Richard & John: Kings at War

by McLynn, Frank

  Striking out from his temporary base at Vendôme, in the first three weeks of July Richard fought another blitzkrieg campaign, smashing the rebels Geoffrey of Rancon and the count of Angoulême, capturing Taillebourg and many other castles, culminating in a glorious victory at Angoulême, where he captured the city and citadel in a single evening and scooped up 300 knights and a large number of infantrymen (Richard claimed the impossible number of 40,000). Verneuil, Loches, Fréteval, Taillebourg, Angoulême: the list of important Lionheart victories seemed endless.23 In the south Richard carried all before him but in the prolonged struggle for dominance in the crucial marches of Normandy, between Rouen and Paris, the English king found the going much harder. Philip’s strategy was to retire before Richard in the south but then to dig in and not yield an inch in the Seine valley, where his true interest lay.24 He elected to make his stand at Vaudreuil, controlling the Seine bridges ten miles south of Rouen. Formerly one of John’s castles in his capacity as count of Mortain and ceded as a token of fealty by John to Philip, Vaudreuil soon found itself besieged by forces commanded by John and the earl of Arundel, while Richard attended to matters in Aquitaine. Confident now that he faced only the militarily unimpressive brother and not the Lionheart himself, Philip made a forced march and arrived outside Vaudreuil with the cream of his forces. His attack on John was completely successful: while the Norman cavalry fled, Philip captured the Angevins’ siege artillery and made most of their infantry prisoners.25

  This setback in the north, plus simple war-weariness and financial exhaustion, led Richard to agree to a ceasefire. The truce of Tillières, signed on 23 July 1194, was supposed to run until 1 November 1195 and froze both sides on an ‘as is’ basis with regard to territory. Philip retained Vaudreuil, Gisors and Vexin and a host of other castles (effectively most of north-eastern Normandy), while Richard was only allowed to rebuild four of the many fortresses the French had devastated.26 Since Richard’s representatives negotiated the truce in ignorance of his victories in the south, and consequently extended amnesty to the major Aquitaine rebels, it was not surprising that Richard was reported very angry at the fait accompli his ambassadors had forced on him, and particularly the fact that ‘treasonable rebels’ were to enjoy all the benefits of the truce. The temporary peace was far too favourable to Philip, considering that Richard had won a string of victories. He also objected to the prominent role of the Church in brokering the agreement, sharing his father’s distaste for ecclesiastical meddling in politics.27 It seems that he made many representations to the German empire to petition the anti-Philip military aid vaguely promised in the release agreement at Mainz, but in vain. Richard’s anger must have increased as he heard repeated reports of Henry VI’s great successes in Italy, first in Apulia and Salerno and finally in Sicily where he overthrew the dynasty of Tancred.28 Richard realised he was in for a long hard slog in the Seine valley if he was ever to restore the Angevin empire to its position when at the apogee under his father Henry II.

  There followed a year of ‘phoney peace’, with both sides skirmishing, jockeying for position, building castles and generally waging a war of attrition in all areas from unofficial border ‘incidents’ to simple propaganda. Everyone knew the peace could not hold, for too many essential issues, especially concerning the Franco-Norman marches, had been swept under the carpet. The Lionheart, having inherited his father’s restlessness, was almost constantly on the move. Based at Rouen, where he spent Christmas 1194, he spent time in Alençon, Tours, Poitiers, Chinon, Le Mans and elsewhere .29 Richard used the interlude to patch up the many feuds and rows in his own family. In May 1195 he moderated his cold contempt towards John to the extent of restoring him to the counties of Mortain and Gloucester (his forgiveness the year before had obviously been partly a piece of theatre) and the living of Eye, and granting him a handsome income in Angevin livres in lieu of his other lands; significantly, though, he drew the line at restoring him his castles. John had to be content with witnessing charters and signing himself count of Mortain.30 In some ways an even more serious quarrel, with Richard’s half-brother Geoffrey, archbishop of York, was also patched up. Here Richard’s ire had been aroused by Geoffrey’s high-handed use of the royal seal, on Henry II’s death and without permission from Richard. He had dealt with this in the first instance by simply annulling the benefices made by Archbishop Geoffrey, but now he summoned him to France to effect a reconciliation, which seems to have been finalised very soon after the rapprochement with John.31 The month before, Richard achieved his third family ‘breakthrough’ by a reconciliation with his wife Berengaria, capped by joint purchase of a country house near Sarthe.32 We do not know the details of the estrangement, but it is clear that an uxorious man would not have sent his wife on by separate ship from the Holy Land. Scholarly ignorance about the rift between husband and wife has, naturally, encouraged speculators to assert that it ‘must have been’ because of the king’s alleged homosexuality.33

