Henry the Young King, 1155-1183

by Matthew Strickland

  Despite all the distortions inherent in the History of William Marshal ’s version of events and the probability that tensions between the Marshal and his lord may have been simmering for some time, it seems likely enough that the Young King keenly felt William’s supposed betrayal and fall from grace. His overwhelming desire during the 1170s to escape from the tutelage of his father’s ministers had made him place a high premium on absolute loyalty, and his own insecurities, already reflected in his uncharacteristically harsh treatment of Adam of Churchdown, may have made him all too susceptible to the charges of disloyalty and lèse-majesté brought against the Marshal by his enemies in young Henry’s household.

  In an incident that may have been related to the Marshal’s demand for trial by combat, the Christmas festivities at Caen were again disrupted when the Marshal’s former lord, William de Tancarville, came to assert his own rights as chamberlain of Normandy.153 Striding into the hall, he seized the basin used for washing the king’s hands from an attendant and personally washed Henry II’s hands: he may have fallen from favour at court, but the office of chamberlain was still his by hereditary right, and the king should not forget it.154 As seneschal of France, the Young King could appreciate as much as any the significance of his former ally’s gesture, and as some present may well have reflected, it was now a decade since the Young King’s first and fateful independent court, likewise held at Caen, at which plans for the great rebellion against Henry II had begun to form. The protests of both William Marshal and the chamberlain of Tancarville were dramatic reminders of how highly politically charged the great seasonal courts which brought together the king and many of the nobility of the Angevin lands might be. Yet in contrast to 1172, the nobility of Normandy now appeared quiescent. The power of many of the former rebels in the duchy had been broken or contained, and Henry II’s grant of what was effectively the regency of Normandy to the Young King in 1181 had demonstrated that he no longer feared a renewed rebellion there headed by his eldest son. The Old King had good reason to celebrate in such magnificent style at Christmas 1182. From being at bay against a powerful coalition of enemies, Henry II had become unchallenged, and since 1180 he had been peacemaker and the arbiter of the political status quo in northern France.

  For the Young King, the years between 1178 and 1182 had been a period of successful political rehabilitation and reintegration. Restored unequivocally as Henry II’s principal heir, his relations with his father appeared far more cordial than in the strained, volatile years immediately following the war. The ultimate cause of his discontent was unresolved, but his acceptance of Henry II’s generous financial settlement suggests that young Henry had resigned himself to the fact that neither by threat, force or entreaty would his father grant him direct rule of any part of the Angevin heartlands while the Old King yet remained in robust good health. If, however, his regal status still suffered from his lack of a kingdom, his lavish funding had allowed young Henry to forge a new image as a pre-eminent figure of the tournament and a king among knights, whose free-handed generosity astonished and delighted, winning him kudos and much support. By 1182, his chivalric reputation had reached its apogee. Yet dark clouds were gathering that would soon shatter the apparent unity of the Angevin family and plunge them into a bitter civil war.

  CHAPTER 13

  The Brothers’ War, 1183

  A king who fights for his rights has a better right to his heritage;

  Because Charles conquered Spain, men have been talking about him ever since.

  For with effort and generosity, a king both conquers merit and wins it …

  The Young King has acquired merit from Burgos to Germany.

