When Henry returned to England at the end of April, 1186, he abandoned all prospect of profiting by the opportunity which still existed, though in diminished degree, of checking in its beginning the ominous growth of Philip"s power, an opportunity which we may believe his grandfather would not have overlooked or neglected. By the end of the summer all chance of this was over, and no policy of safety remained to Henry but a trial of strength to the finish with his crafty suzerain, for Philip had not merely returned successful from his Burgundian expedition, but he had almost without effort at concealment made his first moves against the Angevin power. His opening was the obvious one offered him by the dissensions in Henry"s family, and his first move was as skilful as the latest he ever made. Richard was now on good terms with his father; it would even appear that he had been restored to the rule of Aquitaine; at any rate Henry"s last act before his return to England in April had been to hand over to Richard a great sum of money with directions to subdue his foes. Richard took the money and made successful and cruel war on the Count of Toulouse, on what grounds we know not. Geoffrey, however, offered himself to Philip"s purposes. Henry"s third son seems to have been in character and conduct somewhat like his eldest brother, the young king. He had the same popular gifts and attractive manners; he enjoyed an almost equal renown for knightly accomplishments and for the knightly virtue of "largesse"; and he was, in the same way, bitterly dissatisfied with his own position. He believed that the death of his brother ought to improve his prospects, and his mind was set on having the county of Anjou added to his possessions. When Richard and his father refused him this, he turned to France and betook himself to Paris. Philip received him with open arms, and they speedily became devoted friends. Just what their immediate plans were we cannot say. They evidently had not been made public, and various rumours were in circulation. Some said that Geoffrey would hold Britanny of Philip; or he had been made seneschal of France, an office that ought to go with the county of Anjou; or he was about to invade and devastate Normandy. It is probable that some overt action would have been undertaken very shortly when suddenly, on August 19, Geoffrey died, having been mortally hurt in a tournament, or from an attack of fever, or perhaps from both causes. He was buried in Paris, Philip showing great grief and being, it is said, with difficulty restrained from throwing himself into the grave.
The death of Geoffrey may have made a change in the form of Philip"s plans, and perhaps in the date of his first attempt to carry them out, but not in their ultimate object. It furnished him, indeed, with a new subject of demand on Henry. There had been no lack of subjects in the past, and he had pushed them persistently: the question of Margaret"s dower lands,--the return of the Norman Vexin,--and of the payment of her money allowance, complicated now by her second marriage to Bela, king of Hungary; the standing question of the marriage of Philip"s sister Adela; the dispute about the suzerainty of Auvergne still unsettled; and finally Richard"s war on the Count of Toulouse. Now was added the question of the wardship of Britanny. At the time of his death one child had been born to Geoffrey of his marriage with Constance,--a daughter, Eleanor, who was recognized as the heiress of the county. Without delay Philip sent an emba.s.sy to Henry in England and demanded the wardship of the heiress, with threats of war if the demand was not complied with. The justice of Philip"s claim in this case was not entirely clear since he was not the immediate lord of Britanny, but kings had not always respected the rights of their va.s.sals in the matter of rich heiresses, and possibly Geoffrey had actually performed the homage to Philip which he was reported to be planning to do. In any case it was impossible for Henry to accept Philip"s view of his rights, but war at the moment would have been inconvenient, and so he sent a return emba.s.sy with Ranulf Glanvill at its head, and succeeded in getting a truce until the middle of the winter.
Various fruitless negotiations followed, complicated by an attack made by the garrison of Gisors on French workmen found building an opposing castle just over the border. Henry himself crossed to Normandy about the middle of February, 1187, but personal interviews with Philip led to no result, and the situation drifted steadily toward war. The birth of a posthumous son to Geoffrey in March--whom the Bretons insisted on calling Arthur, though Henry wished to give him his own name, a sure sign of their wish for a more independent position--brought about no change.
Philip had protected himself from all danger of outside interference by an alliance with the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and was determined on war. By the middle of May both sides were ready. Henry divided his army into four divisions and adopted a purely defensive policy.
Philip"s attack fell on the lands of disputed allegiance on the eastern edge of the duchy of Aquitaine near his own possessions, and after a few minor successes he laid siege to the important castle of Chateauroux. This was defended by Richard in person, with his brother John, but Philip pressed the siege until Henry drew near with an army, when he retired a short distance and awaited the next move. Negotiations followed, in the course of which the deep impression that the character of Philip had already made on his great va.s.sals is clearly to be seen.[49] Henry"s desire was to avoid a battle, and this was probably the best policy for him; it certainly was unless he were willing, as he seems not to have been, to bring on at once the inevitable mortal struggle between the houses of Capet and Anjou. Unimportant circ.u.mstances on both sides came in to favour Henry"s wish and to prevent a battle, and finally Henry himself, by a most extraordinary act of folly, threw into the hands of Philip the opportunity of gaining a greater advantage for his ultimate purposes than he could hope to gain at that time from any victory. Henry"s great danger was Richard. In the situation it was inc.u.mbent on him from every consideration of policy to keep Richard satisfied, and to prevent not merely the division of the Angevin strength, but the reinforcement of the enemy with the half of it. He certainly had had experience enough of Richard"s character to know what to expect. He ought by that time to have been able to read Philip Augustus"s. And yet he calmly proceeded to a step from which, it is hardly too much to say, all his later troubles came through the suspicion he aroused in Richard"s mind,--a step so unaccountable that we are tempted to reject our single, rather doubtful account of it. He wrote a letter to Philip proposing that Adela should be married to John, who should then be invested with all the French fiefs held by the house of Anjou except Normandy, which with the kingdom of England should remain to Richard.[50] If Henry was blind enough to suppose that the Duke of Aquitaine could be reconciled to such an arrangement, Philip saw at once what the effect of the proposal would be, and he sent the letter to Richard.
The immediate result was a treaty of peace to continue in force for two years, brought about apparently by direct negotiations between Richard and Philip, but less unfavourable to Henry than might have been expected.
