Richard the Lion Heart

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RICHARD THE LION HEART

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

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[vi] 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.

ERRATA

BOOK I
RICHARD OF AQUITAINE
1157-1189

CHAPTER I
THE BOY DUKE
1157-1179

“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 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 [3] 1157 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 [4] 1157 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 [5] 1157 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 [6] 1157 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 1156 1156, he successfully asserted his ducal rights.[15] In the spring or early summer of 1159 he again went to Aquitaine, 1159 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 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, [7] 1160 is that the sheriffs of London paid ten pounds six and eightpence for his travelling expenses on some occasion—probably 1163 his elder brother’s birthday feast—in 1163,[18] and that in May 1165 he went with his mother and eldest sister 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 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.

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 1167-8 of Angoulême and La Marche,[25] the viscount of Thouars,[26] [8] 1167-8 Robert of Seilhac in the Limousin and his brother Hugh,[27] Aimeric of Lusignan in Poitou, Geoffrey of Rancogne in the 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 [9] 1168 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 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 [10] 1169 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 1170 1170, at Limoges with his mother, laying the foundation-stone of the abbey of S. Augustine.[39] On the Octave of 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 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. [12] 1173 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 [13] 1173 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 [14] 1173 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 [15] 1173 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 [16] 1173 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 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 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 [17] 1174 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 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] 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 [18] 1175 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 [19] 1775 “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 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 [20] 1176 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 [21] 1176 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 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 [22] 1176 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 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 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 [23] 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 [24] 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 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 1176 taken place to cause the Pope’s action. In May 1176 [25] 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; 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 [26] 1177 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 [27] 1177 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. 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 [29] 1178 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 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 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 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 [30] 1179 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 [31] 1179 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

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 [33] 1179 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 [34] 1179 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 [35] 1179 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 [36] 1179 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 [37] 1179 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 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, [39] 1180 and we hear of no further hostilities between him and Richard for more than six months.[134] We hear indeed of no 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 [40] 1181 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, [41] 1181 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 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 [42] 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 [43] 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 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 [44] 1182 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] 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 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]

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, 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 [46] 1182 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 [47] 1182 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 [48] 1182 by the two Henrys, Richard, and Geoffrey, at Caen.[171] On 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 [49] 1183 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 [50] 1183 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 [51] 1183 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 [53] 1183 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 [54] 1183 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 [55] 1183 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 [56] 1183 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

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 [58] 1183 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 [59] 1183 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 [60] 1183 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 [61] 1183 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 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 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, 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 [62] 1183 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 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 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, [63] 1184 not back to Britanny, but to Normandy, as a nominal assistant to the officers who were in charge of that duchy.[230] It 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 1184 surrender Poitou. In the preceding June (1184) Queen Eleanor, after eleven years of captivity, had been released by her husband’s order and permitted to join their eldest daughter and her husband the duke of Saxony, now for the 1185 second time driven into exile.[233] At the end of April (1185) Henry sent for her, and also for their daughter and son-in-law, to join him in Normandy; “and when they arrived, he sent instructions to his son Richard that he should without delay surrender the whole of Poitou with its appurtenances to his mother Queen Eleanor, because it was her heritage; and he added that if Richard in any way delayed to fulfil this command, he was to know for certain that the queen his mother would make it her own business to ravage the land with a great host. And Richard, when he had heard his father’s command, yielded to the wholesome advice of his friends; and laying down the arms of iniquity, returned with all meekness to his father, and surrendered all Poitou, with his castles and fortresses, to his mother.”[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 [64] 1185 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 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 [65] 1186 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 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 1187 till February of the next year. Richard met him at Aumale, and accompanied him on Low Sunday, April 5, to a conference [67] 1187 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 [68] 1187 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 [69] 1187 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 [70] 1187 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 [71] 1187 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 [72] 1187 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 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 [73] 1188 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, [74] 1188 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 [75] 1188 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 [76] 1188 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 [77] 1188 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 [78] 1188 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 [79] 1188 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 [82] 1188 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 [83] 1188 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 [84] 1188 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 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 [85] 1189 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 [86] 1189 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 [87] 1189 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 [89] 1189 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