  – Bertran de Born, ‘Ieu chan que.l reys m’en a preguat’1

  The Castle of Clairvaux and the Breach with Richard

  The spark that would ignite war had already been kindled in Aquitaine. It was most probably during the Young King’s visit to Limoges in June of 1182, but certainly before Christmas, that young Henry had secretly accepted pledges from the dissident barons of Poitou that they would follow him as their liege lord and not withdraw from his service.2 The question of his support was becoming ever more pressing, for by late 1182 the Taillefers and Aimar of Limoges had once more come out in open rebellion against Richard, summoning mercenaries to their aid.3 The Young King’s propensity to aid his brother’s enemies had been increased by his own quarrel with Richard over the latter’s construction of a castle, Clairvaux, on the border of Anjou and Poitou.4 Geoffrey Greygown, count of Anjou, had forcibly annexed the castle from Poitou, though he had acknowledged Count William III’s ultimate title by performing homage for it. Over time, however, this homage had lapsed, and Clairvaux had been assimilated into Anjou.5 Richard may well have been reasserting an ancient claim, but in 1182 it was Henry II, not the Young King, who had actual control of Anjou, and Richard can scarcely have felt threatened by his father after the latter’s evident support for him against the Aquitanian rebels. Richard may have been strengthening his position in relation to the viscount of Châtellerault, one of his leading Poitevin vassals whose own fortress at Châtellerault controlled a key crossing of the river Vienne.6 But his motives may have been as much economic as strategic. A mid-thirteenth-century inquest reveals that in 1184 Richard had established a castle, but also a new town dependent on it, at Saint-Rémy-de-la-Haye on the river Creuse, which formed the border between Poitou and the Touraine. Burgesses were attracted to the ‘free town’ by the rent or sale of plots to be held by burgage tenure, and the count’s officials collected tolls and dues.7 Richard’s founding of the castle at Clairvaux in 1182 appears closely analogous. In his sirventes which speaks of Clairvaux, Bertran de Born gives the Young King the mocking senhal or coded name ‘Sir Carter’ (en Charretier), and the poem’s thirteenth-century razo, or introduction, explained this by noting that Henry II had given young Henry an income of tolls from carts, but that these had been taken away by Richard.8 Little reliance can be placed on these quasi-historical razos, but the presence of a new bourg at Clairvaux may well have led to conflict over local rights, not least with comital officials in Anjou. The Young King’s unusually complete dependence on assigned revenues doubtless made him particularly sensitive to such issues. Yet what rankled most was that, as in 1173, he felt his patrimony was being encroached upon by a younger brother before he himself had even obtained it. Bertran de Born was quick to point up the insult and, by extension, the Young King’s lack of power:

  Between Poitou and L’Île Bouchard and Mirebeau and Loudun and Chinon, at Clairvaux they have built a beautiful castle without a by-your-leave and put it in a flat field. I don’t want the Young King to know it or see it, because he would not like it, but I’m afraid he will see it from Mateflon, since it shines so bright.9

  Bertran’s naming of the three Angevin castles of Chinon, Loudun and Mirebeau was a deliberate and provocative reminder of the quarrel over them that had wrecked the Maurienne marriage plan in 1173 and precipitated young Henry’s rebellion.

  A superficial peace had been maintained during the Christmas celebrations at Caen, but tensions between the brothers were soon brought to a head when the court reached Le Mans. In an attempt to establish the relationship between his sons and their respective lands after his own death, Henry II ordered Richard and Geoffrey to perform homage to their elder brother.10 The Old King was clearly anxious that the younger Henry should step into his shoes not only as king of England, duke of Normandy and count of Anjou, but as the head of the family, a position already suggested by the Young King’s acceptance of the homage of Raymond V of Toulouse in 1173.11 This unambiguous establishment of young Henry’s overlordship can be seen in part as an extension of Henry II’s recent settlement with him, and as an attempt to reassure the Young King of the pre-eminence of his position.12 By securing Richard’s homage to the Young King, moreover, Henry II was seeking to bypass Capetian claims to direct overlordship of Aquitaine.

  Geoffrey readily obeyed his
father’s command and performed liege homage to the Young King: such an act merely reaffirmed the homage he had performed to young Henry as duke of Normandy in 1169.13 But obtaining Richard’s homage was a very different matter. The count of Poitou indignantly refused, protesting that, having the same illustrious birth as his brother, he was young Henry’s equal.14 ‘He exploded in anger,’ noted Ralph of Diss,

  declaring (so it was reported) that since he came from the same father and the same mother as his brother, it was not right for him to acknowledge his elder brother as superior by some sort of subjection. Rather, by the law of firstborn sons (lege primogenitorum), the paternal goods were due to his brother, and he claimed equal right to legitimate succession to the maternal goods.15

  Such a stance reflected a very different view of the future of the Angevin ‘empire’ from that of his father: on Henry II’s death, Aquitaine would go its own separate way under Richard and his heirs, its duke bound only as the vassal of the king of France.16 Richard was eventually persuaded by his father, though with great reluctance, to perform homage to his older brother, but only on condition that Henry II ensured that the Young King should grant the duchy of Aquitaine to Richard, ‘to be held by Richard and his heirs by an undisputable right’.17 Richard evidently feared for the security of his hold on Aquitaine once Henry II was dead. Young Henry’s own insistence on performing homage to his father in 1175 had underlined its great significance as a form of security. In turn, Richard’s performance of homage to his elder brother, though unpalatable, would obligate the Young King to recognize his rightful inheritance and to support and protect Richard as his lord.

