Itin._, 390, 391.
[950] Bohadin, 309. He calls the day “Tuesday, 11th of Jomada II”;
but as 11 Jomada II in that year was a Wednesday, it is doubtful
whether he means Tuesday 10 (= June 23) or Wednesday 11 (= June 24).
The former is almost certainly the true date. Roger of Howden, iii.
182, says the affair occurred “on the eve of S. John”; Imad-ed-Din,
_apud_ Abu Shama, 55, says the Frank army set out on the night
preceding June 22; the _Estoire_, l. 10304, says it set out “un seir
de diemaine,” which thus seems to have been Sunday June 21; and both
_Estoire_ and _Itinerarium_ clearly indicate that the fight took
place on the second morning after. Imad-ed-Din, _l.c._, locates it at
“El Hesy”; but we cannot possibly set aside the plain and unanimous
testimony of Bohadin and the Frank writers as to Kuweilfeh. The
Franks do not mention El Hesy at all on this occasion; Bohadin makes
it clear that both parties passed through that locality on their way.
It seems plain also that in this case, as in an earlier one, “El
Hesy” stands not for the village now so called, but for the Wady, and
more especially for its western end, or head. In one place the actual
phrase used is “the source of El Hesy” (“la source d’El Hasy,” French
edition of Bohadin, _l.c._; “caput El Hissi,” Schultens’ edition,
232).
[951] Bohadin, 311-15.
[952] Cf. Bohadin, 309, _Est._, ll. 10565-75, and _Itin._, 392.
Bohadin says they got back to their camp on “Friday, 16 Jomada II,”
which is self-contradictory, as 16 Jomada II (= June 26) that year
was Monday. He may have meant either Monday June 26 or Friday 30; he
may even have meant both, and confused them together. The indications
in _Estoire_ and _Itinerarium_ are vague, but they seem to imply a
two days’ journey from the Round Cistern to Ramlah; thus Ramlah may
have been reached on the 26th and the “camp” proper, at Beit Nuba, on
the 30th. Richard seems not to have gone to Beit Nuba at all, but to
his former quarters at Castle Arnold; R. Coggeshall, 40.
[953] _Est._, ll. 10576-626; _Itin._, 393, 394.
[954] _Est._, ll. 10639-64; _Itin._, 394, 395.
[955] R. Coggeshall, 39, 40. Ralf says Richard caused Saladin’s
captured envoys to be shot to death with arrows by his own servants
in the sight of the host, neither portion of it (that is, his own
adherents or those of Burgundy) knowing whence the victims came nor
why they were thus slain. It seems hardly possible that Ambrose
should have omitted to mention so strange an incident if it really
was seen by the Crusaders of whom he was one. Ralf further represents
Hugh as setting out for Acre with his forces immediately, and Richard
with the rest of the host following next day; whereas Ambrose
distinctly says that the French quitted Beit Nuba at the same time
as the king (_Est._, ll. 10709-10). The _Itinerarium_, 397, says the
same.
[956] Bohadin, 315.
[957] “Quatre liues,” _Est._, l. 10690; “quatuor tantum nunc
distabant millia,” _Itin._, 396. Beit Nuba is about thirteen miles
from Jerusalem. Seemingly “liues” and “millia” here must stand for
hours of march, as Stubbs says they often do in Crusade history.
[958] _Itin._, 376. This passage follows the account of an event
which the same writer dates June 17, and other authorities June 16.
[959] “Par la Porte David estoit la voie qui maine en Belleem. Em mi
voie estoit une Esglyze ou Seint Elie fu mananz,” _Contin. W. Tyr._,
MS. Rothelin, _Recueil Hist. Occid._, ii. 512. R. Howden, iii. 182,
calls the place “capellam S. Elyae quae distat a Jerusalem per tres
leucas.” As the distance between Jerusalem and Bethlehem is about
six miles, Roger must here have used the word _leuca_ as equivalent
to a mile (as the author of the _Itinerarium_ seems to have done
frequently). On the other hand, there appears to be a mistake in the
passage from the Rothelin MS.; seeing that “David’s Gate” was the
west gate of Jerusalem, and that Bethlehem lies south of that city,
the natural “way that leads to Bethlehem” would be by the “Gate of
Sion.”
[960] _Est._, ll. 10089-135; _Itin._, 377, 378. Both writers give
the date as “the third day before S. John’s,” and the Latin one adds
“die S. Albani,” _i. e._ June 22. On June 22, however, Richard was,
as we have seen, at Galatia. Roger of Howden’s account of the affair
(iii. 182) is obviously confused. He gives no date; but in his work,
as in the _Estoire_ and the _Itinerarium_, the story is immediately
followed by that of the Egyptian caravan. Probably therefore the true
date is Sunday, June 21.
[961] R. Coggeshall, 40, 41.
[962] Joinville, c. 108.
[963] Bohadin, 315; _Est._, ll. 10704-5.
[964] Bohadin, 316.
[965] Bohadin, 316-22; obviously more authentic than the version in
_Est._, ll. 10747-63, and _Itin._, 398, 399.
[966] _Est._, ll. 10706-14; _Itin._, 397, giving the date.
[967] _Est._, ll. 10768-85; _Itin._, 399-401. The date of leaving
Joppa comes from Bohadin, 322, that of the arrival at Acre from
_Itin._, 400-1.
[968] _Est._, ll. 10935-55; _Itin._, 403-4. (The dates will appear
from the sequel.) The former writer seems to imply, and the latter
distinctly states, that Richard had really and avowedly called his
ships together for the purpose of sailing at once for Europe, the
attack on Beyrout being intended as a mere incident on the way.
I cannot believe this view of the matter to be based on anything
else than an erroneous impression current among the lower ranks of
the host. Richard may very likely have hoped that the capture of
Beyrout would lead to fresh overtures for peace on the part of the
Moslems, and to such concessions from them as might enable him to
make a treaty which would end the war for a time, and thus set him
honourably free to depart before the date which he had fixed; he may
have made preparations for such a contingency, and if so, he would no
doubt make them openly because a possibility of their purpose being
misconstrued could hardly occur to his mind. Richard might break a
treaty or a contract without scruple, and also without appreciable
damage to his reputation in his own day; but a sudden desertion of
the Holy Land such as these writers supposed him to have contemplated
would have been a flagrant breach of what he and every other man
of the world of chivalry held far more sacred than any treaty or
contract—his knightly word, solemnly and publicly pledged only a few
weeks before. Such an act must infallibly have brought upon him, in
his own eyes and in the eyes of all true knights, a double share of
the “shame and everlasting contempt” which he had once denounced
against Philip Augustus, and would be utterly irreconcileable with
his whole character. The Beyrout project seems really to have been
much more definite and important than we should gather from the
casual way in which it is mentioned by the two Frank chroniclers. It
had evidently been planned in concert with the other leaders before
Richard left Joppa, since as early as July 22—five days before the
king reached Acre—Saladin had learned from his spies that “the Franks
were moving on Beyrout”; Bohadin, 322.