It contained, according to our French authorities, the very probable agreement that the points in dispute between the two kings should be submitted to the decision of the curia regis of France, and Philip was allowed to retain the lordships of Issoudun and Freteval, which he had previously occupied, as pledges for the carrying out of the treaty. The ultimate result of Philip"s cunning was that Richard deserted his father and went home with the king of France, and together they lived for a time in the greatest intimacy. Philip, it seemed, now loved Richard "as his own soul," and showed him great honour. Every day they ate at table from the same plate, and at night they slept in the same bed. One is reminded of Philip"s ardent love for Geoffrey, and certain suspicions inevitably arise in the mind. But at any rate the alarm of Henry was excited by the new intimacy, and he did not venture to go over to England as he wished to do until he should know what the outcome was to be. He sent frequent messengers to Richard, urging him to return and promising to grant him everything that he could justly claim, but without effect. At one time Richard pretended to be favourably inclined, and set out as if to meet his father, but instead he fell upon the king"s treasure at Chinon and carried it off to Aquitaine to use in putting his own castles into a state of defence. His father, however, forgave even this and continued to send for him, and at last he yielded. Together they went to Angers, and there in a great a.s.sembly Richard performed liege homage to his father once more and swore fealty to him "against all men," a fact which would seem to show that Richard had in some formal way renounced his fealty while at Philip"s court, though we have no account of his doing so.
During this period, in September, 1187, an heir was born to King Philip, the future Louis VIII.
As this year drew to its close frequent letters and messengers from the Holy Land made known to the west one terrible disaster after another.
Saladin with a great army had fallen on the weak and divided kingdom and had won incredible successes. The infant king, Baldwin V, had died before these events began, and his mother Sibyl was recognized as queen. She immediately, against the expressed wish of the great barons, gave the crown to her husband, Guy of Lusignan. He was a brave man and an earnest defender of the Holy Land, but he could not accomplish the impossible task of maintaining a kingdom, itself so weak, in the face of open and secret treachery. In October the news reached Europe of the utter defeat of the Christians, of the capture of the king, and worse still of the true Cross by the infidels. The pope, Urban III, died of grief at the tidings. His successor, Gregory VIII, at once urged Europe to a new crusade in a long and vigorous appeal. Very soon afterwards followed the news of the capture of Jerusalem by Saladin. The Emperor Frederick was anxious to put himself at the head of the armies of Christendom, as he was ent.i.tled to do as sovereign of the Holy Roman Empire, and lead them to recover the holy places. But while most princes delayed and waited to know what others would do, the impulsive and emotional Richard took the cross the next morning, men said, after he had learned the news. This he did without the knowledge of his father who was shocked to learn of it, and shut himself up for days, understanding more clearly than did his son what the absence of the heir to the throne on such a long and uncertain expedition would mean at such a time.
The advisability, the possibility even, of such a crusade would all depend upon Philip, and the movements of Philip just then were very disquieting. About the beginning of the new year, 1188, he returned from a conference with the Emperor Frederick, which in itself could bode no good to the father-in-law and supporter of Henry the Lion, and immediately began collecting a large army, "impudently boasting," says the English chronicler of Henry"s life, "that he would lay waste Normandy and the other lands of the king of England that side the sea, if he did not return to him Gisors and all that belonged to it or make his son Richard take to wife Adela the daughter of his father Louis." Philip evidently did not intend to drop everything to go to the rescue of Jerusalem nor was he inclined at any expense to his own interests to make it easy for those who would. Henry who was already at the coast on the point of crossing to England, at once turned back when he heard of Philip"s threats, and arranged for a conference with him on January 21.
Here was the opportunity for those who were urging on the crusade. The kings of France and England with their chief barons were to be together while the public excitement was still high and the Christian duty of checking the Saracen conquest still keenly felt. The Archbishop of Tyre, who had come to France on this mission, gave up all his other undertakings as soon as he heard of the meeting and resolved to make these great princes converts to his cause. It was not an easy task.
Neither Henry nor Philip was made of crusading material, and both were far more interested in the tasks of constructive statesmanship which they had on hand than in the fate of the distant kingdom of Jerusalem. A greater obstacle than this even was their fear of each other, of what evil one might do in the absence of the other, the unwillingness of either to pledge himself to anything definite until he knew what the other was going to do, and the difficulty of finding any arrangement which would bind them both at once. It is practically certain that they yielded at last only to the pressure of public opinion which must have been exceedingly strong in the excitement of the time and under the impa.s.sioned eloquence of a messenger direct from the scene of the recent disasters. It was a great day for the Church when so many men of the highest rank, kings and great barons, took the cross, and it was agreed that the spot should be marked by a new church, and that it should bear the name of the Holy Field.
Whatever may be true of Philip, there can, I think, be no doubt that, when Henry took the cross, he intended to keep his vow. It was agreed between them that all things should remain as they were until their return; and Henry formally claimed of his suzerain the protection of his lands during his absence, and Philip accepted the duty.[51] A few days after taking the cross Henry held an a.s.sembly at Le Mans and ordered a tax in aid of his crusade. This was the famous Saladin t.i.the, which marks an important step in the history of modern taxation. It was modelled on an earlier tax for the same purpose which had been agreed upon between France and England in 1166, but it shows a considerable development upon that, both in conception and in the arrangements for carrying out the details of the tax. The ordinance provided for the payment by all, except those who were themselves going on the crusade, of a tenth, a "t.i.the," of both personal property and income, precious stones being exempt and the necessary tools of their trade of both knights and clerks. Somewhat elaborate machinery was provided for the collection of the tax, and the whole was placed under the sanction of the Church. A similar ordinance was shortly adopted by Philip for France, and on February 11, Henry, then in England, held a council at Geddington, in Northamptonshire, and ordained the same tax for England.
