Louis: The French Prince Who Invaded England (15 page)

Four sons of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine had lived to adulthood, two of whom (Henry the Young King and Richard the Lionheart) had died childless. Other than John’s children the only surviving descendant in the male line was the unfortunate Eleanor of Brittany, daughter of John’s elder brother Geoffrey (and therefore with a better claim to the throne than John himself if primogeniture were to be observed strictly), who was living out her life in close confinement at John’s order. Henry II and Eleanor also had three daughters, who were by now all dead: Matilda, Eleanor and Joanna. Matilda was the mother of Otto, the erstwhile Holy Roman Emperor who had been defeated at Bouvines; Otto himself had a living older brother, Henry. Eleanor was the mother of Louis’s wife Blanche, and it was from her that he derived his hereditary claim. The youngest sister, Joanna, had been married to Raymond VI, count of Toulouse, and there was one surviving son to the marriage, also named Raymond, who was in his teens.

As Joanna had been the youngest sister the claims of her descendants could safely be ignored and, besides, her widower and son were embroiled in the wars in the south of France and busy trying to get their county back from Simon de Montfort. The imprisoned Eleanor of Brittany does not seem to have been mentioned by anyone, her captive status rendering her ineligible. She was thirty-two and unmarried, so in theory a claim could have been raised by anyone who could break her out of John’s custody and marry her. Louis cut this off by declaring rather speciously that as Geoffrey Plantagenet had been dead since before John’s ‘condemnation’ in 1203, he could not transmit a right which he had never possessed. The same argument was also made against the children of Matilda, who had died in 1189, so they were pushed out of the queue as well. Her sons were in any case not in a position to mount any claim to the English throne: Henry had extensive lands in Germany and had no interest outside the borders of the empire; Otto was still licking his wounds after Bouvines and would not be able to raise an army. Henry and Otto had also had a younger brother William and a sister Matilda, both now deceased but with one surviving son each: William’s was a small child located deep in Germany, while Matilda’s was the French count of Perche, who was not about to advance a counterclaim against that of his liege lord.

That left John’s middle sister, Eleanor, who was Blanche’s mother. Of course, a further complication here was that Blanche had two living older sisters: Berengaria, queen of León (a realm neighbouring Castile and covering what is now north-western Spain and northern Portugal), and Urraca, now queen of Portugal (then comprising the southern two-thirds of its current area). The increasingly desperate Guala pointed out that if Louis’s previous arguments were correct, then King Alfonso of León had first call on the English throne. Louis countered this by saying in all innocence that if Alfonso wanted to raise a campaign to claim the crown then he would do everything he could to support him; he would have known that this was very unlikely, as Berengaria had separated from her husband on the grounds of consanguinity and was now living back in Castile as regent for the new king there, her eleven-year-old brother Henry.

To us it may seem as though Louis was simply erasing at will from the succession anyone who stood in his way. However, we must consider this in the context of the early thirteenth century. As we have already noted, at the time there was a certain fluidity to the principles of primogeniture in favour of the interests and practicalities of the moment, with an adult male heir being much preferred even if he had less of a hereditary claim. There would be little point in the monarch being someone who was not vigorous enough, powerful enough, and backed by enough resources to win the campaign and keep the crown – that would simply be a recipe for ongoing disputes and wars such as those which had marred the Holy Roman Empire for the best part of two decades. All that was really needed was a blood claim and enough resources to back it up. If William the Conqueror could invade in 1066, kill the existing king and take the throne, and if his grandson Stephen could sail to England in 1135, usurp the direct heir Matilda and be crowned in her stead, then why could not Louis do the same?

Louis also made the valid point that he could claim the throne by right of election. The barons had invited and accepted him; if they acclaimed him king and he was crowned, then who would gainsay him? Again, this has parallels with King Stephen, who, although feeling entitled to trample over the rights of his cousin, was the son of the youngest of William the Conqueror’s five daughters and had at the time of his coronation at least one and possibly two living older brothers; therefore he could not justifiably claim to be king by hereditary right. This may have been on Louis’s mind all along, and there is a hint, in a letter he sent to the Abbey of St Augustine in Canterbury in May 1216, that John’s coronation in 1199 had actually been by virtue of election and not by right of succession – he had after all pushed past the two nearer heirs, Arthur of Brittany and his sister Eleanor – thus lending legitimacy to Louis’s claim that he could do the same.