[969] Bohadin, 322, 323; dates, which he gives in his usual
self-contradictory fashion, corrected by help of _Est._, ll.
10807-10, and _Itin._, 400, 401.
[970] Cf. Bohadin, 327, 328, _Itin._, 401-3, and _Est._, ll. 10815-25.
[971] _Est._, ll. 10910, 10911.
[972] Both _Estoire_, ll. 10957-63, and _Itinerarium_, 404, say the
messengers reported that Joppa was already taken and the garrison
shut up in the citadel; but the sequel shows that they reached Acre
on the date given above, July 28, three days before matters had come
to this pass.
[973] _Est._, ll. 10968-76; _Itin._, 504. Cf. R. Coggeshall, 41, 42.
[974] Cf. _Itin._, 404, 405, _Est._, ll. 10979-11037, and R.
Coggeshall, 42. The _Estoire_ (ll. 11033-7) says they lay off Joppa
“tote la nuit del _samedi_”; which can be correct only if Ambrose has
here fallen, as some of the Frank chroniclers of the Crusade seem to
have occasionally done, into the eastern way of reckoning days, from
evening to evening.
[975] _Est._, ll. 10021-4.
[976] Bohadin, 328-31.
[977] _Itin._, 405, 406; cf. _Est._, ll. 11040-54.
[978] Bohadin, 331, 332.
[979] Cf. Bohadin, 332, with _Itin._, 407, 408, and _Est._, ll.
11079-11113.
[980] _Est._, ll. 11114-26.
[981] Bohadin, 333.
[982] _Itin._, 407, 408; _Est._, ll. 11127-53; Bohadin, 332; R.
Coggeshall, 43.
[983] Bohadin, 333.
[984] _Est._, ll. 11154-8; _Itin._, 408.
[985] _Itin._, 410, 411; _Est._, ll. 11164-238; cf. Bohadin, 333.
[986] R. Coggeshall, 43.
[987] Cf. the French translation of Bohadin, 334, with the Latin
in Schultens’s edition, 252: “Cognitamque meam in bello operam
praestabo.”
[988] Bohadin, 333-5. He dates the negotiations “evening of Saturday
19 Rajab” and the removal to Ramlah “Sunday 20 Rajab.” Saturday was
really 20 Rajab = August 1. Here, as usual with eastern writers,
“evening” stands for “eve,” _i. e._ the “vigil” or evening _before_.
[989] _Ib._, 335.
[990] _Itin._, 412; Est., ll. 11295-9.
[991] _Itin._, 413; Est., ll. 11318-27.
[992] Bohadin, 336; cf. R. Coggeshall, 44.
[993] Cf. R. Coggeshall, 44, 45, _Itin._, 414, 415, and _Est._, ll.
11379-407.
[994] R. Coggeshall, 44, cf. _Itin._, 420. The latter writer puts the
episode of the Saracens re-occupying the town and Richard re-taking
it at the end of his narrative of the fight, _i. e._ after the
victory outside the walls; but as he introduces it with “Interea,”
we cannot be sure where in the order of events he really meant to
place it; and as R. Coggeshall’s information is derived from Hugh de
Neville, who was in close attendance on the king during the fight,
his narrative is probably correct.
[995] See details of the array in _Itin._, 416.
[996] R. Coggeshall, 44, 45; cf. _Itin._, _l.c._
[997] “Ferme quinquaginta milites,” _Itin._, 413; “milites
octoginta,” R. Coggeshall, 50.
[998] The _Itin._, 413, says fifteen, but R. Coggeshall, 46,
says six horses and one mule. Bohadin—after remarking “I was not
there, thank God!”—says some who were there told him the Christian
knights numbered only nine, or at most seventeen (337); he, or his
informants, doubtless reckoned as “knights” only those who were
horsed. According to the _Itin._, 420, Richard gained two more
horses, as soon as he entered the town, by killing their Turkish
riders.
[999] “Un hardi serjant e nobile, Henri le Tyois, el conroi Portoit
la baniere le roi,” _Est._, ll. 11432-4. “Serviens probissimus
Hernicus Teutonicus, regis signifer,” _Itin._, 415. “Rex ...
assumptis secum sex strenuis militibus cum regio vexillo,” R.
Coggeshall, 55.
[1000] _Itin._, 420. This writer reduces the king’s mounted followers
at this time to two, which of course is absurd.
[1001] R. Coggeshall, 46.
[1002] _Itin._, 420, 421.
[1003] _Ib._, 417.
[1004] R. Coggeshall, 47.
[1005] _Ib._; cf. _Itin._, 416, 417, and Bohadin, 337.
[1006] R. Coggeshall, 48.
[1007] _Ib._; cf. _Itin._, 417.
[1008] Bohadin, 337; cf. Ibn Alathyr, 64.
[1009] Ibn Alathyr, 65.
[1010] Bohadin, 337.
[1011] R. Coggeshall, 49.
[1012] _Itin._, 418; cf. _Est._, ll. 11510-32.
[1013] R. Coggeshall, 49-51.
[1014] _Itin._, 423.
[1015] Bohadin, 338.
[1016] _Itin._, 412. This seems to have been a not uncommon practice
of the Turks.
[1017] _Ib._, 425; R. Coggeshall, 51.
[1018] Bohadin, 336.
[1019] “Saturday, 26 Rajab” says Bohadin, 338, but 26 Rajab was a
Friday.
[1020] Bohadin, 338, 339.
[1021] Bohadin, 339-41.
[1022] _Est._, ll. 11725-49; _Itin._, 425-7.
[1023] _Itin._, 427; cf. R. Devizes, 75.
[1024] _Est._, ll. 11750-60; _Itin._, _l.c._
[1025] Bohadin, 341, 342.
[1026] “Houat,” Bohadin, 342. Stubbs, in a note to _Itin._, 428,
suggests this identification, which is rendered highly probable by
the mention in R. Devizes, 69, of Hubert as concerned in the making
of the truce.
[1027] Bohadin, 342-4.
[1028] Bohadin, 344.
[1029] _Ib._, 344-6. He says the truce was for three years and eight
months from Wednesday 22 Shaban = October 1. Ibn Alathyr (_Recueil_,
II. i. 65) says three years and eight months from September 1;
Imad-ed-Din (_apud_ Abu Shama, 78) says three years and three months,
without any date; R. Diceto, ii. 305, and W. Newburgh, lib. iv. c.
