Eleanor Of Aquitaine (48 page)

Peter of Blois wrote to his old school friend, the Bishop of Mainz (who was no friend of the emperor), that the Germans, "those children of perdition, were levying a treasure that would not be drawn from the royal exchequer, but from the patrimony of Christ, the pitiful substance of the poor, the tears of widows, the pittance of monks and nuns, the dowries of maidens, the substance of scholars, the spoils of the church."
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It is the chronicler Newburgh who, in describing the conscription of property, cites the prophet Joel.
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The ravages of the caterpillar left no live shoot upon the vine. As the sluggish tithes flowed in, they were sealed with the queen's own seal and kept for safety in the cathedral of Saint Paul.

It was certainly no mitigation of the difficulty of gathering the hostages that the exiled and sometime excommunicated Bishop of Ely was sent with royal mandate to read off their roster and herd them for transportation to the Rhine.
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With many valuable bishops and barons still abroad, the roll had to be made up partly of prospective heirs to great estates, some of them mere children. Not since Henry Fitz Empress had banished the kin of Becket from the shores of England had such groanings gone up from sundered famlies. This draft was as grievous as that conscription of Eleanor's vassals which Louis Capet long before, in the green days of his statecraft, had mustered for banishment in the public square of Poitiers.

Even Ely, whose tact was never sufficient, realized that his sweet triumph over the regency's sentence of exile might render his mission difficult. He did not approach the shore of Britain as a reinstated chancellor with an army and banners, but came unostentatiously as a simple bishop, a humble instrument of grace, rendering his due service to his captive king. The citizens of London, however, refused to deal with him in any guise, and he dared not show himself in that newly constituted commune. In these spring days Philip Augustus was making his incursions in Normandy. The queen, desperate over the course of events and the dangers of delay, met Ely with some of the magnates at Saint Albans and with him threshed out the horrible business of the roster. In the course of the arrangements, she held out stoutly against including any of the children of Henry of Saxony, who since their mother's death (with the exception of the two elder sons) had grown up in the courts of the Plantagenets. History bears no detailed records of these interviews, nor of the even more lamentable appeals that must have followed; but there can be no doubt that they were a heavy strain upon the tact and fortitude of the queen, who bore the brunt.

The recruiting of the hostages naturally gave a certain impetus to the raising of the ransom, since the more sterling in the coffers in Saint Paul's, the fewer the number of the hostages required. But even so the collection dragged. The first campaign having yielded far less than the sum required, the queen sent gleaners into the field. A second levy was made, and then a third. In this most difficult of all enterprises, Eleanor did not spare herself. She sent agents abroad to stimulate the sluggish flow of treasure from the lukewarm barons of Anjou and Aquitaine, and from the rich ys along the pilgrim route from Saint Martin's of Tours to the shrines of the paladins near Bordeaux. From the abby of Saint Martial in Limoges, which had had the honor of investing the reigning duke now captive, she extracted the sum of one hundred marks of silver.
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But the labor as a whole progressed at a snail's pace, and every delay was a succor to the king's enemies.

In the intervals of her sudden journeyings, her multifarious interviews, and her eagle eyed oversight of Philip Augustus and John, she found time to address the Pope with urgent correspondence. In her salutation she styles herself "Eleanor, by the wrath of God, Queen of England" She may have employed clerks to put her ideas into impeccable Latin, but the sentiments bear the marks of authenticity.

What afflicts the church and excites the murmur of the people and diminishes their esteem for you, is that, in spite of the tears and lamentations of whole provinces, you have not sent a single nuncio. Often for matters of little importance your cardinals have been sent to remote parts with sovereign powers, but in this desperate and deplorable affair, you have not sent so much as a single subdeacon or even an acolyte.