  Richard was by no means idle in this limbo period. Desultory peace talks, as also talks about talks, continued through the first half of 1195. One bizarre suggestion mooted was that all outstanding disputes be settled by a duel of champions, with five knights from each side deciding the issue. Philip seemed interested until it turned out that he and Richard were supposed to be two of the ten knights.34 The scheme was hastily shelved. It was probably a pure propaganda exercise, like today’s perennial proposals in Britain, likewise summarily turned down, that heads of political parties should debate face-to-face on television. During the year when he was free from major hostilities, Richard also followed international affairs closely, noting the safe return of all the hostages from Austria following Leopold’s dramatic and untimely death, the return of Henry VI from Sicily to Frankfurt via Como, the death of Henry, duke of Saxony (his brother-in-law) at Brunswick, and of Baldwin V, count of Hainault at Mons, and also the demise of Isaac the deposed ‘emperor’ of Cyprus.35 Yet it was only when Henry VI was back in Germany that the international dimension impinged to the point where France once again became a battleground. In June Henry sent Richard a golden crown and charged him ‘by the fealty which he owed him’ to invade the domain of the king of France, this time promising that he really would send military aid.36 Alerted to this by his spies and alarmed by what it portended, Philip denounced the truce and ordered most of the castles he held in Normandy demolished - a kind of Ascalon in reverse, informed by the conviction that he could not beat Richard on the battlefield. The story is told that Richard and Philip met to parley at Vaudreuil but were overwhelmed by dust and debris as Philip’s engineers managed to bring the castle walls tumbling down even as Richard was supposed to be negotiating its eventual fate. ‘By God’s legs I will see that saddles are emptied this day!’ cried an enraged Richard. Philip barely escaped from the conference with his life and evaded pursuit by Richard by having the bridge over the Seine at Portjoie pulled down behind him.37 General war was at once resumed, and Richard’s great captain Mercadier, now promoted to general, captured Issoudoun in the important county of Berry.38

  A major conflict was just about to be waged on all fronts, when more dramatic international news halted the war in its tracks. Terrible tidings were received from Spain that the king of Morocco had invaded and inflicted a signal defeat on a Christian army at Alarcos.39 This conjured ancient memories of Islam and Charlemagne, of Charles Martel at Tours, of El Cid and the Almohads a century before. Most of all, it inevitably suggested a crusade in reverse. It was clearly necessary for the two powerful monarchs of Western Europe to lay down their arms and compose a permanent peace at such a critical juncture. Accordingly, another truce was called, and there were further parleys. Initial terms proposed included the return of Alice to Philip (at long last) and a marriage between Philip’s son Louis and Eleanor of Britanny, Arthur’s sister - the woman Leopold of Austria had earmarked for his son before his sudden death changed everything. Philip would renounce his claims in the counties of Angoulême, A
umale, Eu and Arques and return to Richard the castles he had seized during the Lionheart’s captivity; more significantly, in exchange for 20,000 marks he would give back the Vexin.40 The shorthand version of this proposal was that the Vexin would be given to Richard as a dowry for Eleanor, provided she married Louis. As a further sweetener, Philip publicly declared that Richard had had nothing to do with the assassination of Conrad of Montferrat.41 All seemed set fair for a long-running truce, but Richard insisted that he first had to consult his ‘liege lord’ Henry VI. Philip meanwhile married his sister Alice to William, count of Ponthieu. Since he provided as her dowry the county of Eu and the town of Arques already pledged to Richard in the draft treaty, there are grounds for suspecting Philip of arch -machiavellianism. 42