29, make the period three years, three months, three weeks, three
days and three hours from Easter 1193. Bohadin is unquestionably
the best authority on the matter, especially as the final proposals
on the Moslem side appear to have been actually written either by
his own hand, or by the hand of the writer—whoever this may have
been—who made the revised edition of his work, published with a
Latin translation by Dr. Schultens at Leyden; so at least we gather
from Schultens, 259—“_Conscripsi_ quae convenerant, _exaravique_
conditiones pacis.” The French version, which represents Bohadin’s
original text, has merely “_On_ rédigea,” etc.; so we are left in
doubt whether the first person in the Leyden version represents
Bohadin himself or his reviser.
Richard of Devizes (69-77) has a long and curious account of the
circumstances relating to the truce. According to him, the first
overtures were made and the preliminaries arranged by Hubert of
Salisbury and Henry of Champagne without the knowledge of King
Richard, and the matter was only referred to the king when it was
so far advanced that, sick and bewildered as he was, he could do
nothing but leave it in their hands and sanction their arrangements.
This in itself is not impossible, nor is it irreconcileable with
Bohadin’s narrative; but there are in Richard’s story details which
are certainly incorrect—_e. g._, he makes Hubert and Henry apply to
Safadin instead of Bedr-ed-Din, and introduces visits of Safadin in
person to the camp at Joppa and to the king himself, all of which are
unquestionably fictitious or imaginary.
[1030] _Est._, ll. 11801-26; _Itin._, 429, 430.
[1031] Bohadin, 348.
[1032] _Ib._, 349, 350; _Est._, ll. 11868-75; _Itin._, 432.
[1033] R. Devizes, 78.
[1034] Bohadin, 350.
[1035] _Est._, ll. 11835-8; _Itin._, 430.
[1036] _Est._, ll. 12257-70; _Itin._, 440.
[1037] _Itin._, 441; cf. _Est._, ll. 12271-2.
[1038] Rigord, 118.
[1039] Rigord (_l.c._), says “secundo vendidit”; R. Howden, iii.
306, when recording Guy’s death in 1195, says “cui Rex Angliae
vendiderat insulam Cypri.” But Roger himself says elsewhere (181),
that when Henry was chosen King of Jerusalem “rex Angliae dedit in
excambium regi Guidoni insulam de Cypre in vita sua tenendam.” Ralf
of Coggeshall, who also (36) places the transaction after Henry’s
election in April 1192, says, “Regi Guidoni concessit, accepto ejus
homagio”; and W. Newburgh (lib. iv. c. 29) says, “mera liberalitate
donavit.” The version given by all these latter writers can hardly
fail to be the correct one; it is inconceivable that Guy could have
had means for the purchase.
[1040] This in an inference from Rigord, 118, who seems to place the
whole transaction at this time.
[1041] R. Diceto, ii. 106; _Itin._, 441.
[1042] _Ll.cc_; R. Howden, iii. 185, says October 8.
[1043] Bohadin, 348.
[1044] _Eracle, Recueil, Hist. Occid._, ii. 189.
[1045] Gerv. Cant., i. 513.
[1046] R. Coggeshall, 53.
[1047] _Ann. Colon. Max._, Pertz, xvii. 796; cf. Ansbert, ed.
Dobrowsky, 115 (Stubbs, R. Howden, iii. introd. cxli). “Allein die
Glaubwürdigkeit dieser Zeugnisse unterliegt gegründeten Bedenken”;
Kellner, _Ueber die deutsche Gefangenschaft Richards I_, 44.
[1048] “Applicuit in insula de Cuverfu, et navigavit usque ad tres
galeas quas vidit ex opposito in Rumania,” R. Howden, iii. 185. Roger
dates the arrival at Corfu, “infra mensem post diem illum,” _i.
e._ the day on which Richard left Acre, October 9. R. Coggeshall,
whose information, being partly derived from the chaplain Anselm who
accompanied the king on his voyage, is probably more accurate, says
(53) that Richard had been six weeks at sea when he turned back to
Corfu; so the date would be about November 20. According to the same
writer (_l.c._) the pirate galleys numbered two, not three as Roger
says.
[1049] Twenty-one according to R. Howden, _l.c._ One of the party was
Anselm, who told the story to R. Coggeshall, _l.c._
[1050] R. Howden, _l.c._
[1051] Document, dated 1598, from the archives of Ragusa, “ex lib.
Div. Cancellariae n. 98,” in Farlati, _Illyricum Sacrum_, vi. 90.
[1052] Appendini, _Notizie istorico-critiche sulle antichita, etc.,
di Ragusa_, i. 272; Farlati, vi. 90.
[1053] “It is not Great Britain who will fail in keeping her
promises. Great Britain has known us ever since Richard received our
hospitality and built for us a most beautiful church on the spot
where our ancestors had saved him from shipwreck on his way back from
the Crusade,” said M. Vesnitch, the representative of Serbia, at a
great public meeting in Paris on January 27, 1916.
[1054] None of the authorities for Richard’s voyage mention more than
one landing after his departure from Corfu. “Accidit ut ventus, rupta
nave sua in qua ipse erat, duceret eam versus partes Histriae, ad
locum qui est inter Aquileiam et Venetiam, ubi rex Dei permissione
passus naufragium cum paucis evasit,” says the Emperor in a letter
to Philip of France (R. Howden, iii. 195). Ansbert (ed. Dobrowsky,
114; Stubbs, R. Howden, iii. introd. cxl.) says, “Ad Polam, civitatem
Ystriae, ad litus fertur et applicare cogitur.” R. Diceto (ii. 106)
makes the voyage end “in Sclavonia”; R. Coggeshall (54), “in partes
Sclavoniae, ad quandam villam nomine Gazaram”; R. Howden (iii.
105) “prope Gazere apud Raguse.” This word _Gazere_, misunderstood
as intended to represent Zara, has puzzled commentators, but is
explained by Wilkinson (_Dalmatia and Montenegro_, i. 301) as being
a corruption of an Arabic word meaning “island”; that is, it really
stands here for Lacroma. The final landing was evidently not anywhere
in “Slavonic parts” but in Istria, as the German authorities say; and
of these the Emperor is the most likely to be correct.
[1055] The narrative which we are here following—that of Richard’s
chaplain and companion Anselm, as reported by R. Coggeshall,
53-5—calls this personage merely “Dominus provinciae illius, qui
nepos extitit Marchisii.” That he was the Count of Gorizia appears
from the Emperor’s letter in R. Howden, iii. 195.
[1056] R. Coggeshall, 54, 55.
[1057] Gerv. Cant., i. 513.
