Lionheart (12 page)

The meeting took place on 21 September, Henry II as usual spinning out the negotiations – this time by agreeing to depart on crusade with Louis, as well as confirming that Alais would marry Richard, bringing the Berry as her dowry, and that Marguerite’s dowry was indeed the Vexin.
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If that was the devious side of his character, he subsequently showed his quality as a law-giver in complying with his bishops’ requests to make illegal in all the continental possessions the evil practice of forcing vassals and vavasours to pay the enormous ransoms due when their overlords were taken prisoner in
mêlées
, failing which they could be sent to prison as debtors. Under the new law, it was up to the captive to arrange payment of the ransom by mortgaging future revenue until the debt was discharged.
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This problem did not arise in England, where the
mêlée
was illegal.

The problem of the mercenaries raised its head again in October, when Henry II ordered Richard back to Poitou, where Count Vulgrin of Angoulême was ravaging the country with several armed bands. Richard’s seneschal Thibault Chabot had insufficient troops to put them down, so the bishop of Poitiers followed the example of Limoges the previous year and reinforced Thibault’s troops from his own funds to take on the combined mercenaries at Barbezieux, near Angoulême. In the resulting battle, all but a handful of mercenaries were killed, the few survivors taking refuge in a nearby castle. That was not enough for Richard, who proceeded to wreak vengeance on Vulgrin’s vassal Viscount Aymar, taking Aymar’s fortress at Limoges by storm.

With Poitou and Aquitaine enjoying comparative stability, he then raced into the Berry, where there was some unfinished business that Young Henry had failed to sort out. After the death of her father while returning from crusade in 1176 and the deaths of her two brothers, who drowned in a hunting accident, a whole sweep of territory said to be worth more than all of Normandy was inherited by 3-year-old Denise de Déols. Henry II had demanded that she be handed over to him as her overlord, but she had been kidnapped by the lord of La Châtre who now, seeing Henry II’s Normans and Richard’s troops converging on his castle where the girl was kept, lost courage and handed her over without a struggle. Conducted to Chinon, Denise was then despatched to England and married to Baudouin de Revers for reasons unknown. Her husband must have been delighted, seeing his personal fortune grow overnight from a small fief on the Isle of Wight to embrace a large piece of central France including the city of Châteauroux
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and both Henry II and Richard could congratulate themselves on extending Poitevin influence further into central France, nibbling away at the lands loyal to Louis VII.

Immediately south of Déols-Châteauroux lay another feudal untidiness, in which Richard had an interest. This was the county of La Marche, so called because it lay between his lands and territory of Louis’ vassal the duke of Burgundy. Count Audebert IV had killed a knight in cold blood, after catching him paying court to the countess, whom he then sent away. When his only son died, it was taken as divine retribution for the murder, for there were no other close relatives, other than those in holy orders. After fruitlessly requesting Henry’s confirmation of his title – and nearly being locked up for this temerity – Audebert decided to atone for his sins on crusade and sell the title to his lands to Henry II. He therefore led all his vassals and vavasours to the abbey of Grandmont, where the old king was staying, and had them do homage to him and to Richard, receiving for his pains 5,000 silver marks plus twenty mules and twenty palfreys – these last to equip him for the journey to the Holy Land.
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Temporarily satisfied with these extensions of the continental possessions, Henry II decided to hold his Christmas court of 1177 in Angers, from where he had set out to marry Eleanor a quarter-century earlier. To make the point that he had returned to retake possession of his ancestral lands, he summoned more vassals than had attended his own coronation or those of Young Henry. The effect on the three older princes standing beside him as fealty was sworn by vassal after vassal was a salutary reminder that they were not the absolute lords of the territories whose titles they bore, so long as their father lived. Given the character of Young Henry and Richard, their thoughts on this occasion can reasonably be guessed.

