Lionheart

by Douglas Boyd

  Geraldus Cambrensis, or Gerald of Wales, archdeacon of Brecon, a contemporary of Richard, wrote a treatise entitled De Principis Instructione – On the Education of a Prince – to illustrate the inculcation of the virtues a monarch should have. Richard’s upbringing was far from that ideal.

  In the fifteen years of her marriage to Louis VII of France, Eleanor had produced only two daughters. Her failure to give him a son and heir had been the key to the annulment that freed her to marry Henry of Anjou. In the five years so far spent with Henry she had done her queenly duty in providing him with a daughter, Princess Matilda, and three sons, one of whom had died. After Richard, Eleanor was to bear the princes Geoffrey and John and the princesses Eleanor and Joanna. For a royal couple to beget so many offspring was unusual, for it could lead to a repeat of the situation after the death of William the Norman, whose ten children fought over the realm he had acquired by defeating the last Saxon ruler, King Harold Godwinson, at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Since neither Henry nor Eleanor was stupid, it seems that their purpose in begetting so many offspring was to marry them off to unite the rulers of the whole of Western Europe in a web of common family relationships dominated by … Henry and Eleanor.4

  A great-grandson of the Conqueror, Henry was an even more frequently absent parent than the queen. There is no record that he bore any affection for his children. In January 1163 he returned to England after an absence of four and a half years, briefly crossing paths with Eleanor and Richard, who departed in the other direction some weeks later. All the evidence points to Henry having regarded his daughters as political tools to be used in marriage alliances with other royal European families. As for his four surviving sons, he refused the easy way out, which was to make one into a churchman, to reduce the internecine rivalry by that son’s consequent ineligibility to exercise royal power. He did, however, appoint his bastard son Geoffrey to be bishop of Lincoln and later archbishop of York.

  Richard and the three other legitimate sons were tormented by Henry throughout their childhood, adolescence and adult lives. He would first promise something to one of them and then give it to another, only to take it away when it pleased him to do so and give it to a third. It was a technique he used with allies, vassals and enemies too, having learned it from his mother the Empress Matilda.5 Life, she taught her son, was like venery: always show the bait to the hawk, but take it away again before the bird can bite in order to keep it hungry and anxious to please.6 In the protracted bloody civil war against her cousin Stephen of Blois for the throne of England, Matilda’s policy had alienated so many allies that she had narrowly escaped back to France with her life. While the life-is-like-venery approach could thus not be said to have worked for her, Henry used this manipulative technique throughout his life, outwitting enemies and allies alike, but succeeded in making enemies of his own sons.

  Richard’s mother was by her own birthright countess of Poitou, which by tradition also made her duchess of the thirteen counties that made up the immense duchy of Aquitaine. Since her only brother’s death she had been raised for this task, and had been, in the words of her first modern biographer Amy Kelly, accustomed to travel with the peripatetic household of her father Duke William X:

  … from the foothills of the Pyrenees to the River Loire on those long chevauchées made necessary by the ducal business of overlooking intriguing vassals and presumptuous clergy, and carrying law and justice to the remoter corners of creation. She knew … the scarped heights where the baronial strongholds loomed above their clustering hamlets [of mud and straw huts]. She knew the red-roofed towns and the traffic of each one; here a lazar house, there a hostel thronging with pilgrims returning from Saint James [of Compostela] or the shrines of the pious Limousin. Melle she knew, where there was a ducal mint, and Blaye where, in the glow of forges, armourers repaired their travelling gear and Maillezais where her aunt, the Abbess Agnes, never failed to halt the ducal progress for a largess.7

  In her childhood, at the end of each day’s long ride this privileged heiress of a duke was deferred to by the assembled castellans, bishops, abbots, merchants, troubadours and hangers-on who constituted the ducal court going about its programme of feudal business. This headstrong, intelligent and beautiful girl born to the corridors of power grew up to be the only queen ever to sit on the thrones of both France and England. Becoming duchess when she was just 15 years old, after her father died on pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, she married Prince Louis Capet two weeks before he succeeded his father as king of France and took the title Louis VII, making his bride the teenage queen of France.