The momentum seemed to be going Louis’s way, but Guala still had what he thought was a trump card to play: John had taken the cross and so his lands were under the protection of the Church and could not be attacked; and England was in any case a papal fief held by John from the pope. Louis had an answer to this, too: he had made no peace or truce with John since his (supposed) condemnation in 1203, so John’s crusading vow of 1215 did not protect him in this instance; also, John had attacked his lands in Artois in 1213 so Louis had the right of reprisal; and, finally, as John did not legally possess the crown of England, he was not entitled to cede the kingdom as a papal fief so the agreement was void.

Looking at Louis’s claim as a whole it is evident that very few of his individual points would stand on their own. However, when put together they provided him at least with the semblance of a legitimate claim to the throne, and the momentum was with him: he had a blood claim via his wife, he was keen and he had the resources to mount and sustain a campaign. But Guala had one last ace up his sleeve: his influence over King Philip. Philip, let us not forget, had only recently been reconciled with the pope after the years of conflict, excommunication and Interdict occasioned by his treatment of Ingeborg. He did not want to endanger his papal relations now and Guala played on this, demanding that he forbid his son from invading England under pain of excommunication.

At this point Louis lost his temper, partly at the threat to his father but mainly at being treated like a minor of no account. He was twenty-eight and a seasoned warrior and leader, not a boy to be sent to bed with no supper. The crown had been offered to him, not to Philip. He declared that Philip was of course his overlord for his lands in France, but that he could have no say in his rights to the throne of England. According to Roger of Wendover his reply was firm as he appealed to the council:

‘I therefore throw myself on the decision of my peers, as to whether you ought to hinder me from seeking my rights, and especially a right in which you cannot afford me justice. I therefore ask of you not to obstruct my purpose of seeking my rights, because, for the inheritance of my wife I will, if necessary, contend even unto death.’ And with these words Louis retired from the conference with his followers.

Philip Augustus was not a man to fall for melodramatic cloak-swirling, but this did leave him in a quandary. His subsequent actions are open to interpretation: he announced that he would not support Louis in his campaign; he would not forbid him to go, but he would not prevent him either. Whether he genuinely opposed Louis but felt that his jurisdiction did not extend to England, whether he was afraid of a further excommunication, whether he simply did not want to underwrite what might be a losing cause, or whether he actually supported Louis but wanted to appease the pope, we cannot know. William the Breton, loyal to Philip, says quite definitively that Philip refused to support his son so as not to offend the pope (having already noted specifically that Louis sent the first contingent of 140 knights ‘against the will of his father’). But it does seem plausible that Philip’s official washing of hands masked a more covert personal support that he may have conveyed to his son behind closed doors. In his
Chronicle of the Kings of France
the Anonymous of Béthune says that ‘his father publicly made it appear as though he did not want to be involved because of the truce he had granted [i.e. reconciliation with the pope]; but privately, it was believed that he had advised him’. The last word on the subject shall go to the Minstrel of Reims, who depicts a heated conversation between father and son ending thus: ‘“By the lance of St James,” said the king, “do whatever you like, but you will never succeed, as the English are traitors and felons, and they will never keep their word to you.”’ It is ironic that this most maligned and least reliable of chroniclers should be the one proved right in the end.

One last point to note on this subject is that Innocent, too, may have been playing a double game. He let his legate rant against Louis and Philip, threatening excommunication, but made no moves to do so himself and made no personal announcement on the subject. Guala left the French court in something of a huff after the assembly and headed for England, with a warning from Philip ringing in his ears that he was assured safe conduct while he was on French soil, but that the king was not to be blamed if Guala should just happen to fall prey to pirates on the sea.