In the meantime the crusade had received a check, and partly, at least, through the fault of its most eager leader, Richard of Poitou. A rebellion had broken out against him, and he was pushing the war with his usual rapidity and his usual severities, adopting now, however, the interesting variation of remitting all other penalties if his prisoners would take the cross. If Richard was quickly master of the rebellion, it served on the one hand to embitter him still more against his father, from the report, which in his suspicious att.i.tude he was quick to believe, that Henry"s money and encouragement had supported the rebels against him; and on the other, to lead to hostilities with the Count of Toulouse. The count had not neglected the opportunity of Richard"s troubles to get a little satisfaction for his own grievances, and had seized some merchants from the English lands. Richard responded with a raid into Toulouse, in which he captured the chief minister of the count and refused ransom for him. Then the count in his turn arrested a couple of English knights of some standing at court, who were returning from a pilgrimage to St. James of Compostella. Still Richard refused either ransom or exchange, and an appeal to the king of France led to no result.
Richard told his father afterwards that Philip had encouraged his attack on the count. Soon, however, his rapid successes in Toulouse, where he was taking castle after castle, compelled Philip to more decided interference; probably he was not sorry to find a reason both to postpone the crusade and to renew the attack on the Angevin lands. First he sent an emba.s.sy to Henry in England to protest against Richard"s doings, and received the reply that the war was against Henry"s will, and that he could not justify it. With a great army Philip then invaded Auvergne, captured Chateauroux and took possession of almost all Berri. An emba.s.sy sent to bring Philip to a better mind was refused all satisfaction, and Henry, seeing that his presence was necessary in France, crossed the channel for the last of many times and landed in Normandy on July 1, 1188.
All things were now, indeed, drawing to a close with Henry, who was not merely worn out and ill, but was plunged into a tide of events flowing swiftly against all the currents of his own life. Swept away by the strong forces of a new age which he could no longer control, driven and thwarted by men, even his own sons, whose ideals of conduct and ambition were foreign to his own and never understood, compelled to do things he had striven to avoid, and to see helplessly the policy of his long reign brought to naught, the coming months were for him full of bitter disasters which could end only, as they did, in heartbreak and death.
Not yet, however, was he brought to this point, and he got together a great army and made ready to fight if necessary. But first, true to his policy of negotiation, he sent another emba.s.sy to Philip and demanded rest.i.tution under the threat of renouncing his fealty. Philip"s answer was a refusal to stop his hostilities until he should have occupied all Berri and the Norman Vexin. War was now inevitable, but it lingered for some time without events of importance, and on August 16 began a new three days" conference at the historic meeting-place of the kings near Gisors. This also ended fruitlessly; some of the French even attacked the English position, and then cut down in anger the old elm tree under which so many conferences had taken place. Philip was, however, in no condition to push the war upon which he had determined. The crusading ardour of France which he himself did not feel, and which had failed to bring about a peace at Gisors, expressed itself in another way; and the Count of Flanders and Theobald of Blois and other great barons of Philip notified him that they would take no part in a war against Christians until after their return from Jerusalem.
Philip"s embarra.s.sment availed Henry but little, although his own force remained undiminished. A sudden dash at Mantes on August 30, led only to the burning of a dozen or more French villages, for Philip by a very hurried march from Chaumont was able to throw himself into the city, and Henry withdrew without venturing a pitched battle. On the next day Richard, who till then had been with his father, went off to Berri to push with some vigour the attack on Philip"s conquests there, promising his father faithful service. A double attack on the French, north and south, was not a bad plan as Philip was then situated, but for some reason not clear to us Henry seems to have let matters drift and made no use of the great army which he had got together. The king of France, however, saw clearly what his next move should be, and he sent to propose peace to Henry on the basis of a restoration of conquests on both sides.
Henry was ever ready for peace, and a new conference took place at Chatillon on the Indre, where it was found that Philip"s proposition was the exchange of his conquests in Berri for those of Richard in Toulouse, and the handing over to him of the castle of Pacy, near Mantes, as a pledge that the treaty would be kept. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Philip knew that this demand would be refused, as it was, and that he had only made the proposal of peace in order to gain time to collect a new force. In this he must now have succeeded, for he immediately took the offensive in Berri and added somewhat to his conquests, probably by hiring the German mercenaries whom we learn he shortly afterwards defrauded of their pay.
In the meantime Richard and Philip were drawing together again, in what way exactly we do not know. We suspect some underhanded work of Philip"s which would be easy enough. Evidently Richard was still very anxious about the succession, and it seems to have occurred to him to utilize his father"s desire for peace on the basis of Philip"s latest proposition, to gain a definite recognition of his rights. At any rate we are told that he brought about the next meeting between the kings, and that he offered to submit the question of the rights or wrongs of his war with Toulouse to the decision of the French king"s court. This dramatic and fateful conference which marks the success of Philip"s intrigues began on November 18 at Bonmoulins, and lasted three days. Henry was ready to accept the proposal now made that all things should be restored on both sides to the condition which existed at the taking of the cross, but here Richard interposed a decided objection. He could not see the justice of being made to restore his conquests in Toulouse which he was holding in domain, and which were worth a thousand marks a year, to get back himself some castles in Berri which were not of his domain but only held of him.
Then Philip for him, evidently by previous agreement, brought forward the question of the succession. The new proposition was that Richard and Adela should be married and that homage should be paid to Richard as heir from all the Angevin dominions. It seems likely, though it is not so stated, that on this condition Richard would have agreed to the even exchange of conquests. As time went on the discussion, which had been at first peaceable and calm, became more and more excited so that on the third day the attendants came armed. On that day harsh words and threats were exchanged. To Richard"s direct demand that he should make him secure in the succession, Henry replied that he could not do it in the existing circ.u.mstances, for, if he did, he would seem to be yielding to threats and not acting of his own will. Then Richard, crying out that he could now believe things that had seemed incredible to him, turned at once to Philip, threw off his sword, and in the presence of his father and all the bystanders offered him his homage for all the French fiefs, including Toulouse, saying his father"s rights during his lifetime and his own allegiance to his father. Philip accepted this offer without scruple, and promised to Richard the restoration of what he had taken in Berri, with Issoudun and all that he had conquered of the English possessions since the beginning of his reign.