In March 1178 Henry II was on the move again, dragging Richard with him to Normandy and taking the bizarre precaution before crossing to England on 15 July to place all his continental possessions under the protection of his feudal overlord Louis VII, which can be taken to mean that he, who never hesitated to go back on his word, nevertheless trusted Louis not to do the same thing and invade Plantagenet territory whilst he was gone.

With his father safely across the Channel, Richard rode back to Aquitaine, the pacification of which Henry had ordered him to complete. As usual, the most unrest was in the south, near the Pyrenees, where Count Centulle of Bigorre had attempted to take Dax but had himself been taken prisoner by the militia of the city. There now ensued one of those feudal negotiations that baffle the modern mind. After Richard reached Dax with a task force of knights and men-at-arms from Bayonne to punish Centulle for defying his and the old king’s authority, who should arrive but King Alfonso II of Aragon, pleading his close relationship with Centulle, begging Richard’s forgiveness and promising that Centulle would never again defy his overlords. Richard gave in and released the count of Bigorre, but only after taking possession of his two most important castles.

Interestingly, when rewarding the lords and people of Bayonne for their support, the wording of the charter made plain that it was made not only in his own name, but also that of Henry II. What could be given with one hand could be taken away with the other. Repairing to the ancient Roman capital of Saintes for his Christmas court, Richard considered how to punish Geoffroy de Rancon – the lord of Taillebourg, who had been given him asylum in 1174 to save him from his father’s wrath. Gratitude was, as Alfred Richard observed, not a quality Richard possessed. At the end of the festivities he launched an attack, first on Rancon’s castle at Pons, which held out for two months and showed no sign of capitulation. After Easter, Richard changed tack and left the siege in place, departing with part of his forces to reduce the castle of Richemond, which he tore down after only three days of siege. Emboldened by this, he attacked, took and destroyed four more castles of Rancon’s vassals before returning to Taillebourg. Alfred Richard recorded the events thus:

Richard attacked with his usual savagery. As soon as he was on the lands of the lord of Taillebourg, he tore up the vines, burned down isolated houses and laid waste whole villages, reducing the population to poverty and leaving them no alternative but to join one of the bands of
routiers
. Since he well knew the strong points and weaknesses of the castle from the time he had spent there, he installed his siege engines on the most vulnerable side. Geoffroy made a sortie [to destroy them], but was beaten back by Richard’s troops. In the violent combat, a horde of attackers and defenders poured through inside the walls before the gate could be closed, giving Geoffroy no choice but to retreat to the donjon. This was on 8 May. Because many of the garrison had been [killed or] taken prisoner and because provisions were short, a long defence was out of the question. So Geoffroy decided to negotiate. To avoid being taken prisoner, he yielded all his castles, especially the one at Pons. Richard had them razed to the ground, foundations and all.
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With Taillebourg taken, it was only a matter of time before the same ruthless tactics forced Count Vulgrin to yield the city of Angoulême and the fortress of Montignac, which Richard destroyed completely. The region of Saintonge now being pacified to his satisfaction, Richard dismissed his mercenaries, among them many Basques and men from Navarre, who halted outside Bordeaux on their way home to loot and burn everything outside the city walls.

Richard was now 22 years old. Travelling to England, he first made pilgrimage to the shrine of Becket at Canterbury, to cleanse his soul of all the blood he had spilled, then journeyed on to meet Henry. The old king welcomed him, confident that the violence and cruelty of Richard’s recent campaigns against his vassals must have alienated them to the point where he could safely be given the authority that went with the title of duke. Since Eleanor had never renounced her title as duchess, he allowed her to emerge from captivity to do so publicly, in Richard’s favour. Rumour had it that this indicated some kind of reconciliation between them, but she was afterwards again placed under house arrest, although possibly under less rigorous conditions as reward.