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Louis was now free to make his preparations for invasion. A fleet of some 800 ships began to assemble at Wissant, Gravelines, Boulogne and Calais and troops were sent there as they were raised. Louis was able to call up from his own lands those who owed him military service, but he would need more men than this. As Philip was not officially supporting him he could not call on anyone who owed service to the French crown, so he needed to recruit privately. In some quarters he met with little success. One of the greatest landowners in France was Odo III, the duke of Burgundy, but as he was making his own preparations to go to the Holy Land he refused to engage personally and would agree only to a loan of 1,000 marks; he would not live long enough to be repaid, dying on his journey east. Another great lord was the count of Champagne; this was Theobald IV who was at the time still a minor (having been born posthumously to the previous count in 1201 and then placed in the household of Louis and Blanche, as we saw earlier) so the decisions were made by his mother, Blanche of Champagne, the dowager countess. She also refused to supply men or funds on the pretext that she could not sanction an attack on a crusader (meaning John, although as we have noted he had never been within a thousand miles of the Holy Land). Some of Louis’s men got overexcited and paid her a personal call while she was sitting down to a meal, scaring her so much that she fled the table. King Philip was angry when he heard of the incident and demanded that the men be put in prison, to which Louis agreed.

In truth Louis did not need to go to such lengths, as other nobles were flocking to his banner. His friends were there, of course, including the Dreux brothers – although Peter was tied up with immediate responsibilities in Brittany and agreed to sail at a later date – the counts of Bar and St Pol, and Simon Langton. Others who had a taste for adventure or a grudge against John volunteered: William des Roches, William des Barres and William the count of Holland. Another who joined Louis, possibly with an eye to the main chance, was Hervé de Donzy, the count of Nevers, Auxerre and Tonnere, who as a senior nobleman would be Louis’s second-in-command. Hervé was something of a slippery character (the author of the
History of William Marshal
goes so far as to call him ‘an arrogant and vicious man’) who was not constant in his loyalties. He had supported the French against the English in Normandy in 1203–4 and had been in French service on the Albigensian crusade in 1208, although he had gone home after forty days, the exact period of service which he owed. But by 1214 he had wavered; he fought against King Philip at Bouvines. In contrast to other traitorous lords, Hervé had somehow inveigled his way back into royal favour afterwards; this may have had something to do with the fact that his only son died in 1214 so he was left with one daughter, Agnes, who became his sole heiress and who thus represented a chance to annex Hervé’s three counties to the royal domain. She was now betrothed to Louis’s elder son Philip, so if Hervé played his cards right and stayed in royal favour he could expect that in due course his daughter would be queen consort and his grandson would one day be king.

Between them, the lords brought some 1,200 knights, a large force for the time. None of the chroniclers gives a precise figure for the number of non-knightly soldiers who made up the rest of the host, but judging by what we know of early thirteenth-century armies, and by the number of ships, it would be reasonable to assume that there were about two to three times as many again.

The final figure of note in Louis’s company was the sea captain and commander of the fleet, Eustace the Monk. Eustace, a colourful figure and one of the few non-royal, non-knightly, non-saintly men to have an entire medieval text written about him (the
Romance of Eustace the Monk
), had at one time been committed to the cloister by his family, hence his nickname. But he fled the monastery and eventually became a maritime mercenary operating in the Channel from a base on the island of Sark. He began selling his services to John in 1205 and attacked the Normandy coast for him in an attempt to regain the duchy; although he did not conquer the land he did destroy many French ships. With a free-and-easy attitude towards loyalty and honesty he also raided English towns, but as without him John did not have the naval strength he needed, this was conveniently overlooked. However, Eustace had a long-standing enmity with Renaud de Dammartin, so when Renaud entered into alliance with John in 1212 and demanded that John rid himself of his pirate, Eustace offered his services to Philip instead. He had been in French service ever since, raiding English towns and ships, and was now appointed admiral of Louis’s fleet. His ship was to be the flagship on which Louis and his chief adviser Simon Langton travelled.