To one at least of the historians of the time Richard"s feeling about the succession did not seem strange, nor can it to us.[52] For this act of Richard, after which peace was never restored between himself and his father, Henry must share full blame with him. Whether he was actuated by a blind affection for his youngest son, or by dislike and distrust of Richard, or by a remembrance of his troubles with his eldest son, his refusal to recognize Richard as his heir and to allow him to receive the homage of the English and French barons, a custom sanctioned by the practice of a hundred years in England and of a much longer period in France, was a political and dynastic blunder of a most astonishing kind.
Nothing could show more clearly how little he understood Philip Augustus or the danger which now threatened the Angevin house. As for Richard, he may have been quick-tempered, pa.s.sionate, and rash, not having the well-poised mind of the diplomatist or the statesman, at least not one of the high order demanded by the circ.u.mstances, and deceived by his own anger and by the machinations of Philip; yet we can hardly blame him for offering his homage to the king of France. Nor can we call the act illegal, though it was extreme and unusual, and might seem almost revolutionary. An appeal to his overlord was in fact the only legal means left him of securing his inheritance, and it bound Philip not to recognize any one else as the heir of Henry. Philip was clearly within his legal rights in accepting the offer of Richard, and the care with which Richard"s declaration was made to keep within the law, reserving all the rights which should be reserved, shows that however impulsive his act may have seemed to the bystanders, it really had been carefully considered and planned in advance. The conference broke up after this with no other result than a truce to January 13, and Richard rode off with Philip without taking leave of his father.
For all that had taken place Henry did not give up his efforts to bring back Richard to himself, but they were without avail. He himself, burdened with anxiety and torn by conflicting emotions, was growing more and more ill. The scanty attendance at his Christmas court showed him the opinion of the barons of the hopelessness of his cause and the prudence of making themselves secure with Richard. He was not well enough to meet his enemies in the conference proposed for January 13, and it was postponed first to February 2 and then to Easter, April 9. It was now, however, too late for anything to be accomplished by diplomacy. Henry could not yield to the demands made of him until he was beaten in the field, nor were they likely to be modified. Indeed we find at this time the new demand appearing that John should be made to go on the crusade when Richard did. Even the intervention of the pope, who was represented at the conferences finally held soon after Easter and early in June, by a cardinal legate, in earnest effort for the crusade, served only to show how completely Philip was the man of a new age. To the threat of the legate, who saw that the failure to make peace was chiefly due to him, that he would lay France under an interdict if he did not come to terms with the king of England, Philip replied in defiant words that he did not fear the sentence and would not regard it, for it would be unjust, since the Roman Church had no right to interfere within France between the king and his rebellious va.s.sal and he overbore the legate and compelled him to keep silence.
After this conference events drew swiftly to an end. The allies pushed the war, and in a few days captured Le Mans, forcing Henry to a sudden flight in which he was almost taken prisoner. A few days later still Philip stormed the walls of Tours and took that city. Henry was almost a fugitive with few followers and few friends in the hereditary county from which his house was named. He had turned aside from the better fortified and more easily defended Normandy against the advice of all, and now there was nothing for him but to yield. Terms of peace were settled in a final conference near Colombieres on July 4, 1189. At the meeting Henry was so ill that he could hardly sit his horse, though Richard and Philip had sneered at his illness and called it pretence, but he resolutely endured the pain as he did the humiliation of the hour. Philip"s demands seem surprisingly small considering the man and the completeness of his victory, but there were no grounds on which he could demand from Henry any great concession. One thing he did insist upon, and that was for him probably the most important advantage which he gained. Henry must acknowledge himself entirely at his mercy, as a contumacious va.s.sal, and accept any sentence imposed on him. In the great task which Philip Augustus had before him, already so successfully begun, of building up in France a strong monarchy and of forcing many powerful and independent va.s.sals into obedience to the crown, nothing could be more useful than this precedent, so dramatic and impressive, of the unconditional submission of the most powerful of all the va.s.sals, himself a crowned king. All rights over the disputed county of Auvergne were abandoned.
Richard was acknowledged heir and was to receive the homage of all barons. Those who had given in their allegiance to Richard should remain with him till the crusade, which was to be begun the next spring, and 20,000 marks were to be paid the king of France for his expenses on the captured castles, which were to be returned to Henry.
These were the princ.i.p.al conditions, and to all these Henry agreed as he must. That he intended to give up all effort and rest satisfied with this result is not likely, and words he is said to have used indicate the contrary, but his disease and his broken spirits had brought him nearer the end than he knew. One more blow, for him the severest of all, remained for him to suffer. He found at the head of the list of those who had abandoned his allegiance the name of John. Then his will forsook him and his heart broke. He turned his face to the wall and cried: "Let everything go as it will; I care no more for myself or for the world." On July 6 he died at Chinon, murmuring almost to the last, "Shame on a conquered king," and abandoned by all his family except his eldest son Geoffrey, the son, it was said, of a woman, low in character as in birth.
[48] Gesia Henrici, i. 338.
[49] Gervase of Canterbury, i. 371; Giraldus Cambrensis, De Principis Instructione, iii. 2. (Opera, viii. 231.)
[50] Giraldus Cambrensis, De Principis Instructione. (Opera, viii.
232.)
[51] Ralph de Diceto, ii. 55.
[52] Gervase of Canterbury, i. 435.
