CHAPTER VI

RICHARD AND SALADIN

1192

Circumdate Sion et complectimini eam ... et distribuite domos ejus,

ut enarratis in progenie altera.

The abandonment of the projected expedition to Ibelin was due to more

causes than one. On the day of the [Sidenote: _May 22_] surrender

of Darum Saladin had yielded to the necessity strongly urged upon

him by his emirs, of restoring peace and unity within the borders of

Islam as the essential preliminary to a renewal of the “Holy” war,

and had despatched Safadin with full powers to make whatever terms

he might think good with his rebel great-nephew El Mansour.[922]

The settlement thus made enabled the Sultan to call out all his

forces again for action against the Franks; and so prompt was the

response to his call that two important contingents, under the Emirs

Bedr-ed-Din and Ezz-ed-Din, reached Jerusalem on the last day of May,

just as the Christian host was on its march northward from Cassaba.

Hearing that it was at the “parting of the roads” between Ascalon and

Ibelin, he despatched Ezz-ed-Din with the newly arrived forces to

intercept it, and an encounter in circumstances which would have been

highly unfavourable to the Franks was only averted by the promptitude

with which their leaders, on discovering Ezz-ed-Din’s approach,

changed their plans and retired to Ascalon.[923] Ibelin was a place

worth securing; but its capture was not essential to their present

object; for the purpose of leading an army to Jerusalem the Wady el

Afranj was as valueless as the Wady el Hesy. When once a new advance

on Jerusalem was decided on, the matter of most urgent necessity

was the restoration of the host to its fullest possible strength.

Some of the French contingent were still at Acre. Thither Count

Henry once more proceeded from Ascalon to call these recalcitrants

back to their duty,[924] and also to collect any reinforcements that

could be obtained from Tyre, Tripoli, or elsewhere.[925] Beit Nuba

was appointed as the place where he and they were to rejoin the main

body.[926] With the latter Richard on June 6 set out early in the

morning, and in a few hours was encamped before Blanchegarde.[927]

From Blanchegarde three ways into the hill-country lay open. One was

the valley of Elah (Wady es Sunt), which runs almost due east from

the place where the Crusaders now were. This way was not attractive

to invaders, because its continuation on the further side of the

central trench was very difficult for troops. North-eastward from

Blanchegarde a road ran along the border of the plain past the mouth

of the valley of Sorek (Wady es Surar) to Natroun, and thence across

the Shephelah to Beit Nuba. The valley of Sorek is the most direct

and the easiest of all the natural ways that lead up from the plain

to the mountains of Judah; but it had a great disadvantage. For an

army advancing through it there was no possible base on the coast

nearer than Ascalon or Joppa, both of them more than twenty miles

distant from its western end. The only place within easy reach of

it that could be called a coast-town was Ibelin-Yebna, and this was

not a coast-town in the proper sense; it was four miles from the sea

and had no harbour. Of all the roads that led to Jerusalem the best

for the Crusaders was unquestionably the one which they had chosen

for their first attempt—the Beit Nuba road, where they would have in

their rear a safe double line of communication through Ramlah and

Lydda with their original base at Joppa and thence, by land and sea,

with Acre. On June 9 they advanced to Natroun,[928] and that night

they intercepted a score of Turks returning from a plundering raid

on Joppa; six escaped, the other fourteen were made prisoners.[929]

Next day Richard with the men of his own domains moved on to Castle

Arnold,[930] a place whose character is expressed in its modern

Arabic name, Khurbet-el-Burj, “ruins of the Bourg,” _burh_ or

fortress; it had been built by his great-grandfather, King Fulk, on

one of the highest hills in the Shephelah, about three and a half

miles north-west of Beit Nuba, and commanded both the “way that goeth

to Beth-horon” and the lower road along the foot of the hills, from

Lydda by Beit Nuba to Jerusalem. Probably the Turks had dismantled

it; Richard pitched his tents “on a high place to the right.” He was

joined by the rest of the [Sidenote: _June 10_] army next day, when

all together proceeded to Beit Nuba and encamped there to wait for

Count Henry and his recruits.[931]

On that same day Saladin, whose scouts kept him well informed of all

the enemy’s movements, held a council to decide what course should

be taken in view of their apparent intention to attempt the siege

of Jerusalem. It was settled that the defence of the walls should

be divided among the emirs, a certain portion being assigned to

each of them, and that the Sultan himself with the rest of his army

should take the field against the invaders.[932] The latter part of

this arrangement was, however, not carried into effect: throughout

the three weeks which the Franks spent at Beit Nuba they never

encountered Saladin, and no general engagement took place, though

there were, as Ambrose says, many “adventures and skirmishes and

discomfitures,” in several of which Richard was personally engaged.

One of these counterbalanced, within twenty-four hours, an evil omen

for the Franks with which, according to Bohadin, their stay at Beit

Nuba began—the falling of a convoy from Joppa into a Turkish ambush

on June 12.[933] That night a scout sent out by Richard returned

from the hill of Gibeon—called by the Franks Montjoie, because it

was the place whence the earliest Crusaders had first seen the Holy

City—with tidings of another ambush which, he seems to have learned,

was posted near “the Fountain of Emmaus,” or Amwas, half way between

Natroun and Beit Nuba, and close to the point where the roads from

Natroun and Ramlah meet. Before dawn Richard was in the saddle; at

daybreak he was at the Fountain; the Turks were caught at unawares,

twenty were slain, one was captured and his life spared because he

was Saladin’s herald; three camels, several fine Turcoman horses, and

two good mules laden with silk stuffs, aloes, and spicery, were the

prize of the victor. The rest of the party he chased over the hills

till he overtook and slew one of them, seemingly on the “Mount of

Joy” itself, for according to Ambrose—who says he had the story of

the adventure from one who took part in it—he “saw Jerusalem plainly”

before he turned back.[934] During his absence from the camp it had

been assailed by a band of Turks, but they were driven back into the

hills.[935] An attempt of the enemies to intercept another caravan

three or four days later was equally unsuccessful, though the Turks

killed a few Christians and took some prisoners.[936]

Meanwhile the lesser folk were growing tired of waiting for Henry,

and impatiently asking whether they were or [Sidenote: _June 16-20_]

were not really going to Jerusalem this time. Some of the French

nobles urged Richard to lead the host at once to Jerusalem and begin

the siege. He refused. He pointed out the risks which such a step

would involve; he reminded them how easy it would be for Saladin,

who always knew all their movements, to swoop down with his army

into the plain in their rear and cut off their supplies and their

communication with the sea, the circuit of the walls being too

extensive to admit of the division of so small a force as theirs

into two bodies, one to form the siege and the other to protect the

besiegers and keep the ways clear for convoys. He would not, he said,

be the leader of such an undertaking, because he had no mind to incur

the blame for the disaster in which he believed it would result. He

knew well, he added, that both in Holy Land and in France there were

some persons who wished that he might wreck his reputation in some

such way, but he was not minded to satisfy their desire. Moreover,

he and the French were alike strangers in the land; it was not for

them to take the responsibility, but for the Military Orders and the

feudataries of the realm. “Let them decide whether we are to attempt

the siege, or to go and take Babylon, or Beyrout, or Damascus.

So shall there be no discord amongst us.”[937] The decision was

committed to twenty umpires representing every division of the host

except the subjects of Richard: five Templars, five Hospitaliers,

five knights of Syria, and five barons of France. The first fifteen

gave their award for an expedition against “Babylon”; but the French

would not agree to this; they declared they would go to Jerusalem

and nowhere else. Richard did his utmost to restore unity. He held

out every possible inducement to the French to accept the Cairo

project: “See, my fleet lies at Acre, ready to carry all the baggage,

equipments, and accoutrements, biscuits and flour; the host would go

all along by the shore and I would lead from here at my own charges

seven hundred knights and two thousand men-at-arms; no man of mine

should be lacking. But if they [that is, the French] will not do

this, I am quite ready to go to the siege of Jerusalem; only be it

known that I will not be the leader of the host; I will go in the

company, as leader of my own men, but of no others.” And forthwith

he bade all his men assemble in the quarters of the Hospitaliers,

“and arrange what help they would give to the siege when they got to

Jerusalem.”[938]

Before this last order was fully carried out an unexpected and most

welcome diversion occurred. Saladin was now in daily expectation of

some troops from Egypt, for whose despatch he had given orders some

time before with a warning that they must be specially cautious when

they approached the territory occupied by the Franks. These troops

waited at Belbeis for the assembling of a great caravan, in company

with which they finally set out for Jerusalem. All this was known

to Richard through his scouts, who were fully equal in efficiency

to those of Saladin; some of them were renegade Arabs[939]; others

were Syrian Christians, so well disguised and speaking the “Saracen”

tongue so perfectly as to be indistinguishable from real Saracens.

Three of these Syrian spies came into the camp—seemingly on Sunday

June 21[940]—and bade the king mount and ride with his men, and

they would lead him to the great caravan that was coming up from

Egypt. Richard, in his joy, asked Hugh of Burgundy and the other

Frenchmen to join the expedition, and they did so, on condition of

receiving a third part of the spoil. With five hundred knights and

men-at-arms the king rode by moonlight to Blanchegarde and thence to

Galatia, a town in the plain, half way between Ascalon and Ibelin of

the Hospital; there he was within easy reach of both the coast-road

and the inland road, and could also procure from Ascalon whatever

supplies he needed, whether of fresh horses or provisions.[941]

Saladin, as soon as he was informed of these movements, despatched

five hundred picked Turkish soldiers under the emir Aslam to meet

the force from Egypt and warn it of its danger.[942] He evidently

expected that the Egyptians, knowing the coast to be practically

in the hands of the Franks, would come by the inner or eastern road

which after crossing the Wady Ghuzzeh divided into two branches,

one passing over the mountains by Hebron and Bethlehem, the other

through the Shephelah across the Wady el Hesy and thence by Beit

Djibrin (Ibelin) to the valleys of Elah and Sorek. This latter route,

being the easier and shorter, was the one which the Egyptians would

naturally take and which Aslam took to meet them. His mission was

to reach them, if possible, in the desert, and guide them by the

safer though more toilsome and lengthy way over the mountain-range.

Riding as only Arabs (and possibly Richard on Fauvel) could ride,

he and [Sidenote: _June 22_] his party did meet them, late in the

evening, at what the Arabs called “the Waters of Kuweilfeh” and the

Franks “the Round Cistern.” This was no doubt a well-known stage

on the road from Egypt and Mecca; its site is at the southern foot

of the Shephelah, close to the opening from the central fosse into

the desert, and it would thus be the first watering-place for their

beasts of burden after passing the Wady Ghuzzeh and before entering

the hill-country. Aslam was urgent that the ascent to Hebron should

be made that night; but the Egyptian commander, Felek-ed-Din, fearing

lest the caravan should fail to keep together in the darkness,

decided to wait till morning.[943] Meanwhile a native Syrian scout

had come to Richard at Galatia and told him that if he made haste he

might capture the caravan at the Round Cistern. Richard, conscious

that there was no real need to hurry—since he and his horsemen

could easily overtake the slow movements of a caravan—determined to

verify the report before acting on it. He accordingly sent out three

more scouts,[944] one a real Bedouin, the others native Turcoples

disguised in Bedouin attire, to make a further reconnaissance in the

evening. Meanwhile he and his troops seem to have advanced to the

head of the Wady el Hesy, which Aslam had crossed shortly before

them.[945] Here the returning scouts met them with the news that not

only the caravan, but also the army from Egypt, was encamped at the

Round Cistern for the night. The king gave orders for all to mount

and ride, and, as they valued their honour, not to think of gain, but

devote all their energy to routing the Turkish soldiers. He took his

usual post in the van; the [Sidenote: _June 23_] French formed the

rearguard. By daybreak they were all close to their destination, and

were forming up for attack when another scout came to warn them that

their approach had been discovered and the caravan was on the alert.

Richard sent forward some archers, Turcoples, and crossbowmen, to

harass the enemies and impede their movements till he could come up

with his other troops. The caravan remained stationary; the Moslem

troops took up a sheltered position close to the hills and greeted

their assailants with a thick cloud of missiles “which fell on the

ground like dew,”[946] but it was all in vain. “Those of our men who

were reputed bravest,” confesses Bohadin, “were glad to save their

lives by the fleetness of their horses. It was long since Islam had

had such a disgraceful defeat.”[947] Aslam, to the neglect of whose

counsel the disaster was due, had before the fight began withdrawn

with his troops into the mountains. Thither the others fled, chased

by the Frank cavalry, while the infantry turned to secure the

caravan. Aslam, seeing the Christian forces thus divided, seized

his opportunity to send down by a side path a party of horsemen who

attacked the Christian foot; but the attack was beaten off, and the

caravan surrendered.[948] The booty was immense; there were more than

four thousand camels laden with precious stores of the most varied

kind, gold and silver, silks and purple cloth, grain and flour, sugar

and spices, tents, hides, arms of all sorts; the horses and mules

were “altogether beyond counting”; and besides all this, the Egyptian

contingent so eagerly awaited by Saladin had lost nearly two thousand

men[949] and suffered a most ignominious defeat. “No tidings,” says

Bohadin, “ever dealt a more grievous wound to the heart of the Sultan

than those which were brought to him at the close of that day.”[950]

Saladin at once prepared for the siege which he now felt to be

imminent. He ordered his captains to take up their appointed

positions round the walls and make all ready for their defence, and

he caused the brooks and pools round about the city to be polluted,

the wells filled up, and the cisterns destroyed, so as to leave the

assailants no means of obtaining water, for it would be impossible

for them to dig new wells in that rocky soil. When all these

precautions were taken, however, he was still very anxious; for he

knew that among the Moslems, no less than among the Christians, there

was dissension as to the conduct of the war, and jealousy and mutual

distrust between the various nationalities of which his host was

composed; for although the Sultan’s subjects were all lumped together

indiscriminately by the Frank writers as “Turks” or “Saracens,” some

of them were in reality much less closely akin and much less alike

in origin, character, and habits, than were the men of England and

France and Italy and Germany. On the night of Wednesday July 1 he

called his emirs to a solemn council. By his desire Bohadin opened it

with an impassioned exhortation to all present to persevere in the

war, and proposed that they should all take an oath on the Sacred

Stone of the Temple to hold together till death. Saladin himself

appealed to them as “the only fighting force and sole stay of Islam,”

on whom depended the safety of all Mussulmans everywhere. They all

pledged themselves to stand by him till death. [Sidenote: _Thurs.,

July 2_] Next day, however, they held a meeting among themselves,

and some of them there expressed their disapproval of the Sultan’s

strategy in shutting up “the only fighting force and stay of Islam”

at Jerusalem; they believed it would result in the capture of the

city and the destruction of the army by a fate such as that of the

garrison of Acre, and thus bring the Mussulman dominion in Palestine

to ruin, and that the wiser course would be to risk a pitched battle,

which if they were victorious would shatter the enemy’s power and

enable the Moslems to recover all that they had lost, while if they

were defeated, they would indeed lose Jerusalem, but the army of

Islam would remain, and might hope to regain the city hereafter.

