‘The Eagle of the Broken Covenant’: The Role of Eleanor of Aquitaine
Despite these preparations, Henry failed to anticipate treachery much closer to home.117 It is unclear to what extent, if at all, Henry had been aware of Eleanor’s role in the intrigues against him before the summit at Limoges in February 1173, when he seemingly was first warned of his wife’s complicity. Even then, however, he took no pre-emptive measures but left Eleanor behind in Aquitaine at liberty with their younger sons Richard and Geoffrey while he headed north from Limoges with the Young King. Past experience must have led him to regard Louis as the principal troublemaker, and as long as Henry had control of the Young King he may have judged Eleanor’s position to be too weak to be a serious threat. If so, it was a serious miscalculation. William of Newburgh recorded the rumour that the Young King himself had secretly travelled to Aquitaine and, with Eleanor’s connivance, brought Richard and Geoffrey back to the Capetian court, for he ‘was taught by the French to believe that the men of Aquitaine might be won over more easily to his side through Richard, and the Bretons similarly through Geoffrey’.118 It seems improbable, however, that Louis would have risked young Henry’s capture on so dangerous a mission or even that such a clandestine journey would have been feasible in the wake of his flight from Chinon. It is far more likely that, as Roger of Howden noted, it was Eleanor herself who sent Richard and Geoffrey to join their elder brother, once the Young King was safely at the Capetian court.119
Contemporaries were quick to see in the rebellious Eleanor ‘the eagle of the broken covenant’ foretold in the ‘Prophecies of Merlin’.120 It has been suggested that Eleanor’s growing alienation from Henry after 1168 helped to detach her sons from him, so that by their adolescence ‘they lacked any loyalty to Henry’.121 This is possible, but in reality little is known about young Henry’s relationship with his mother, either before or after the rebellion of 1173–74.122 Nevertheless, both to sympathizers in Aquitaine and to more hostile observers at Henry II’s court, it seemed evident that Eleanor wielded a decisive influence over her sons. Writing after her subsequent capture, Richard the Poitevin could lament: ‘Tell me, two-headed eagle, where were you when your eaglets, fluttering from the nest, boldly unsheathed their talons against the King from the North? For it was you – so we hear – who urged them to bring their father down.’123 Earlier, in a letter to the queen that seems to have been written very soon after the outbreak of the uprising, Archbishop Rotrou of Rouen deplored the fact that she had left her husband and had ‘opened the way for the lord king’s, and your own, children to rise up against their father … You alone are now the guilty one, but your actions will result in ruin for all in the kingdom.’124 Nevertheless, Rotrou assured her that an amnesty was still possible, and urged her to return to her lord and husband:
So before worse befall, return with your sons to the husband whom you should live with and obey. If you do return to him, no suspicion will fall on either you or your sons. We are quite sure that the King will offer you affection and full and utter safety. Exhort your sons, I pray you, to be obedient and devoted to their father: he has been through so much anxiety on their behalf, so many difficult situations, so much labour … You are one of our flock, as is your husband, but we cannot ignore the demands of justice: either you come back to your husband or we shall be obliged by canon law to lay upon you the censure of the Church. We say that reluctantly, but reluctantly, in tears and in anguish, we shall do it, if you fail to come to a better mind.125
Eleanor returned neither to Henry II, nor to the court of her ex-husband to join her sons, but remained in Aquitaine, assisted by Ralph de Faye, to orchestrate the rebellion.
The queen needed to steer a careful course between the competing ambitions of her sons: the sixteen-year-old Richard may himself have been deeply resentful of the Young King’s acceptance of Raymond’s homage for Toulouse. Where she could unite them in common cause against Henry II was in their shared frustration at being denied real power by their father. Only the year previously, Richard had been invested with the county of Poitou and the duchy of Aquitaine, but as yet enjoyed no actual rule.126 Similarly, although Geoffrey had been betrothed to Constance since 1166, the marriage itself had not yet taken place, even though Duke Conan had died in 1171, while the duchy itself was still run by Henry II’s agents, and Geoffrey’s authority remained nominal. Not only that, but following Conan’s demise Henry II had kept in his own hands the barony of Tréguier and the great honour of Richmond which Geoffrey could regard as his rightful inheritance.127 Whatever other justifications the queen put forward for rebellion, Eleanor must have won Richard and Geoffrey over to the Young King’s cause by promises of effective power.
Unlike the revolt of sons against their fathers, there were few precedents for queens actively fomenting insurrection against their own husbands.128 Ralph of Diss was right in regarding Eleanor’s deep involvement in the unfolding war as ‘something great, new, and unheard of’. It was a disaster that had been ominously heralded by a great burst of thunder heard on Christmas night 1172, not only in Ireland and England but in the whole of France – a ‘sudden, horrible phenomenon’.129 Yet the reasons for Eleanor’s deep hostility to her husband by the early 1170s remain elusive. Contemporary chroniclers clearly regarded the matter as a dangerous subject; if they mentioned her involvement at all, it was qualified as being reported as hearsay, and none ventured to proffer any explanation for Eleanor’s active aggression.130 The Melrose chronicler, for example, speaking of the Young King’s flight, noted cautiously that ‘it is said that he did this by the advice of his mother, but of this we are ignorant; let her see to it and let Him judge’.131 Later legend would make much of Eleanor’s deep hatred and jealousy of Rosamund Clifford, Henry II’s beloved and beautiful mistress, but Jean Flori has warned against underplaying the reaction of noble women to their husband’s infidelities, and suggests that Eleanor may have been genuinely afraid of being supplanted as queen.132 Yet how far her resentment of Rosamund or of Henry II’s earlier and numerous liaisons played a driving force in her rebellion is now impossible to recover.133 It seems very likely that Eleanor felt personally alienated by Henry’s unconcealed passion for Rosamund, but it would have been quite exceptional to have gone to war over her husband’s infidelities. Nor was Eleanor herself above suspicion, being widely rumoured to have conducted her own adulterous affairs.134
It is more likely that the real source of tension between Eleanor and her husband was the governance and status of Aquitaine, where she may have felt that her authority was increasingly marginalized by Henry’s assertion of power.135 In the duchy itself, Eleanor was able to harness the growing fears of the seemingly inexorable expansion of Angevin power. During the earlier rebellion of 1168–69, the chronicler Richard the Poitevin had expressed joy at the assertion of Aquitaine’s independence from the oppressive rule of Henry II: ‘Be glad, Aquitaine! Rejoice, Poitou! For the King of the North’s sceptre is departing from you!’136 Gerald of Wales believed Eleanor to be plotting by 1172, but what may have galvanized her into drastic action was the recent concordat at Limoges, when Raymond V had performed homage for Toulouse not only to Henry II and to Richard, as duke of Aquitaine, but also to the Young King. Henry II had exercised authority in Aquitaine in right of his marriage to its duchess, and had in 1159 pressed Eleanor’s claims, inherited from her grandmother Philippa, to the overlordship of Toulouse. Yet if now young Henry, as the future ruler of England, Normandy and Anjou, was in turn to claim hegemony over it, Eleanor may have feared that Aquitaine itself would be swallowed up in a greater Anglo-Norman empire.137 Raymond’s submission had certainly prompted Ermengard, the spirited countess of Narbonne, forthrightly to rebuke Louis VII for his failure to challenge Henry’s dominance in the Midi, as he had done with some success in 1159. Sending him ‘greetings and the courage of Charlemagne’, she continued:
My fellow countrymen and I are much saddened to see our region, which the vigour of the kings of t
he Franks adorned with liberty, at risk – through your absence, not to say your fault – of coming under the dominion of a stranger, a foreigner who has not the smallest right over us. Do not be angered, my dear lord, by my bold words. If I speak thus, it is because I am a vassal especially devoted to your crown, and because I suffer extremely when I see its power declining. It is not only the loss of Toulouse that is involved, but that of our whole country from the Garonne to the Rhône, which our enemies boast they will subjugate.138
Though this criticism must have stung Louis, he knew it to be no more than the truth. Henry II had accepted the homage of Raymond of Toulouse in defiance of Louis’ own claims of overlordship, as he himself angrily complained to Henry.139 Young Henry’s acceptance of Raymond’s homage, moreover, went against the tenor of the Treaty of Montmirail, in which Louis had attempted to ensure the detachment of Aquitaine from direct Angevin lordship.140 Capetian influence in the region seemed in full retreat, while that of Anjou seemed to have been increased still further by the Maurienne agreement.141 The archbishop of Narbonne was being overly alarmist in warning Louis that Henry was even planning to invade France, but it was clear to Louis that a counterstroke against Plantagenet expansion was urgently needed, before it was too late.142 Eleanor’s desire to safeguard the autonomy of Aquitaine from the ‘King of the North’ thus dovetailed with the interests of her former husband. Henry II was a formidable opponent, commanding, as Wace noted, ‘so much land and so many towns that he can make Louis and his men tremble’.143 Yet the rift between him and his wife and sons, and the particular disaffection of Young Henry, gave Louis an unparalleled opportunity to break the power of the Angevin colossus.
Forging an Alliance
Louis VII had naturally welcomed the Young King and his brothers with open arms, and quickly convened a great council of his magnates at Paris.144 To bind the allies in their undertaking against Henry II, Louis swore on the Gospels that he would aid the Young King and his brothers with all his power against their father, and support young Henry’s war to gain the kingdom of England.145 In turn, the Young King, Richard and Geoffrey swore that they would not withdraw from the king of France or make peace with their father without the consent of Louis and his barons. Having received this assurance on oath, the French nobles took the same oath as King Louis to uphold the sons in their war.146 As was customary at such councils of war, boasts and high vaunts were made of actions that would bring Henry II low.147
An embassy sent by Henry II to treat for peace, headed by Archbishop Rotrou and Arnulf of Lisieux, met with an icy reception: the ambassadors reported that although Louis had listened to their delegation, he had refused to acknowledge King Henry’s salutation.148 Writing considerably later, but with access to good information on the events of 1173–74, William of Newburgh painted a dramatic scene of the French king’s response:
Having discovered his son’s treachery and knowing whither he had fled, his father sent to the king of France certain eminent men who in pacific terms demanded the return of the son by paternal right, and promised that if anything should appear to require amendment in respect of his son, it should be speedily rectified with the advice of the French king. At these words, the king of France asked, ‘Who is it that sends such a message to me?’ They replied, ‘The king of England’. ‘It is false’, he replied, ‘behold! The king of England is here present, and he sends no message to me through you. But even if you still call king the father who was formerly king of England, know that he, as king, is dead. And though he may still act as king, this shall be speedily remedied, for he resigned his kingdom to his son, as all the world bears witness.’149
As a member of a dynasty long accustomed to associative coronation, which did nothing to harm the authority of the reigning monarch, Louis knew this to be an outrageous claim. Yet it played upon the novelty of crowning an heir in the father’s lifetime in England, and exploited real uncertainty about Henry II’s subsequent position. Louis also set out his casus belli against Henry, which, he told the legation, antedated the Young King’s arrival in Chartres: Henry had repeatedly broken sworn agreements; he had accepted the homage of Raymond of Toulouse; and the Angevin’s attempts to stretch his power from the Rhône to the Alps had earned Louis the odium of his own subjects who had fallen under Henry’s sway. They were now at war, and Louis would not make peace with Henry II without the consent of his sons or of Queen Eleanor.150
Louis had assembled a formidable coalition to aid the Young King.151 Among the greatest French lords were his own brother Robert, count of Dreux, his brothers-in-law, Henry, count of Champagne, Theobald, count of Blois, and Stephen, count of Sancerre, together with Philip, count of Flanders, and his brother Matthew, count of Boulogne. The Young King’s new allies were expecting major territorial concessions in return for their support.152 As Henry II now had custody of the seal the Young King had received after his coronation in 1170, Louis had immediately ordered a new one to be made for him, and it was with this that young Henry now sealed charters making extensive grants.153 He granted Theobald of Blois revenue of 500 livres angevins, the strategically important castle of Amboise, situated between Tours and Blois, and all the rights he claimed in the Touraine.154 A nephew of King Stephen, Theobald had long been an enemy of Henry II, and his demands reflected the continuing struggle between the houses of Blois and Anjou for control of Tours and the central Loire valley.155 The chroniclers record no grants by the Young King to Theobald’s brother Henry of Champagne, who brought support primarily in his role as Louis VII’s vassal, but the potential of his military resources had been revealed only the previous year in the Feoda Campanie, a survey of fiefs and of service owed to the count, probably modelled directly on Henry II’s own 1172 inquest in Normandy.156
After Louis himself, young Henry’s most powerful supporter was his kinsman Philip of Flanders, or ‘Philip the Warrior’, as Jordan Fantosme calls him.157 His marriage to Elizabeth of Vermandois in 1164 had brought him control of that important county, while trade and the burgeoning urban economies of the Flemish towns made him one of the wealthiest of the territorial princes of France. Though Count Thierry had renewed the Anglo-Flemish treaty in 1163, Philip’s support for the Angevins was more equivocal. He had played an important role as a mediator in the dispute with Becket, but by 1168 Philip had openly sided with Louis in his war against Henry II.158 Now in 1173 he performed homage to the Young King and swore fealty to him, receiving in return a promise of the county of Kent, and its two principal castles of Rochester and Dover, which reflected the holdings acquired by William of Ypres, King Stephen’s leading Flemish supporter.159 In addition, Philip was to receive an annual sum of £1,000 from English revenues. As this was the sum stipulated in the earlier Anglo-Flemish treaties of 1101 and 1163, it seems likely that the Young King was attempting to renew this money fief in his capacity as king of England and thereby secure for himself the single most important source of stipendiary knights in north-west Europe. Philip, as William of Newburgh noted, was ‘a man of great resources and boundless boastfulness by reason of his confidence in the countless and warlike people whom he governed’.160
Philip, moreover, controlled the key Channel ports of Wissant and Gravelines, from which an invasion of England might be launched.161 In 1160, his brother Matthew had married King Stephen’s daughter Matilda, who brought him not only the county of Boulogne, with control of its powerful fleet, but also the lands held by the counts in England and a strong claim to the county of Mortain.162 The potential danger posed by the Boulonnais fleet had already been made plain in 1167 when, during the war between Henry and Louis, Count Matthew had threatened to invade England with a fleet carrying Flemish soldiers, in order to pursue his claims.163 Though Henry II had promised the count a large money fief in return for quittance of these territorial claims, the Young King’s rebellion presented Matthew with a great opportunity to press again his full demands: he performed homage to the younger Henry for his county of Boulogne, and was granted t
he county of Mortain in Normandy, the soke of Kirkton in Lindsey, and the honor of Eye.164
The Young King’s messengers had also been soliciting the aid of William the Lion, king of Scots. When in 1157 Henry II had forced Malcolm IV to cede the northern counties of England, William the Lion had been compelled to give up the earldom of Northumberland, which he had inherited from his father, Earl Henry.165 In compensation, Malcolm received back the earldom of Huntingdon and William was granted the substantial lordship of Tynedale, held as a fief from the English king.166 William, however, remained aggrieved and a burning desire both to regain his father’s earldom of Northumberland and to rebuild David I’s great ‘Scotto-Northumbrian realm’ became a dominant factor in his relationship with the Angevin kings.167 By July 1168 he had openly sided with Louis VII, offering him aid and hostages.168 The appearance of William and his younger brother David at the English court and at the Young King’s coronation suggests that by 1170 an entente with Henry II had been established, but the deteriorating relationship between Henry II and his son in 1173 and the formation of a powerful coalition of Angevin enemies was an opportunity that William found hard to resist.169 He was nevertheless reluctant to enter a war against this powerful southern neighbour without a prior demand for the restoration of Cumbria and the earldom of Northumberland.170 Envoys sent to Henry II in Normandy, however, met with a flat refusal: Henry would not grant William’s demands in such circumstances, but rather would wait to see if William acted loyally, thereby holding out the prospect of restoring to him all or part of his lordship if he supported Henry II against his son. Henry’s attempt to divide the Scottish royal house by summoning Earl David and offering him lands in return for his service did not succeed, but William’s bluff had been called.171 In a bitterly divided council, a strong lobby of younger knights prevailed in their demands for war over wiser heads such as Bishop Ingelram of Glasgow and Waltheof, earl of Dunbar.172 Messengers were sent to Paris, to accept the Young King’s offer and to request military aid from Count Philip, who duly dispatched Flemish troops to assist King William in a planned summer offensive.173
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