CHAPTER XVII
RICHARD I AND THE CRUSADE
The death of Henry II may be taken to mark the close of an epoch in English history, the epoch which had begun with the Norman Conquest. We may call it, for want of a better name, the feudal age,--the age during which the prevailing organization, ideals, and practices had been Norman-feudal. It was an age in which Normandy and the continental interests of king and barons, and the continental spirit and methods, had imposed themselves upon the island realm. It was a time in which the great force in the state and the chief factor in its history had been the king. The interests of the barons had been on the whole identical with his. The rights which feudal law and custom gave him had been practically unquestioned, save by an always reluctant Church, and baronial opposition had taken the form of a resistance to his general power rather than of a denial of special rights. Now a change had silently begun which was soon to show itself openly and to lead to great results. This change involved only slowly and indirectly the general power of the king, but it takes its beginning from two sources: the rising importance of England in the total dominions of the king, and the disposition to question certain of his rights. Normandy was losing its power over the English baron, or if this is too strong a statement for anything that was yet true, he was beginning to identify himself more closely with England and to feel less interest in sacrifices and burdens which inured only to the benefit of the king and a policy foreign to the country. To the disposition to question the king"s actions and demands Henry had himself contributed not a little by the frequency and greatness of those demands, and by the small regard to the privileges of his va.s.sals shown in the development of his judicial reforms and in his financial measures these last indeed under Henry II violated the baronial rights less directly but, as they were carried on by his sons, they attacked them in a still more decisive way. When once this disposition had begun, the very strength of the Norman monarchy was an element of weakness, for it gave to individual complaints a unity and a degree of importance and interest for the country which they might not otherwise have had. In this development the reign of Richard, though differing but little in outward appearance from his father"s, was a time of rapid preparation, leading directly to the struggles of his brother"s reign and to the first great forward step, the act which marks the full beginning of the new era.
Richard could have felt no grief at the death of his father, and he made no show of any. Geoffrey had gone for the burial to the nunnery of Fontevrault, a favourite convent of Henry"s, and there Richard appeared as soon as he heard the news, and knelt beside the body of his father, which was said to have bled on his approach, as long as it would take to say the Lord"s prayer. Then we are told he turned at once to business.
The first act which he performed, according to one of our authorities, on stepping outside the church was characteristic of the beginning of his reign. One of the most faithful of his father"s later servants was William Marshal, who had been earlier in the service of his son Henry. He had remained with the king to the last, and in the hurried retreat from Le Mans he had guarded the rear. On Richard"s coming up in pursuit he had turned upon him with his lance and might have killed him as he was without his coat of mail, but instead, on Richard"s crying out to be spared, he had only slain his horse, and so checked the pursuit, though he had spared him with words of contempt which Richard must have remembered: "No, I will not slay you," he had said; "the devil may slay you." Now both he and his friends were anxious as to the reception he would meet with from the prince, but Richard was resolved to start from the beginning as king and not as Count of Poitou. He called William Marshal to him, referred to the incident, granted him his full pardon, confirmed the gift to him which Henry had recently made him of the hand of the heiress of the Earl of Pembroke and her rich inheritance, and commissioned him to go at once to England to take charge of the king"s interests there until his own arrival. This incident was typical of Richard"s action in general. Henry"s faithful servants suffered nothing for their fidelity in opposing his son; the barons who had abandoned him before his death, to seek their own selfish advantage because they believed the tide was turning against him, were taught that Richard was able to estimate their conduct at its real worth.
Henry on his death-bed had made no attempt to dispose of the succession.
On the retreat from Le Mans he had sent strict orders to Normandy, to give up the castles there in the event of his death to no one but John.
But the knowledge of John"s treason would have changed that, even if it had been possible to set aside the treaty of Colombieres. There was no disposition anywhere to question Richard"s right. On July 20 at Rouen he was formally girt with the sword of the duchy of Normandy, by the archbishop and received the homage of the clergy and other barons. He at once confirmed to his brother John, who had joined him, the grants made or promised him by their father: 4000 worth of land in England, the county of Mortain in Normandy, and the hand and inheritance of the heiress of the Earl of Gloucester. To his other brother, Geoffrey, he gave the archbishopric of York, carrying out a wish which Henry had expressed in his last moments; and Matilda, the daughter of Henry the Lion, was given as his bride to another Geoffrey, the heir of the county of Perche, a border land whose alliance would be of importance in case of trouble with France. Two days later he had an interview with King Philip at the old meeting-place near Gisors. There Philip quickly made evident the fact that in his eyes the king of England was a different person from the rebellious Count of Poitou, and he met Richard with his familiar demand that the Norman Vexin should be given up. Without doubt the point of view had changed as much to Richard, and he adopted his father"s tactics and promised to marry Adela. He also promised Philip 4000 marks in addition to the 20,000 which Henry had agreed to pay. With these promises Philip professed himself content. He received Richard"s homage for all the French fiefs, and the treaty lately made with Henry was confirmed, including the agreement to start on the crusade the next spring.
In the meantime by the command of Richard his mother, Eleanor, was set free from custody in England; and a.s.suming a royal state she made a progress through the kingdom and gave orders for the release of prisoners. About the middle of August Richard himself landed in England with John. No one had any grounds on which to expect a particularly good reign from him, but he was everywhere joyfully received, especially by his mother and the barons at Winchester. A few days later the marriage of John to Isabel of Gloucester was celebrated, in spite of a formal protest entered by Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury, because the parties were related within the prohibited degrees. The coronation took place on Sunday, September 3, and was celebrated apparently with much care to follow the old ritual correctly and with much formal pomp and ceremony, so that it became a new precedent for later occasions down to the present day.
