Richard & John: Kings at War (62 page)

The subsidiary expedition from Dartmouth to Poitou did, however, manage to clear from English shores, as did a small force under the earl of Salisbury, sent to shore up the garrison at La Rochelle. The only immediate result was the ransoming of two of John’s cronies taken captive after the fall of Loches and Chinon, Hubert de Burgh and Gérard d’Athée, two men, not coincidentally, cordially loathed by the English barons.
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But John began patiently to lay the foundations for a great campaign in Aquitaine that would take advantage of local antipathy to Philip Augustus. First he strengthened the defences of the Channel Islands - a major way-station on the seaborne route to the Bay of Biscay. In the winter of 1205-06 he built eight huge transport ships and sent chests of treasure to Poitou to consolidate the loyalty of the magnates there.
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Next he undertook an extensive tour of northern England to win hearts and minds in the early months of 1206, successfully whipping up support from the northern lords; the itinerary took him first to Yorkshire and then to Cumberland, Lancashire and Cheshire.
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Finally, he assembled another armada of warships and transports, though on a less spectacular scale than for the ill-fated Normandy expedition of 1205; once again the Cinque Ports were the principal providers. Again the rendezvous was at Portsmouth, though this time there was no foot-dragging by the barons, mainly because the great lords who sailed with him were largely the barons of the north he had so effectively conciliated in his charm offensive a few months earlier.
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John was in good heart, for Niort and La Rochelle still held out, the former courageously defended by Savary de Mauléon, one of the few prisoners taken at Mirebeau and released under a promise of fealty who had actually kept his word.
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With a formidable fleet John and his army sailed for La Rochelle on 29 April and arrived there on 7 June.

John was further encouraged by the influx of Aquitaine vassals eager to fight Philip, but wisely decided he was still not strong enough to try conclusions with Philip in a pitched battle. He therefore marched out to Niort and relieved the defenders there, then feinted towards Poitiers before turning abruptly south towards the Garonne. His objective was the supposedly impregnable castle of Montauban, said to be so secure against attackers that not even the great Charlemagne had been able to breach its defences. John was back to his military best on this campaign. As if in emulation of his legendary brother he took just fifteen days to reduce Montauban, using powerful siege engines. The spoils from Montauban’s fall on 1 August were impressive: not just horses, arms and money but a quantity of wealthy noble prisoners, whose ransom would bring him another small fortune.
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Confident that his position in Aquitaine was now secure, he headed north and was back at Niort by 21 August, whence he proceeded to raid across the Poitou/Berry border. That John was on a winning streak was clear when the ace trimmer, the viscount of Thouars, once more changed his allegiance and returned to John’s fold. As if this was not enough, from England came the news of the death of his old enemy Hubert Walter. John exulted in his usual brutal manner: ‘Now for the first time I am king of England!’ he exclaimed with typical hyperbole.
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With northern Poitou under his control, John next aimed at Anjou, aiming his thrust at the precise point on the Loire where Anjou, Poitou and Britanny meet. After fording the Loire in a histrionic and melodramatic manner, implying that he was a God-endorsed saviour (in reality he took advantage of unusually low water levels), he fought his way into Angers and held court in the home of his ancestors.
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In September he pressed on as far as the border with Maine, all the time emphasising his credibility but taking care not to encounter Philip’s main army. Finally Philip was stung into action and led his host to the borders of Poitou. John, who had achieved all his propaganda objectives, was anxious not to be sucked into a pitched battle and put out peace feelers. Philip’s ready acquiescence seemed to signal that, as long as his position in Normandy was not threatened, he was prepared to tolerate John’s hegemony in the south.
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The truce agreed between the two monarchs on 13 October 1206 was to last for two years. During that time each sovereign would retain the homage and services of the lords who had fought for him in 1206, and disputes were to be settled by a tribunal of four barons, two from either side. Trade and communications were to continue as normal.