These criticisms were reported to Saladin, with a further warning

that if he persisted in his plan of defence, he must either himself

remain in the city or leave one of his family to take the command

there, as the Kurdish troops would not obey a Turkish emir nor the

Turks a Kurdish one. Personally he was willing to stay, but his

friends would not sanction a course which they felt might bring upon

Islam a double disaster in the loss of the city and the Sultan both

[Sidenote: _July 2_] at once. He and his devoted secretary spent the

whole night in deliberating and praying over the problems suggested

by [Sidenote: _July 3_] this communication; on the Friday morning

Bohadin advised his master to give up all attempts at finding a

solution of them and simply commit the direction of all his affairs

to a higher Power. The counsel was followed. That evening the officer

in command of the Moslem advanced guard sent word that “the whole

army of the enemies” had—seemingly on the preceding day—ridden out

to the top of a hill, stationed itself there a while, and then

ridden back to its camp; he had sent out scouts to ascertain what

[Sidenote: _Sat., July 4_] was going on. At daybreak next morning

this announcement was followed by another; the scouts had come in and

reported that a great discussion, lasting all night, had taken place

among the Christian leaders, and had ended at dawn in a decision to

retreat.[951]

The victors of Kuweilfeh seem to have reached Beit Nuba on June 30;

they had returned by easy stages by way of Ramlah, where they found

Count Henry with the troops which he had collected at Acre.[952]

At first the camp was filled with rejoicing over the spoil, which

Richard took care to distribute fairly among all ranks of the host;

but in a day or two the lesser folk began to clamour for an immediate

advance on Jerusalem. The native umpires who a fortnight before had

given their award against the siege repeated the arguments which

they had then used, laying special stress on the impossibility of

procuring water, now that all the artificial stores of it for two

miles round the city were known to have been destroyed by the enemy,

and at a season when every drop of moisture, except the little

fountain of Siloam, would be dried up by the heat of the Syrian

midsummer.[953] There were also other difficulties. One which Richard

had urged in January—the numerical insufficiency of the host—does

not seem to have been appreciably lessened by the results of Count

Henry’s recruiting expedition. The worst difficulty of all was

internal disunion. Hugh of Burgundy’s self-will and his jealousy

of Richard were shown more openly than ever now that his share of

the caravan spoils had made him independent of Richard’s bounty. He

and his men had long been in the habit, wherever the host went, of

camping apart from their fellow-Crusaders at night as if desirous

to avoid their company; by day, when they and the men of other

nations had to associate together, there were constant bickerings and

altercations; and the duke crowned all this mischief by “causing a

song full of all vileness to be made about the king, and this song

was sung amid the host. Was the king blameworthy,” asks the Norman

poet-chronicler, “when he in return made a song upon these people

who were always thwarting and insulting him? and truly no good song

could be sung about such outrageous folk.”[954] According to one

English writer, Hugh even entered into a secret negotiation with

Saladin, which the vigilance of a scout enabled Richard to unmask,

to the utter confusion of the duke; but the details of the story are

somewhat doubtful.[955] Clearly, however, there was no exaggeration

in the report transmitted to Saladin from his advanced guard as to

dissensions in the Christian camp; and there is no reason to doubt

the correctness of Bohadin’s account—derived likewise from the

statements of a scout who was secretly present—of the final council

held on the night of Thursday-Friday, July 2-3. After much debate,

three hundred arbitrators were appointed from among the nobles and

knights; these three hundred delegated their powers to twelve others,

and these twelve chose three umpires, from whose decision there was

to be no appeal.[956] In the morning the pilgrims were, for the

second time [Sidenote: _July 3_] when at a distance of little more

than four hours’ march from their goal, told that they must prepare

for a retreat.[957]

The disappointment was perhaps all the more keenly felt because it

followed closely not only upon the victory over the Egyptians, but

also upon two incidents which had heightened the religious fervour

and thus encouraged the hopes of the Christian soldiers. Several

relics of the Holy Cross besides the famous one which had been lost

at Hattin were preserved in various places in Palestine, and had

been hidden at the time of the Saracen conquest to save them from

falling into Infidel hands. A Syrian bishop who had held the see of

Lydda is said to have come with a great company of men and women of

his flock and presented one of these fragments to Richard shortly

after the host reached Beit Nuba.[958] A little later—seemingly just

before Richard heard of the coming of the Egyptian caravan—the abbot

of Saint Elias, a monastery situated on the road from Jerusalem to

Bethlehem,[959] came and told the king that he had a piece of the

Cross hidden in a place known only to himself, which Saladin, who

knew the relic had been secreted, had vainly tried to bribe him into

revealing. Richard rode with him to the place and brought the sacred

treasure back, to the great joy of the host.[960] If we may trust

an English writer who, though he did not take part in the Crusade,

had a special opportunity of obtaining information about Richard’s

personal share in it, a third fragment of the Holy Rood came into

the king’s hands under yet stranger circumstances, one of which may

possibly have had some influence on his conduct two [Sidenote: _July

3_] months later. On the last night of the army’s sojourn at Beit

Nuba a monk brought him a message from a certain hermit who dwelt on

the “Mount of Saint Samuel”—that is, Nebi Samwîl, the Arabic name for

what the Crusaders usually called the Montjoie—bidding him, in God’s

Name, come to him without delay. Richard arose, called up an escort

of horsemen, and rode to the place. The hermit was believed to have

the spirit of prophecy; he wore no clothes, and was covered only by

his long unshorn hair and beard. Richard, after gazing for a while

in wonder at this strange-looking personage, asked him what was his

will. The hermit led his guest into an oratory, removed a stone from

the wall, and brought out a wooden cross “of a cubit’s length” which

he reverently handed to the king, telling him it was made from the

sacred Tree of Calvary. He added a prediction that the king would

not at this time succeed in winning the land, however hard he might

strive for it; and to demonstrate the reality of his own prophetic

gift, he further foretold his own death on that day week. Richard

took him back to the camp to prove whether his words would come true.

Seven days afterwards the prophet died.[961] Sixty years later, there

was a tradition in Palestine that on one occasion when the men of the

Third Crusade, on the point of marching upon the Holy City, were by

the jealousies among their leaders compelled to turn back, a knight

in Richard’s service “cried out to him, ‘Sire, sire, come here and

I will shew you Jerusalem.’ And when he heard that, he cast his

surcoat before his eyes all weeping, and said to our Lord: ‘Fair Lord

God, I pray Thee that Thou suffer me not to behold Thy Holy City,

since I cannot deliver it from the hands of Thine enemies.’”[962]

This incident, in itself quite possible, is in Joinville’s report of

the story placed in a setting of which the details are certainly not

historically accurate. If it really occurred, its true place is most

probably at the close of Richard’s nocturnal visit to the Mount of S.

Samuel, as the sunrise on July 4 lighted up the lower slopes of the

mountain-range of which that eminence was the crown, and revealed the

city on its coign of vantage at the south-eastern angle of [Sidenote:

_July 4_] the plateau. A few hours later the whole host was back at

Ramlah.[963]

The umpires at Beit Nuba had reasoned soundly from the premisses

before them; and those premisses were sound likewise, except in one

particular: the Franks did not—as we do from Bohadin—know what was

passing behind the scenes in the Saracen headquarters. They therefore

probably over-estimated the enemy’s powers of resistance. On the

other hand, there was a similar miscalculation on the Moslem side;

Saladin’s anxiety and alarm would scarcely have been so great had he

realized how completely the unity of the Christian host was broken.

Even when fully assured that the Franks had really withdrawn from the

neighbourhood of Jerusalem, he was still extremely uneasy, fearing

they might now take up again the project of an attempt on Cairo, and

feeling by no means sanguine that they might not, with the coast

of Palestine in their possession and with the supply of beasts of

burden which they had recently acquired, bring it to a successful

issue.[964] A new game of diplomacy now began. The first move in it

was made, on the morrow, if not on the very day, of the retirement

from Beit Nuba, in the name of the king-elect of Jerusalem, Henry of

Champagne; but the Saracens at once recognized that the king-elect

could be nothing more than a cipher so long as he was uncrowned and

his uncle was in the land, and that the game was not worth playing

with anyone except the king-guardian. From him overtures for peace

arrived on July 6, and negotiations continued till the 19th. It is

difficult to decide how far either the king or the Sultan was in

earnest. Richard made so many different proposals that they cannot

all have been seriously meant. He and Saladin alike seem to have been

really disposed to content themselves with a division of the land;

each of them hoping that the division would be merely temporary,

and would serve as a breathing-space enabling his own party to

recover strength for a new effort. On one point, however, both were

equally determined not to give way. Saladin, while agreeing that the

Franks should keep the sea-coast, made it an essential condition

that Ascalon should be again dismantled. This Richard persistently

refused; so on July 19 the negotiations dropped, and Saladin began to

prepare again for war.[965]

His rival was doing the like. By Richard’s orders three hundred

Knights of the Temple and Hospital had already gone from Casal Maen

(whither he and the host had retired on July 6)[966] to Darum,

dismantled that fortress, and transferred its garrison to Ascalon

to reinforce the defences of “Syria’s Summit.” As soon as the three

hundred returned, the whole host proceeded to Joppa; here the sick

folk were left, and also some of the able-bodied for the greater

security of the place; the rest set out on July 21 or 22 for Acre,

which they reached on Sunday the 26th.[967] The weary pilgrims of

lower rank grew more dispirited at every stage in this northward

journey; Richard having given orders for the whole fleet to accompany

it, whence they inferred that he intended sailing for Europe

immediately. He had, however, another purpose. The Frank re-conquest

of the coast of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem was still incomplete;

the northernmost sea-port of the realm, Beyrout, was still in Moslem

hands. An attempt on Beyrout had been one of the alternative schemes

suggested by Richard before the final retirement from Beit Nuba.

The place, though of less military importance than Tyre or Acre or

Ascalon, was well worth the winning; it had a good harbour, and

its loss would deprive the Moslems of their only remaining outlet

on the sea between Laodicea and the mouth of the Nile. As soon as

Acre was reached, [Sidenote: _Sunday, July 26_] Richard despatched

seven galleys to make a demonstration before Beyrout. On the morrow

(Monday, July 27) he took leave of the Knights of the Temple and

Hospital—with whom he had always acted in concert, and who probably

undertook the control of the host during his absence—and prepared to

follow next day with the rest of the fleet.[968] But his plans were

upset by an unexpected counterstroke on the part of Saladin.

The Sultan had been rejoined at Jerusalem on July 17 by his

son Ed-Daher, who ruled at Aleppo; and Safadin, recalled from

Mesopotamia, was close at hand with further reinforcements when

on the 22nd Saladin learned that the Christian host had left

Joppa and was on its way to Beyrout. He at once went to Beit Nuba

to reconnoitre, leaving orders for all his troops to follow him

thither. Safadin joined [Sidenote: _July 23_] him there next day.

By the 25th their united forces were [Sidenote: _July 25_] on the

old camping-ground of the Franks between Lydda and Ramlah. On the

26th—the day of Richard’s arrival at Acre—Saladin reconnoitred Joppa;

before nightfall his men were around its walls, and on Monday 27th

they assaulted the town.[969] After four days of furious fighting

Saladin’s engines made, on Friday the 31st, a breach through which

his men swarmed into the town; it was given over to pillage and

slaughter, and the garrison in the citadel promised to surrender,

on terms arranged between them and the Sultan, if they were not

relieved before three o’clock on the morrow.[970] They were in hourly

expectation of Richard’s return; for they had, as soon as the Moslem

army came in sight, despatched by sea an urgent message to recall him

from Acre.[971] The message was delivered to Richard as he sat in

his tent on the evening of Tuesday July 28.[972] He at once summoned

the host to go back with him to Joppa; but the French “declared

they would not stir a foot with him.”[973] A number of Templars,

Hospitaliers, and other “good knights,” however, set off by land to

the rescue, while Richard with another party, comprising the rest of

his own men and some Genoese and Pisans, went on board the galleys.

The land party on reaching Caesarea learned that the road between

that place and Arsuf was blocked by “the son of the Assassin”;

not daring to risk an encounter with forces of whose numbers they

knew nothing and of whose military repute all Syria stood in awe,

they made no attempt to proceed further. The ships were caught by

a contrary wind off Haïfa, detained by it for three days, and so

dispersed by its violence that only three of them at last came in

sight of Joppa, late in the [Sidenote: _July 31_] evening of Friday

the 31st, and had to wait at a safe distance for the rest to overtake

them, and also for the light of day.[974] One of the three carried

Richard, chafing sorely at all these hindrances: “God, have mercy!

Why dost Thou keep me here, when I am going in Thy service?”[975] In

the afternoon of that same Friday Saladin had received from Acre a

letter telling him that Richard had given up his intended expedition

against Beyrout and was hastening to the relief of Joppa. The Sultan

and his confidant Bohadin at once decided that the agreement with the

garrison must be flung to the winds, and an effort made to get the

garrison out of the citadel before Richard should arrive. Saladin

spent some time in haranguing his troops and exhorting them to storm

it that evening; but they were worn out with the day’s fight, and

so sullenly unresponsive to his appeal that he dared not give it

the form of a command; and at last he and his staff withdrew for

[Sidenote: _Aug. 1_] the night to their usual quarters in the rear.