Richard was then just coming to the end of his thirty-second year. In physical appearance he was not like either the Norman or the Angevin type, but was taller and of a more delicate and refined cast, and his portrait shows a rather handsome face. In character and ambitions also he was not a descendant of his father"s line. The humdrum business of ruling the state, of developing its law and inst.i.tutions, of keeping order and doing justice, or even of following a consistent and long-continued policy of increasing his power or enlarging his territories, was little to his taste. He was determined, as his father had been, to be a strong king and to put down utterly every rebellion, but his determination to be obeyed was rather a resolution of the moment than a means to any foreseen and planned conclusion. He has been called by one who knew the time most thoroughly "the creation and impersonation of his age," and nothing better can be said. The first age of a self-conscious chivalry, delighting intensely in the physical life, in the sense of strength and power, that belonged to baron and knight, and in the stirring scenes of castle and tournament and distant adventure, the age of the troubadour, of an idealized warfare and an idealized love, the age which had expressed one side of itself in his brother Henry, expressed a more manly side in Richard. He was first of all a warrior; not a general but a fighter. The wild enthusiasm of the hand-to-hand conflict, the matching of skill against skill and of strength against strength, was an intense pleasure to him, and his superiority in the tactics of the battle-field, in the planning and management of a fight, or even of a series of attacks or defences, a march or a retreat, placed him easily in the front rank of commanders in an age when the larger strategy of the highest order of generalship had little place. Of England he had no knowledge. He was born there, and he had paid it two brief visits before his coronation, but he knew nothing of the language or the people. He had spent all his life in his southern dominions, and the south had made him what he was. His interest in England was chiefly as a source of supplies, and to him the crusade was, by the necessities of his nature, of greater importance than the real business of a king. For England itself the period was one during which there was no king, though it was by the authority of an absent king that a series of great ministers carried forward the development of the machinery and law which had begun to be put into organized form in Henry"s reign, and carried forward also the training of the cla.s.ses who had a share in public affairs for the approaching crisis of their history. From this point of view the exceedingly burdensome demands of Richard upon his English subjects are the most important feature of his time.
At the beginning of his reign Richard had, like his father, a great work to do, great at least from his point of view; but the difference between the two tasks shows how thoroughly Henry had performed his. Richard"s problem was to get as much money as possible for the expenses of the crusade, and to arrange things, if possible, in such a shape that the existing peace and quiet would be undisturbed during his absence. About the business of raising money he set immediately and thoroughly. The medieval king had many things to sell which are denied the modern sovereign: offices, favour, and pardons, the rights of the crown, and even in some cases the rights of the purchaser himself. This was Richard"s chief resource. "The king exposed for sale," as a chronicler of the time said,[53] "everything that he had"; or as another said,[54] "whoever wished, bought of the king his own and others" rights": not merely was the willing purchaser welcome, but the unwilling was compelled to buy wherever possible. Ranulf Glanvill, the great judge, Henry"s justiciar and "the eye of the king," was compelled to resign and to purchase his liberty with the great sum, it is a.s.serted, of 15,000. In most of the counties the former sheriffs were removed and fined, and the offices thus vacated were sold to the highest bidder. The Bishop of Durham, Hugh de Puiset, bought the earldom of Northumberland and the justiciarship of England; the Bishop of Winchester and the Abbot of St. Edmund"s bought manors which belonged of right to their churches; the Bishop of Coventry bought a priory and the sheriffdoms of three counties; even the king"s own devoted follower, William of Longchamp, paid 3000 to be chancellor of the kingdom. Sales like these were not unusual in the practice of kings, nor would they have occasioned much remark at the time, if the matter had not been carried to such extremes, and the rights and interests of the kingdom so openly disregarded. The most flagrant case of this sort was that relating to the liege homage of the king of Scotland, which Henry had exacted by formal treaty from William the Lion and his barons. In December, 1189, King William was escorted to Richard at Canterbury by Geoffrey, Archbishop of York and the barons of Yorkshire, and there did homage for his English lands, but was, on a payment of 10,000 marks, released from whatever obligations he had a.s.sumed in addition to those of former Scottish kings.
Nothing could show more clearly than this how different were the interests of Richard from his father"s, or how little he troubled himself about the future of his kingdom.
Already before this incident, which preceded Richard"s departure by only a few days, many of his arrangements for the care of the kingdom in his absence had been made. At a great council held at Pipewell abbey near Geddington on September 15, vacant bishoprics were filled with men whose names were to be conspicuous in the period now beginning. Richard"s chancellor, William Longchamp, was made Bishop of Ely; Richard Fitz Nigel, of the family of Roger of Salisbury, son of Nigel, Bishop of Ely, and like his ancestors long employed in the exchequer and to be continued in that service, was made Bishop of London; Hubert Walter, a connexion of Ranulf Glanvill, and trained by him for more important office than was now intrusted to him, became Bishop of Salisbury; and Geoffrey"s appointment to York was confirmed. The responsibility of the justiciarship was at the same time divided between Bishop Hugh of Durham and the Earl of Ess.e.x, who, however, shortly died, and in his place was appointed William Longchamp. With them were a.s.sociated as a.s.sistant justices five others, of whom two were William Marshal, now possessing the earldom of Pembroke, and Geoffrey Fitz Peter himself afterwards justiciar. At Canterbury, in December, further dispositions were made.
Richard had great confidence in his mother, and with good reason.
Although she was now nearly seventy years of age, she was still vigorous in mind and body, and she was always faithful to the interests of her sons, and wise and skilful in the a.s.sistance which she gave them. Richard seems to have left her with some ultimate authority in the state, and he richly provided for her wants. He a.s.signed her the provision which his father had already made for her, and added also that which Henry I had made for his queen and Stephen for his, so that, as was remarked at the time, she had the endowment of three queens. John was not recognized as heir nor a.s.signed any authority. Perhaps Richard hoped to escape in this way the troubles of his father, but, perhaps remembering also how much a scanty income had had to do with his brother Henry"s discontent, he gave him almost the endowment of a king. Besides the grants already made to him in Normandy, and rich additions since his coming to England, he now conferred on him all the royal revenues of the four south-western counties of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, and Somerset. He already held the counties of Derby and Nottingham. Richard plainly intended that political rights should not go with these grants, but he shows very little knowledge of John"s character or appreciation of the temptation which he put in his way in the possession of a great princ.i.p.ality lacking only the finishing touches.