Feeling that he had not much longer to live, Louis VII decided to crown his son Philip Augustus on 15 August 1179, but the ceremony had to be delayed due to the young prince’s illness. Fearing that his son might die, Louis made pilgrimage to Becket’s tomb after being given a safe conduct by Henry II, who met him at Dover and escorted him in suitable pomp during the four days he spent in England. Philip Augustus’ subsequent recovery was yet another miracle attributed to Becket, and he was crowned in Reims Cathedral on 1 November in the presence of Richard, Young Henry and Geoffrey as his vassals for the continental possessions.

The coronation was not before time, for Louis was terminally ill and transferred power to Philip Augustus on 28 August 1180 when his son was still two months short of his fifteenth birthday. Less than three months afterwards, on 18 September, Louis VII died and his only son, Philip II Augustus, to give him his full title, became Henry II’s overlord for the continental possessions. He would prove a shrewd and cunning negotiator, quite unlike his gentle father.

Richard passed the next months in more or less continual warfare, criss-crossing Poitou and Aquitaine. In Alfred Richard’s words, he ‘ravaged the country terribly’.
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On occasion, their differences briefly put aside, he was accompanied by Henry II or Young Henry. Whenever lulls occurred, he betook himself with a small number of familiars to Talmont in the Vendée or another forest for equally bloody sport hunting deer and wild boar. Summoned to Henry II’s 1182 Christmas court at Caen, he found there his sister Matilda and her husband Henry the Lion of Saxony, exiled from Germany. They had arrived in France with a large entourage which Henry II, with his habitual parsimony, sent back to Germany so that he would not have to pay for their keep. More than a hundred of the Norman vassals and vavasours attended the celebrations. The troubadour Bertran de Born, as was his wont, grew bored with the civilities and began spreading gossip to liven things up. He was also present to enlist Richard’s and/or Henry II’s support in the long-running disputes with his brother and co-castellan of Autafòrt Castle. While some troubadours were content to compose odes to their ladies and others wrote tender romantic fantasies or moral treatises, Bertran could not resist flirting with Matilda and indiscreetly composed a risqué poem describing her bodily charms. Matilda was ‘not amused’ by this. He was on safer ground when praising combat and bloodshed as the heights of masculine virtue:

Tot jorn contendi e m’baralh,

M’escrim, e m’defen e m’tartalh

E m’fon hom ma terra e la m’art

E m’fai de mos arbres essart …

[I’m always in the thick of the fray. / Skirmishing and fighting, that’s my way. / They waste my lands, leave my fields burnt brown. / Now they’re hacking my trees all down …]

Although the Church protested at the worst excesses, it seems that none in the ranks of the nobility gave a thought for the suffering of the peasants, the fruit of whose labour financed their violent lifestyle. Bertran again:

E platz mi quan li corredor fan las gens e l’aver fugir.

E platz mi quan vei après lor gran re d’armatz ensems venir.

E platz mi em mon coratge quan vei fortz chastels assetjatz

e los barris rotz et esfondratz …

[I love to see the skirmishers putting the common folk to flight. / A host of armed men riding them down is a grand sight. / It warms my heart to see great castles under siege / and ramparts gaping at the breach …]

The pleasures of riding with Richard
en chevauchée
did not buy the loyalty of Bertran, who had as little of that quality as Richard himself. Meeting Young Henry at the old king’s Christmas court of 1182 in Le Mans, Bertran’s devious mind contrived a plan in concert with Viscount Aymar of Limoges, one of many vavasours whom Richard’s recent campaigns had alienated. After Henry II demanded that both Richard and Geoffrey do homage to the Young King, Geoffrey did so, but Richard argued that he and his older brother were equals, being both conceived in the same parents’ bed. He agreed that it was right that the older should inherit their father’s kingdom of England whose crown he wore, in theory at least, and Normandy too, but argued that it was equally right that he, Richard, should enjoy absolute authority in his mother’s lands of Poitou and Aquitaine. Choosing his moment well, Young Henry, incited by Bertran, informed his father that the lords of Poitou and Aquitaine had asked him to depose Richard and replace him as their overlord.