Read Eleanor of Aquitaine Online
Authors: Marion Meade
Eleanor of Aquitaine (35 page)
Sometime during the early portion of their royal progress in 1157, Henry had concocted a scheme of such audacity that probably only his mind could have conceived it. There had been talk of Louis Capet and probably more than a little mirth over the fact that Louis’s second wife had proved as inept as Eleanor in producing an heir for the French throne. In the four years since Constance of Castile had wed Louis, she had given birth to only one child, a girl named Marguerite, and Louis had been heard to grumble about his alarming superfluity of daughters. Aside from the obvious irony of Eleanor now having two sons and her former husband none, it occurred to Henry that perhaps Louis would never be able to sire an heir. Therefore, he boldly proposed to marry his eldest son to Louis’s new daughter, a stroke of diplomacy that, he hoped, would bring France into the Angevin empire and one day give young Henry the crowns of both England and France.
In view of Louis’s feelings about the parents of Prince Henry, broaching this outrageous idea to him required a considerable amount of tact and delicacy, not to mention nerve. Certainly no mention could be made of the possibility that he might never have a son; the negotiations must be conducted on a more impersonal level, such as Henry’s desire for harmonious relations between the two states. Nor could the mission be undertaken by Henry and certainly not by Eleanor. There remained only Henry’s alter ego, Thomas Becket, a man who possessed the style and diplomatic talent to carry it off.
In the spring of 1157, the chancellor had been reprieved from the barbarities of touring with Henry and dispatched to Paris with an entourage designed and choreographed to overwhelm both Louis and his court. Becket’s trip may have been Henry’s idea, but its details and execution could have been invented by no one but the queen and performed by none other than Thomas Becket. In one respect, Eleanor and Thomas were not so different; they were both adept at staging splendid shows. Collaborators for once, they created a pageant that would leave the Franks gaping in wonder, and it is almost comic to imagine the two of them, sitting in a hovel “pigs would have shunned,” dreaming up a farce that would convince Louis of England’s wealth and persuade him to give up his daughter to a man and woman he hated. When Becket’s embassy rattled across the cobbles of Paris in June 1158, people streamed from their houses to watch him go by. Two hundred and fifty footmen singing Welsh and English songs led the procession, and behind them followed the chancellor’s hounds and greyhounds, led on leashes by their keepers. There were “dogs and birds of every sort that kings and rich men use,” not only falcons but goshawks and sparrow hawks. Eight great wagons, each of them drawn by five horses, were laden with the chancellor’s belongings, and two carried English beer “made from a decoction of grain in water, in iron-bound kegs, to give to the French who marveled at that kind of a liquid, a healthful drink indeed, clear, of the colour of wine, and more pleasant to the taste.” Each wagon was guarded by chained mastiffs and by “a stout lad in a new tunic,” each horse carried a monkey on its back. Behind the wagons came twenty-eight packhorses carrying money, books, chests of gold and silver plate, and the chancellor’s chapel. Finally, as if all this might not be sufficient to stupefy the Parisians, there marched the chancellor’s personal retinue—two hundred squires, knights, clerks, stewards and lesser servants, and the sons of nobles. “All these men and all their followers shone in new holiday attire, each according to his station.” And last of all, surrounded by a few of his intimates, rode the king’s chancellor himself. To the Franks, he looked like a king: certainly, he was dressed like one, and in his chests he had brought twenty-four changes of clothing “whose texture mocks the purple dyes of Tyre,” apparel that he planned to distribute among various influential men in Paris.
Never in their lives could the Franks recall an embassy of such magnificence, and they asked each other who this man Becket could be.
When they learned that he was only a servant of the English king, they said, “Wonderful indeed is this King of the English, whose chancellor comes in such great fashion.” Eleanor could not have hoped for a more satisfactory response if she herself had put the words in their mouths.
In view of this ostentatious display of English wealth, it would have taken powerful extrasensory perception on Louis Capet’s part to guess that his former wife was not living like a Byzantine empress. Becket’s mission to France may have been a state affair, but Eleanor meant it to convey a personal message to Louis; she wanted to show him how far and how high she had come without him. He was a loser, she a winner, a perhaps cruel but common enough emotion among the divorced of any era.
One might think that Louis would have seen through this nonsense or have felt offended by such obvious showing off. But precisely the opposite seems to have happened. Perhaps he was just as bedazzled as his subjects, because he outdid himself as a host. He arranged for the embassy to be lodged in a new hall built by the Templars, the only one in the city spacious enough to accommodate so large a crowd of visitors. He also ordered the markets of Paris closed so that his guests would not be tempted to spend a penny in his capital, but Becket, who had instructions to give instead of take, sent his stewards into the suburbs to buy provisions just the same. The one-upsmanship mushroomed to absurd heights: Louis and his nobles entertained the chancellor’s party at a magnificent feast, but the chancellor, not to be outdone, entertained Louis at an even more sumptuous banquet. Years afterward, the Franks were still talking about how Becket had paid 100s. sterling for a single dish of eels. Spending with the abandon of a man on an unlimited expense account, which is precisely what he had, Becket distributed gifts all over Paris—clothing, dogs. falcons, silver plate, and, of course, those barrels of English beer. In the student quarter, where he had once lived in obscurity during the time of Peter Abelard, he fêted the scholars and their teachers and paid the debts of English students. When it came time for departure, his chests and carts stood empty, but he triumphantly carried back to England the answer for which he had come—Louis’s consent to the betrothal.
For this reason, after the tour had disbanded in the late summer of 1158, Henry had sent Eleanor back to Westminster to tend the kingdom while he rushed to the Continent to arrange the details of the royal alliance. He met with Louis near Gisors, in the Vexin, an appropriate conference site because of the schemes percolating in his fertile mind. In the fateful summer during which he had met Eleanor, it will be recalled, his father gave up the Norman Vexin to Louis as the price of Henry’s recognition as duke of Normandy. There was no region Henry coveted more than this buffer zone between Normandy and the Île-de-France, and he had never regarded its loss as anything but temporary. Now he proposed that Louis dower his daughter with the Vexin and its castles. Since young Henry was only three and Marguerite less than a year, there could be no marriage for at least a decade, and in the meantime, France was to retain control of the Vexin. Louis had no objections, and the meeting ended on a friendly note. Just one detail remained: the transference of the infant Marguerite to Henry’s possession so that she might be brought up, as was customary, with his family until old enough to be married. In September, Henry visited Paris for the first time in seven years, and considering the interim hostility between the two kings, he received a royal welcome from Louis and Constance. Henry’s entrance into the city was in marked contrast to Becket’s. He came as himself, simply dressed with only a few servingmen, playing the role of humble vassal to his liege lord. If there was a touch of hypocrisy here, it went unnoticed, for Louis, responding in kind, played the role dearest to himé&—the monk—and escorted Henry on a tour of Parisian churches, standing happily to one side as Henry distributed large sums of money to the monks.
It was, apparently, a time of remarkable harmony between the two kings, even though the occasion was overcast by the invisible, but palpable, presence of Eleanor. She had not been invited to Paris, of course, nor had Henry ever suggested bringing her. Such a three-way confrontation between the two kings and the woman who had had them both would have been in the height of bad taste, although one suspects that Eleanor might have enjoyed it. Certainly, the men avoided any open discussion of the queen, but finally, although indirectly, she entered the negotiations. Louis, surprisingly agreeable to every term Henry presented, balked at the thought of his daughter being reared by his ex-wife. Indeed, he flatly refused to hear of it. He did not regret retaining custody of her two daughters—how unfeminine and headstrong, how like their mother they might have turned out—nor did he regret their being raised by his pious second queen, who knew the value of docility in a female. Now he had no intention of turning over his third daughter to, in his opinion, an unfit guardian like Eleanor. Slightly annoyed but unwilling to see the alliance collapse over a minor detail, Henry suggested as an alternative that Marguerite be placed in the household of his chief justice for Normandy, Robert of Newburgh, whose castle was located near the French border. Since Newburgh was known to be a man of unimpeachable character and exceptional piety, Louis seemed mollified, and Henry was able to leave Paris with the baby. Throughout the autumn, the mood of conciliation between the Capets and the Plantagenets continued. In November, Louis decided to make a pilgrimage to Mont-Saint-Michel in Normandy and requested permission to pass through Henry’s domains. Not only was it granted, but Henry himself escorted Louis to the abbey high above the sea, hearing Mass with him and dining spartanly in the refectory with the monks. Together in that silent abbey, with only the rush of the tide as background music, they would never be closer, and afterward, Louis was overheard to remark, to the astonishment of his retinue, that he knew of no man so thoroughly lovable as the king of England. After visiting his daughter and approving arrangements for her care, he returned to Paris laden with gifts and the distinct impression that the difficulties between France and England had been mended. It was an impression that would not last for long.