At daybreak they heard a trumpet-call, and learned that the king’s

ships were in sight. Saladin despatched Bohadin with orders to “get

into the citadel and get the Franks out of it.” With a body of troops

Bohadin entered the town, went to the castle gate, and bade the

garrison come out. They answered that they would do so, and began

to make their preparations. The morning wore on to noon, and still

the relief party showed no sign of trying to disembark: Richard in

fact, while the garrison were waiting for him to land, was waiting

to ascertain what had become of them, for the shore was lined and

the town, to all appearance, filled with Mussulman troops, so that

the whole place, as seen from the sea, looked as if it were in the

enemy’s hands. On the other hand, it seems that only a small part

of the fleet was as yet visible from the castle-tower. The garrison

therefore, growing hopeless of rescue, yielded to Bohadin’s urgency

and began to march out. Forty-nine men, besides some women and some

horses, thus came forth.[976] As each man passed through the gate he

paid down the ransom appointed in the capitulation, although the hour

fixed for its fulfilment had not yet come; and a Frankish version of

the story adds that in some cases at least, as soon as the money was

paid, the payer’s head was struck off by the Turkish guards.[977]

Suddenly the procession stopped. The ships were spreading out in

line and becoming more distinguishable under the noon-tide sun; the

Moslems could see that there were at least thirty-five; the anxious

watchers on the castle-tower could probably see that there were more

than fifty. The remaining men in the citadel hastily put on their

armour, made a sally, and drove Bohadin and his followers out of the

town. They themselves, however, were quickly driven back, and the

fighting became fiercer and more confused than ever. Once more the

garrison, in despair, sent the Patriarch of Jerusalem (who chanced

to be in Joppa when the siege began) and a chaplain to renew their

offer of submission to Saladin on the terms originally proposed.[978]

Then another priest, “after commending himself to the Messiah” as

Bohadin says, leaped from the top of the tower into the harbour.

Falling in shallow water, with soft sand beneath it, he was unharmed,

and made his way to the nearest galley, whence he was transported

to that of the king.[979] “Gentle king,” said he, “the people who

await you here are lost, unless God and you have compassion on them.”

“How!” cried Richard, “are any of them still living? Where are

they?” “Before the tower, awaiting their death.” Richard hesitated

no longer. “God sent us here to suffer death, if need be; shame to

him who lags behind now!”[980] The royal galley, “painted all red,

with a red canopy on the deck, and a red flag,” shot forward;[981]

the king, without greaves or mail-shoes, sprang out, up to his waist

in the water, came first ashore, and dashed into the midst of the

Turks, cutting them down right and left. His shipmates followed close

behind him; the other vessels quickly came up, and each disembarked

its freight of men; and in little more than an hour the shore of the

harbour was cleared of Turks.[982] Bohadin, under whose eyes all

this had taken place, went round to Saladin’s tent in the rear and

whispered his tidings into the ear of the Sultan, who was writing (or

dictating) a letter for the Patriarch and the chaplain to take back

to their friends in the citadel. The envoys were present; Saladin

detained them till some flying Moslems passed the door of the tent.

Then he placed the envoys under arrest, and ordered his whole army to

retreat to Yazour.[983]

Meanwhile Richard, as soon as the harbour was cleared, had set his

men to barricade it on the land side with planks, barrels, pieces

of old ships and boats, and other wood hastily piled up to form a

rampart behind which they could safely defy the Saracens.[984] He

himself made his way “by [Sidenote: _Aug. 1_] a stair that led to

the house of the Templars” into the town, where he found a crowd of

Saracens so busy pillaging that they made no attempt to interfere

when he caused his banners to be reared on the walls as a signal

to the Christians in the tower. These latter at once sallied forth

to meet him, and the Turks, thus caught at unawares between two

fires, were slaughtered wholesale. Then the victors turned towards

the retreating army of Saladin. The crossbowmen tried to overtake

it with a volley of arrows; the king galloped after it on a horse

which he had found in Joppa; but as this and two other horses, also

found in the town, were the only ones he possessed, he soon gave up

the pursuit, and pitched his tents on the site lately occupied by

Saladin,[985] in the open ground where the Frank host had camped

in the previous October, between Joppa and S. Habakkuk’s.[986] No

sooner was Richard in his tent than several of Saladin’s emirs and

favourite Mameluks went to visit him; seemingly not as accredited

envoys from the Sultan, but to ascertain informally what was now

the king’s attitude towards the question of peace. He received them

willingly, and sent a special invitation to the chamberlain Abu Bekr,

who had previously acted as a medium of communication between him and

Safadin, to join the assembly. Abu Bekr found him talking over the

recent fight in a tone half serious, half bantering. “That Sultan of

yours is truly admirable! But why did he run away at my very landing?

I did not come prepared to fight; I am still in my boating-sandals!

Why, in God’s Name, did he retreat, when I thought he could not

take Joppa in two months, and he took it in a couple of days!” Then

he turned to Abu Bekr and spoke seriously: “Greet the Sultan from

me, and beg him to let us have peace. My country needs me, and the

state of things in this land is bad alike for you and for us.”

Saladin was still close at hand, and twice in that night proposals

and counter-proposals of terms passed between the two sovereigns.

Ascalon was still the stumbling-block; neither of them would renounce

his claim to it. To a daring suggestion of Richard’s, that Saladin

should enfeoff him after the manner of the Franks with the counties

of Ascalon and Joppa, to hold by military service including, if

required, the personal service of the king himself—“of which,” he

added, “you know the value”[987]—Saladin returned an answer in which

Ascalon was not named at all. The Sultan [Sidenote: _Aug. 2_] then

followed his army to Yazour, and thence, early next morning, went

to Ramlah.[988] Thither a messenger from Richard followed him, and

pressed for a definite cession of Ascalon. Saladin’s reply was given

instantly and finally: “It is impossible.”[989]

[Sidenote: _Aug. 2-4_]

That Sunday and the two following days were spent by Richard and

his men in repairing the walls of Joppa as well as they could by

piling up the stones without mortar or cement.[990] On one of these

three days they were joined by Count Henry, who came from Caesarea

in a galley; the rest of the troops being still detained there by

“the ambushes of the Turks” on land and the lack of ships to convey

them by sea.[991] It was seemingly to ascertain what chance there

was of intercepting these troops, of whose departure from Acre he

had only just been made aware, that Saladin on the [Sidenote: _Aug.

4_] Monday (August 4) moved northward as far as the banks of the

Aoudjeh (the River of Arsuf). There, however, he further learned

that they were safe in Caesarea, and also that a not less important

and probably easier prey lay within his reach—King Richard and his

little band, in their unprotected tents in the fields outside Joppa.

At nightfall he turned back, hoping to surround Richard’s camp in

the darkness and surprise it at break of day.[992] The first body of

Moslem troops which approached the camp, however, was discovered by a

watchful Crusader who at once aroused the king. Richard slipped his

mail-coat over his night-gear, sprang bare-legged on horseback, and

with the few knights in his company—most of them dressed and armed

in a like hasty fashion—began to array his men.[993] The Saracens,

finding they could not take him by surprise, sent a party to force an

entrance through the still uncompleted walls into the town, in order

to deprive him of a refuge there.[994] The scared townsfolk sent

word to the king that they were all lost, for “a countless host of

heathen” were taking possession of the city. Richard sternly silenced

the messenger, swore to cut off his head if he let anyone else hear

the message, and went on with his preparations for defence. Behind a

low barricade hastily made up of pieces of wood from the tents the

tiny army was arrayed with the utmost skill[995] so as to leave in

its ranks no opening for attack. Then the king addressed his men,

bidding them have no fear of the foe; he himself, he added, would go

and see what was taking place in the town.[996] His knights numbered

some [Sidenote: _Aug. 5_] three or four score,[997] but the horses

only six.[998] On these five of the knights and a “hardy and valiant”

German man-at-arms named Henry, bearing the king’s banner,[999]

mounted, and with a few crossbowmen[1000] followed the king as

with lance and sword he forced his way into Joppa. He probably

found its Turkish invaders engaged, as he had found them before, in

pillaging, and less numerous than the messenger had represented, for

he very soon drove them all out. After ordering a detachment of the

garrison to come down from the tower and guard the town against

further attack,[1001] he rode down to the shore, brought back thence

some townsfolk who had fled to the ships for refuge, and all the

sailors except just enough to take care of the ships, and with these

reinforcements, in addition to his gallant six, rejoined his little

army in the field.[1002]

Saladin meanwhile had arrayed his host in seven divisions.[1003]

While the first of these was advancing to the attack, the king issued

his final orders. “Only keep your ranks unbroken—let not the foes

make their way in. If we stand thus firm against their first onset,

we may make light of the next, and by God’s help we shall defeat

them. But if I see one of you, through fear, giving way or yielding

ground or trying to flee, I swear by Almighty God I will straightway

cut off his head!”[1004] So when the first division of the Turks

charged them the Christian ranks stood immoveable and impenetrable.

The attacking force fell back, baffled and amazed, stood for a

while within two spears’ length of them without any interchange of

hostilities except verbal ones, and then retired, grumbling, to its

original position.[1005] Richard burst out laughing: “Did not I

tell you how it would be? Now they have done their utmost; we have

only to stand firm against every fresh attempt, till by God’s help

victory shall be ours.”[1006] As he ceased speaking, another body

of Turks came forth; they, too, fell back from the living wall, now

firmer than ever, and retired to their former station. This process

was repeated five or six times, while the day wore on “from prime

almost to nones.”[1007] The Arab historians relate that in one of

the intervals between these futile charges Richard rode alone, lance

in hand, along the whole front of the Moslem army, challenging it

to fight, and not a man came forth to meet him;[1008] according to

one account, he ended by stopping his horse midway between the two

hosts, asking the Moslems for some food, and calmly dismounting to

eat what they gave him.[1009] It was not only the dread of him

that held the enemies in check; Saladin’s troops were thoroughly

discontented with their ruler’s conduct of this expedition to Joppa

and with its failure to bring them either the success or the booty

which they had expected. In vain the Sultan rode up and down among

them, promising them splendid rewards for one more charge; his son

Ed-Daher sprang forward alone, only to be hastily called back by

his father, for not another man broke the stillness of the silent,

motionless ranks.[1010] At last, it seems, they yielded a sullen

obedience to Saladin’s impassioned exhortations, and made another

attempt to advance. But this time a volley of arrows, with which

the crossbowmen had hitherto speeded their retirement, greeted

them on their approach, and under cover of this the king and his

men charged. “Brandishing his lance, and laying about him as if he

had done nothing yet that day,”[1011] Richard with his few mounted

followers burst right through the Turkish host and came out facing

the rearguard. Looking round, he saw that the earl of Leicester was

unhorsed and in danger of capture; he at once rescued him and helped

him to remount. A crowd of Turks rushed at a banner which from its

device—a lion—they probably took for the king’s, but which seems to

have been really that of Ralf of Mauléon. Ralf was surrounded, and

was actually being led away by his captors when he, too, was rescued

by his sovereign.[1012] At another moment a large body of Turks

closed in upon Richard, all alone; but he laid about him with his

sword, smiting off heads and limbs on every side, till he had slain

or disabled so many of his assailants that the rest took to flight

“as from the face of a furious lion.” His first sudden irruption had

thrown into confusion the whole array of Saladin’s host; and when the

guard which he had left in Joppa, seeing how matters were going, came

out to help their comrades, the Moslem defeat became a rout.[1013] At

the close of the long day’s fighting the victor returned “with arrows

sticking out all over him like the bristles of a hedgehog, and with

his horse in the same plight.”[1014] Saladin retired to Yazour, and

on the following day to Natroun.[1015]

The victory at Joppa was Richard’s crowning exploit in Holy Land; and

he himself very soon realized that it was to be his last. Both in him

and his men the tremendous physical and mental strain of those five

August days was followed by a sudden breakdown which was aggravated

by the unhealthiness of their surroundings. The Turks when they

evacuated Joppa had not only left in its streets the bodies of those

who had been slain in the siege, but also slaughtered all the pigs

in the town and interspersed the carcases with the human corpses,

as an insult to the Christians.[1016] No sanitary measures had been

possible during the stress of the succeeding days; the consequence of

this state of things had therefore spread beyond the walls on every

side, and the king and his men, too much exhausted to move far enough

to escape from it, lay helpless and sick almost unto death.[1017]

Nevertheless, Richard’s next message to the Sultan was practically

a defiance. The envoy whom he had despatched on August 2 to Saladin

at Ramlah had proceeded thence on a further mission to Safadin, who

was then lying sick at Gibeon, near Neby Samwîl.[1018] This envoy

returned to Joppa on the 7th or 8th[1019] with a message from Safadin

proposing a colloquy. He was accompanied by the chamberlain Abu

Bekr. Richard gave an audience to Abu Bekr outside the town and said

to him: “How far am I to put myself in the Sultan’s hand before he

will deign to receive me? Truly, I was very desirous of returning

home; but now I have decided to stay through the winter, and want no

further conferences with you.”[1020] For nearly three weeks after

this, Saladin made no move of any kind; he was [Sidenote: _Aug. 20_]

waiting for reinforcements. On the 20th the long-desired contingent

from Egypt at last arrived; and two days later the forces of the

lands beyond the Euphrates were brought up by the Sultan’s once rebel

great-nephew, El Mansour. Messengers still passed between the two

camps; Richard, exhausted by fever, asked Saladin for fruit and snow,

which the Sultan readily sent him; the friendly intercourse enabling

each party to learn how matters went with the other.[1021] Meanwhile

Richard’s sickness was increasing, and so were his anxieties.