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John had reason to be satisfied. He had secured his mother’s inheritance and retrieved his situation in Poitou, while gaining invaluable experience in seaborne and amphibious operations. But he may have realised that he had been lucky, both in that Philip’s aims in the south were not expansionist and that the perilous voyage around Ushant and into the Bay of Biscay had proceeded without mishap. A decisive campaign against Philip would mean bringing a larger army by that route, and the potential for disaster by shipwreck and storm was clear.
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John realised that another trial of strength with Philip would require years of careful planning and preparation. He therefore turned away from the affairs of France and began to interest himself in his own Celtic fringes. The easiest to deal with of the three non-English regions in the British Isles was Scotland, since the overall cause of problems between that nation and England was the Scots’ demand for Northumbria and this the English kings adamantly refused to give up. From the very earliest days John’s relations with William of Scotland had been far more fractious than Richard’s and the pattern of shadow-boxing evident from early in the reign persisted into the first decade of the thirteenth century. John met the king of Scots at York in May 1207, and even set up a further meeting for 11 November that year, but William claimed the notice given was too short, and temporised so successfully that the two monarchs did not meet again until 1209.
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In that year John sent William a friendly invitation to meet in Newcastle, possibly because, being in Northumberland, it was ‘neutral’ territory, possibly because William was ill and John wanted to save him the trouble of the extra journey to York.
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Either way, the ensuing meeting was very short, as William was genuinely ill. There was enough time for John to demand that William restore the castles of Berwick, Roxburgh and Jedburgh and that William’s son Alexander be sent into England as a hostage. Evidently William did not make a satisfactory answer to this demand, for we next find John in hostile mood towards the Scots.
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Why the sudden enmity in summer 1209? One explanation is that William had reacted angrily and intemperately when John built a castle at Tweedmouth to destroy Berwick. Another is that William made the mistake of harbouring some of John’s enemies, especially recalcitrant bishops caught up in the great crisis with the Pope (see Chapter 16). Yet a third is that there was a conspiracy of northern barons against John that year in which William was implicated. Needless to say, all these explanations have had their passionate scholarly expositors and detractors.
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But probably the profoundest underlying cause of tension was that John got wind of Philip Augustus’s attempt to bring Scotland into his orbit by offering a dynastic marriage. The much-married serial monogamist Philip was once again tiring of his current wife and seeking to get an annulment of the latest marriage.
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What is much clearer is the upshot. Hearing that John was assembling an army south of the border preparatory to full-scale invasion, William sent him a more emollient message, but John continued grim and implacable and advanced as far as Bamburgh by the end of July 1209. Matters were now very serious but William was too ill to organise effective resistance and so was forced into a shameful climb-down. Wishing to buy time, he was forced into the humiliating treaty of Norham in August 1209. This stipulated that William was to pay John an indemnity of 15,000 marks, to send thirteen hostages into England and to agree to the marriage of his daughters to John’s sons. For the sake of peace John accepted the Scots king’s disingenuous denial that he had ever negotiated a marriage with Philip. Finally, William’s son Alexander was to hold William’s lands in England from John; William’s hope was that, whereas John could not stomach ceding Northumbria to him, he might be prepared to do so in future to his son - a hope that was almost certainly vain.
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For two years the Scots lay low. The instalments of the agreed indemnity were paid on time, although the means remains a mystery since the king of the Scots was already heavily in debt to Jewish moneylenders and owed the estate of ‘Aaron the Jew’ the sum of £2,776.
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John and William met again, at Durham in February 1212; each swore to protect the other in all just quarrels. This was more than just empty diplomatic protocol, for William was beginning to be hard pressed within his own dominions.