  Eleanor defied the papal interdiction on women travelling with the Second Crusade ‘except for decent washerwomen’8 and accompanied Louis and the French army on the long march overland to the Holy Land, fighting the influence over her husband of the crusade’s bishops and his own chaplain. By divorcing Louis VII after the crusade to marry Henry of Anjou, she changed the balance of power in Western Europe.

  The divorce had been arranged by negotiation between Louis’ bishops and her vassal, Archbishop Geoffroy of Bordeaux. The more worldly of Louis Capet’s churchmen, like Archbishop Suger of St Denis, who had also served the late King Louis VI as chancellor, were reluctant to see the taxes of her immense dowry of Aquitaine and Poitou lost to the royal purse. They also considered it dangerous that one-third of France would revert to her personal control in the absence of a husband. Against that, the more pious of Louis’ prelates, like Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux, quoted from the Sermon on the Mount, when Christ said that an eye that sinned should be plucked out and thrown away, for it was better to lose a hand or eye than for the whole body to be cast into hellfire. These bishops agonised over the state of the king’s soul and wanted him separated as swiftly as possible from ‘the whore of Aquitaine’, suspected of gross misconduct including an affair with her uncle Raymond of Toulouse during her stay in the Holy Land while on the pointless Second Crusade with Louis. They saw a divorce as the only way to save Louis’ soul from further sin by removing from his bed – not that they often slept together – the obstreperous consort who had briefly weaned him away from the influence of the Church, for high office in which he had been raised until called to supreme temporal office by the accidental death of his older brother.

  In March 1152 the archbishop of Sens, who had presided over the condemnation of the teacher Peter Abelard, castrated in punishment for his scandalously illicit sexual relationship with his adolescent pupil Heloïse, convened the most important churchmen and lay nobles of Louis’ territory at the castle of Beaugency, between Orleans and Blois. Louis, with charity rare among royalty, refused to accuse his queen of anything that might be prejudicial to her and decreed that the marriage be dissolved on the grounds of consanguinity alone. Being a woman, Eleanor was not allowed to speak. Her advocate, Archbishop Geoffroy of Bordeaux, who had negotiated her marriage to Louis fifteen years earlier, stipulated the return of her dowry lands in the same condition as at the time of the marriage, in consideration of which she would remain a faithful vassal of King Louis. After arrangements were agreed for an audit to ensure that this condition was observed, Eleanor was free – at the price of a recent unwanted pregnancy forced on her by the pope and the loss of her two daughters by Louis, who remained the property of their father.

  Twelfth-century France showing Eleanor’s territorial inheritance

  Eleanor departed from Beaugency in a cortège of her vassals, the richest woman in the world by far but a potential prey for any noble with the nerve and force to kidnap and forcibly marry her. This nearly happened twice in the next few days during the journey home to her own lands. Near Blois, 16-year-old Geoffrey Plantagenet attempted an ambush that failed.9 On the Loire crossing at Tours another ambush by Thibault of Blois, son of the count of Champagne, likewise failed when Eleanor’s route was changed at the last minute.

  Once safely installed in her own quarters in the Tour Maubergeonne of the comital palace at Poitiers, 30-
year-old Eleanor lost no time in repudiating all the charters appertaining to her lands that she had been obliged to sign with Louis. Taking stock of her situation, she had no illusions. Her position was the same as it had been fifteen years earlier after inheriting title to the duchy of Aquitaine on her father’s death. So rich an heiress, while unmarried and therefore unprotected by a father or husband, was constantly at risk of having her territory invaded, and being obliged to wed the invader. Although just released from a marriage that had bored her for years, she had therefore swiftly to remarry a powerful noble, whose territories added to hers would make the couple a force to be reckoned with. Her choice was dictated not by love, but realpolitik. It fell on a neighbour whom she had met at the Capetian court when he and his father came to do homage to King Louis.