The kings and princes of the earth have conspired against my son, the anointed of the Lord. One keeps him in chains while another ravages his lands, one holds him by the heels while the other flays him. And while this goes on, the sword of Saint Peter reposes in its scabbard. Three times you have promised to send legates and they have not been sent. In fact, they have rather been leashed than sent [ potius ligati quam legati
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If my son were in prosperity, we should have seen them running at his call, for they well know the munificence of his recompense. Is this the meaning of your promises to me at Chateauroux, made with so many protestations of friendship and good faith? Alas! I know today that the promises of your cardinals are nothing but vain words. Trees are not known by their leaves, nor even by their blossoms, but by their fruits. In this wise we have known your cardinals.

The queen then lifts before the eyes of Celestine the specter that was forever haunting Aquitaine and that had tempted Henry in the days of his trials with Becket: the threat of schism.

Recall when Frederick of Germany, the author and promoter of the great schism, gave his allegiance to that apostate Octavian against the rightful Pope, Alexander, and the Kings of France and England were beset by legates now for one, now for the other, how King Henry, my husband and the father of this king, grieving to see the tunic of Christ longer divided, was first to give allegiance to Alexander, and how he with prudent counsels brought the King of the Franks to a similar allegiance, and thus the ship of Saint Peter, threatened with certain shipwreck, was brought to a safe harbor… But I declare to you that the day foretold by the Apostle is not far distant. The fateful moment is at hand when the tunic of Christ shall be rent again, when the bonds of Saint Peter shall be broken, the catholic unity dissolved.

The letters are long; there is much more to the same general effect, delivered in language searing and forthright.

It is only fair to pause for a reasonable sympathy for the Pope in the situation in which he found himself. He had instantly, upon receiving news of the capture, excommunicated the Duke of Austria for the violation of Richard's immunity as a pilgrim from the Holy Land;
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he had threatened the King of the Franks with an interdict if he should trespass upon the territories of the captive king; and he had menaced the English with interdict if they should fail to raise the ransom.
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But the church was in difficulty with Henry of Hohenstaufen in Italy, and Celestine doubted how far he might proceed against a Holy Roman Emperor who, besides trespassing on papal territories, unleashed agents who displayed a terrible ferocity toward papal emissaries, plucking their beards and cutting their throats with unexampled
Schreclichkeit
Perhaps half the lands in Germany were ecclesiastica, property, and the Pope did not feel sure of the outcome of the issues between the emperor and some of the latter's ecclesiastical feudatories. Perhaps also he did not forget with how firm a besom the queen had recently swept from her frontiers his nuncios when she had not wished to deal with them. With all the concern in the world for "the Lord's anointed," Celestine was obliged to act in the framework of the total situation.

Sometime in June Coeur-de-Lion's employment with the arts of poesy and letter writing and his harmless bouts with his jailers were interrupted by an invitation to make a journey down the Rhine to Worms,
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whither, with the advancing season, Henry of Hohenstaufen presently arrived with his
mesnie
. In the weeks of Pentecost the emperor had had time to revolve in his mind the fearful but tempting prospects unfolded by Philip Augustus; and he had concluded, before meeting Philip in Vaucouleurs,
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to review in Worms the findings of the imperial court four months before in Speyer with respect to the prisoner.

In Worms on the Rhine the imperial court sat impressively in plenary Session for five days. With Richard were the Bishops of Ely and Salisbury, one of his justiciars lately arrived, and Baldwin of Béthune, that noble comrade of crusade whose impersonation of the king had saved him from capture on the seacoast of Istria. How much of the detail of the interchange between Philip Augustus and the emperor transpired to Richard and his company is not clear, for its purport became manifest to Richard, as Hoveden explains, "indirectly"; but it was enough to fill them with consternation. The force of the bribe from France was now felt in the emperor's demand for an increase in the ransom, which was then and there raised by one half, and the roster of the hostages adjusted upward accordingly. The biographer of Guillaume le Maréchal cites Baldwin of Béthune as the most liberal of all the contributors to the sum for the king's release.
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This occasion may have stimulated his generosity. The new compact was sworn to "on the soul of the emperor" and witnessed by the attendant magnates.