  Richard certainly made a meal of his consultation with the emperor, sending his chancellor to the German court (as his opposite number went the archbishop of Rheims, representing France). Predictably, Henry VI refused to ratify the peace proposals, and it was on this occasion that he waived the final 17,000 marks of Richard’s ransom, as a douceur.43 All signs had anyway pointed to a renewal of hostilities before that, from the intriguing of William of Ponthieu to the arrival at the end of August (at Barfleur) of a fresh army from England. A further circumstantial pointer is that Longchamp’s brother, abbot Henry of Croyland, found Richard uninterested in administrative and church matters, but preoccupied with military planning.44 The sober conclusion is that both sides were preparing for war once the day set for a firm conclusion of the truce (8 November) arrived. It was Philip who jumped the gun, leading a dashing raid on Dieppe (which he had given back to Richard in July) that ended with the sack of the town and the gutting of the harbour with Greek fire.45 The mind behind the raid, however, was the turbulent William of Ponthieu, who had more than one reason to hate Richard; Alice apart, Richard was even then besieging Arques, supposedly part of Alice’s dowry but also promised to the Lionheart in the truce and which had never been handed over. It was never wise to try to outpoint Richard in wars of rapid movement, as Philip and his six hundred triumphant knights learned on their way back through the northern forests; with another lightning movement, Richard formed his Welsh veterans up in ambuscade and mauled the victors of Dieppe severely.46 By the end of the year Richard had both Dieppe and the fallen Arques in his possession.

  Piqued by this setback, Philip switched fronts and made another probe in the south. News had come in that there were two separate revolts in Aquitaine, one in the Perigord and another, more familiar manifestation, involving treasonous border lords in collusion with Raymond of Toulouse. Seeing a unique chance opening up, Philip appeared before the town of Issoudoun in Berry and took it after a very short siege; the garrison in the castle, however, continued to hold out. This was the kind of challenge at which Richard excelled. Leaving orders for his army to follow him with all speed on forced marches, he and a picked company of knights rode south at great speed, covering three days’ journey in a single day. At Issoudoun Richard and his company broke through the French besiegers and appeared in the castle to the joy of the defenders. Philip thought that by his quixotry Richard had placed himself in a trap and continued with the siege, hoping soon to do with the Lionheart what Henry VI had done the year before. Suddenly the main Anglo-Norman army appeared in his rear, and he realised to his horror that he was caught between two fires; the hunter became the hunted. Out-thought, outclassed and outgeneralled, Philip swallowed hard and accepted the humiliation of an imposed truce on 5 December.47 It was agreed that all troops would go to their homes, that the truce would last until 13 January 1196, and that the two kings would then meet again to see if the temporary peace terms could be made more permanent.48 Richard spent a satisfied Christmas at Poitiers, sufficiently relaxed to take an interest in the election of a new bishop of Durham.49

  The peace conference at Louviers in the Seine valley in January 1196 showed clearly that in the struggle for northern France Richard currently held the advantage. He had expelled the French from all Channel ports, regained all of Normandy except the Vexin, and got Philip to agree that in the south Raymond of Toulouse was no more than a warmonger, and his allies illegitimate rebels against the count of Aquitaine, to whom in feudal law they properly owed homage and service.50 The French consoled themselves by the thought that in the treaty of Louviers Richard had implicitly abandoned for all time his claim to the Norman Vexin. Naturally Richard himself did not construe the treaty in that way at all; for him it was merely a means of buying time until the time came to renew the peace in June.51 The common rallying point of the two monarchs was their joint dislike of the archbishop of Rouen, in their eyes yet another turbulent priest. The archbishop had grievances against the two kings because of the damage done by both to his churches in Normandy, and even tried to place Philip’s lands under interdict. Richard tried to silence the archbishop by making him surety for a payment of 2,000 marks to Philip, but the divine refused and fled to sanctuary with the archbishop of Cambrai, where the two ecclesiastics devised a kind of mutual assistance pact, to protect themselves against powerful temporal lords. But Richard was before him. As soon as the archbishop withdrew from the Louviers conference, Richard decreed that if the churchman refused to act as his surety for the 2,000 marks, he would be banished from Normandy and not allowed to return until he had either paid the 2,000 marks or secured King Philip’s permission to come back.52 Richard demonstrated on this occasion that he could be just as tough as his father on any prince of the Church who overstepped his due bounds.