In London, Eleanor had followed developments on the Continent between her present and former husbands with interest and possibly a touch of amusement. Whatever other emotions she may have had at this time, she had good reason to feel gratified. There was peace at home and abroad. The quarrel sparked by her remarriage had been patched, and now her eldest son stood an excellent chance of someday wearing Louis’s crown. In England the year 1158, marked by nothing more important than a new issue of coinage, was closing amid general tranquility. Well satisfied with her administration of the country, assured that every situation remained under control, Eleanor left England in the steady hands of Robert of Leicester and crossed the Channel to celebrate Christmas with Henry at Cherbourg.
Domestically as well as politically, the Christmas court was a happy one. With another son added to their family, with their domains in peace and perfect order and the future so promising that it took one’s breath away, the Plantagenets had much cause for thanksgiving. Possibly one dark cloud dimmed their euphoria, but even that turned out to bear a silver lining. On July 26, Henry’s twenty-four-year-old brother, Geoffrey, had died. Shortly after Henry had bought him off with an annuity in 1156, Geoffrey had stumbled across a piece of good luck that undoubtedly saved him from the temptation of future strife with his brother. Brittany, in a state of anarchy ever since its duke had died twenty years earlier, was beset by rival claimants to the title, and the citizens of its key city, Nantes, tired of lawlessness, had offered the dukedom to Geoffrey. Eager for standing in the world, he accepted with delight. Now, upon his death, Henry had no intention of allowing the duchy to escape from the Plantagenet circumference, even though his claim to Brittany rested on the shakiest of foundations. During his honeymoon with the Franks that fall, he persuaded Louis to recognize him as overlord of Brittany, and he then took an army to Nantes to make certain of the city’s loyalty. When the citizens received him as Geoffrey’s rightful heir, he placed the city under the supervision of a few trusted men. Certainly, Nantes was not the whole of Brittany, but Henry felt positive that the rest of the duchy would follow in time.
With Brittany more or less added to the empire, one might think that the Plantagenets would have been content. On the contrary, their mania for land and more land continued unabated. In this respect, Eleanor was no different from, or better than, her husband. Still laboring under the impression that she and Henry were partners in all enterprises-a justifiable impression at that stage, it must be admitted—she was eager to make a contribution to the Plantagenet holdings. She had, of course, already given him Aquitaine, a gift of dubious value, but now she presented another possibility. Even though Toulouse had not belonged to her family for nearly fifty years, she had never stopped considering the county part of her rightful inheritance. That her grandmother Philippa had ruled there and her father was born there overshadowed the fact that Toulouse had most assuredly passed into the hands of the house of Saint-Gilles. A realist in most ways, Eleanor must have known that Toulouse was irrecoverable by this time, especially after Louis’s botched effort to conquer it eighteen years earlier, but that seemed to make no difference. During the Christmas festivities, when acquisition and expansion were on everyone’s mind, it is easy to see how the subject of Toulouse came up quite naturally and how Henry must have needed little prompting.
At this point there was something curiously self-defeating about the Plantagenets’ decision to gain control of Toulouse, however good their reasons for believing it a rightful portion of Eleanor’s inheritance. Henry already had more territory than he could comfortably supervise, and the last thing he needed was another rebellious province like Aquitaine. Although the Toulousains gave nominal allegiance to the Capetians, their political interests were directed southward to the Mediterranean, to Provence and Barcelona, the far south comprising a distinct region of its own. And what is equally curious at this point is why Henry and Eleanor selected this particular moment to offend Louis Capet, whose sister, Constance, widowed upon the death of King Stephen’s son, Eustace, had married Count Raymond V of Toulouse. In the past four years, Louis’s sister had borne three sons, the only male children of the Capetian royal line as of that time. To press Eleanor’s claim to the county by right of inheritance implied dispossession of Count Raymond and his family, something Louis was unlikely to regard favorably. With peace established between England and France, Henry and Eleanor could have selected no more inauspicious moment to bring up Toulouse. Perhaps Walter Map was correct when he wrote of Henry: “He was impatient of peace and felt no qualm in harassing almost the half of Christendom.” But in this case, it was not merely a matter of impatience ; plain and simple, his motive was greed. Toulouse was a rich county, and Henry could not resist. As for Louis, everyone knew that he could be easily duped.
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