To fix the limits of the ransom unequivocally was of critical importance certainly; but more important still it appeared to Coeur-de-Lion to prevent the meeting of Philip and the emperor, as a result of which he seemed very likely to be sold into a Capetian dungeon with small hope of looking out again upon the jocund river valleys of Poitou and Aquitaine. To settle ancient scores with Philip Augustus would require something more than ransom.

In this crisis Coeur-de-Lion had recourse to his brother-in-law, Henry the Lion of Saxony, whose role in securing the king's release is somewhat shadowy in the chronicles.
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Richard had already enlisted the sympathy of the disaffected vassals of the emperor by his candid defense of himself in Speyer. But nowhere had the skill and celerity of Plantagenet diplomacy shown more brilliantly than it now appeared in Worms. For the king succeeded not only in bringing about the concord between Henry of Hohenstaufen and his hostile feudatories, which Philip had only promised to essay in Vaucouleurs, but also in laying the grounds for a peace between the emperor and Henry the Lion, which was a little later confirmed by the marriage of Henry's son and heir to Constance of Hohenstaufen, the cousin of the emperor and the most valuable marriage prize in his bestowal.

The double accord, brought to pass by Coeur-de-Lion, proved a major setback for Philip Augustus: the reconciliation of the emperor and his feudatories brought down the Frankish bargaining power; and the settlement with Henry of Saxony offered the King of the Franks a new and smarting injury. In the course of the spring, fired by a considerable success in Normandy, Philip had cast about for allies with whom to build up a coalition against the Plantagenets. John, as an ally, had proved not much better than a reed, because, since the dispersal of his Flemish mercenaries from the shores of England by the queen's home guard, the regency had prevented his leaving the island and intercepted all communications with him. In looking about for new allies, Philip chose Canute, the King of Denmark, whose sea dogs might be induced, like the Danes of old, to harry the coasts of Britain. To cement the bond, Philip proposed to end his widowhood by marrying the king's sister, Ingeborg. Although King Canute did not commit himself on the matter of attacking England, he dispatched to France the Princess Ingeborg, described by the Frankish chronicler Rigord as a maiden "of great beauty and innocence,"
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with a noble suite and a boatload of presents and equipment. Philip met her processionally in Arras and conveyed her in state to Amiens, where she was duly married
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and crowned Queen of France by Philip's uncle, the Archbishop of Reims.

But even in the midst of the marriage and crowning of Ingeborg, Philip found himself confused by a disturbing afterthought. Awkwardly late he saw how much better it would have been in the circumstances to ingratiate the Holy Roman Emperor by offering a queen's crown to the latter's cousin Constance. 55 Upon inquiry he found that the emperor would favor the alliance and arrangements were made accordingly. So, on the day after his marriage to Ingeborg, Philip dismissed that lady on grounds of consanguinity, gave her leave to return to her brother's court, and sent her household home to Denmark. Preparations were on foot for the more auspicious marriage, when it was suddenly discovered that Constance, thoroughly alarmed at the course events were taking, and not wishing to risk the fate of Ingeborg even for the crown of France, had secretly, with her mother's connivance, married the son of Henry the Lion of Saxony.

The emperor, though he expressed chagrin at the miscarriage of plans to which he had agreed, declared himself unable to undo a marriage in all respects canonical. Ingeborg, instead of going home, took refuge in a convent of nuns at Soissons to weather the tragedy and await an appeal to Rome;
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and Philip Augustus, to fill the measure of his injuries, presently found himself excommunicated for the repudiation of the Danish princess, and the Danes, if there should be any virtue in them, thrown into the camp of the English. The circumstances were so singular that some chroniclers attributed the whole affair to sorcery. If so, it was certainly an operation of the demon of Anjou. When the outcome of the deliberations in Worms became known, Philip found a way to warn John to beware, "for the devil was unloosed."

During the summer the emperor sent his emissaries to Britain to supervise the collection of the ransom and the assembly of the hostages, which, with the dismaying additions agreed to in Worms, dragged through harvest to the end of autumn. The round figure was not completed by the last month of the year, but such a weight of silver had been amassed in London that the emperor decided to wait no longer to possess it. On the 20th of December he wrote to the queen and the magnates as follows: