The Crusades: The Authoritative History of the War for the Holy Land (43 page)

A contemporary eyewitness and ardent supporter offered this stirring portrait of his physical appearance:

The same source claimed that Richard had been endowed by God ‘with virtues which seemed rather to belong to an earlier age. In this present age, when the world is growing old, these virtues hardly appear in anyone, as if everyone were like empty husks.’ In comparison:

Perhaps not surprisingly, scholars have not always accepted this startling image of the Lionheart as an almost superhuman hero. As early as the eighteenth century, English historians were criticising Richard both as a monarch and as a man–accusing him of exploiting England for his own ends and of being possessed of a brutish and impulsive character. In recent decades the exceptional University of London scholar John Gillingham has reshaped the perception and understanding of the Lionheart’s career. Gillingham acknowledged that Richard barely spent one year out of ten in England during his reign, but contextualised this fact, stressing that he had been not just a king of England, but the ruler of an Angevin Empire at a moment of crisis in Christendom. Likewise, the Lionheart’s headstrong nature was recognised, but his image as a savage and tempestuous brute overturned. Richard is now generally regarded as having been a well-educated ruler, adept in politics and negotiation, and above all a man of action, beloved of warfare and imbued with a visionary flair for military command. Although much of this reassessment still holds true, in seeking to rejuvenate the Lionheart’s reputation Gillingham may have overstated some of Richard’s achievements on the Third Crusade, sparing him criticism when it was justified.
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Richard, count of Poitou, duke of Aquitaine

The Lionheart may have become king of England, but he was most assuredly not English by either birth or background. His native tongue was Old French, his heritage that of Anjou and Aquitaine. He was born in Oxford on 8 September 1157 to King Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine. With such parentage, the young prince was almost predestined to leave his mark on history, but Richard was not expected to inherit this vast Angevin realm; that glory fell to his elder brother, known to history as Henry the Younger. To begin with, at least, Richard was groomed to be a lieutenant, not a commander. In twelfth-century Europe, however, high rates of infant and adolescent mortality meant that a change in prospects was always possible.

As a boy, Richard was associated with Aquitaine. On the expectation that he would not inherit the throne of England, and perhaps through the influence of his mother, the young prince was designated as ruler of this vast region of south-western France. In 1169 Richard paid homage to the French King Louis VII for Aquitaine and then, in 1172 at the age of fifteen, he was installed formally as duke of Aquitaine (with the associated title of count of Poitou). Richard was further woven into the complex web of relations between the Angevin and Capetian dynasties through his betrothal, in 1169, to King Louis’ daughter Alice–although the French princess spent her time from this point onwards in King Henry II’s court rather than with Richard, and reputedly became Henry’s mistress.

Aquitaine was among the wealthiest and most cultured regions of France–a flourishing centre of music, poetry and art–and these factors seem to have left their marks on Richard. He was a generous patron of troubadours and himself a keen singer, and a writer of songs and poetry. He likewise possessed an excellent knowledge of Latin and a good-natured, if acerbic, wit. His duchy was also notable for its associations with the legendary holy wars against Islam waged in Spain during the time of Charlemagne. Churches within the region claimed to house the body of Roland, the mighty hero of the campaign, and the very horn with which he had sought to summon aid against the Moors.

For all its veneer of civility, Aquitaine was a quarrelsome hotbed of lawlessness and civil discord–really it was just a loosely agglomerated collection of fiercely independent territories, peopled by powerful, recalcitrant families like the Lusignans. Given this, Richard looked set to rule a polity that was all but ungovernable, but he proved to be remarkably competent. Through the 1170s and 1180s he not only maintained order, quelling numerous rebellions, but even managed to expand his ducal territory at the expense of the county of Toulouse. These trials provided the Lionheart with valuable military experience, particularly in the field of siegecraft, and he revealed a marked aptitude for warfare.

Richard also had to contend with the fractious reality of contemporary politics. Throughout his early career, he was enmeshed in a complex, constantly shifting power struggle within the Angevin dynasty–with Henry II skilfully defending his own position against the rising power of his sons and the ambitions of his wife, while the Lionheart and his brothers squabbled over the Angevin inheritance as often as they united against their father. As early as 1173, Richard was involved in a full-scale rebellion against Henry II alongside his brothers. The Lionheart’s status was transformed in 1183 when, in the midst of another rebellion, his brother Henry the Younger died, leaving Richard as Henry’s eldest son and heir designate. Far from resolving the internecine feuding, this simply made Richard a clearer target for attacks and intrigue, as Henry sought to recover possession of Aquitaine and to rearrange the distribution of Angevin territory in favour of his youngest son John. Richard certainly did not prevail in all of these convoluted machinations, but by and large he held his own against Henry II, perhaps the most devious and adroit Latin politician of the twelfth century.

As an Angevin, Richard was also party to the continued rivalry with the Capetian monarchy and often found himself drawn into disputes with King Louis VII and then, after 1180, his heir Philip Augustus. The lingering matter of Richard’s betrothal to Alice of France was also at issue, because Henry continued to use the proposed union as a diplomatic tool and no marriage had yet taken place. This pattern of confrontation looked set to continue in June 1187 when King Philip invaded Angevin territory in Berry, prompting Henry II and Richard to ally and move in for a counter-attack. A major pitched battle seemed imminent, but at the last minute a rapprochement was reached and a two-year truce brokered. But once this agreement was finalised, Richard suddenly switched sides, riding back to Paris with Philip in a deliberately public demonstration of friendship. This was an agile diplomatic manoeuvre that even the now-ageing Henry II had not foreseen, and the message it sent was clear. Should the Angevin monarch seek to deprive Richard of Aquitaine of his wider inheritance, the Lionheart was more than willing to break with his family and side with the Capetian enemy. Outplayed, Henry immediately sought to repair relations with Richard, confirming all his territorial rights. The old king won his son back into the Angevin fold and, for now, an uneasy standoff held, but the shadows of a more decisive confrontation involving Henry, Richard and Philip were looming.

Richard and the crusade

Barely a week later, Saladin defeated the Jerusalemite Franks at Hattin on 4 July 1187. By November that same year, Richard had taken the cross at Tours, evidently without consulting his father. Under the circumstances, the Lionheart’s decision was extraordinary. In 1187 Richard was deeply immersed in the power politics of western Europe and had shown an absolute determination to retain the duchy of Aquitaine and assume control of the Angevin Empire after Henry II died. Richard then joined the crusade, seemingly without considering the consequences–a move that threatened his own prospects and those of his dynasty. King Henry was enraged by what he deemed to be an ill-considered and unsanctioned act of folly. Philip Augustus, too, was aghast at the prospect of such a potentially critical ally heading off to holy war. The Lionheart’s enlistment in the Third Crusade promised to disrupt massively the delicately balanced web of power and influence in England and France. On the face of it, Richard had little to gain and everything to lose.

How then can this apparently anomalous deed be explained? Aware, with the benefit of hindsight, that the West soon would be swept by crusade enthusiasm–indeed, that Henry II and Philip Augustus themselves would take the cross within a few months–scholars have all but passed over Richard’s decision, presenting it as normative and inevitable. Yet, taken on its own terms and in context, his choice was quite the opposite.

Perhaps a multiplicity of factors was at work. Impulsiveness probably played its part. If the Lionheart had a weakness, it was his emerging streak of overconfident, reckless arrogance. Even one of Richard’s supporters admitted that ‘he could be accused of rash actions’, but explained that ‘he had an unconquerable spirit, could not bear insult or injury, and his innate noble spirit compelled him to seek his due rights’. In addition, Richard may well have been moved, like so many crusaders before him, by a heartfelt and authentic sense of religious devotion. Such feelings surely would have been intensified by his familial and seigneurial connections to Frankish Palestine, being the great-grandson of Fulk of Anjou, king of Jerusalem (1131–42), cousin to Queen Sibylla and former feudal overlord to the Poitevin, Guy of Lusignan. The Lionheart was also struggling to emerge from the shadow of his parents. Much of his life had been devoted to emulating and eclipsing the achievements of his father (and to a degree those of his mother). Before 1187 the fulfilment of that goal had lain in defending Aquitaine and succeeding to the Angevin realm. But Hattin and the launching of the Third Crusade opened up another path to greatness–a new chance to leave a lasting mark on history as a leader of men and a military commander, in a sacred war far beyond the confines of Europe. The crusade may also have appealed to Richard as an ardent warrior, born into a world in which ideas about knightly honour and chivalric conduct were beginning to coalesce. For the coming campaign would serve as the ultimate proving ground of prowess and valour.
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The true balance between these various stimuli is impossible to determine. In all likelihood, Richard himself would have been unable to define a singular motive or ambition that shaped his actions in late 1187. Certainly, in the years that followed, he showed flashes of anger and impetuosity. It also became clear that he was wrestling with a deep-seated crisis of identity and intention–striving to reconcile his roles as a crusader, a king, a general and a knight.

THE TAKING OF THE CROSS

The shock of Richard’s enlistment in the Third Crusade prompted a political crisis, with Philip of France threatening to invade Angevin territory unless Henry II made territorial concessions and compelled the Lionheart to marry Philip’s sister, Alice of France. On 21 January 1188 the Capetian and Angevin monarchs, Philip and Henry, met near the border castle of Gisors, in the company of their leading magnates, to discuss a settlement. But Archbishop Joscius of Tyre also attended the assembly. He proceeded to preach a rapturous sermon on the imperilled state of the Holy Land and the merits of the crusade, speaking ‘in [such] a wonderful way [that he] turned their hearts to taking up the cross’. At this moment a cross-shaped image was supposedly seen in the sky–a ‘miracle’ which prompted many other leading northern-French lords to join the expedition, including the counts of Flanders, Blois, Champagne and Dreux.
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Amid an impassioned groundswell of crusading enthusiasm, Henry II and Philip Augustus made public declarations of their determination to fight in the Levantine holy war. It is not known whether one king pledged his willingness first, thus all but forcing the other to follow suit. What is certain is that, by the meeting’s end, both were committed. The effectively simultaneous nature of this enrolment was telling, because it reflected a wider determination only to act in tandem. Angevin and Capetian alike had vowed to crusade in the East, but it was soon obvious that neither would leave Europe without the other. To do so would have been tantamount to political suicide–the abandonment of one’s realm to the privations of a despised arch-enemy. The absolute necessity for coordinated action and synchronised departure had a profound effect on the Third Crusade, contributing to a series of interminable delays as the English and French monarchs eyed one another with suspicion and distrust.

Frederick Barbarossa and the German crusade

In 1187, Frederick Barbarossa, the Hohenstaufen emperor of Germany, was Europe’s elder statesman. Through a mixture of tireless military campaigning and shrewd politicking, he had imposed an unprecedented degree of centralised authority over the notoriously independent-minded barons of Germany and reached advantageous accommodations with northern Italy and the papacy. Now in his mid-sixties, Frederick could claim dominion over a swathe of territory from the Baltic coast to the Adriatic and the Mediterranean. In terms of wealth, martial resources and international prestige, his power easily outstripped that of the Angevins and Capetians. Naturally, most contemporaries expected him to play a leading role in the Third Crusade.

The first call to arms in Germany was made at Barbarossa’s 1187 winter court in Strasbourg. This secured a stream of eager recruits, but the emperor bided his time, gauging the scale of public support for the expedition, before taking the cross at a second great assembly at Mainz, on 27 March 1188, and announcing his firm intention to set out in just over one year. Frederick then made relatively swift but assiduous preparations for his departure: exiling his political enemy Henry the Lion; leaving his eldest son, Henry VI, in Germany as heir designate, while taking his second son, Frederick of Swabia, with him on crusade. Barbarossa marshalled his own economic resources, establishing a significant imperial war chest, but otherwise devolved financial responsibility for funding the expedition on to individual crusaders, requiring each participant to carry their own money east.