  That the peace of Louviers was shaky was immediately demonstrated when Philip changed tack on the affair of the archbishop of Rouen. First he issued safe-conducts for him and his confederate the archbishop of Cambrai. Then he promised to make restitution of all the losses sustained by the bishop. Seeing himself in danger of being marginalised as an enemy of the Church, Richard then wrote to Rouen, assuring him of his benevolence and releasing him from the onus of being a surety for the 2,000 marks. In return he asked that the archbishop help him get the earl of Leicester (still a prisoner in Philip’s hands, even though he had promised, in the treaty, to release him) freed by offering as a quid pro quo the withdrawal of the episcopal interdict.53 When Rouen proved amenable, this particular headache seemed ended. But an even greater one almost at once supervened. Ever since Henry II’s death, Britanny had been a weak link in the Angevin empire, so Richard decided to summon to his court his late brother Geoffrey’s wife Constance, who had since remarried (to Ranulf of Chester) in a bizarre marriage of convenience, where the husband lived in England and the wife in Britanny. Apparently Richard had decided that holding Constance’s daughter Eleanor as his ward was not enough for effective control of Britanny, that he needed Constance too. But this turn of events was too much for the absentee husband. Suddenly he appeared in Britanny and kidnapped his wife even as she prepared to obey Richard’s summons.54 Perplexed by this enigmatic sequence of events, Constance’s Breton advisers appealed to Philip on the grounds that their duchess had been kidnapped by the Lionheart. Philip loved fishing in such troubled waters and engineered a virtual coup in Britanny, whereby the duchy revoked its allegiance to the Angevin empire. Richard could not stand idly by and tolerate such a signal threat to his sea power and cross-Channel communications, so invaded Britanny and swept all before him (in the Easter week of 1196).55 The defeated Breton oligarchs responded by whisking Richard’s heir-apparent Arthur off to Philip in Paris. When Philip publicly granted Arthur asylum, he made a virtual declaration of war against Richard. The English king responded by writing to Hubert Walter, urgently calling for more knights for a long campaign against France.56

  The Arthur affair was a straw in the wind. By summer 1196, the diplomatic advantage seemed to have shifted to Philip. He had persuaded Baldwin IX, the new count of Flanders and Hainault, to join his anti-Angevin alliance, and with Baldwin and his (Philip’s) brother-in-law the count of Ponthieu, he launched an attack on Aumale in July.57 Richar
d retaliated by seizing Nonancourt, suborning the castellan so that it surrendered without a fight. From there he marched to Aumale but now, for the first time ever in his career, the God of war deserted him. Richard sustained his first serious reverse at the hands of Philip’s forces - a defeat so embarrassing that the English chroniclers of his reign prefer to pass it by in silence. It seems that Richard failed to realise how gravely he was outnumbered and, once he did, faced the unpalatable choice of retreating and losing face or pressing on against impossible odds.58 There was only one possible course for a Lionheart, but the dice was loaded against him, as events proved. On 20 August Aumale fell, and Richard had the further humiliation of having to pay 3,000 marks to ransom the garrison.59 Although the French had taken heavy losses during the siege and from Richard’s diversionary attack - which seems to have been directed at particularly strong French entrenchments - they completed the Angevin shame by not leaving one stone of Aumale standing on another.60 That summer, 1196 turned into a disaster for Richard. Philip recaptured Nonancourt, the Lionheart himself was wounded by a crossbow quarrel and, as if to add insult to injury, the despised John took the fortress of Gamaches in the Norman Vexin.61

  Once again both sides paused for breath. Increasingly convinced that his reconquest of the Vexin - his abiding aim - was not something that could be achieved by the previous strategy of lightning campaigns, however flamboyant and spectacular his individual victories might prove to be, Richard settled in for the long haul. His new project was the construction of a fortress in the Seine valley that would rival for impregnability the great crusader castles like Krak des Chevaliers. Château-Gaillard, as the new castle was called, was Richard’s version of the Arthurian Joyous Garde. Built on a limestone rock 300 feet above the Seine and its companion new town Les Andelys, the castle had a most elaborate network of defences: outworks linking it to the town, which in turn was protected by bridged waterways and a stockade built across the river on the south side of the rock. A veteran of dozens of sieges, Richard knew all about the blind spots that allowed attackers to get inside the guard of defenders and be secure from their missiles - the so-called ‘dead angles’ - and combated them with curvilinear walls. Château-Gaillard turned out to be a mathematical gem: citadel, fortifications, crenellations, embrasures interlinking and in turn interpenetrating with the island town and the stockade so that the whole had the pleasing symmetry of a Bach sonata.62 This was Richard the mathematician at work, in this, as in so much else, anticipating Napoleon. Throughout the winter of 1196, into the new year, and well into 1198 Richard kept his architects and builders, his masons and engineers, his soldiers and his civilian labourers hard at work completing his masterpiece. Chroniclers reported an anthill of activity, with water-carriers, carpenters, quarrymen, woodmen, miners, blacksmiths, hodcarriers and stonecutters all competing against each other for piece-work bonuses. Delighted with his handiwork, Richard declared that he would eventually be able to hold Château-Gaillard against all comers; the layout permitted a concentration of force at any locality such that he felt confident of defending the walls, as he put it, even if they were made of butter.63