[1058] It comprised, besides Baldwin de Béthune and the king,
“Magister Philippus regis clericus, atque Anselmus capellanus qui
haec omnia nobis ut vidit et audivit retulit, et quidam fratres
Templi,” R. Coggeshall, 54; and also, as appears later (_ib._, 55),
some personal attendants of Richard’s.
[1059] Letter of Henry VI, in R. Howden, iii. 195.
[1060] Ansbert, ed. Dobrowsky, 104; Stubbs, R. Howden, iii. introd.
cxl.
[1061] Letter of Henry VI, _l.c._
[1062] R. Coggeshall, 55. The name of the town, Freisach, and that
of the German lord, Frederic of Pettau, are not given by Ralf; they
are supplied from the Emperor’s letter, _l.c._ Ralf makes the final
halting-place and the scene of the capture Vienna itself: “ad quandam
villam nomine Ginanam in Austria prope Danubium”; but the German
accounts, including that of the Emperor, which must have been derived
from Leopold of Austria, make it a neighbouring village: “juxta Wenam
in villa viciniori, in domo despecta,” letter in R. Howden, _l.c._;
“in quoddam diversorium juxta Viennam civitatem,” Otto of S. Blaise
(Pertz, xx. 334); “circa Wiennam ... in vili hospitio,” Ansbert
(ed. Dobrowsky, 114, R. Howden, iii. cxl). Kellner (_Gefangenschaft
Richards I_, 29), calls the place “Erdberg, Dörfchen bei Wien”; but I
can find no authority for the name. Trivet, to whom he seems to refer
for it, says “in civitate Wienna” (ed. Eng. Hist. Soc., p. 148).
[1063] R. Coggeshall, 56. R. Howden, iii, 186, says Richard was
captured asleep; according to Otto of S. Blaise (Pertz, xx. 324),
he was roasting meat on a spit, thinking by this servile employment
to avoid recognition, and was betrayed by a splendid ring which he
had forgotten to remove from his finger. This account of the matter
has a somewhat characteristic air; but it may have been founded on a
confused version of Ralf’s story of the ring offered to Mainard of
Gorizia. W. Newburgh’s narrative of Richard’s adventures (lib. iv.
c. 31) seems to be based on the Emperor’s letter, which says nothing
about the circumstances of the capture; the details and speeches
added by William are obviously mere rhetoric of his own. The date
is given by R. Coggeshall as December 21, by R. Diceto (ii. 106) as
December 22.
[1064] _Ann. Marbac._, Pertz, xvii. 165; Ansbert, ed. Dobrowsky, 112;
R. Howden, iii., introd. cxl.
[1065] R. Coggeshall, 56.
[1066] Letter in R. Howden, iii, 195.
[1067] _Ann. Magn. Reichensberg._, Pertz, xvii. 520.
[1068] Ansbert, ed. Dobrowsky, 115; R. Howden, iii. introd. cxli.
[1069] Otto of S. Blaise, Pertz, xx. 324.
[1070] Agreement in Ansbert, ed. Dobrowsky, 115-19, and Stubbs’s R.
Howden, iii. introd. cxli.-iii.
[1071] Kellner, _Gefangenschaft_, 39.
[1072] Rigord, 116; _Gesta Ric._, 192-9, 203, 204, 227-30.
[1073] Ansbert, ed. Dobrowsky, 78; for date see Kellner, 18, note 2.
Milan does not appear in Philip’s itinerary in _Gesta Ric._, unless
in the form of “Cassem Milan” (230), and this identification is
doubtful, as the name comes between “Monte Bardon” and “Furnos,” _i.
e._ Farinovo. Some of the other names, however, seem to be out of
geographical order.
[1074] This probably referred to Richard’s dealings with Saladin.
[1075] R. Howden, iii. 198, 199; cf. W. Newb., lib. iv. c. 33. The
date of the assembly is from R. Diceto, ii. 106. The place was
probably Spire; Richard was there on Easter day and on the Tuesday in
Easter week (March 28 and 30), _Epp. Cantuar._, 362-4. The statement
of the Emperor’s poetical panegyrist, Peter of Eboli, that Richard
offered to clear himself by ordeal of battle, a proposal by which
Henry was so greatly impressed in his favour that he set him at
liberty (_Petr. Ansolini de Ebulo Carmen_, _apud_ Muratori, _Rer.
Ital. Scriptt._ xxxi. 142), is probably a misunderstanding or a
poetical embellishment of Richard’s offer to stand to right in the
court of his French overlord.
[1076] R. Diceto, ii. 106, 107.
[1077] Stubbs, note to R. Howden, iii. 210.
[1078] R. Coggeshall, 58. Ralf says Richard was imprisoned “primo
_Treviris_, deinde Warmatiae.” _Treviris_ here seems to mean
Triffels, as there is no other indication that Richard was ever at
Treves; we shall see that he was at Worms later. Ralf is perhaps the
best authority as to the character of Richard’s imprisonment, as he
probably heard about it from Anselm the chaplain, who may very likely
have been, for a time at least, one of the attendants imprisoned with
their sovereign. William of Newburgh (lib. iv. c. 37, lib. v. c. 31)
is less to be trusted on the subject. Two German chroniclers say that
Richard was kept “sub honorabili custodia” (_Ann. Aquicinct._, _Rer.
Gall. Scriptt._, xviii. 456), “in libera clausus custodia” (_Andr.
Marchian._, _ib._ 557); but the chief German historian of the time,
Otto of S. Blaise, says “Henricus [regem] Wormatiam asportari vinctum
ferroque onustum praecepit” (Pertz, xx. 324).
[1079] R. Howden, iii. 197, a letter which shows that Savaric was at
the Imperial court before February 28.
[1080] _Récits d’un ménéstrel de Reims_, 41-4.
[1081] R. Howden, iii. 198.
[1082] _Ib._, iii. 194.
[1083] _Gesta_, 230, 236.
[1084] _Ib._, 236. The actual “treaty of Messina” is not extant; all
we know about it is from Philip’s charter, dated March 1190 (_i.
e._ before March 25, 1191, the French year beginning on Lady Day),
proclaiming certain conditions on which he and Richard had made “a
firm peace.” This charter, in its existing form, contains no mention
of either Eu or Aumale, nor of any conditions about the restitution
of Aloysia or of her dower-lands. No original copy of it is known;
it is printed in _Fœdera_, I. i. 54 from a fragment of an English
Treasury Roll dating from the second half of the thirteenth century.
Powicke, _Loss of Normandy_, 126, 127.
[1085] _Gesta_, 236, 237.
[1086] R. Howden, iii. 204.
[1087] _Ib._, iii. 205.
[1088] “Imperator vero iratum animum ac ferocem erga regem diutius
conservans nullatenus eum in praesentia sua convocare vel alloqui
voluit.” R. Coggeshall, 58.