CHAPTER I
THE YEAR OF PREPARATION
1189-1190

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 [92] 1189 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 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. 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 [93] 1189 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 [94] 1189 himself before his brother was “received with honour”[365] and “kindly comforted.”[366]

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 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 [95] 1189 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] 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 [96] 1189 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 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 [97] 1189 the 3rd he was crowned at Westminster.[384] Three contemporary writers, one of whom actually assisted in the most 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 [98] 1189 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 [99] 1189 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 [100] 1189 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 [101] 1189 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 [102] 1189 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 [103] 1189 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 [104] 1189 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 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 [105] 1189 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 [106] 1189 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 [107] 1189 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 [108] 1189 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 [109] 1189 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 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 [110] 1189 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 [111] 1189 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 Dec. 5 on December 5.[437]

On the same day Richard proceeded to Dover;[438] about a week later he went to Normandy.[439] He kept Dec. 11, 14 Christmas[440] in great state, “but,” adds a poet-chronicler, “there was little singing of gestes”; Richard, who usually revelled in Dec. 25 that kind of entertainment, was now too busy and in too grave a mood for minstrelsy.[441] On December 30 he and Philip, after holding a conference at the Gué St. Rémi, Dec. 30 [112] 1189 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] 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 [113] 1190 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 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 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. 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 [114] 1189 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 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 [115] 1190 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 [116] 1190 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] May 8 Two days later he was at Cognac;[461] a month later, at Bayonne,[462] and it seems to have been about this June 6 time that he besieged and took the castle of Chis in the [117] 1190 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 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,[118] 1190 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

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 [120] 1190 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, 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 [121] 1190 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 Aug. 13 till the 13th that he reached Genoa, where he went ashore to visit Philip, who was lying there sick. Next day, at Portofino, Aug. 14 he received a message from Philip asking for the loan of five galleys; Richard offered three, but this Philip declined. On the 23rd Richard relieved the tediousness of the slow Aug. 23 [122] 1190 coasting voyage by landing with a small escort at Baratto and hiring horses on which the party rode to Piombino; 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. 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 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 [123] 1190 Cross day.[498] According to English accounts Philip of France 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 [124] 1190 the northern end of the strait in readiness to meet him. 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 [125] 1190 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] 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 [126] 1190 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, 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 [127] 1190 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 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 [128] 1190 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:

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 [130] 1190 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 Oct. 8 they renewed their alliance,[539] swearing and making their respective barons swear to keep good faith with each other 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 [131] 1190 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 [132] 1190 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 [133] 1190 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 [134] 1190 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 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]

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 1191
Feb. 2 the strife.[563] An incident on Candlemas Day (1191) throws a [135] 1191 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 [136] 1191 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 [137] 1191 refused both.[569] Meanwhile Tancred had invited him[570] to a 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 [138] 1191 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 [139] 1191 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]

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, [140] 1191 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, 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 [141] 1191 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 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 April 24 coast of Cyprus, when a storm arose and dashed two of [142] 1191 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 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 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 May 4 on the morrow with hospitable gifts of bread, meat, and the famous wine of Cyprus. On the Sunday he again tried May 5 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 [143] 1191 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 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 [144] 1191 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 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 [145] 1191 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 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. [146] 1191 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 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 [147] 1191 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 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 [148] 1191 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]

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, [149] 1191 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 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 [150] 1191 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 [151] 1191 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.

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 [153] 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 [154] 1189 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 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 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] [155] 1191 “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, June 8 he—seemingly that very night—issued a proclamation throughout the host offering four bezants a month to any [156] 1191 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 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 June 11-14 eastern side; and all along the line of the walls stone-casters and miners set vigorously to work. Richard meanwhile [157] 1191 “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 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 [158] 1191 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 [159] 1191 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 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 [160] 1191 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, [161] 1191 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 [162] 1191 July 3,[673] coinciding with the failure of an attack made by Saladin and his brother on the Christian trenches,[674] was 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 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 [163] 1191 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 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 [164] 1191 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 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 [165] 1191 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 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 [166] 1191 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 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 [167] 1191 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 July 23 his folk.” Next day Philip repeated his demand for half of Cyprus; which Richard again refused. Three days later July 26 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); 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 [168] 1191 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 [169] 1191 once, after holding a council with the other princes, had all 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 [170] 1191 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 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 [171] 1191 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 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 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 [172] 1191 skirmishes in which the king took his full share.[732] 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] [173] 1191 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 [174] 1191 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 [175] 1191 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