In vain he sent Count Henry back to Caesarea to insist that the

laggards there should come and help to hold the land; they would

not stir. Then he called Henry, the Templars, and the Hospitaliers

around his bed, and begged that some of them would take charge of

Ascalon and others of Joppa, and thus set him free to seek pure air

and medical treatment at Acre, as the only chance of restoring his

health. “But they all declared they would not undertake the custody

of the fortresses without him; and they went out [of his tent]

without another word.”[1022] A [Sidenote: _Aug. 9-26_] proclamation

published throughout the coast-towns, calling upon all fit men to

come and serve under the king at his expense, brought a crowd of

foot-soldiers, but so few horsemen that he was compelled to reject

them all, both horse and foot, as useless for his purpose.[1023] As

the conviction grew upon him that he must either quit the country

or die in it, he felt also that in either case, if he left it in

its present unsettled condition, the whole labour of the Crusade

would be lost, and thus that a truce on almost any terms had become

a necessity for the realm’s sake as well as for his own.[1024]

He therefore asked that Abu Bekr might be sent to him once more.

Through this man the king intimated his willingness, if Saladin still

absolutely insisted on the restitution of Ascalon to the Moslems, to

accept a money indemnity for the expense which he had incurred in

fortifying the place, and to abide by the other conditions which he

had formerly agreed upon with Safadin.[1025]

On the morrow—Friday, August 28—Bedr-ed-din Dolderim, the emir in

command of the Moslem advanced guard, sent to ask the Sultan whether

he might accede to a request which had been made to him by five Frank

officers, one of them an intimate counsellor of Richard’s—probably

the bishop of Salisbury, Hubert Walter[1026]—for a parley. With

Saladin’s consent the parley took place; and the same night

Bedr-ed-din in person reported to his sovereign that, according to

these men, Richard now consented to give up Ascalon [Sidenote: _Aug.

28_] unconditionally. Saladin refused to proceed further without

some security that on this point the king would not go back from

his word. Next day Bedr-ed-din announced that he had received, by a

sure hand, Richard’s pledge on the subject. Saladin then called his

council together and with them drew up the details of the partition

of the land. The king was to have Joppa and its dependent territory,

except Ramlah, Lydda, Ibelin, Yebna, and Mirabel; also Acre, Haïfa,

Arsuf, and Caesarea, with all their dependencies except Nazareth and

Safforia. These terms were drawn up in writing and carried back to

Richard by an envoy who came from him on the afternoon of Saturday,

August 29, and returned to Joppa with a Moslem colleague next day.

Richard, when the terms were read to him, denied that he had ever

withdrawn his claim to compensation; but as “the persons who had gone

to Dolderim” all declared that the thing was so, he answered: “If I

did say it, I will not go back from my word. Tell the Sultan I agree

to these conditions; only I appeal to his generosity, and acknowledge

that if he grants me anything further, it will be of his own bounty.”

He then sent the envoys on to Safadin, to beg that he would obtain

from Saladin the cession of Ramlah.[1027]

Saladin was quite as anxious for a truce as Richard could be. On the

night of August 27 he had despatched several emirs on a reconnoitring

expedition to ascertain the chances of success in another attempt on

Joppa, or, failing this, a night attack on Ascalon. They came back to

him at Ramlah with tidings that there were at Joppa scarcely three

hundred mounted troops, most of whom had only mules for chargers.

Yet against this small and ill-mounted force Saladin dared not pit

his great army, “because,” says Bohadin, “he knew that his men were

weakened and wearied and longing for their homes, and he feared that

they would refuse, as they had refused once already at Joppa, to

attack the foe, or would desert him altogether.”[1028] He therefore

drew up his final terms on Monday, August 31. The truce was to last

for three years, beginning on Wednesday, September 22. Ramlah or

Lydda was to be added to the king’s share of the land, or even both

places, unless he would be content with half of each; and Ascalon

was to be dismantled again. All the Moslem territories were to be

included in the truce, and also the princes of Antioch and Tripoli.

When on September 1 the schedule was brought to Richard, he said he

was too ill to read it, but he added: “I have already confirmed the

agreement by giving my hand on it.” Count Henry and the other leaders

were then informed of its details, and accepted them all, including

the proposed partition of Lydda and Ramlah. Next day (Wednesday,

September 2) they and Saladin’s envoys all met in Richard’s tent.

Richard again confirmed the truce by giving his hand to the Moslems;

they asked him for his oath, but he explained that it was not

customary in the West for a king to swear on such occasions, and they

accepted the explanation. The other Frank leaders then took the usual

oath, and several of them went back with the Moslems to Saladin’s

camp to witness his ratification of the treaty.[1029] Immediately

afterwards Richard despatched to Saladin a special message setting

forth his own purpose in making the truce. That purpose, he said, was

first to revisit his home-lands and see how they did, and next, to

collect there men and money wherewith he hoped to return and to wrest

from the Sultan the whole “Land of Jerusalem.” Saladin answered in

the spirit of true chivalry: if he were to lose the Land, he would

rather it were won by Richard than by any prince whom he had ever

known.[1030]

The dismantling of Ascalon was a precaution on which Richard had

insisted when he found himself compelled to cede the place; if the

Moslems must have it, they should at any rate be unable to make any

military use of it till they had had the expense and trouble of

rebuilding it again. The work of demolition was entrusted to the

joint superintendence of a party of Moslems and one of Franks, who

all set out for Ascalon on September 5, and who were also to bring

back its Frankish garrison.[1031] As under the terms of the truce

Christian pilgrims were to have free access to the Holy Sepulchre,

the rest of the Franks at Joppa and many from Acre and elsewhere now

began crowding to Jerusalem to fulfil their vow of pilgrimage.[1032]

An English writer tells us that some of them urged the king to do

likewise; “but his lofty spirit would not suffer him to accept from

the grace of a heathen ruler a privilege which he had been unable to

obtain as a gift of God.”[1033] On the night of Tuesday, September

9, he set out on his northward journey.[1034] Haïfa, in its quiet,

sheltered corner between the foot of Carmel and the mouth of the

Kishon, and with its outlook northward across the sea to Acre at the

opposite end of the bay, offered probably a better resting-place

for an invalid than Acre itself, to which it was near enough for

medical aid to be easily available. At Haïfa the king stayed a while

to recover his strength.[1035] Then he went on to Acre and completed

his preparations for departure. He ransomed William des Préaux, who

had been made a voluntary prisoner in his stead in September 1191, by

exchanging for him ten valuable Saracen captives.[1036] He called, by

public proclamation, all his creditors to come and claim whatever he

owed them, that they might all be paid in full, “and even overpaid,

lest there should be any complaints or disputes after he was gone

about anything that they had lost through him.”[1037] He had some

months before made provision for the future of Cyprus, and also for

that of his earliest friend among the Franks in Holy Land, Guy of

Lusignan, who had so greatly helped him to conquer that island. He

had conquered it not for his own benefit, but for the benefit of

the Christian kingdom of Jerusalem, to which its preservation in

friendly hands was a matter of great importance. He at first agreed

to make it over to the Order of the Temple for twenty-five thousand

marks;[1038] but this agreement came to nothing; and when Henry of

Champagne was chosen King of Jerusalem in April 1192, Richard made

substantial compensation to the displaced King Guy by giving him the

island realm of Cyprus.[1039] The grant was perhaps put into legal

form during Richard’s last days at Acre.[1040] The two queens sailed

on Michaelmas day,[1041] the king on October 9.[1042]

* * * * *

The causes of the comparative failure of the third Crusade have been

much discussed; yet after following in detail the story of that

expedition one is led to marvel not at its so-called failure, but

at the extent of its success. The truce restored to the Christians,

for the period of its duration, the whole coast of Palestine from

Haïfa to Joppa, left the southern remainder deprived of its chief

stronghold, Ascalon, and secured to the pilgrims the right of free

and safe access to the holy places of Jerusalem. If at its expiration

Richard had been able to return—as he hoped and intended—to take up

again his task in Holy Land, he would have done so with far other

prospects of success than those with which he and his followers had

set out from Acre in 1190. Saladin himself regarded the position of

the Moslem power in Holy Land with grave misgiving. His own health

was failing, and he confessed to Bohadin his fears that in case of

his death the Franks would come forth from the strongholds which the

truce had placed in their hands, and once more become masters of the

country.[1043] It was to Richard that the measure of success gained

by the Crusade was mainly due; and this fact was fully recognized

by the Moslems. A writer of the next generation reports that “the

fear of him was so constantly in the hearts and on the lips of the

Saracens that when their children cried they said to them, ‘Be quiet!

England is coming!’ and when their horses started with affright, they

mocked at them saying, ‘What is the matter? Is England in front of

us?’”[1044] “England,” in the sense in which they used the word—as

representing England’s king—was destined never to confront them

again. But seven centuries later the attainment of the goal was to be

granted to “England” in another form, that of an army which, having

set out from what Richard had once proposed to secure as the fittest

starting-point for the purpose—Egypt—finally closed round the Holy

City by ways in every one of which it was almost literally treading

in the footsteps of the Lion-Heart.

BOOK III

RICHARD AND EUROPE

1192-1199

—Thy harvest, fame;

Thy study, conquest; war, thy game.

CHAPTER I

RICHARD AND THE EMPIRE

1192-1194

There was I beaten down by little men,

Mean knights, to whom the moving of my sword

And shadow of my spear had been enow

To scare them from me once.

After a last visit to Cyprus[1045]—perhaps for the purpose of

removing the officers whom he had placed there and transferring the

custody of the island to representatives of Guy—Richard directed

his course straight for Marseille, and in less than a month was off

the coast of Barbary, within three days’ sail of his destination.

Disquieting rumours had, however, reached him; from passing ships,

or at sea-ports where he had touched, there had come to him repeated

warnings that the count of Toulouse, so long his determined enemy and

now his unwilling vassal, was in league with some of the neighbouring

princes and nobles to seize him as soon as he should land. He could

not but suspect that [Sidenote: _Oct.-Nov._] Philip Augustus was

either an accomplice in the plot or would at least be only too

ready to support the plotters; he therefore suddenly altered his

course, and sailed to Corfu.[1046] It is difficult to guess why he

did not proceed through the Pillars of Hercules direct to England.

Instead, he seems to have deliberately chosen the much more hazardous

adventure of a voyage up the Adriatic and an overland journey through

the territories of the Empire. His motives for this strange choice

can only be conjectured. He may have counted on a personal meeting

with Henry VI as a means of renewing and cementing the old alliance

of England with the Empire, and thus securing a valuable support in

the struggle with France for which he knew he must prepare himself in

every possible way. But if so, the moment and the circumstances were

extraordinarily ill chosen. Richard indeed could not fully know how

untoward the circumstances really were. That the young Emperor was as

unscrupulous and false as his father had been upright and honourable;

that he was just then making an attempt—destined to failure—to obtain

possession of Naples; that on his way back to Germany Philip would

meet him; and that there were symptoms of coming trouble in the

Empire from the party of Richard’s brother-in-law Henry of Saxony, to

whom Richard, like his father, had given shelter and protection, and

at whose return to Germany in violation of an oath to set foot there

no more Richard was said to have connived[1047]—all these things

Richard could not know. But he did know, or ought to have known, that

the German contingent had been a source of constant disturbance in

the crusading host; that his own alliance with Tancred, the Emperor’s

successful rival for the crown of Sicily, had made the Emperor his

natural enemy; and that he had also a personal enemy—again of his

own making—in Duke Leopold of Austria, who, though his territorial

possessions were insignificant, was of considerable importance in

German politics by reason of his close family connexion with the

imperial house and with several of the chief feudataries of both the

German and Italian realms.

Richard’s scheme seems, in fact, to have been prompted by the spirit

of sheer adventure and knight-errantry; and in the same spirit he

set out to carry it into effect. On reaching Corfu he saw three

galleys lying off the coast of the mainland; he at once put off in

a little boat to hail them.[1048] [Sidenote: _Nov._] Their crews

were pirates, and instantly attacked the boat; but Richard, through

one of his sailors, entered into a parley with them, “and for their

laudable bravery and boldness” made a bargain that they should carry

him, with a few attendants,[1049] for two hundred marks of silver, to

Ragusa.[1050] Probably, and not unreasonably, he preferred to embark

with a crew as familiar with the intricacies of the Dalmatian coast

as they were hardened to its perils. So furiously, however, did the

wind drive the ships up the gulf that a wreck seemed imminent; and

the king made a solemn vow to spend a hundred thousand ducats in

building a church on whatever spot he should come safe to land.[1051]

He found refuge on a little rocky island called Lacroma, lying half a

mile south of Ragusa, and at that time forming part of the territory

of that city, which was an independent republic. The rulers of

Ragusa, on hearing of his arrival, begged him to accept a lodging

in their city, and gave him a respectful and hospitable welcome.

The chief inhabitants of Lacroma were a community of Benedictine

monks; Richard at once proposed to fulfil his vow by rebuilding their

monastic church. The rulers of the republic, however, represented to

him that the sum which he had vowed was out of all proportion to the

size of the monastery and the requirements of the monks, and would

be far better employed in rebuilding the cathedral church of Ragusa

on a scale befitting its metropolitan dignity. To this he agreed,

on condition that the republic should obtain the Pope’s sanction to

this deviation from the terms of his vow, and should at its own cost

rebuild the little church on the island; and that, further, the abbot

of Lacroma, assisted by his monks, should have in perpetuity the

privilege of celebrating Mass in the cathedral church once a year,

on the feast of the Purification of our Lady. Hereupon, it seems,

“the good king having borrowed a large sum of money for the purpose,”

the work was begun immediately. The zeal of the pilgrim king fired

that of the people of the diocese, and his gift, supplemented by

contributions from them, resulted in the erection of a church which

for nearly five centuries stood without a peer in Illyria for the

stately grace of its proportions and the beauty of its architectural

details.[1052] An earthquake destroyed it in 1667; but Richard had,

all unknowing, laid in a nation’s heart the foundation of something

more precious and more lasting than any material edifice. The little

republic of Ragusa kept her independence till 1810, when she was

conquered by Napoleon. Four years later she was annexed to Dalmatia

under the yoke of Austria. Although never before incorporated into

any of the Slavonic states which surrounded her, she had a natural

affinity with them; the greater part of her inhabitants were, like

theirs, of Serbian blood. Her cause thus became bound up with that of

the whole Serb race in its aspirations after freedom and a national

existence. When there came upon that sorely tried race the darkest

hour it had ever yet known, a Serbian statesman publicly appealed, as

the ground of his confidence in England’s help, to the memory of the

mutual obligations formed more than seven centuries before between

Ragusa and Richard the Lion Heart.[1053]

At Ragusa the king took ship again. What port he really made for

we cannot tell; for he was wrecked a second time, and came finally

ashore somewhere between Aquileia and [Sidenote: _Nov.-Dec._]

Venice.[1054] Stranded in this remote corner of the Italian

border-land, where almost every local magnate was a connexion or a

dependent of either the house of Montferrat, the duke of Austria, or

the Emperor, or of all three, Richard suddenly awoke to his danger.