  On 6 April Geoffrey Plantagenet’s older brother, the 19-year-old Count Henry of Anjou, whose county abutted on the northern border of Poitou, announced to his assembled vassals that he was going to marry the 30-year-old ex-wife of his overlord Louis Capet. He had previously sought the hand of one of Louis VII’s daughters, but abandoned that suit for Eleanor’s far richer dowry.10 Feudal custom demanded that two vassals of Louis must request his approval to their match, but this was something that neither Henry nor Eleanor had any intention of doing. They also chose to ignore the even closer ties of consanguinity between themselves than those which had justified Eleanor’s canonical repudiation by Louis Capet. In addition, Henry ignored a new slander being circulated to blacken the name of the woman who had rejected the king of France: that she had slept with Henry’s own womanising father, Geoffrey the Fair.

  Negotiations on Eleanor’s behalf were again conducted by Archbishop Geoffroy of Bordeaux. On 18 May 1152 in the grandeur of Poitiers Cathedral, which lies a short walk from the comital palace, the knot was tied with due ceremony11 amid excitement and apprehension among their vassals, for the refusal of the two spouses to seek Louis’ approval constituted grounds for his military intervention, should he be able to assemble a sufficiently powerful army to come and punish them.

  Eleanor and Henry’s combined lands

  Through his mother Empress Matilda – so called by virtue of her first marriage to the German Holy Roman Emperor Henry V – Count Henry was also duke of Normandy and overlord of Maine and Touraine. Allying Eleanor’s lands to his made him the most powerful man in France. Together, they controlled more than half the country, which was far more than poor Louis Capet could claim as his own domain. The icing on the cake for Henry was that the acquisition of Eleanor’s dower lands also increased immeasurably his chances of recovering what the Empress Matilda regarded as part of her birthright: the disputed kingdom of England. For that, Henry of Anjou surely owed his new wife a debt of lifelong gratitude. Did Eleanor know that Henry’s gratitude never lasted? She can hardly have guessed then that, two decades later, he would be her implacable enemy, against whom she would raise their adult sons in armed rebellion.

  Louis’ advisers counselled him to summon Henry of Anjou to Paris to answer to a charge of treason for marrying without his suzerain’s consent. Although Eleanor was equally guilty, the king refused then or at any other time to make any move against his ex-wife. Since Henry showed no sign of putting in an appearance to be judged, Louis gathered together a host, partly by pardoning vassals like Robert of Dreux, who had joined a coalition of usurping nobles while Louis was absent in the Holy Land on crusade. Others, like Thibault V de Blois, were bribed – in his case by betrothal to Eleanor’s 2-year-old second daughter by Louis. Her other daughter abandoned in Paris, 7-year-old Aelith, had just been married to Count Henry I of Champagne, enlisting him and his vassals to the royal cause by bringing to the House of Champagne the child bride’s tenuous claim to her mother’s duchy of Aquitaine.

  Normally, the Church would have supported Louis in his intention to punish Henry and Eleanor, but the French prelates and the pope were too busy playing another political game to get involved in this squabble: Pope Eugenius III had instructed Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury not to crown Eustace of Boulogne as the future successor to his father Stephen of Blois on the throne of England. Henry of Anjou’s recent marriage thus made him the strongest contender for the throne of England after Stephen’s death. On Midsummer Day, a little over one month after the May wedding and in the hope of weakening Henry’s position in the competition for the crown of England, Stephen also sent a contingent to join Louis’ forces invading the Plantagenet possessions. The motives of the other members of Louis’ coalition, like young Geoffrey of Anjou, were simpler: to grab and hold on to whatever part of Henry and Eleanor’s territories they could conquer and occupy. There was indeed so much territory at stake that each could easily have acquired a county or two for himself, if victorious.

  NOTES

  1. Latin adjective hodierna, meaning ‘of today’.

  2. Also spelled Necham and Nequam. The latter being Latin for ‘worthless’ was possibly a play on words, or a comparison with his more famous milk-brother.

  3. See, inter alia, F. and J. Gies, Marriage and the Family in the Middle Ages (New York: Hudson and Row, 1987), pp. 176–203.