John"s position was not the only source from which speedy trouble was threatened when Richard crossed to Normandy on December 11. He had prepared another, equally certain, in the arrangement which had been made for the justiciarship. It was absurd to expect Hugh of Puiset and William Longchamp to work in the same yoke. In spirit and birth Hugh was an aristocrat of the highest type. Of not remote royal descent, a relative of the kings both of England and France, he was a proud, worldly-minded, intensely ambitious prelate of the feudal sort and of great power, almost a reigning prince in the north. Longchamp was of the cla.s.s of men who rise in the service of kings. Not of peasant birth, though but little above it, he owed everything to his zealous devotion to the interests of Richard, and, as is usually the case with such men, he had an immense confidence in himself; he was determined to be master, and he was as proud of his position and abilities as was the Bishop of Durham of his blood. Besides this he was naturally of an overbearing disposition and very contemptuous of those whom he regarded as inferior to himself in any particular. Hugh in turn felt, no doubt, a great contempt for him, but Longchamp had no hesitation in measuring himself with the bishop. Soon after the departure of the king he turned Hugh out of the exchequer and took his county of Northumberland away from him. Other high-handed proceedings followed, and many appeals against his chancellor were carried to Richard in France. To rearrange matters a great council was summoned to meet in Normandy about the end of winter. The result was that Richard sustained his minister as Longchamp had doubtless felt sure would be the case. The Humber was made a dividing line between the two justiciars, while the pope was asked to make Longchamp legate in England during the absence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was going on the crusade. Perhaps Richard now began to suspect that he had been preparing trouble for England instead of peace, for at the same time he exacted an oath from his brothers, Geoffrey, whose troubles with his church of York had already begun, and John, not to return to England for three years; but John was soon after released from his oath at the request of his mother.
Richard was impatient to be gone on the crusade, and he might now believe that England could be safely left to itself; but many other things delayed the expedition, and the setting out was finally postponed, by agreement with Philip, to June 24. The third crusade is the most generally interesting of all the series, because of the place which it has taken in literature; because of the greatness of its leaders and their exploits; of the knightly character of Saladin himself; of the pathetic fate of the old Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who lost his life and sacrificed most of his army in an attempt to force his way overland through Asia Minor; and of its real failure after so great an expenditure of life and effort and so many minor successes--the most brilliant of all the crusades, the one great crusade of the age of chivalry: but it concerns the history of England even less than does the continental policy of her kings. It belongs rather to the personal history of Richard, and as such it serves to explain his character and to show why England was left to herself during his reign.
Richard and Philip met at Vezelai at the end of June, 1190, to begin the crusade. There they made a new treaty of alliance and agreed to the equal division of all the advantages to be gained in the expedition, and from thence Richard marched down the Rhone to Ma.r.s.eilles, where he took ship on August 7, and, by leisurely stages along the coast of Italy, went on to Messina which he reached on September 23. Much there was to occupy Richard"s attention in Sicily. Philip had already reached Messina before him, and many questions arose between them, the most important of which was that of Richard"s marriage. Towards the end of the winter Queen Eleanor came to Sicily, bringing with her Berengaria, the daughter of the king of Navarre, whom Richard had earlier known and admired, and whom he had now decided to marry. Naturally Philip objected, since Richard had definitely promised to marry his sister Adela; but now he flatly refused to marry one of whose relations with his father evil stories were told.
By the intervention of the Count of Flanders a new treaty was made, and Richard was released from his engagement, paying 10,000 marks to the king of France. Quarrels with the inhabitants of Messina, due partly to the lawlessness of the crusaders and partly to Richard"s overbearing disposition, led to almost open hostilities, and indirectly to jealousy on the part of the French. Domestic politics in the kingdom of Sicily were a further source of trouble. Richard"s brother-in-law, King William, had died a year before the arrival of the crusaders, and the throne was in dispute between Henry VI, the new king of Germany, who had married Constance, William"s aunt and heiress, and Tancred, an illegitimate descendant of the Norman house. Tancred was in possession, and to Richard, no doubt, the support of Sicily at the time seemed more important than the abstract question of right or the distant effect of his policy on the crusade. Accordingly a treaty was made, Tancred was recognized as king, and a large sum of money was paid to Richard; but to Henry VI the treaty was a new cause of hostility against the king of England, added to his relationship with the house of Guelf. The winter in Sicily, which to the modern mind seems an unnecessary waste of time, had added thus to the difficulties of the crusade new causes of ill-feeling between the French and English, and given a new reason for suspicion to the Germans.
It was only on April 10, 1191, that Richard at last set sail on the real crusade. He sent on a little before him his intended bride, Berengaria, with his sister Joanna, the widowed queen of Sicily. The voyage proved a long and stormy one, and it was not until May 6 that the fleet came together, with some losses, in the harbour of Limasol in Cyprus. The ruler of Cyprus, Isaac, of the house of Comnenus, who called himself emperor, showed so inhospitable a mein that Richard felt called upon to attack and finally to overthrow and imprison him and to take possession of the island. This conquest, in a moment of anger and quite in accordance with the character of Richard, though hardly to be justified even by the international law of that time, was in the end the most important and most permanent success of the third crusade. Shortly before his return home Richard gave the island to Guy of Lusignan, to make up to him his loss of the kingdom of Jerusalem; and his descendants and their successors retained it for four centuries, an outpost of Christendom against the advancing power of the Turks. In Cyprus Richard was married to Berengaria, and on June 5 he set sail for Acre, where he arrived on the 8th.