He despatched one of his followers to ask Count Mainard of Gorizia,

the most powerful noble of the district,[1055] for a safe-conduct

for the little party; he bade the messenger describe them as Baldwin

de Béthune (who really was one of them), a merchant called Hugh,

and their companions, all pilgrims returning from Jerusalem; and

he also—most unwisely—sought to gain the favour of the count by

sending him, in the name of the “merchant Hugh,” a valuable ruby

ring. Mainard, who was a nephew of the marquis of Montferrat, gazed

intently at the ring, and then said: “His name is not Hugh; it

is Richard, the king. I have sworn to seize all pilgrims coming

from those parts and to accept no gift from any of them; but for

the worthiness of this gift, and of him who has honoured me, a man

unknown to him, by sending it, I return it and give him free leave

to depart.” On receiving this message the terrified pilgrims bought

some horses and set off in the middle of the night,[1056] Richard,

according to one account, disguised in the habit of the Temple,[1057]

of which Order there were several in the little company.[1058]

Their fears were well founded; Mainard and his men pursued them and

captured eight of the party.[1059] The rest made their way through

Friuli[1060] to Freisach in Carinthia;[1061] but Mainard had sent

spies to dog their steps all the way, and warned his brother,

Frederic of Pettau, to lie in wait for them there. Frederic chanced

to have in his household a Norman from Argenton, named Roger, who

had been in his service twenty years and whom he trusted implicitly.

He bade this man search the houses where pilgrims were wont to

lodge, if haply he might recognize the king by his speech or other

token; promising Roger half of the town if the prize were captured.

Roger soon penetrated his native sovereign’s disguise, and instead

of delating him, besought him with tears to flee at once, gave him

an excellent horse for the purpose, and then returned and told his

lord that the reports about Richard were all false. Frederic flew

into a rage and ordered all the pilgrims to be arrested. Meanwhile,

however, Richard with two companions had slipped out of the town.

For three days and three nights they rode without food; then hunger

[Sidenote: _Dec._] compelled them to halt at a little inn close to

Vienna.[1062] To pay for his lodging Richard was obliged to send one

of his attendants, who could speak German, into the city to change

some bezants. The lad made too much display of his commission and

of his self-importance; detained and questioned by the citizens, he

said that he was in the service of a rich merchant who was coming

to the city in three days. They let him go, and he hurried back to

his master and urged him to instant flight. Richard, however, was

so exhausted by his adventures by sea and land that he determined

to risk a few days’ longer stay, and sent the lad into the town

again several times to make purchases. Once—on December 20 or

21—the messenger was careless enough to go with his master’s gloves

stuck in his belt. He was seized by the authorities, beaten, and

tortured till he confessed who his master really was. The duke of

Austria, who was in the city, was immediately informed and the king’s

lodging [Sidenote: _Dec. 20-2_] surrounded. Richard, feeling himself

helpless among such a crowd of “barbarians,” managed to make them

understand that he was willing to surrender, but only to the duke in

person. Leopold came; Richard went forth to meet him and gave up his

sword.[1063] Leopold sent him to “Dirmstein,”[1064] Dirnstein or

Dürrenstein, a remote castle in the mountains near Krems, and placed

him in charge of a strong guard who were to keep watch over him with

drawn swords [Sidenote: _Dec. 28_] day and night.[1065] A week later

the Emperor triumphantly announced to Philip of France the fate which

had overtaken “that foe of our Empire and disturber of your realm,

the king of England.”[1066]

[Sidenote: _1193 Jan. 6_]

Henry was anxious to get Richard into his own keeping; but Leopold

was not disposed to part unconditionally with such a valuable

prize. On January 6 he brought his prisoner before the Emperor at

Ratisbon.[1067] “The evil counsels of Duke Leopold’s rivals,” says

an Austrian chronicler, “prevented an immediate conclusion of the

matter”; Richard was taken back to his Austrian prison,[1068] and

it was not till February 14 that the Emperor and the duke came to

terms. They began by laying down conditions to be required of the

king for his release. They decided that he should give the Emperor a

hundred thousand marks of silver, whereof Leopold should have half as

the dowry of Richard’s niece Eleanor of Britanny, who should marry

Leopold’s son; the marriage to take place and half the ransom to be

paid and divided at Michaelmas, the other half in the following Lent.

Richard was to set free, without ransom, Leopold’s relations Isaac

of Cyprus and his daughter. He was to give the Emperor fifty galleys

manned and furnished at his own cost, and carrying a hundred knights

and fifty crossbowmen; he was also to go in person, with another

hundred knights and fifty crossbowmen, with Henry to Sicily and

help him to conquer it. In other words, the king of England was to

be brought down to the level of the dukes of Austria and Suabia and

Bavaria as a vassal of the Empire, within which neither he nor any of

his predecessors, English, Norman, Angevin, or Poitevin, had ever

held a particle of land. For the fulfilment of these conditions he

was to give Henry two hundred hostages, who were not to be released

till he had, furthermore, obtained for Leopold absolution from

Rome—for the Pope on hearing of the capture of the royal Crusader had

at once excommunicated his captor.[1069] If Richard did not fulfil

all these conditions within a year, fifty of his hostages or he

himself, as Leopold might choose, should be restored to the latter.

The Emperor had to give his Austrian vassal two hundred sureties

for the fulfilment of two further stipulations exacted by Leopold

[Sidenote: _Feb._] before he would part with his prize. In case of

Henry’s death while Richard was in his custody, Richard was to be

given back to Leopold; and in case of Leopold’s death his son was to

step into his place for all the purposes of the treaty.[1070]

Henry of Hohenstaufen was a political visionary, obsessed, more

strongly perhaps than any other German ruler before our own day, by

the German dream of world-dominion; yet even he can scarcely have had

any real hope of extorting Richard’s consent to the terms laid down

in this curious document. Leopold of Austria was a practical-minded

person, and moreover knew Richard too well to have any illusions

on the subject; hence the strong safeguards by which he secured

his claims as the original captor of the prize—safeguards which

Henry dared not refuse to grant him. The Emperor could not afford

to forfeit either the friendship of the duke of Austria or the

advantages which the possession of Richard’s person would involve.

In the autumn of 1191 Henry had made an attempt to take possession

of Naples, and it had failed. The Guelfs had profited by his absence

from Germany to stir up discontent and prepare a rising there. In

November 1192 the bishop of Liége was murdered; the malcontents

ascribed the sacrilegious crime to the instigation of the Emperor.

The dukes of Brabant and Limburg (one of whom was brother and the

other uncle to the murdered prelate) and the archbishop of Cologne

were soon up in arms; the archbishop of Mentz, the duke of Bohemia,

and other feudataries quickly followed their example; and at the back

of the whole disturbance was King Richard’s brother-in-law, the old

Saxon “Lion.” Nearly half Germany was in revolt.[1071] It was thus a

matter of the utmost importance for the Emperor to secure the support

of the duke of Austria, whose power and influence already extended

considerably beyond the limits of the little territory from which he

took his chief title. Outside his own realm Henry of Germany had now

one ally, though the alliance was a secret one. Philip of France had

travelled home from Palestine very leisurely[1072] by way of Italy;

early in December 1191 he had met the Emperor at Milan,[1073] and

their meeting had resulted in an agreement, private and informal,

but well understood between them, to make common cause for the ruin

of Richard. The capture of the English king gave them an opening

for joint action sooner than they could have expected; and it also

gave Henry an opportunity of posing before his malcontent vassals

as supreme ruler, judge, and arbiter of all Europe. The actual

transfer of Richard from Leopold’s custody to Henry’s did not take

place till more than a month after the Würzburg compact was made;

it was evidently thus arranged that it might coincide with the

gathering of the imperial court for the Easter festival. On the

Tuesday in Holy Week, probably at Spire, Richard was brought before

the Emperor. Henry seems to have begun by demanding the full terms

drawn up at Würzburg; we are told that he “required many things to

which the king felt he could not consent, were it to save his very

life.” Next, the Emperor brought against his captive a string of

accusations, charging him with betrayal of the Holy Land,[1074]

complicity in the death of Conrad, and violation of some agreement

or compact said to have been made with Henry himself. Finally, some

envoys from France, whose appearance at this opportune moment must

surely have been pre-arranged, came forward and publicly “defied”

the English king in their sovereign’s name. Richard, however, was

ready with an answer to everything; he offered to stand to right in

Philip’s court concerning the matters in dispute between Philip and

himself, and met the Emperor’s charges with a fearless readiness

which enhanced the general admiration already won for him by his

frank yet dignified bearing. Henry saw that the feeling of the

assembly was with the prisoner; so he suddenly changed his tone,

assumed the character of Richard’s protector and friend, undertook

to make agreement between him and Philip, and while “the people who

stood around wept for joy,” showered upon him tokens of honour and

promises of aid and publicly gave him the kiss of peace. Hereupon

Richard, “through the mediation of the duke of Austria,” promised

the Emperor a hundred thousand marks by way of ransom and reward.

Henry answered that if his arbitration should not be successful he

would be satisfied without any payment at all; but according to some

envoys from England who were present, he on Maunday Thursday formally

accepted Richard’s offer with the addition of a promise on Richard’s

part to furnish him with fifty fully equipped galleys and two hundred

knights for a year’s service.[1075] The show of friendliness was

maintained, it seems, till the Easter festivities were over; then,

when the court broke up, Henry despatched his prisoner to Triffels, a

strong fortress on the highest point of the mountains between Suabia

and Lorraine. The castle was said to have been built specially to

serve as a prison for traitors to the Empire,[1076] and the imperial

insignia were also kept in it.[1077] Here the king was placed under a

strong guard of soldiers “picked out from among all the Germans for

strength and bravery.” Girt with swords, they kept watch on him, as

Leopold’s soldiers had done, day and night, and formed round his bed

a ring which none of his own servants who shared his captivity were

ever allowed to penetrate.[1078]

As soon as the justiciars in England heard of their sovereign’s

captivity they took what steps they could in his behalf. They sent

Bishop Savaric of Bath, who claimed some kinship with the house of

Hohenstaufen, to negotiate with the Emperor for his release,[1079]

and they endeavoured to ascertain where he was confined. All the

world knows the story, put into its earliest and most charming

literary shape by a French minstrel some seventy years later, which

has for all after-time linked the name of its hero Blondel with that

of the royal _trouveur_.[1080] Blondel de Nesle, a _trouveur_ of some

distinction, was a contemporary of Richard, and the story in itself

is not impossible. The minstrel of Reims represents Blondel as having

found Richard in the custody of the duke of Austria; if so, he must

have set out at the very first tidings of the capture. The searchers

officially sent from England, the abbots of Boxley and Robertsbridge,

evidently went after the object of their search was known to have

been transferred into the hands of the Emperor. They “wandered over

all Alemannia” (western Germany or Suabia) “without finding him,”

till they met him on Palm Sunday (March 21) at Ochsenfurt on his

way to Spire. His guards evidently allowed them to confer with him

freely; he was naturally delighted at the meeting, and questioned

them eagerly about the state of his realm and the attitude of his

vassals.[1081] The tidings they had to give him were not altogether

satisfactory. England was tranquil and loyal, in spite of John’s

efforts to make it otherwise. In Aquitaine a rising of the count

of Périgord, the viscount of La Marche, and “nearly all the Gascon

barons,” had been crushed by the seneschal of Gascony with the help

of Richard’s brother-in-law, the son of the king of Navarre, and the

victors had swept the country almost to the gates of Toulouse.[1082]

But the Norman and Angevin lands sorely [Sidenote: 1191 _Dec._]

needed the presence of their lord. At the close of 1191 King Philip

had reached Paris, and invited or summoned the seneschal and magnates

of Normandy to a meeting which [Sidenote: 1192] took place at Gisors

on January 20, 1192.[1083] He demanded the restitution of Aloysia

(who was in the tower at Rouen) [Sidenote: _Jan._] and of Gisors, and

the cession of the counties of Eu and Aumale, in virtue, seemingly,

of a document which he exhibited as “the agreement made between

himself and the king of England at Messina.” They answered that they

had no orders from Richard on the subject and would not act without

them.[1084] Philip then invited John to come over from England and

receive investiture of all Richard’s continental territories, and

the hand of Aloysia. John was nothing loth, but was detained in

England by a threat from his mother and the justiciars to seize all

his castles there if he crossed the sea. Next, Philip summoned his

host for an invasion of Normandy; but his barons refused to attack

[Sidenote: 1193] the lands of an absent Crusader.[1085] Early in

the following year—as soon as Richard was known to be safely out of

the way in a German prison—John made another attempt to seduce the

Norman barons from their allegiance. Failing in this, he proceeded

into France and did homage to Philip on the conditions which had been

proposed a year before.[1086]

Thus matters stood when the two English abbots set out on their

quest. They were present at the Maunday Thursday assembly at Spire,

and on their return home reported that “peace” had been there made

between the Emperor and the king.[1087] If Richard was under the

same delusion, he must have been speedily undeceived when he found

himself shut up within the gloomy walls of Triffels and denied all

further access to Henry’s presence.[1088] On the other hand, Henry

was in all likelihood quite as much disappointed by the failure of

all attempts to break the spirit of his prisoner. If we may trust

an English chronicler whose information was probably derived from

an eye-witness, Richard never gave his jailers the satisfaction of

seeing a cloud on his brow; he was “always cheery and full of jest in

talk, fierce and bold in action, according to circumstances. He would

tease his warders with rough jokes, and enjoy the sport of making

them drunk, and of trying his own strength against that of their big

bodies.”[1089] His deeper feelings were expressed in a song,[1090]

addressed to his half-sister Countess Mary of Champagne, which he

seems to have composed in two languages, French and Provençal, in

the autumn or early in the winter of 1193, and which may be roughly

translated thus:

“Feeble the words, and faltering the tongue

Wherewith a prisoner moans his doleful plight;

Yet for his comfort he may make a song.