  4. See at greater length D. Boyd, Eleanor, April Queen of Aquitaine (Stroud: The History Press, 2011), pp. 179–82.

  5. Originally christened Edith and also known as Maud.

  6. Walter Map, ed. M. Rhodes James, De Nugis Curialium (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 238.

  7. A. Kelly, Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Four Kings (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), pp. 6–7 (abridged by the author).

  8. Stubbs, W., Roger of Howden Chronica, Vol 2, p. 335.

  9. Richard, A., Histoire des Comtes de Poitou (Paris: Picard, 1903), Vol 2, p. 108.

  10. Kelly, Eleanor of Aquitaine, p. 193.

  11. William of Newburgh, Historia Rerum Anglicarum, ed. R. Howlett in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, Henry II and Richard I, Rolls Series 82 (London: Longmans, 1884), Vol 1, p. 93.

  2

  Duke to King, Duchess to Queen

  It seemed, briefly, that Henry had been caught unawares because he was heavily involved with preparations to invade England and reclaim the kingdom lost by his mother in the protracted civil war against Stephen of Blois – a time of strife in which, it was said, ‘Christ and his angels slept’ while the country was ravaged by Stephen’s Flemish mercenaries and even the palace of Westminster was turned into a doss-house. In fact, Henry had been preparing for Louis’ move ever since the council of war on 6 April. The speed and savagery with which he now led his forces to lay waste Robert of Dreux’s lands caused the Church to beg for a truce, at the chance of which Louis leaped after falling psychosomatically ill. Ignoring both, Henry rode south with his customary speed to capture the castle of Montsoreau from a castellan who supported his brother Geoffrey. One by one, his other enemies fled the field, leaving Eleanor and her husband the strongest force in France and in a stronger position to invade England the following year.

  They spent that autumn en chevauchée – literally riding the length and breadth of her lands together to impress on every vassal, both lay and religious (for an abbot was required like any other baron to lead his contingent of armed men in the field in support of his overlord) that the new duke would ruthlessly crush any attempts at secession during his absence the following year when Henry intended invading England. Just one example was needed to impress all the other vassals. It came when the couple arrived at Limoges for Henry’s coronation as duke and were at first greeted with acclamation by the populace and the abbot and his community. Following feudal custom, Henry demanded accommodation and food for his retinue but the abbot of Limoges refused, pleading that the custom only covered a modest ducal party lodged within the walls, whereas Henry’s retinue, expanded by many of his vassals and vavasours who had come to witness the ceremony, was encamped outside them. It is probable that the dispute had more to do with the numbers involved than where exactly they were sleeping but,
when fighting erupted between his soldiery and the resentful townsfolk, Henry ordered that they and the abbot be taught a lesson. The newly built bridge across the River Vienne was torn down, as were the recently rebuilt city walls,1 making Duke Henry’s point that his retinue was no longer ‘without the walls’ which no longer existed, and therefore should be fed.

  Once crowned duke of Aquitaine, he was deterred from further punitive action in the Limousin by news from England that his mother’s erstwhile supporters in England were now prepared to support his claim to the throne of England. To them he was known as Henry fitz-Empress, meaning ‘son of the Empress’. Others called him by the sobriquet Curtmantle, from his habit of wearing a short cloak, which, although offering less protection from the weather, allowed quicker reactions in the saddle than a long one would have done. It was a sartorial expression of his pragmatic nature and impatience. The chronicler Peter of Blois observed that Henry could ride in one day the distance others would cover in four or five; as Louis’ supporters had found out, his speed of attack was to become legendary.

  Instead of waiting for milder weather, Henry now insisted on braving the winter gales by crossing the Channel with a small army of mercenaries transported in a fleet of twenty-six vessels from the little port at Barfleur in the lee of the Cotentin Peninsula on 8 January 1153.2 In a series of marches, counter-marches and skirmishes without any major battle, he and Stephen manoeuvred for advantage, with Henry and his supporters controlling the south-west, the Midlands and much of northern England, while Stephen held the more valuable south and east. The biggest confrontation seemed likely to happen on the River Thames at Wallingford, where the castle had been besieged by Stephen for months, but the barons on both sides were more in favour of a settlement, allowing the bishops to arrange a truce, during which Henry and Stephen met face-to-face.