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A serious rebellion in Scotland had been engineered by a formidable pretender, Guthred McWilliam, challenging the Anglo-Scottish ‘culture creep’ in the name of Gaeldom. The ageing William went to Durham determined to secure the succession for his son Alexander at all costs, but John made it plain that the price of his support would be high. The powerful English baron Eustace de Vesci fled to Scotland when John nipped one of the many baronial revolts in the bud, but John told William that he required Alexander to come south of the border and be held as hostage until the Scots gave Vesci up. Under pressure from his Scottish nobles, William refused the request, arguing that John already held his hostages from the treaty of Norham in England, a surety for Scotland’s good faith in the matter of Vesci. The record until December 1214, when William died, is far from clear, but it does not appear either that Vesci was surrendered or that any significant concession was made, even though John sent an army of mercenaries into Scotland to suppress the rising by Guthred McWilliam. Alexander succeeded his father without any help or hindrance from John, and the most plausible inference is that John made no move in Scotland as he already had his hands tied with a full-blown war in Wales.
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Wales presented John with far more problems than Scotland. Stability there during the reign of Henry II had been guaranteed by Henry’s alliance with the uncontested supreme native ruler Rhys ap Gruffyd, who bestrode Welsh history of the second half of the twelfth century like a colossus. But when Henry died in 1189, succeeded by a man who had no interest in Wales, the older pattern of factionalism and chaos reasserted itself, even more so when Rhys himself died in 1197. As earl of Gloucester and lord of Glamorgan during his obscure years, John knew all about the turbulence of Welsh politics, and he knew from bitter experience that it was a reflex action of discontented marcher lords and border barons to make common cause with Welsh princes. At his accession there were no less than three rival claimants as ruler of South Wales: Rhys’s sons Griffith and Maelgwyn and the more impressive Gwenwynwyn, son of Owen Cyfeiliog, prince of Powys. With English help Griffith seemed to have won the struggle by 1198 but he died in 1200, when Gwenwynwyn’s star definitely started to ascend. But at this very moment a contender burst onto the scene, later to be acknowledged as Rhys’s true spiritual successor: Llewellyn ap Iorweth, prince of North Wales. In a few years Llewellyn made all of South Wales his virtual appanage while John looked on, content to stir the pot occasionally and play divide and rule from a distance.
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He eventually decided that an alliance with Llewellyn was the best policy, an idea in which the Welsh prince readily acquiesced. In July 1202 he promised to do homage to John as soon as he returned from Normandy, in 1204 he was betrothed to John’s illegitimate daughter Joan, and in 1206 he married her.
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John had eliminated the main opposition to Llewellyn by confining Gwenwynwyn in an English prison, but he was released in 1208 after doing homage to the English king. John’s overall triumph seemed secured when all the princes of North and South Wales did homage to him at Woodstock in October 1209
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but, as so often in John’s reign, auspicious omens were merely the calm before the storm. The very next year saw a serious rift between John and Llewellyn when the Welsh prince decided to support the recreant William de Braose, who fled to Wales from Ireland just as John was setting sail across the Irish Sea (see below, p.344-45). In May 1211, fresh from what then looked like a military triumph in Ireland, John summoned Llewellyn’s rivals as allies and crossed the border into Wales at the head of a formidable army. He took the castle of Dyganwy but soon got bogged down in the mountain country of the north. While Llewellyn proved a master of guerrilla warfare, logistics and commisariat defeated John, whose army was soon starving and on the brink of collapse. John withdrew to re-equip his forces and make more methodical preparations for a tough campaign; he returned to the fray in July that year. Alarmed by John’s pertinacity, Llewellyn sent his wife (John’s daughter) to negotiate terms. John insisted on draconian terms for peace. Mid-Wales was reserved as an English enclave, thirty hostages were taken, and Llewellyn had to pay heavy reparations in the form of cattle and horses.
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Following hard on the treaty of Norham with William of Scotland and the campaign in Ireland in 1210, this triumph at first seemed to set the seal on John’s achievements in the British Isles. Walter of Coventry boasted: ‘In Ireland, Scotland and Wales there was no man who did not obey the nod of the king of England - a thing which, it is well known, had never happened to any of his forefathers. ’
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