The siege of the important port and fortress of Acre, which had been taken by Saladin shortly before the fall of Jerusalem, had been begun by Guy of Lusignan at the end of August, 1189, as the first step toward the recovery of his kingdom. Saladin, recognizing the importance of the post, had come up with an army a few days later, and had in turn besieged the besiegers. This situation had not materially changed at the time of Richard"s arrival. Both the town and the besiegers" camp had remained open to the sea, but though many reinforcements of new crusaders had come to the Christians almost from the beginning of the siege, little real progress had been made; even the arrival of King Philip in April had made no important change. Richard, on landing, found a condition of things that required the exercise of the utmost tact and skill. Not merely was the military problem one of the greatest difficulty, but the bitter factional dissensions of the native lords of Palestine made a successful issue almost hopeless. Guy of Lusignan had never been a popular king, and during the siege his wife Sibyl and their two daughters had died, while his rival, Conrad marquis of Montferrat, had persuaded his sister Isabel to divorce her husband and to marry him. The result was a conflict for the crown, which divided the interests and embittered the spirits of those whom the crusaders had come to aid. Philip had declared for Conrad.
Guy was a man somewhat of Richard"s own type, and he would have been attracted to him apart from the natural effect of Philip"s action. One who is disposed to deny to Richard the qualities of the highest generalship must admit that he handled the difficult and complicated affairs he had to control with great patience and unusual self-command, and that he probably accomplished as much in the circ.u.mstances as any one could have done.
The siege was now pressed with more vigour, and before the middle of July, Acre surrendered. Then Philip, whose heart was always in his plans at home, pleaded ill health and returned to France. After this began the slow advance on Jerusalem, Saladin"s troops hanging on the line of march and constantly attacking in small bodies, while the crusaders suffered greatly from the climate and from lack of supplies. So great were the difficulties which Richard had not foreseen that at one time he was disposed to give up the attempt and to secure what he could by treaty, but the negotiations failed. The battle of Arsuf gave him an opportunity to exercise his peculiar talents, and the Saracens were badly defeated; but the advance was not made any the easier. By the last day of the year the army had struggled through to within ten miles of the holy city.
There a halt was made; a council of war was held on January 13,1192, and it was decided, much against the will of Richard, to return and occupy Ascalon before attempting to take and hold Jerusalem--probably a wise decision unless the city were to be held merely as material for negotiation. Various attempts to bring the war to an end by treaty had been going on during the whole march; Richard had even offered his sister, Joanna, in marriage to Saladin"s brother, whether seriously or not it is hardly possible to say; but the demands of the two parties remained too far apart for an agreement to be reached. The winter and spring were occupied with the refortification of Ascalon and with the dissensions of the factions, the French finally withdrawing from Richard"s army and going to Acre. In April the Marquis Conrad was a.s.sa.s.sinated by emissaries of "the Old Man of the Mountain"; Guy had little support for the throne except from Richard; and both parties found it easy to agree on Henry of Champagne, grandson of Queen Eleanor and Louis VII, and so nephew at once of Philip and Richard, and he was immediately proclaimed king on marrying Conrad"s widow, Isabel. Richard provided for Guy by transferring to him the island of Cyprus as a new kingdom. On June 7 began the second march to Jerusalem, the army this time suffering from the heats of summer as before they had suffered from the winter climate of Palestine. They reached the same point as in the first advance, and there halted again; and though all were greatly encouraged by Richard"s brilliant capture of a rich Saracen caravan, he himself was now convinced that success was impossible. On his arrival Richard had pushed forward with a scouting party until he could see the walls of the city in the distance, and obliged to be satisfied with this, he retreated in July to Acre. One more brilliant exploit of Richard"s own kind remained for him to perform, the most brilliant of all perhaps, the relief of Joppa which Saladin was just on the point of taking when Richard with a small force saved the town and forced the Saracens to retire. On September 2 a truce for three years was made, and the third crusade was at an end. The progress of Saladin had been checked, a series of towns along the coast had been recovered, and the kingdom of Cyprus had been created; these were the results which had been gained by the expenditure of an enormous treasure and thousands of lives. Who shall say whether they were worth the cost.
During all the summer Richard had been impatient to return to England, and his impatience had been due not alone to his discouragement with the hopeless conditions in Palestine, but partly to the news which had reached him from home. Ever since he left France, in fact, messages had been coming to him from one and another, and the story they told was not of a happy situation. Exactly those things had happened which ought to have been expected. Soon after the council in Normandy, William Longchamp had freed himself from his rival Hugh of Durham by placing him under arrest and forcing him to surrender everything he had bought of the king.
Then for many months the chancellor ruled England as he would, going about the country with a great train, almost in royal state, so that a chronicler writing probably from personal observation laments the fact that a house that entertained him for a night hardly recovered from the infliction in three years. Even more oppressive on the community as a whole were the constant exactions of money which he had to make for the king"s expenses. The return of John to England in 1190, or early in 1191, made at first no change, but discontent with the chancellor"s conduct would naturally look to him for leadership, and it is likely John was made ready to head an active opposition by the discovery of negotiations between Longchamp and the king of Scotland for the recognition of Arthur of Britanny as the heir to the kingdom, negotiations begun--so the chancellor said--under orders from Richard. About the middle of summer, 1191, actual hostilities seemed about to begin. Longchamp"s attempt to discipline Gerard of Camville, holder of Lincoln castle and sheriff of Lincolnshire, was resisted by John, who seized the royal castles of Nottingham and Tickhill. Civil war was only averted by the intervention of Walter of Coutances, Archbishop of Rouen, who had arrived in England in the spring with authority from the king to interfere with the administration of Longchamp if it seemed to him and the council wise to do so. By his influence peace was made, at an a.s.sembly of the barons at Winchester, on the whole not to the disadvantage of John, and embodied in a doc.u.ment which is almost a formal treaty. One clause of this agreement is of special interest as a sign of the trend of thought and as foreshadowing a famous clause in a more important doc.u.ment soon to be drawn up. The parties agreed that henceforth no baron or free tenant should be disseized of land or goods by the king"s justices or servants without a trial according to the customs and a.s.sizes of the land, or by the direct orders of the king. The clause points not merely forward but backward, and shows what had no doubt frequently occurred since the departure of the king.