[1089] R. Coggeshall, 58.
[1090] French version in Leroux de Lincy, _Recueil de Chansons
Historiques_, i. 56-9, and Sismondi, _Literature of S. Europe_,
trans. Roscoe, i. 152 _et seq._; Provençal version in Raynouard,
_Choix de Poésies des Troubadours_, iv. 183 _et seq._
[1091] _I. e._ Philip of France.
[1092] “Mes compaignons cui j’amoie e cui j’aim, Ces dou Cahiul”
(“Chacu,” Sismondi) “e ces dou Porcherain” (“Percherain,” Sismondi).
Leroux de Lincy translates “Ceux de Cahors et ceux du Perche.”
Feeling doubtful about the identification, I have tried to turn the
difficulty by using a vague phrase and omitting the names altogether.
[1093] W. Newb., lib. iv. c. 33.
[1094] Gerv. Cant., i. 517.
[1095] He landed in England on April 20; _ib._, 516.
[1096] “Honeste circa ipsum Imperatorem moram facimus.”
[1097] Letter of Richard, in R. Howden, iii. 209, 210.
[1098] R. Howden, iii. 206.
[1099] Rigord, 123.
[1100] Cf. R. Howden, iii. 206; R. Coggeshall, 61, 62; Rigord,
123, 125, 126; _Chron. Rothomag., Rev. Gall. Scriptt._, xvii. 358;
_Ann. Aquicinct_, _ib._, xviii. 546. The dates are conflicting, and
Rigord’s chronology, in particular, is even more confused than usual
just here; the other writers, especially the English ones, are safer
guides.
[1101] “Misit nuncios ad Imperatorem cum infinita pecunia, rogans
attentius regem Angliae utpote hominem suum ei mitteret liberum, vel
diutius retineret incarceratum.” Gerv. Cant., i. 516.
[1102] Richard was there on May 26 and June 8; _Epp. Cant._, 364,
365; cf. Otto of S. Blaise, Pertz, xx. 324.
[1103] W. Newb., lib. iv. c. 37, says 24th; R. Howden, iii. 212, says
25th.
[1104] R. Howden, iii. 214; date, June, _Vita Alb. Leod._, Pertz,
xxv. 168.
[1105] “Totius Alemanniae generalis conventus magnates solos
comprehendens,” says R. Diceto, ii. 110, who dates it July 5; but R.
Howden, _l.c._, is obviously more accurate.
[1106] William Brewer and Baldwin de Béthune. These latter arrived on
June 28; R. Howden, _l.c._
[1107] R. Howden, iii. 214, 215.
[1108] R. Howden, iii. 215, 216.
[1109] John—whose restoration, however, was conditional; see R.
Howden, iii. 217, 218;—the count of Angoulême, who in 1192-3 had
stirred up another revolt in Aquitaine, invaded Poitou, and been
made prisoner by its seneschal; see _Chron. S. Albini_, a. 1192, and
R. Howden, iii. 194;—and the counts of Perche and Meulan, who had
supported John’s intrigues in Normandy.
[1110] Treaty in R. Howden, iii. 217-20.
[1111] Letters in R. Howden, iii. 226, 227.
[1112] _Ib._, 229.
[1113] R. Howden, iii. 228-32.
[1114] Letter of Archbishop Walter of Rouen in R. Diceto, ii. 112,
113.
[1115] R. Howden, iii. 233.
[1116] See Note V at end.
[1117] Letter in R. Diceto, ii. 113.
[1118] R. Howden, iii. 233, 234.
[1119] R. Howden, iii. 234; cf. Gislebert of Mons, Pertz’s small
edition, 250. The duke of Suabia was the emperor’s brother; the
marquis of Montferrat was Boniface, brother and successor to Conrad.
To the duke of Louvain Richard also granted the lands in England
which had belonged to count Matthew of Boulogne, father of the
duke’s wife, “ipsique duci contra comitem Flandriae et Hanoniae
et marchisum Namurcensi auxilium promisit, ita quod saltem tantum
comiti Flandriae et Hanoniae guerram facerent quod comes nequaquam
domino regi Franciae auxilium ferre posset” (Gislebert, _l.c._). The
Flemish chronicler adds: “Conventiones tamen eorum in nulla parte
fuerunt observatae; nec mirum, cum rex Angliae nemini unquam vel
fidem vel pactum servasset, nec omnes illi nominati cum quibus foedus
firmaverat conventiones suas observare consuevissent” (_ib._, 250,
251). This is rather too sweeping, in view of the conduct of the
allies in after-years. One of them at least, Boniface of Montferrat,
received three hundred marks “de feodo suo” and ten marks as a
present from Richard in 1197 (Stapleton, _Norman Exchequer Rolls_,
ii. 301).
[1120] W. Newb., lib. iv. c. 41.
[1121] R. Howden, iii. 235.
[1122] R. Coggeshall, 62.
[1123] “Circa horam tertiam recessit a portu de Swine, et in crastino
post horam diei nonam applicuit in Angliam apud Sandicum portum, diei
dominica tertio idus Martii”; _i. e._ he left Swine on Saturday March
12, and reached Sandwich on Sunday the 13th, R. Howden, iii. 235. R.
Diceto, ii. 114, makes it a week later, Sunday March 20; but that
this is wrong is clear from Gervase of Canterbury, i. 524, where we
are told that Richard was received at Canterbury on the 13th, having
landed at Sandwich on the 12th. Ralf of Coggeshall, 62, says he
landed “secunda hora diei,” on the Sunday after S. Gregory’s day, _i.
e._ on March 13.
[1124] R. Diceto, ii. 114; cf. R. Coggeshall, 63.
[1125] W. Newb., lib. iv. c. 42.
[1126] R. Coggeshall, 63.
[1127] It was seemingly on the march to Nottingham that, according to
a marginal note in two MSS. of Ralf of Coggeshall, “Robertus Brito a
rege captus, jussit ut fame in carcere interiret” (63). I have failed
to discover who this man was, or what he had done to incur such a
doom.
[1128] R. Howden, iii. 237-9.
[1129] W. Newb., lib. iv. c. 42.
[1130] R. Howden, iii. 239.
[1131] _Hist. G. le. Mar._, ll. 10236-64.
[1132] R. Howden, iii. 240; cf. R. Diceto, ii. 114.
[1133] R. Coggeshall, 63.
[1134] R. Howden, iii. 240, 241.
[1135] For details see R. Howden, _l.c._, 241.
[1136] _Ib._
[1137] R. Howden, iii. 242, 243, 245.
[1138] _Ib._, 247, 248.
[1139] “Ut regnum innovaret.” Gerv. Cant., i. 524.