Friends have I many, but their gifts are slight;

Shame to them if unransomed I, poor wight,

Two winters languish here!

“English and Normans, men of Aquitaine,

Well know they all who homage owe to me

That not my lowliest comrade in campaign

Should pine thus, had I gold to set him free;

To none of them would I reproachful be—

Yet—I am prisoner here!

“This have I learned, here thus unransomed left,

That he whom death or prison hides from sight

Of kinsmen and of friends is clean bereft;

Woe’s me! but greater woe on these will light.

Yea, sad and full of shame will be their plight

If long I languish here.

“No marvel is it that my heart is sore

While my lord[1091] tramples down my land, I trow;

Were he but mindful of the oath we swore

Each to the other, surely do I know

That thus in duresse I should long ago

Have ceased to languish here.

“My comrades whom I loved and still do love—

The neighbour-lords who were my friends of yore—[1092]

Strange tales have reached me that are hard to prove;

I ne’er was false to them; for evermore

Vile would men count them, if their arms they bore

’Gainst me, a prisoner here!

“And they, my knights of Anjou and Touraine—

Well know they, who now sit at home at ease,

That I, their lord, in far-off Allemaine

Am captive. They should help to my release;

But now their swords are sheathed, and rust in peace,

While I am prisoner here.”

Two other visitors besides the abbots seem to have found their way

to Richard before his incarceration at Triffels; the English Bishop

Hubert of Salisbury, who, learning in Sicily on his way home from

Palestine what had befallen his sovereign, changed his own course

and hurried to seek him out;[1093] and a Norman chaplain, William

of Sainte-Mère-Eglise. This latter Richard, before his own removal

from Spire, despatched to England on business connected with the

arrangements for the fulfilment of his promises to Henry, and also

for the elevation of Hubert to the see of Canterbury.[1094] Hubert

followed about the middle of April.[1095] Meanwhile Bishop William

of Ely had also come to the help of his royal master and friend. He

had been exiled from England by the queen-mother and the justiciars

in 1191 for misgovernment; but his personal loyalty to the king seems

never to have failed, and was certainly not doubted by Richard, who

had never deprived him of his office of chancellor. Through his

diplomacy the Emperor was induced to let his prisoner be brought to

meet [Sidenote: _April 19_] him at Hagenau. On April 19 Richard,

writing thence to his mother and his lieges in England, related that

the Emperor and Empress and their court had welcomed him with all

honour and loaded him with gifts, and that “an indissoluble mutual

bond of love” had been formed between him and Henry, each promising

to help the other to obtain and retain his rights against all men;

and that he was “staying with the Emperor”[1096] till some other

matters should be settled between them and seventy thousand marks

of the ransom paid. He urgently desired that this sum and hostages

for the rest should be collected with all speed and sent over under

the care of the bishop of Ely, whom he was apparently despatching to

England for that purpose. “Know ye for certain,” he added, “that were

we in England and free, we would give as great a sum, or a greater,

to secure the conditions which by God’s grace we have obtained, and

if we had not the money to our hand we would give our own person in

pledge for it to the Emperor rather than leave uncompleted that which

has been done.”[1097]

Richard evidently anticipated a speedy release, for he sent to

England not only for money and hostages, but also for ships, and for

the captain of his own ship, Alan Trenchemer; and bade Robert of

Turnham proceed thither “with his” (_i. e._ the king’s) “military

accoutrements”—as if he expected soon to require them there.[1098]

He seems to have really believed that the new agreement secured

for him the Emperor’s active support in the matter about which he

was most anxious—the impending struggle with Philip. The seneschal

and baronage of Normandy, as a body, had rejected the treasonable

proposals of John; but there was one traitor among them; on April

12[1099] Gilbert of Vacoeil, the constable of Gisors and Néaufle,

surrendered these two castles to the king of France. With these keys

of the border in his hands, Philip had no difficulty in entering

the duchy. In a few weeks he was master of the whole Vexin, the

county of Aumale, and the lands of Vaudreuil, Neufbourg, [Sidenote:

_April-May_] Evreux, and Gournay.[1100] He was thus in full career

of success when on hearing of the Hagenau agreement he urgently

besought the Emperor either to hand Richard over to him free “as his

homager,” or to keep him in a German prison as long as possible;

and he backed his request with a heavy bribe in money.[1101] Henry

saw that he could not make friends of both kings, and he was in

doubt which of the two would be the most useful friend or the

most dangerous foe; so he staved off the decision for a time,

placed Richard in confinement at Worms,[1102] and arranged to hold

a conference with Philip at Vaucouleurs on June 24 or 25.[1103]

Before that day came, however, the French alliance had ceased to be

of much consequence to Henry; for the matter in which he had been

most anxious to obtain Philip’s support, his quarrel with his own

feudataries, had been settled by other means. Richard, fearing that

if Henry and Philip should meet he would be given up to the latter,

“exerted himself greatly” that the meeting should be prevented, and,

to this end, that the Emperor and the German magnates should come

to an agreement; which, “owing to his urgency,” they did.[1104] The

result was that instead of a conference with Philip at Vaucouleurs,

Henry on June 25 opened at Worms a great Court[1105] which sat for

five days, and at which there were present, besides a crowd of his

own vassals, spiritual and temporal, four representatives of King

Richard—the bishops of Bath and Ely, and two of the justiciars from

England[1106]—and on the 29th the whole assembly confirmed by an oath

“on the soul of the Emperor” a new agreement between Henry and his

royal prisoner.[1107] The money total for the ransom was now raised

to a hundred and fifty thousand marks, of which a hundred thousand

were to be fetched from England by envoys who were to be despatched

thither by both sovereigns immediately. Richard was to give sixty

hostages to Henry for thirty thousand marks more, and seven hostages

to Leopold for the remaining twenty thousand. When these hostages

and the first hundred thousand marks were all received, Richard was

to be set free. There was, however, an alternative: “If the king

should fulfill the promise which he formerly made to the Emperor

concerning Henry sometime Duke of Saxony, the Emperor, letting the

king off fifty thousand marks, shall pay for him twenty thousand to

the Duke of Austria”; no hostages would then be required, and Richard

should be liberated as soon as the hundred thousand [Sidenote: _June

29_] marks were paid and his promise fulfilled. Furthermore, Richard

took an oath that in either case he would within seven months of his

return home send his niece to Germany to be married to Leopold’s

son.[1108]

What was the promise which Richard had made to the Emperor concerning

Henry the Lion, when it was made, and whether or not it was ever

fulfilled, we cannot tell; the only known mention of the matter is

the passage quoted above. From the fact that Richard did on his

release leave some hostages in Germany we might infer that he had

not done what he had promised; but this inference is doubtful,

for we shall see that the conditions of his release were altered

again before Henry let him go. Richard’s next step was to seize

his opportunity, while negotiations between Henry and Philip were

at a standstill, to make overtures to Philip. Immediately after

the council at Worms he despatched William of Ely to France with

orders to make “some sort of a peace” for him with the king. This

William did at Mantes on July 9. The terms consisted of a promise

in Richard’s name that he would leave to Philip’s discretion the

disposal of whatever territories within the Angevin dominions

were then occupied by Philip himself or by his men; that he would

perform the homages and services due for all and each of his French

fiefs, would grant an amnesty and restitution of their lands to

certain of his vassals[1109] who had incurred forfeiture, and would

clear off the debt which, it seems, Philip still claimed under the

treaty of 1189, by paying him twenty thousand marks in half-yearly

instalments of five thousand marks each, the first instalment to be

paid within six months after the payer’s release from captivity,

and Philip meanwhile to hold in pledge the castles of Loches,

Châtillon-sur-Indre, Driencourt and Arques; one of these to be

restored to Richard on the payment of each instalment of the money.

Philip promised that meanwhile, as soon as the castles were placed in

his custody, he would “receive the King of England into his favour

and make request to the Emperor for his liberation.”[1110]

In less than six months the German envoys returned from England,

bringing with them “the greater part” of the ransom—seemingly the

stipulated hundred thousand marks, for the Emperor wrote on December

20 to the English prelates, barons, and people, and Richard on

December 22 to the new archbishop of Canterbury, Hubert Walter,

announcing that the captive’s liberation was to take place on

Monday, January 17; adding that on the following Sunday (January

23, 1194) he was to receive the crown of the kingdom of Provence

which the Emperor had granted to him.[1111] Richard’s place of

confinement at this time was probably Spire. There, on the appointed

day, Henry held [Sidenote: 1194 _Jan. 17_] a council which “after

long discussion” was adjourned to [Sidenote: _Feb. 2_] re-assemble

at Mentz on Candlemas Day.[1112] At this adjourned meeting Richard

was present, with his mother, Archbishop Walter of Rouen, and the

bishops of Ely and Bath, who had all come to witness his release. To

the amazement of all parties, Henry proposed a yet further delay,

and shamelessly avowed his motive for the proposal. He had received

in a private audience at Spire, in January, some messengers charged

with letters from Philip and John. He now brought these messengers

before the council, and handed the letters to Richard. In them the

Lion-Heart’s overlord and his brother made to the Emperor three

alternative offers. He should receive from Philip fifty thousand

marks and from John thirty thousand if he would keep Richard prisoner

till Michaelmas; or a thousand pounds of silver (seemingly from

the two jointly) every month, so long as he chose to keep him; or

a hundred thousand marks from Philip and fifty thousand marks from

John if he would either keep him another twelvemonth or deliver him

up to them. Richard, in utter desperation, appealed to the prelates

and princes who had stood surety for the Emperor’s fulfilment of

the treaty drawn up at Worms.[1113] Two of them—the archbishops of

Mentz and Cologne—protested strongly against a breach of so solemn an

agreement; the other members of the council seem to have taken the

same side; and after a [Sidenote: _Feb. 4_] two days’ struggle Henry

yielded.[1114]

The day was a Friday; “an unlucky day,” remarks an English chronicler

of the time.[1115] There was a special reason for the remark. Henry,

as we have seen, had promised to invest Richard on his release with

the kingdom of Arles or Burgundy. This kingdom, as such, had ceased

to exist more than a century and a half before, and over a great

part of the lands which had composed it the German Emperors had

now no practical authority or control. It seems that at the last

moment Henry suddenly required his prisoner to do him homage, not

for Burgundy—of which we hear no more—but for all the possessions of

the Angevin house, including the kingdom of England; and Richard,

seeing no way of escape, and urged by his mother, went through a

ceremony of surrender, investiture and homage Which, if it had been

binding, would have made him a vassal of the Empire for the whole

of his dominions.[1116] Such a transaction was, however, void in

law, on two grounds. Firstly, no account was taken in it either

of the French king’s rights as overlord of Richard’s continental

territories, or of the immemorial right of the English Crown to

absolute independence. Secondly, Richard had been driven to it under

compulsion, as the only means of regaining his freedom and rescuing

his dominions from imminent peril—for a refusal would certainly have

resulted in an immediate alliance between Henry and Philip. Homage

done under such conditions was a mere empty form, a concession to the

vanity of the Emperor, who was ready to clutch at any expedient for

magnifying himself in the eyes of his own vassals and inflicting as

much outward degradation as he dared on the captive whom he—seeing

that he could now wring out of him no further profit, financial or

political—thereupon set at liberty.[1117]

Richard’s first act was the despatch of a messenger to Henry of

Champagne and the other Christian nobles in Syria to tell them that

he was free, “and that, if God would avenge him of his enemies

and grant him peace, he would at the appointed time come to help

them against the heathens.” [Sidenote: _Feb. 4_] On the same day

the Emperor and his magnates wrote to Philip and John bidding them

deliver up immediately whatever they had taken from Richard during

his captivity; otherwise restitution would be enforced by the writers

to the uttermost of their power.[1118] Protected by an imperial

safe-conduct to Antwerp, and accompanied by his mother and his

chancellor, Richard set out on a leisurely progress down the Rhine.