  To Henry II’s complete exasperation, however, the Young King now refused to accept Richard’s homage. It was a lord’s duty to aid his man against his enemies, and the ties of homage meant that the Young King would be unable, either in good conscience or in feudal law, to give any support to those rebelling against Richard. Yet equally, if kept hidden, his earlier intrigues with the disaffected barons of Aquitaine might so anger his father that the generous settlement recently agreed might be jeopardized. There was no option but to make a clean breast of it. Accordingly, on 1 January 1183, in the presence of a large gathering of clerics and laymen, young Henry swore an oath on the Gospels ‘of his own accord, with no-one compelling him, that from that day forward, and for all the days of his life, he would keep complete faith with King Henry, as his father and his lord, and always show the honour and service he owed to him’.18 Yet this, an affirmation of his earlier oath of 1182, was the prologue to a shocking revelation. As Roger of Howden, who was evidently an eyewitness to the events at Le Mans, recorded:

  And because – as he asserted – he desired to retain in his mind no malice or rancour whereby his father might afterwards be offended, the Young King made it known to him that he was bound by an agreement with the barons of Aquitaine against his brother Richard. He had been moved to do so because his brother had fortified the castle of Clairvaux against his wishes, in the patrimony which would come to him after their father’s death. He therefore besought his father to take that castle from Richard, and retain it in his own keeping.19

  Not unnaturally, given his brother’s league with the Aquitanian rebels, Richard refused Henry II’s initial command to hand Clairvaux over to him. He was, however, eventually prevailed upon by his father and ‘freely made it over to him to dispose of it according to his good pleasure’.20 Doubtless he judged it expedient to prevent his elder brother from any subsequent meddling with the dissident lords of Aquitaine.

  To further quell the discord between the brothers, Henry II summoned them to Angers, where he made young Henry, Richard and Geoffrey swear a compact of perpetual peace. Each then swore an oath of fealty to their father against all men, pledging they would maintain his honour and service, and would observe the peace between them according to their father’s dispositions.21 To tackle the divisive issue of the rebels in Aquitaine, it was agreed that a new peace summit would be held at Mirebeau, to which the dissidents would be invited. Geoffrey was accordingly sent to the Limousin soon after 2 February 1183, to arrange a truce and to summon the rebel lords to the conference.22 In what appears to have been a move prearranged with the Young King, however, Geoffrey immediately sided with the rebels and began to plunder with units of routiers.23 The Young King at once offered to act as an intermediary, and convinced his father that if the dissident barons were dissatisfied with terms of the agreement made in the summer of 1182, they should be allowed to appeal for justice to Henry II’s court. This move seems to have been the last straw for Richard, and there can be little doubt that the Young King was deliberately attempting to provoke his brother. The surrender of Clairvaux was galling, and to have agreed to his father’s request that he perform homage to his elder brother was a bitter pill to swallow. Yet now Richard’s acquiescence appeared to be for nothing. Young Henry had leagued with his enemies, and by supporting their claims against him before Henry II, he now sought to undermine the terms Richard had succeeded in imposing on the rebel nobles after so long and hard-fought a campaign. On top of this, his brother had the temerity to demand he swear fealty to him, a man who had formed a secret alliance with his enemies. Without taking leave, Richard stormed from the court, ‘leaving nothing but insults and threats behind him’.24

  Provoked beyond patience, Henry II fell into a rage and ‘threatened difficulties for Richard, saying that the Young King should rise up and tame Richard’s pride. He told Geoffrey count of Brittany to stand faithfully by his brother as his liege lord.’25 The History of William Marshal has the Young King tell Henry II, ‘“For a long time they [the barons] were my men, and it would not be right of me to fail them or allow them to be ill-treated; it is only right that I should come to their aid.” “Go on then, go to their aid,” said the father, “I’ll permit that.”’26 It was not to be the last time that Henry, in a moment of deep anger and frustration, would sanction war between his sons. Yet it proved a fatal miscalculation and, as Prior Geoffrey of Vigeois lamented, the quarrel between the king’s three sons was soon to be the cause ‘of a lamentable calamity for Aquitaine’.27