[1140] Gerv. Cant., i. 524, 525.
[1141] _Ib._, 524-6; cf. R. Howden, iii. 247, 248.
[1142] Gerv. Cant., 525.
[1143] “Tantaque solemnitas facta est _propter praecedentis captionis
contumeliam_,” _ib._, 526, “In octavis Paschae Wintoniae regni
diademate fulgidus, _detersa captivitatis ignominia_, quasi rex novus
apparuit,” W. Newb., lib. iv. c. 42. “Rex Ricardus ... consilio
procerum suorum, _licet aliquantulum_ renitens, coronatus est,” R.
Coggeshall, 64. It is hard to conceive what “ignominy” or “contumely”
could be thought to attach to the mere fact of Richard’s captivity,
or why Richard should have been “reluctant” to revive a time-honoured
custom which would surely have appealed with double force to his
well-known love of pomp and splendour and of grand Church services,
unless its revival was urged upon him for some special reason whose
cogency he was unwilling to admit. On the other hand, it is curious
that R. Diceto (ii. 114) says nothing about this crown-wearing beyond
the bare statement that the king “in octavis Paschae regni diadema
suscepit de manibus Huberti Cantuariensis Archiepiscopi.”
[1144] R. Howden, iii. 249, 250.
[1145] R. Howden, iii. 251. R. Diceto, ii. 114, and Gerv. Cant., i.
527, give the same date.
[1146] _Hist. G. le Mar._, ll. 10431-52.
[1147] Cf. Rigord, 127, R. Diceto, ii. 115, with date Whitsun Eve
(May 27), and R. Howden, iii. 252.
[1148] Cf. _Hist. G. le Mar._, ll. 10,353-518, R. Howden, Rigord,
_ll.cc._, and R. Diceto, ii. 115, 116.
[1149] _Hist. G. le Mar._, ll. 10491-550.
[1150] _Chron. S. Albini_, a. 1192; under this year all the events of
1192-5 are lumped together in this Chronicle.
[1151] R. Howden, iii. 252.
[1152] R. Diceto, ii. 116.
[1153] _Ib._, ii. 117; R. Howden and _Chron. S. Alb._, _ll.cc._
[1154] R. Howden, iii. 252, 253.
[1155] Rigord, 127; _Chron. Turon._, a. 1194, with date June 11.
This spoliation was only temporary; on November 11 of the same year
Richard, at Alençon, restored into the hands of the legate all that
he had taken from the canons and other clerks of S. Martin at Tours.
R. Diceto, ii. 122.
[1156] R. Diceto, ii. 117; R. Howden, iii. 252.
[1157] R. Diceto, _l.c._
[1158] _Ib._; R. Howden, _l.c._, giving date; _Chron. S. Alb._, a.
1192.
[1159] R. Howden, iii. 253; cf. R. Diceto, ii. 116.
[1160] R. Howden, iii. 253, 254; cf. Rigord, 127, who gives the date,
June 14.
[1161] R. Howden, iii. 254, 255.
[1162] Cf. _ib._, iii. 255, 256; R. Diceto, ii. 117; W. Newb., lib.
v. c. 2; Rigord, 129, and _Chron. S. Alb._, a. 1192. William the
Breton’s description of the captured documents (_Philippis_, lib.
iv. ll. 530-68) is surely a poetical exaggeration. The date is from
R. Diceto, who says the affair took place thirty-seven days after
Philip’s retirement from Verneuil.
[1163] R. Howden, iii. 256.
[1164] Peter was made seneschal between February 12 and May 5, 1190;
see Richard, _Comtes de Poitou_, ii. 263-5.
[1165] _Chron. S. Alb._, a. 1192.
[1166] Elias V, 1166-1204.
[1167] R. Howden, iii. 194; cf. R. Devizes, 55.
[1168] Teulet, _Layettes du Trésor des Chartes_, i. 176.
[1169] R. Diceto, ii. 117.
[1170] Letter in R. Howden, iii. 257. Cf. W. Newb., lib. v. c. 2.
[1171] R. Diceto, ii. 118, 119.
[1172] Letter in R. Howden, iii. 257-60.
[1173] See Note VI at end.
[1174] The ordinance concerning tourneys; dated “apud Villam
Episcopi,” _Fœdera_, I. i. 65.
[1175] R. Howden, iii. 259.
[1176] Madox, _Hist. Exchequer_, i. 637, 638.
[1177] See Note VI at end.
[1178] R. Diceto, ii. 119.
[1179] R. Howden, iii. 267.
[1180] _Fœdera_, I. i. 65; also in Appendix to Preface to R. Diceto,
ii. pp. lxxx., lxxxi.
[1181] R. Howden, iii. 288-90.
[1182] W. Newb., lib. v. c. 17.
[1183] R. Howden, iii. 290.
[1184] R. Howden, iii. 276.
[1185] R. Diceto, ii. 121.
[1186] R. Howden, iii. 283. Roger places the story “eodem anno”
between two events of which one is dated January and the other
February 1195.
[1187] R. Howden, iii. 300, 301.
[1188] _Ib._, 302, 303.
[1189] R. Howden, iii. 301; W. Newb., lib. v. c. 15; cf. Rigord, 130,
131. The two latter give the date “mense Julio.”
[1190] _Fœdera_, I. i. 66.
[1191] R. Howden, iii. 303, 304.
[1192] _Ib._, iii. 304.
[1193] Rigord, 131. Arques had been in Philip’s hands since July
1193, when it was pledged to him and placed under the control of the
archbishop of Reims by the treaty which William of Ely made during
Richard’s captivity.
[1194] _Ib._; R. Howden, iii. 304.
[1195] Rigord, 131, 132.
[1196] R. Howden, iii. 305.
[1197] Rigord, 132.
[1198] W. Newb., lib. v. c. 15.
[1199] R. Howden, _l.c._; cf. W. Newb., lib. v. c. 17.
[1200] W. Newb., _l.c._
[1201] Rigord, 132.
[1202] Cf. Rigord, 132, 133, W. Newb., lib. v. c. 17, and R. Howden,
iii. 305. The last-named gives the date of the meeting at Issoudun as
December 9; Rigord and William make it December 5, and are confirmed
by Delisle’s _Catal. des Actes de Ph. Aug._, nos. 462-464.
[1203] Treaty in _Fœdera_, I. i. 66; cf. R. Howden, iv. 3, W. Newb.,
lib. v. c. 18, Rigord, 133, and Delisle, _Catal._, nos. 463, 464.
[1204] R. Howden, iv. 3, 4.
[1205] Letter in R. Diceto, ii. 135-137; cf. R. Howden, _l.c._
[1206] Letter in Appendix to Preface to R. Diceto, ii. lxxix., lxxx.;
dated April 15. The context shows the year to be 1196.