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 [177] 1191 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 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 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 [178] 1191 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] 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 [179] 1191 Maccabee.”[754] The Franks re-formed in order, and proceeded 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 [180] 1191 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 Aug. 27 days to receive from them a fresh store of provisions.[757]

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 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 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 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 [181] 1191 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. 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 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]

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, [182] 1191 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 Sept. 1 mid-day, crossed it in safety, and pitched their tents on its southern bank: whereupon the Turks retired, “for,” says [183] 1191 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 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 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 [184] 1191 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 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 [185] 1191 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, [187] 1191 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 [188] 1191 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 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 [189] 1191 Jerusalem. Saladin appears to have thought that the Franks might march across the plain and attempt an advance 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 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 [190] 1191 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 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 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 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 [192] 1191 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 [194] 1191 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 [195] 1191 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 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 Oct. 13 that within a fortnight[807] he was back at Joppa accompanied [196] 1191 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 [197] 1191 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 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 Oct. 28 tidings that the enemy was preparing to leave Joppa. Next [198] 1191 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.

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 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 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 [199] 1191 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, 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 [200] 1191 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 [201] 1191 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]

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 [202] 1191 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 [203] 1191 “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 Dec. state of affairs the leaders, having now fully ascertained [204] 1191 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]

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 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 [205] 1192 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 [206] 1192 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 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 [208] 1192 at Ibelin[850] to the main road along the coast. The ten miles’ march through mud and mire to Ibelin was a sufficiently 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 [209] 1192 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 [210] 1192 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. [211] 1192 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 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 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 [213] 1192 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]

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 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 [214] 1192 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 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 [215] 1192 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 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 [216] 1192 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 [217] 1192 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] [218] 1192 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 [219] 1192 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 [220] 1192 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 [221] 1192 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 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 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 [222] 1192 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 [223] 1192 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 [224] 1192 they saw the Christian banners waving all over the outer 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 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 [225] 1192 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 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, 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 [227] 1192 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] 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]

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 [228] 1192 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, [229] 1192 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 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, [231] 1192 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 [232] 1192 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 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 [233] 1192 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 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 [234] 1192 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 [235] 1192 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 [236] 1192 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 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 [237] 1192 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 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, [238] 1192 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 [239] 1192 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. 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 July 2 at once. He and his devoted secretary spent the whole night in deliberating and praying over the problems suggested by 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 [240] 1192 top of a hill, stationed itself there a while, and then ridden back to its camp; he had sent out scouts to ascertain what 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 [241] 1192 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] [242] 1192 In the morning the pilgrims were, for the second time 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] [243] 1192 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 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.’ [244] 1192 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 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 [245] 1192 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, [246] 1192 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, 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] [247] 1192 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 July 23 him there next day. By the 25th their united forces were on the old camping-ground of the Franks between Lydda July 25 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 [248] 1192 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 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 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 [249] 1192 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 [250] 1192 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 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 [251] 1192 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 Aug. 2 then followed his army to Yazour, and thence, early next [252] 1192 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]

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 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] [253] 1192 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 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 [254] 1192 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 [255] 1192 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 [256] 1192 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 Aug. 20 waiting for reinforcements. On the 20th the long-desired contingent from Egypt at last arrived; and two days later [257] 1192 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 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, [258] 1192 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 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 [259] 1192 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] [260] 1192 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 [261] 1192 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 [262] 1192 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 [263] 1192 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

CHAPTER I
RICHARD AND THE EMPIRE
1192-1194

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 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] [265] 1192 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] 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 [267] 1192 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 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 [269] 1192 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 Dec. compelled them to halt at a little inn close to Vienna.[1062] [270] 1192 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 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 [271] 1192 “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 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]

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, [272] 1193 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 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 [273] 1193 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 [274] 1193 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 [275] 1193 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 [276] 1193 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 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 1192 took place at Gisors on January 20, 1192.[1083] He demanded the restitution of Aloysia (who was in the tower at Rouen) 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 [277] 1192 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 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 [278] 1193 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:

1193Two 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 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 [280] 1193 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, 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 [281] 1193 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: [282] 1193 “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 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 [283] 1193 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 1194 Jan. 17 probably Spire. There, on the appointed day, Henry held a council which “after long discussion” was adjourned to re-assemble at Mentz on Candlemas Day.[1112] At this adjourned Feb. 2 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 [284] 1194 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 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 [285] 1194 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.” 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 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 [286] 1194 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 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 March
4-7 reached in three days; five more were spent in waiting there [287] 1194 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 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 [288] 1194 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] 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 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 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 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 [290] 1194 April 4 on the Monday before Easter and travelled together on the Tuesday to Malton; there William “asked for the 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 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, [291] 1194 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 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, [292] 1194 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 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 [293] 1194 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

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 [295] 1194 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, 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 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 [296] 1194 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; 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 [297] 1194 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 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 1194 March this Aquitaine seems to have been comparatively quiet till March 1194, when the old arch-troubler of the land, Geoffrey of Rancogne, threw off his allegiance and with June Bernard of Brosse did liege homage to Philip.[1168] In June [298] 1194 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 [299] 1194 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 [300] 1194 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.

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 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] 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]

During the past five months the truce had been very ill kept. In less than two months from its commencement [301] 1194 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 [302] 1194 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 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, 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 [303] 1194 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 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, 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 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 [304] 1194 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, 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 [305] 1194 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]

The meeting did take place, and a treaty was made, consisting of a quit-claim from Philip to Richard and his heirs 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, Jan.
13-15 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 April 15 sending to England for reinforcements “because”—so he [306] 1196 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 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 [307] 1196 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 [308] 1196 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 [309] 1196 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 [310] 1196 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 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]

Meanwhile Richard was, through his agents at Rome, bargaining with Archbishop Walter for an exchange of May lands. At last he made an offer which was distinctly advantageous to the metropolitan see of Rouen; it was accepted, and the Interdict was raised.[1220] A year later the 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 [312] 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 [313] 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 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 [314] 1197 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 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]

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 [315] 1197 April 15 feed his own men.[1229] A month later Mercadier made a raid on Beauvais and captured its Bishop.[1230] Early in the summer there came an indication that the Vexin was not altogether May 19 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 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 [316] 1197 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] 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 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 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 [317] 1197 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 [318] 1197 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, 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 [319] 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 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 [320] 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 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 [321] 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 [322] 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. 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 [323] 1199 till S. Hilary’s day.[1260] At the appointed time the kings 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 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 [324] 1199 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 [325] 1199 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 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 [326] 1199 moment about forty persons; only two of these were knights, and some of the others were women.[1276] For three March
24-6 days Richard’s miners dug under the walls while he with his crossbowmen rode round about them, discharging a shower of missiles into the enclosure.[1277] On the third day Friday
March 26 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 [327] 1199 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 [328] 1199 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 [329] 1199 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 April 6 received Extreme Unction on April 6, the Tuesday in Passion week, “and as the day was closing, he also ended his earthly 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[331] 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[332] 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.

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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[334] 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[335] 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,[336] 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).

[337]

(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[338] 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[339] 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;
[342]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;
[343]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;
[344]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
[345]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;
[346]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;
[347]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;
[348]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;
[349]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

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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 [viii]
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

PREFACE

CONTENTS

ERRATA

BOOK I RICHARD OF AQUITAINE 1157-1189

CHAPTER I THE BOY DUKE 1157-1179

CHAPTER II FATHER AND SONS 1179-1183

CHAPTER III KING HENRY’S HEIR 1183-1189

BOOK II RICHARD’S CRUSADE 1189-1192

CHAPTER I THE YEAR OF PREPARATION 1189-1190

CHAPTER II THE OUTWARD VOYAGE 1190

CHAPTER III THE FALL OF ACRE 1191.

CHAPTER IV FROM ACRE TO JOPPA 1191

CHAPTER V THE ADVANCE ON JERUSALEM 1191-1192.

CHAPTER VI RICHARD AND SALADIN 1192

BOOK III RICHARD AND EUROPE 1192-1199

CHAPTER I RICHARD AND THE EMPIRE 1192-1194

CHAPTER II RICHARD AND FRANCE 1194-1199