At Cologne he was sumptuously [Sidenote: _Feb. 20-22_?] entertained

for three days in the archbishop’s palace, and on the third day

was asked to attend Mass in the church of S. Peter. The day was

probably the festival of S. Peter’s Chair at Antioch (February 22);

Archbishop Adolf chose to act as precentor, and began the Mass not

with the proper introit, but with that of the feast of S. Peter in

Chains—“Now know I of a surety that the Lord hath sent His Angel and

hath delivered me out of the hand of Herod.” The choice was doubtless

made in compliment to the royal guest; whether the archbishop failed

to notice, or deliberately ignored, the comparison of the Emperor to

Herod which it involved, we are not told. Adolf indeed was only one

of a crowd of imperial feudataries who were eager to make a friend

of the English king. By the time Richard arrived at Antwerp not only

Adolf but also the archbishop of Mentz, the bishop-elect of Liége,

the dukes of Austria, Suabia, Louvain, and Limburg, the count of

Holland, the son of the count of Hainaut, the marquis of Montferrat,

and many others, were bound to him by homage and fealty—saving, of

course, their fealty to the Emperor—for certain revenues which he

granted them by charter, on condition of their help against the

king of France.[1119] Possibly the Emperor may have taken alarm

at [Sidenote: _Feb._] these alliances between his vassals and his

late captive, for one English chronicler tells us that he sent out

some men to overtake and recapture him.[1120] Richard, however,

under the personal escort of Archbishop Adolf, passed through the

lands of the duke of Louvain to Antwerp, where some of his own

ships awaited him.[1121] The wind being unfavourable for a direct

passage to England,[1122] he slowly made his way by sea to a port

which Roger of Howden calls “Swine in Flanders, in the lands of the

Count of Hainaut”—either Swyn, between Breeden and Ostend, in the

present West Flanders, or Zwin, on the Belgian frontier of the Dutch

province of Seeland—coasting along by day in Alan Trenchemer’s galley

“because in that it was easier to pass through among the islands,”

and spending the nights on “a large and splendid ship which had

come from Rye.” Swine was [Sidenote: _March 4-7_] reached in three

days; five more were spent in waiting there for a wind; at last, on

March 12 or 13, the king landed at Sandwich, and straightway went

to offer up his thanksgivings at the shrine of S. Thomas the Martyr

at Canterbury.[1123] On [Sidenote: _March 16_] March 16 he entered

London in a triumphal procession to S. Paul’s.[1124] Clergy and

people gave him a rapturous welcome; and the sumptuous decorations

of the city were beheld with amazement by some German nobles who

accompanied him, and who had supposed the wealth of England to be

exhausted by his ransom. One of them, it is said, actually told him

that he would not have been released without a much heavier payment

if the Emperor could have known that such riches existed in the

island realm.[1125]

The welcome was mainly a clerical and popular one, because most of

the lay barons were occupied in trying to put down a revolt stirred

up by John. They had made some progress towards this end before

Richard’s arrival; most of John’s castles had been captured, but two,

Nottingham and Tickhill, were still holding out. Richard went to work

leisurely. He spent “scarcely a day” in London; but he left it to

make another pilgrimage, to S. Edmund’s.[1126] He knew that he could

afford to wait. Both castles were closely besieged, the one by the

earls of Huntingdon, Chester, and Ferrars, the other by the bishop

of Durham. Another great rebel stronghold, Mount Saint Michael’s in

Cornwall, had surrendered before the king’s return because at the

tidings of his coming its commandant died of fright. The garrison

of Tickhill now sent two knights to ascertain whether the king was

really home, and if he were, to offer him the castle. He refused to

receive it unless they would all surrender at discretion. While

the envoys carried this message back to Tickhill, he marched upon

Nottingham,[1127] and on March 25 arrived there “with such a numerous

force and such a noise of trumpets and horns” as greatly alarmed the

garrison; nevertheless, hoping that all this was merely a display

contrived by the nobles to make them believe the king had returned,

they continued to shoot from the walls, and shot down some of his men

almost at his feet. At this he waxed wroth and assaulted the castle.

One rebel knight was killed by a bolt from Richard’s own crossbow;

the barbicans were taken and the outer gates burnt.[1128] The place

was, however, of such strength as to appear, if well defended,

impregnable except by starvation; and it was amply supplied with

provisions as well as with men.[1129] Next morning Richard began to

prepare his stone-casters, and also set up in view of the castle a

gallows on which he hanged some of John’s men-at-arms who had been

captured outside it. Meanwhile Tickhill had been surrendered to

Bishop Hugh on his assurance that the lives of the garrison should

be spared; and on March 27 he, with his prisoners, joined the

king.[1130] That day, while the king was at dinner, the constables

of Nottingham castle sent two men “to see him” and report “what they

saw and heard.” Till then the Nottingham constables had not believed

that their sovereign was really in England. Their messengers “looked

at him well, and recognized him. ‘Am I the king? What think you?’

he asked them. They said ‘Yes.’ ‘Then you may go back; go free, as

is right; and do the best you can.’”[1131] [Sidenote: _March 28_]

On their report the two constables, with twelve followers, went and

placed themselves at Richard’s mercy; and on the morrow the castle

was surrendered on the same terms by the rest of the garrison,[1132]

of whom some were imprisoned and others put to ransom.[1133]

Richard spent the next day in visiting two royal Forests [Sidenote:

_March 29_] “which he had never seen before,” Clipstone and Sherwood;

“and they pleased him well.” At night he returned to Nottingham,

where he had summoned a council to meet on [Sidenote: _March 30_] the

following day. It was a great assembly, at which the queen-mother,

the two archbishops, and a number of prelates and magnates were

present.[1134] The king opened the proceedings by disseising two

of John’s chief partizans, Gerard de Camville and Hugh Bardolf, of

the sheriffdoms and royal castles which they held—Lincoln shire and

castle, held by Gerard; Yorkshire and Westmorland by Hugh—all of

which he put up for sale and sold to the highest bidder.[1135] On the

second day of the council (March 31) he “asked for judgement upon

Count John and upon Hugh of Nonant,” the bishop of Coventry, John’s

chief ally. “And it was judged that they should be peremptorily

cited, and that if they failed to come and stand to right, Count John

should be declared to have forfeited all claim to the crown and the

bishop be subjected to the judgement of his fellow-prelates as bishop

and that of the lay barons as sheriff.” On the third day (April 1),

the king ordered that for every carucate of land throughout England a

contribution of two shillings should be made to him; and “that every

man should render to him the third part of the military service due

from his fee, to go with him” (the king) “into Normandy.” He also

demanded of the Cistercians all the year’s wool of their flocks: but

for this they compromised by a fine. The [Sidenote: _April 2_] fourth

day was employed in hearing appeals from Archbishop Geoffrey of York

and Gerard de Camville; in neither case did the council arrive at any

decision. Lastly, the king “appointed his crowning to take place at

Winchester at the close of Easter” (April 17), and ordered that on

the day after that event all the prisoners taken in John’s castles

should be brought before him.[1136]

King William of Scotland was now on his way to a conference with

his English overlord. They met at Southwell on the Monday before

Easter and travelled together on [Sidenote: _April 4_] the Tuesday to

Malton; there William “asked for the [Sidenote: _April 5_] dignity

and honours which his predecessors had had in England,” and also

for the restoration of Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmorland, and

Lancaster, which he claimed “by right of his ancestors.” Richard

answered that he would act according to the counsel of his barons.

The two kings spent the rest of Holy Week together in a progress

[Sidenote: _April 10-12_] by Geddington to Northampton, where they

kept Easter. On Easter Monday Richard laid William’s requests before

the council, and gave his reply. “He told the king of Scotland that

he ought on no account to have made his demand about Northumberland,

especially in those days, when nearly all the nobles of the French

kingdom had become his (Richard’s) enemies; for if he were to

grant this, it would look as if he did it more from fear than from

favour.” About the other counties he seems to have said nothing;

but they were doubtless understood to be included in his refusal.

William apparently made no remonstrance and was pacified by a charter

providing minutely for the proper escort and entertainment of the

Scot kings when summoned to the English court.[1137] He accompanied

or followed Richard to Winchester for the coronation on Low Sunday,

when he carried one of the swords of state before his overlord in the

procession.[1138]

The precise significance of this so-called “coronation” is not easy

to determine. Richard, we are told, “when he had called together the

prelates of England, asked and received from them counsel that he

should renew his kingship[1139] and permit the crown to be placed on

his head by the archbishop of Canterbury at the Easter festival. He

followed this counsel of the prelates; and as there was not time to

prepare for so great a solemnity by Easter Day, it was deferred until

the octave. And because the manner of a crowning of this sort had

for many years passed away from the minds of men, the directions for

it were sought and found in the church of Canterbury, where Stephen

had been thus crowned with his queen.”[1140] These directions clearly

apply not to a coronation in the usual sense of the word—a ceremony

of which the pattern for all after-time in England had been set less

than five years before—but to the old English custom, obsolete since

1157, of “wearing the crown” in public on certain high festivals. The

king was arrayed in his full robes, the sceptre and verge were placed

in his hands, and the crown set upon his head by the archbishop, not

in the church, but in the royal chamber; thence he was conducted in

procession to the church, where he was enthroned with special prayers

and suffrages; after which the Mass was celebrated and he made his

offering and his Communion. When the service was ended the procession

returned to the royal apartments, and the king, after changing his

heavy crown for a lighter one, sat down with his magnates to a

banquet, held on this occasion in the refectory of the cathedral

monastery.[1141] “Thus,” says Gervase of Canterbury, “by the counsel

of the prelates was King Richard crowned on the octave [Sidenote:

_April 17_] of Easter at Winchester, because being set free from

captivity he had unexpectedly returned to his kingdom.”[1142] The

revival of the old custom which Henry II had abandoned thirty-seven

years before seems to be thus sufficiently explained as an expression

of the joy and thankfulness of king, Church, and nation at a

deliverance of which they had almost despaired, and which promised

the beginning of a new era in his reign. There are, however,

indications of something behind this. One phrase used by Gervase,

and two other phrases used by other writers of the time, suggest

that during Richard’s captivity something had taken place, or was

supposed or suspected in England to have taken place, derogatory

to his regal dignity and making it advisable for that dignity to

be publicly re-asserted or “renewed.”[1143] That something, if not

altogether imaginary, could hardly be anything else than his alleged

homage to the Emperor; and if that homage were, or were understood

to be, merely for the kingdom of Burgundy, it could scarcely be

regarded as affecting his position or his dignity as king of England.

The evidence is, however, too scanty and too vague to warrant any

definite conclusion on the point.

Little was now needed to complete such a re-settlement of affairs in

England as would enable Richard safely to leave the government of

the kingdom in Archbishop Hubert’s hands and devote himself to the

more anxious task which [Sidenote: _April 19_] he knew awaited him

across the Channel. Two days after the coronation the old bishop of

Durham resigned the sheriffdom of Northumberland, whereupon William

of Scotland offered Richard fifteen thousand marks for the county

and its appurtenances. Richard, after consulting his ministers,

said that for this sum William might have the county, but without

its castles; William refused this offer, and “went home grieved and

humbled,” after another vain attempt to make his overlord change his

mind; Richard was immoveable on the point for the moment, though he

held out a hope that he might yield it “on his return from Normandy.”

The prisoners taken at Nottingham and Tickhill and in John’s other

castles were disposed of by putting the wealthier of them in prison

till they should ransom themselves, and letting the rest go free on

their giving security that they would come up for judgement whenever

summoned.[1144] John himself was in France. On April 25 the king

went to Portsmouth, where a fleet of a hundred ships was assembled

to carry him and his fighting men over sea; but their crossing was

delayed by bad weather for more than three weeks. Once, on May 2, the

king in his impatience to be gone caused the whole fleet to be loaded

up ready for departure, and himself, in defiance of the counsel of

his sailors, went on board a “long ship” and put to sea; “and though

the wind was against him he would not turn back, so while the other

ships remained in port, the king and those who accompanied him were

tossed about by the waves, for there was a great storm.” Next day he

was compelled to land in the Isle of Wight and return to Portsmouth.

On May 12 he was at last able to get across with all his fleet to

Barfleur.[1145]

CHAPTER II

RICHARD AND FRANCE

1194-1199

The King must guard

That which he rules.

—Sad stories of the deaths of kings.

Richard’s journey through the Cotentin and the Bessin was a triumphal

progress. Everywhere the people crowded round him with presents

and acclamations, processions, dances, and songs: “God has come

to our aid with His might; the king of France will go away now!”

they said.[1146] Philip was just then besieging Verneuil, but as

usual he withdrew at Richard’s approach.[1147] He had already lost

his most valuable ally in the duchy; Richard and John had met, and

Richard had accepted John’s submission and sent him to recover

Evreux from the French, a charge which John fulfilled promptly and

successfully.[1148] Richard himself, after dashing into Maine to

besiege and capture Beaumont-le-Roger (whose lord had apparently gone

over to Philip), proceeded to secure his lines of communication along

the left bank of the Seine by fortifying Pont-de-l’Arche, Elbœuf,

and La Roche d’Orival, and then turned upon Philip who was besieging

Vaudreuil. A conference between the kings had just been arranged when

the mines dug by the French under the keep suddenly resulted in its

fall. Richard vowed vengeance, and Philip hastily withdrew.[1149]

Before leaving Verneuil Richard had received intelligence that

Montmirail was being besieged by some “Angevins and others”;[1150]

an English chronicler says “Angevins and Cenomannians,”[1151] and

another simply “Angevins.”[1152] Whether the lord of Montmirail,

William of Perche-Gouet, [Sidenote: _June_] was a partizan of

Philip and the besiegers were acting on their own initiative in

Richard’s interest, does not appear; Richard now hastened to the

place, but before he reached it the besiegers had levelled it to

the ground.[1153] He pushed on into Touraine, where an excellent

opportunity of recovering [Sidenote: _June 1-13_] Loches was offered

to him by his wife’s brother, Sancho of Navarre, who had collected

a band of Navarrese and Brabantines and set out with them to act

against Philip. Sancho himself was very soon called home by the death

of his father; but his troops went on and laid siege to Loches.[1154]

Richard stopped on his way thither to gather some money at Tours,

or rather at Châteauneuf, by turning the canons of S. Martin’s out

of their abode and seizing their goods,[1155] and also receiving

a “voluntary” gift of two thousand marks from the burghers.[1156]

Then he went on to Beaulieu[1157] and joined the Navarrese force in

assaulting Loches; on June 13 it surrendered.[1158]

Meanwhile a meeting between some of the counsellors of the two kings

had been arranged to take place at Pont-de-l’Arche; but the Frenchmen

failed to keep tryst, and instead, Philip “with a considerable force”

appeared before Fontaines, four miles from Rouen. After four days’

siege he took the castle and destroyed it.[1159] On his way back

into France he captured a valuable English prisoner, the earl of

Leicester.[1160] Three days later—on June 17—a conference of Norman

and French prelates and magnates met, with the sanction of the two

kings, near Vaudreuil, to arrange a truce. They failed because Philip

insisted that all his own adherents and all those of Richard should

be precluded from molesting one another during the truce between

their sovereigns, and to this Richard would not consent, “because he

would not violate the laws and customs of Poitou and of his other

lands where it was customary from of old that the magnates should

fight out their own disputes among themselves.” Philip next made

a dash at Evreux and “nearly destroyed it.”[1161] Thence he moved

southward through the county of Blois, and was encamped somewhere

between Fréteval and Vendôme when Richard, hurrying up from Loches,

pitched his tents outside the little unfortified town of Vendôme and

there, “as confidently as if he were surrounded by a wall,” waited

for further tidings of his enemy. They came in the form of a message,

bidding him expect on that very day a hostile visit from the French

king; to which he answered that he was ready, and that if the visit

were not made as announced, Philip might look for one from him on

the morrow. The day passed; [Sidenote: _July 4_] early next morning

Richard called up his men and set forth to seek the enemy, who

hurriedly retired upon Fréteval. Richard dashed after him through the

woods, fell unexpectedly upon his rear, and captured the whole of his

baggage-train; many Frenchmen were slain, many made prisoners, and

the spoil included not only a large quantity of arms and treasures,

but also the whole bundle of the charters given to Philip by the

Norman traitors who had transferred their allegiance to him.[1162]

Richard himself sought a loftier prize; he pursued the French host in

search of its king, resolved to have him alive or dead. A Flemish

soldier told him that Philip was far ahead in the van; in reality,

that cautious monarch had turned aside and taken shelter in a church.