[1207] R. Howden, iv. 7.
[1208] Cf. R. Howden, _l.c._ Gerv. Cant., i. 532, and W. Newb., lib.
v. c. 18.
[1209] R. Howden and Gerv. Cant., _ll.cc._
[1210] W. Armor. _Philippis_, lib. v. vv. 147-60.
[1211] W. Newb. and R. Howden, _ll.cc._; W. Armor., _Phil._, lib. v.
vv. 161-65.
[1212] W. Armor., _Phil._, lib. v. vv. 74-96; cf. Rigord, 135, who
dates the latter event “brevi temporis elapso spatio” after an event
which occurred in June.
[1213] R. Howden, iv. 4, 5.
[1214] Rigord, 135, 136; W. Armor., _Phil._, lib. v. vv. 168-242,
254-69. There is documentary evidence of Philip’s presence at Aumale
in July 1196; Delisle, _Catal._, no. 502. Gervase of Canterbury, i.
532, has confused the chronology.
[1215] W. Armor., _Phil._, lib. v. v. 269.
[1216] Cf. _Mag. Vita S. Hugonis_, 248-51, and R. Howden, iv. 40.
[1217] Letter of Walter in R. Diceto, ii. 149, 150; cf. R. Howden,
iv. 14, W. Newb., lib. v. c. 28, R. Coggeshall, 70, and Gerv. Cant.,
i. 544.
[1218] “Precipitans sevus alta de rupe deorsum Littore Sequanio,
muros ubi _postea_ rupis Gaillarde struxit,” W. Armor., _Phil._, lib.
v. vv. 311-13. This dates the story 1196-7.
[1219] Such is the story as told by Philip’s poet-historiographer,
W. Armor., _Phil._, lib. v. vv. 276-324. Roger of Howden, iv. 54,
tells it in less detail under the year 1198, without specifying its
occasion; according to him Philip was the originator of this “novum
genus grassandi in populo,” “and thus provoked the king of England,
though unwilling, to a like impious act.”
[1220] R. Howden, iv. 18, 19; cf. letters of Walter and Richard in R.
Diceto, ii. 153-8.
[1221] Letter in _Fœdera_, I. i. 71, dated “apud Bellum Castellum de
Rupe,” July 11, 1198.
[1222] J. Brompton, Twysden, _X. Scriptt._, col. 1276.
[1223] Delisle, _Catal._, nos. 497, 499.
[1224] Rigord, 137; _Fœdera_, I., i. 67, 68.
[1225] R. Howden, iv. 19.
[1226] R. Howden, iv. 7.
[1227] _Ib._, 13.
[1228] D’Achéry, _Spicilegium_, vii. 343; cf. Vaissète, _Hist. de
Languedoc_ (new ed.), vi. 173, 179.
[1229] R. Diceto, ii. 152, giving date April 15; cf. R. Howden, iv.
19 and W. Newb., lib. v. c. 31.
[1230] R. Diceto, _l.c._, R. Howden iv. 16, Gerv. Cant. i. 544, W.
Newb., _l.c._ The first two give the day, May 19; Roger makes the
year 1196, but the other three all distinctly place the event in 1197.
[1231] R. Howden, iv. 20.
[1232] Cf. _ib._, iv. 20 and W. Newb., lib. v. c. 32. Gerv. Cant.,
_l.c._ gives the date of Philip’s release “post Assumptionem B.
Mariae.”
[1233] Gervase, i. 544, who alone mentions Hubert, dates the
conference September 8; R. Howden, iv. 20, 21, dates it September 17.
The former makes the truce start from Christmas, the latter (p. 24)
from S. Hilary’s day (1198). This second version seems to be the one
implied by W. Newb., lib. v. c. 32, who says that “mense Septembri”
the kings made “treuiam unius anni et quatuor mensium.”
[1234] “Ita tamen ut qui tenet teneat donec de medio fiat,” says
Gervase, _l.c._
[1235] R. Howden, iv. 21.
[1236] Gerv. Cant., _l.c._
[1237] Gir. Cambr., _De Instr. Princ._, dist. iii. c. 25.
[1238] Charter, dated October 16, 1197, in R. Diceto, ii. 153-6.
[1239] Letter of Celestine, in Magn. Reichersp., Pertz., xvii. 524.
[1240] R. Howden, iv. 37.
[1241] _Ib._, 31.
[1242] Gerv. Cant., i. 545.
[1243] R. Howden, iv. 37, 38.
[1244] R. Diceto, ii. 163.
[1245] Gerv. Cant., i. 545.
[1246] Delisle, _Catal._, no. 535; cf. Rigord, 143.
[1247] R. Howden, iv. 55.
[1248] _Ib._, 59.
[1249] _Ib._, 54.
[1250] R. Howden, iv. 55; R. Diceto, ii. 163, giving date.
[1251] Cf. Richard’s letter, dated Dangu, September 30, in R. Howden,
iv. 58, 59, with Roger’s own account, _ib._, 55, 56, 59, 60, R.
Diceto, ii. 164, and Rigord, 141, 142.
[1252] Letter in R. Howden, iv. 58, 59.
[1253] “Saviez qu’à Chinon Non a argent ni denier.” Leroux de Lincy,
_Rec. de Chansons Historiques_, i. 65-7.
[1254] R. Howden, iv. 66; R. Coggeshall, 93; _Ann. Waverley_, a.
1198; M. Paris, _Chron. Maj._, ii. 451.
[1255] Wyon, _Great Seals_, 19. The last known grant under the old
seal is dated April 1, 1198; _ib._, 149.
[1256] The last confirmation is dated April 5, 1199; Round, _Feudal
England_, 542.
[1257] R. Howden, iv. 60; cf. Rigord, 142.
[1258] R. Howden, iv. 78. The latter place was afterwards called Le
Goulet.
[1259] “In costamento campionum Regis qui fuerunt ducti in Insulam de
Andeleia contra Regem Francie xxx libras.” Roll of A.D. 1198, _Rot.
Scacc. Norm._, ii. 481.
[1260] R. Howden, iv. 61, 68.
[1261] _Ib._, 80; Rigord, 144; letters of Innocent in _Fœdera_, I, i.
73. See also the long account of this last conference in _Hist. G. le
Mar._, ll. 11399-726.
[1262] Rigord, _l.c._
[1263] R. Howden, iv. 80, 81.
[1264] Richard, _Comtes de Poitou_, ii. 259.
[1265] Otto seems to have occasionally styled himself duke of
Aquitaine but never in his uncle’s presence. Richard, _Comtes_, ii,
300, 301, 312, 313.
[1266] _Ib._, 300, 301.
[1267] R. Howden, iii. 308.