  Mindful of the events of 1173, when he had escaped to France but Margaret had been left behind to become his father’s hostage, the Young King sent his wife to the safety of the court of her brother King Philip, then set out for Limoges in early February.28 As he journeyed through Poitou, the insurgents placed their castles under the Young King’s control.29 Arriving at Limoges, he joined forces with Viscount Aimar and Geoffrey, who had brought a large force of knights and other troops from Brittany and had assembled a great host of Brabançons.30 As Gerald of Wales reflected, young Henry had gathered together an army ‘greater than was ever before assembled at any time by a man having neither territory or treasure’.31 By now, the extent of the alliance headed by the Young King against Richard was becoming apparent. As the History of William Marshal noted,

  the high ranking barons of the region, whom the count, whom they hated bitterly, had treated badly, rode there in great numbers, everyone of them with a mind to fight, for they would dearly have loved to humble the pride of Count Richard, if only they had the opportunity and could get the upper hand.32

  They included Aimar of Limoges, the Taillefer brothers of Angoulême and one of their leading vassals, Fulcaud of Archiac in the Saintonge, the viscounts of Ventadour, Comborn, Turenne and Castillon, Oliver de Chalais, and Bernard of Montfort.33 These lords, who together with the count of Périgord, had formed the core of opposition to Richard in 1182, were concentrated in the Angoumois, Limousin and Périgord, but now the Lusignans, who had remained quiescent in 1182, joined the coalition, with other Poitevin lords.34 It was a sign of the upheaval that had taken place within the Young King’s household that at Limoges he welcomed Geoffrey de Lusignan, the sworn enemy of the now disgraced and exiled William Marshal.35 All the chroniclers stress the size and power of the forces assembled by the coalition. At Limoges, the Young King and G
eoffrey retained in their service ‘knights and sergeants, and routiers and crossbowmen, fine footsoldiers and good archers’.36 The History noted that the Young King had summoned stipendiary knights from all over northern France, some of whom had evidently seen previous service with him, whether in war or in his tournament retinues; ‘in France and Normandy, in Anjou and the Lowlands, and throughout Flanders he called up his young knights (ses bachilers)’, who came ‘out of the great affection they had for their lord’.37 Whether they had existing ties to young Henry or not, all these knights were attracted by his reputation as a generous paymaster.

  ‘The Legions of Hell’: Brabançons and Routiers

  The elements of the Young King’s forces which most attracted the wholly negative attention of the chroniclers were the bands of mercenary routiers or rutae who in ever increasing numbers had become the scourge of southern France by the 1170s.38 ‘They are now multiplied above numbering,’ noted Walter Map, ‘and so strong have these armies of Leviathan grown that they settle in safety or rove through whole provinces or kingdoms, hated of God and man.’39 The multiplicity of local lordships in southern France, often in fierce competition, the comparative weakness or absence of direct rule by princes and the distance from the power bases of the kings of France and England, made this an ideal arena for mercenary bands to flourish. The counts, viscounts and other local magnates lacked extensive military resources of their own, yet commanded sufficient wealth drawn from a prosperous region to employ mercenaries for short periods of war against either their local rivals or nominal overlords such as the duke of Aquitaine. The later 1170s and early 1180s, moreover, witnessed a particularly intense period of war and turmoil in the Auvergne and much of Aquitaine.40 Disbanded mercenaries employed in Frederick Barbarossa’s wars in northern Italy had moved into southern France after the Treaty of Venice in 1177, while by 1179 the archbishop of Narbonne could single out Count Raymond V of Toulouse, and his enemies Roger Trencavel of Béziers and Bernard Ato of Nîmes, as notorious employers of the routier bands.41 To this bitter regional struggle was added the conflict between the king of Aragon and the count of Toulouse over their competing claims to Provence, which had erupted into war in 1181 after Alfonso II’s brother Raymon Berenguer IV, the count of Provence, was murdered, a deed in which Raymond was deeply implicated.42 Rigord, carefully omitting Philip Augustus’ role in the troubles of 1183, says that the war between the count of Toulouse and the king of Aragon caused terrible devastation, while the prominence of Basques among the chroniclers’ lists of various routier bands seems closely connected to the presence of Aragonese forces in Aquitaine.43