[1268] Cf. R. Coggeshall, 94, and _Mag. Vita S. Hugonis_, 280.
[1269] Cf. Rigord’s description, 144, with the story of the discovery
in W. Armor., _Phil._, lib. v. vv. 492-9. I suppose _census_ in l.
498—“Census absconsos in arato repperit agro”—stands for coins. As
to the figures and the “table,” M. Richard (_Comtes_, ii. 322 note)
suggests that the treasure was a gilded shield—the “table” being the
central knob or _umbo_, with the figures arranged round it—buried for
safety in the time of the Bagaudes or of the Barbarian invasion, and
that Châlus was chosen as a safe hiding-place because “Châlus, c’est
le _castrum luci_, le château du luc, autrement dit du bois sacré.”
[1270] Of La Boissière, according to G. Guiart, _Branche des Royaux
Lignages_, l. 2601.
[1271] Cf. W. Armor., _Phil._, lib. v. vv. 499-508; Rigord, _l.c._;
and R. Howden, iv. 82, 83.
[1272] R. Howden, iv. 82.
[1273] Cf. _ib._, with R. Coggeshall, 94, and W. Armor., _Phil._,
lib. v. vv. 509-12. Gervase of Canterbury, i. 593, calls the place
“Nantrun”; a mistake which is explained by a “Fragmentum aliunde
assutum” to the chronicle of Geoffrey of Vigeois, Labbe, _Thesaur._,
ii. 342, where we are told that Richard while lying sick before
Châlus sent some of his troops to besiege two other castles in the
Limousin, Nontron and Montagut.
[1274] Rigord, _l.c._
[1275] W. Armor., _Phil._, lib. v. vv. 513-19.
[1276] Addition to Geoff. Vigeois, 342. W. Armor., _Phil._, lib. v.,
v. 529, says there were six knights and nine “clientes.”
[1277] R. Coggeshall, 94, 95.
[1278] R. Howden, iv. 82.
[1279] R. Coggeshall, 95.
[1280] W. Arm., _Phil._, lib. v, vv. 572-6; cf. R. Howden, iv. 82.
[1281] R. Coggeshall, _l.c._; cf. R. Howden, _l.c._; Gerv. Cant., i.
592, and W. Armor., _Phil._, lib. v. v. 589.
[1282] R. Howden, iv. 82.
[1283] R. Coggeshall, 95; cf. R. Howden, iv. 83.
[1284] “Rege ... præcepta _medicorum_ non curante.” R. Coggeshall,
_l.c._
[1285] R. Coggeshall, 95, 96; W. Armor., _Phil._, lib. v. vv. 600-5.
[1286] R. Howden, _l.c._
[1287] Addition to G. Vigeois, 342.
[1288] R. Coggeshall, 96.
[1289] R. Howden, iv. 83.
[1290] R. Howden, iv. 83; cf. Gerv. Cant., i. 593, and R. Coggeshall,
96. Howden gives the name of Richard’s slayer as Bertrand de Gourdon;
in the MSS. of W. Armor., _Phil._ (lib. v. v. 587), it appears in
different forms, which M. Delaborde takes to be misreadings of
“Gurdo.” Gervase of Canterbury, i. 592, calls the man “juvenis
quidem Johannes Sabraz agnomine”; R. Diceto, ii. 166, calls him
“Petrus Basilii,” and is supported by the anonymous continuator of G.
Vigeois, 342, who says: “Unus de militibus” [_i. e._ the two knights
in the castle] “vocatus Petrus Bru, alter Petrus Basilii, de quo
dicitur quod sagittam cum arbalista tractam emisit qua percussus rex
intra duodecimam diem vitam finivit.”
[1291] R. Coggeshall, 96.
[1292] Charter of Eleanor—summarized in Round’s _Calendar of
Documents relating to France_, i. 472—to the abbey of S. Mary at
Torpenay, to which she grants an endowment “for the welfare of the
soul of her dearest son Richard, king of England, and for the yearly
celebration of his anniversary,” “because her beloved [Luke, abbot
of Torpenay,] was present with her at the illness and funeral of her
dearest son the king, and laboured above all others at his obsequies.”
[1293] R. Howden, iv. 84.
[1294] R. Coggeshall, 96. “Septima hora noctis,” says the continuator
of G. Vigeois, 342. R. Coggeshall gives the day as April 7, but his
own next words—“scilicet undecimo die a vulnere sibi illato”—show
this to be an error for April 6, the date given by the best English
authorities, R. Diceto, ii. 166, Gerv. Cant., i. 593, and R. Howden,
_l.c._, and also by the Cont. G. Vigeois, _l.c._
[1295] _Ann. Winton_, a. 1199.
[1296] _Magna Vita S. Hugonis_, 286.
[1297] Gerv. Cant., i. 593.
[1298] W. Armor., _Phil._, lib. v. vv. 611-17.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Obvious typographical errors and punctuation errors have been
corrected after careful comparison with other occurrences within
the text and consultation of external sources.
Some hyphens in words have been silently removed, some added,
when a predominant preference was found in the original book.
Except for those changes noted below, all misspellings in the text,
and inconsistent or archaic usage, have been retained.
Pg 24: ‘contract of mariage’ replaced by ‘contract of marriage’.
Pg 40: ‘out of Augoulême’ replaced by ‘out of Angoulême’.
Pg 92: ‘They came foward’ replaced by ‘They came forward’.
Pg 167: ‘king had deen’ replaced by ‘king had been’.
Pg 169: ‘two thousand kinghts’ replaced by ‘two thousand knights’.
Pg 169: ‘An August 2’ replaced by ‘On August 2’.
Pg 312: ‘to the developement’ replaced by ‘to the development’.
Pg 323: ‘the appointed term’ replaced by ‘the appointed time’.
Pg 331: ‘Gefangenshaft’ replaced by ‘Gefangenschaft’.
Pg 348: ‘slayer, 832’ replaced by ‘slayer, 328’.
Footnote [41]: ‘was a Proven al’ replaced by ‘was a Provençal’.
Footnote [43]: ‘Geoff. Vi eois’ replaced by ‘Geoff. Vigeois’.
Footnote [113]: ‘Gir. Camb.’ replaced by ‘Gir. Cambr.’.
Footnote [120]: ‘Gir. Camb.’ replaced by ‘Gir. Cambr.’.
Footnote [134]: ‘this pasaage is’ replaced by ‘this passage is’.
Footnote [372]: ‘seems to hav’ replaced by ‘seems to have’.
Footnote [458]: ‘[1190]’ replaced by ‘(1190)’;
Footnote [1233]: ‘[1198]’ replaced by ‘(1198)’ to avoid confusion
with Footnote numbering.
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