Richard, mounted as usual on a charger as fiery as himself, spurred

on across the frontier of Normandy and France till the animal could

go no further, and Mercadier, having somehow contrived to overtake

his master, managed also to furnish him with another horse on which

he rode back to Vendôme.[1163]

Richard’s next task was to recover control of Aquitaine. He had

in 1190 left that country to the joint care of its duchess and of

a tried serjeant-at-arms, Peter Bertin, whom he had early in that

year made seneschal of Poitou.[1164] In or about 1192, Eleanor

being no longer in the duchy, Aimar of Angoulême attacked Poitou

“with horse and foot,” but was defeated and taken prisoner by the

Poitevins.[1165] About the same time nearly all the barons of Gascony

took advantage of the illness of the seneschal of that county to

rise in rebellion under the leadership of Count Elias of [Sidenote:

c. 1192] Périgord[1166] and the viscount of La Marche. The seneschal

tried in vain to make terms with them; on recovering his health,

however, he attacked Périgord, captured or destroyed nearly all

the fortresses of its count, and then dealt in like manner with La

Marche, “which he thus brought once for all under the control of the

king.” Sancho of Navarre then joined him with eight hundred knights,

and their united forces harried the county of Toulouse up to the

very gates of its capital city, and spent a night almost under its

walls before they went their several ways home.[1167] After this

Aquitaine seems to have been comparatively quiet [Sidenote: 1194

_March_] till March 1194, when the old arch-troubler of the land,

Geoffrey of Rancogne, threw off his allegiance and with [Sidenote:

_June_] Bernard of Brosse did liege homage to Philip.[1168] In June

Sancho, on his way to join Richard before Loches, led his men through

the lands of Rancogne and Angoulême and ravaged them “from one end

to the other.”[1169] All this timely help from Navarre resulted in

making Richard’s march into Aquitaine after the affair of Fréteval

a progress of unbroken triumph. On July 22 the king wrote to his

justiciar in England that he had captured Taillebourg, Marcillac,

“all the castles and all the land” of Geoffrey of Rancogne, the city

and suburb of Angoulême—“which we took in one evening”—and all the

castles and lands of its count, with some three hundred knights and

forty thousand men-at-arms.[1170] From Verneuil to “Charles’s Cross”

he was master once more.[1171]

Negotiations for a truce with France were now again in progress. On

July 23 some officers of the two royal households met, by mutual

consent of their sovereigns, between Verneuil and Tillières to

treat of this matter, and “came to terms.” The only extant account

of these terms—a proclamation addressed by the French king’s

constable and chamberlain and the dean of S. Martin’s “to all whom

it may concern”[1172]—shows them to have been extremely favourable

to Philip; and from this fact, together with Richard’s subsequent

action, we may probably infer that their acceptance by the English

negotiators was merely a blind to restrain Philip from aggression

in Normandy while Richard was still occupied in the south. When he

returned to Normandy he, according to a contemporary English writer,

repudiated them indignantly, and took away the Great Seal from his

chancellor, on whom he cast the responsibility for them.[1173] The

king’s wrath and the chancellor’s disgrace were, however, alike only

momentary; William of Ely retained his office to the end of Richard’s

reign; and a month after the conference at which the truce had been

arranged Richard himself was sojourning peaceably within the Royal

Domain of France, issuing an ordinance to his subjects in England

from Bresle near Beauvais.[1174]

The duration of the truce had been defined as “a year from All

Saints’ Day next.”[1175] During this breathing-space Richard’s chief

concern was the collecting of money for a renewal of the war. England

had been so drained for his ransom that he, or his justiciar who

acted for him, did not venture on demanding a “scutage of Normandy”

till the following year (1195).[1176] Nor did the king attempt to

carry out at this time—if indeed he had momentarily entertained

it—the project ascribed to him by Roger of Howden, of annulling all

grants made under the existing Great Seal, of course for the purpose

of compelling their holders to pay for a renewal of them.[1177]

But on his way northward from Aquitaine he had called together at

Le Mans “all the magnates under his jurisdiction,” and made them a

speech in commendation of the “willing, unbroken, and well-proved

fidelity shewn to him by the English in his time of adversity,”[1178]

seemingly in contrast to the feeble support which he had received

from his Angevin dominions; for we are told that he compelled all

his bailiffs in Anjou and Maine to pay him a fine for retaining

their offices.[1179] The device which he actually employed at this

juncture for obtaining more money from England, though it sowed the

seeds of later mischief there, was not likely to provoke discontent

nor to inflict any hardship on the people; on August 22 he issued

an ordinance authorizing the holding of tournaments in England—from

which they had hitherto been rigidly excluded—at certain specified

places, on condition that every man who took part in them should make

a certain payment to the Crown for a licence, the sum payable being

regulated by the rank of the payer.[1180] The Church’s prohibition of

tournaments had been renewed in a specially severe form only a year

before; but on the continent it still was, as it always had been,

set at defiance. Richard, who had spent the greater part of his life

in lands where the mimic warfare of the tourney was regarded almost

as part of the necessary education of a gentleman, could not fairly

be expected to realize its evil side, and might well count upon its

finding among the nobles and knights of his island realm such favour

as would make the sale of licences a profitable business for the

Crown.

[Sidenote: 1195]

Early in the next year a certain hermit came to the king and said:

“Be mindful of the ruin of Sodom, and put away thy unlawful doings;

else the vengeance of God will come upon thee.” Five years before,

Richard had publicly confessed and done penance for his private sins,

seemingly without being urged by anyone. Now he was in a different

mood; he resented the admonition as coming from a person of no

importance, and could not make up his mind to obey it unless it were

enforced by a sign from above. The sign [Sidenote: _April 4_] came

on Easter Tuesday when he was struck down by a violent illness. Then

he called the clergy around him, confessed and did penance for his

sins, and at once set about the amendment of his private life by

recalling his wife, whom he had for a long time practically deserted.

“Then,” says the chronicler, “God gave him health of body as well

as of soul.” He began a practice of rising early to attend Mass

“and not leaving the church till the Divine Office was completely

ended.”[1181] A famine had for three years past been gradually

spreading over western Europe[1182] [Sidenote: _April_] and had now

reached Normandy; Richard caused a number of poor persons to be

fed daily at his court and in the cities, towns, and villages, and

multiplied these benefactions as the need increased. He also ordered

the making of a large number of chalices for presentation to churches

which had sacrificed their holy vessels for his ransom.[1183]

[Sidenote: 1194 _Nov.-Dec._]

During the past five months the truce had been very ill kept. In

less than two months from its commencement the homagers of both

kings were ravaging each other’s lands,[1184] and Philip proposed to

Richard a new expedient for ending their strife: a judicial combat

between picked champions, five on either side, to take place in

public, “so that the issue should make manifest to the people of both

realms what was the mind of the Eternal King as to the rights of the

two earthly sovereigns.” This scheme “pleased the king of England

greatly, provided that each of the kings should be one of the five

combatants on his own side and that they should fight each other on

equal terms, armed and equipped alike”[1185]—whereupon the project

fell to the ground. According to one English chronicler of the time,

the next step taken by some of Richard’s enemies seems to have been

an attempt to assassinate him. While he was staying at Chinon,

early in 1195, there came to his court certain “_Accini_”—that is,

“Assassins,” followers of “the Old Man of the Mountain”—or persons

calling themselves such, to the number of fifteen. Some of them,

seeking to approach the king’s person too closely, were arrested, and

then stated that the king of France had sent them to kill his rival.

Richard delayed passing sentence on them till their companions, who

appear to have meanwhile made their escape, should be captured; of

the part which they ascribed to Philip in the matter he took no

notice.[1186] There the story abruptly ends. Whether these men were

really “Assassins” in either sense of the word—whether, if so, they

acted on orders from the “Old Man,” or from someone else, or on their

own initiative, or what their motives or those of their instigator

may have been—there is nothing to show. Their alleged charge against

Philip, at any rate, can hardly deserve more consideration from

history than it received from Richard.

At the end of June or early in July Richard received from the Emperor

a present of “a great golden crown, very precious, as a token of

their mutual friendship.” The gift was accompanied by a letter or

message, bidding him “by the fealty which he owed to Henry, and as

he cared for his hostages, to invade the French king’s land with

an armed force,” and promising that Henry “would send him help

sufficient to avenge the injuries done by Philip to both of them.”

Richard knew the Emperor too well to be tempted into acting hastily

on this mandate. He was aware that Henry “desired above all things to

bring the kingdom of France under subjection to the Roman Empire,”

and he had no mind to become the cat’s paw in a plot which might

result in uniting the forces of Germany and France for his own ruin.

He therefore sent his trusty chancellor, Bishop William of Ely, to

inquire of the Emperor “in what manner, how much, and where and when”

Henry would help him against the French king. Philip, hearing that

the bishop was to pass through France, tried to intercept him, but

failed, and thereupon sent word [Sidenote: _July_] to Richard that

the truce was at an end.[1187]

At this moment Christendom suddenly found itself threatened by

an urgent peril. The emperor of Morocco, “taking occasion by the

dissension between the French and English kings,” invaded Spain,

marched into Castille, [Sidenote: _July 18_] defeated its king

Alfonso in a great battle, and besieged him in Toledo. The danger to

southern Gaul was near enough to alarm both Richard and Philip; and

before the end of July they had another conference, at which Richard

restored Aloysia to her brother, and a treaty of peace was drawn

up.[1188] The draft was, however, fated to be nothing more than a

draft. The meeting was held near Vaudreuil, which for the period of

the truce had been left in Philip’s hands. The two kings, each with a

body of armed followers, seem to have encamped on opposite banks of

the river which flows through the valley whence the place took its

name. While discussion was in progress Philip, fearing an attack on

the fortress, caused its walls to be secretly undermined. Suddenly

a part of them fell down. Richard instantly denounced the truce as

ended on his side, and with his men dashed across the stream into

the French camp. Philip, anticipating this movement, had already

arrayed his followers and was leading them towards the nearest bridge

over the Seine, when (according to one account) it broke down, and

he and they narrowly escaped drowning. Richard was this time wise

enough not to [Sidenote: _End July_] attempt pursuit, and contented

himself with capturing some of Philip’s servants who had been left

behind in the hasty retreat, and setting to work immediately on the

restoration of the recovered fortress[1189] and on preparations for a

renewal of hostilities. He was, however, not inclined to begin these

last till he had received more definite information from Germany;

so another treaty was drafted on September 23, between Issoudun and

Charroux,[1190] to be ratified by the two kings on November 8 at

Verneuil. Before that date William of Ely returned from Germany,

bringing word that the Emperor disapproved of the proposed terms,

and was willing to quit-claim to Richard seventeen thousand marks of

his ransom, to enable him to recover the territory which he had lost

through his imprisonment.[1191] Nevertheless, [Sidenote: _Nov. 8_]

Richard went to Verneuil at the appointed date. On his way he was met

by the archbishop of Reims with a message purporting to come from

Philip, bidding him not to hurry, as the king of France was still

engaged in consultation with his ministers. Richard withdrew to his

[Sidenote: _Nov. 9_] own quarters and stayed there till the following

afternoon; then, resolved to wait no longer, he went to Philip’s

quarters and demanded an interview. He was admitted into Philip’s

presence, but the bishop of Beauvais spoke for his sovereign: “Our

lord the King of France accuses thee of broken faith and perjury,

in as much as thou didst plight thy word and swear to come to a

conference with him this morning at the third hour, and didst not

come; and therefore he defies thee.” Both kings hastened back into

their own territories.[1192] Within two days Richard was laying

siege to Arques,[1193] and Philip burning Dieppe.[1194] Richard seems

to have quitted his siege for the purpose of trying to intercept

the French king on the way back to Paris; but he only succeeded in

overtaking a few men of the French rearguard.[1195] He appears to

have spent the next few weeks in restoring Vaudreuil.[1196]

While these things were happening in northern Gaul, Mercadier, at

the head of his Brabantines, made a dash for Issoudun, destroyed its

suburbs, captured the castle, and garrisoned it for Richard.[1197]

Thence the mercenaries spread themselves over Berry, and crowned

their successes by capturing the count of Auvergne and thus gaining

possession of his castles.[1198] Philip, however, proceeded against

them in person, recaptured the town of Issoudun, and fired the

castle. He thought Richard was too intent on restoring the defences

of Normandy to pursue him; but no sooner did the tidings reach

Vaudreuil than Richard, “casting all other business aside,” achieved

in one day what was reckoned a three days’ ride, and appeared before

Issoudun so unexpectedly that he had no difficulty in entering the

town.[1199] Reinforcements came up rapidly, and the French, seeing

themselves outnumbered, urged their sovereign to make overtures for

peace. Richard had arrayed his men for battle and placed himself, as

usual, [Sidenote: _Dec. 5_] at their head. Philip rode forward to

meet him, and the two kings, on horseback and in armour, parleyed

alone together while their followers stood around awaiting the

result. At last they were seen to dismount, bare their heads, and

exchange the kiss of peace.[1200] According to Philip’s biographer,

Richard there and then renewed his homage to Philip.[1201] At any

rate, the colloquy ended in an appointment for another meeting,

to take place at Louviers (or as Rigord expresses it, “between

Vaudreuil and Gaillon”) on the octave of Epiphany, to make a “final”

peace.[1202]

[Sidenote: 1196 _Jan. 3-13_]

The meeting did take place, and a treaty was made, consisting of a

quit-claim from Philip to Richard and his heirs [Sidenote: _Jan.

13-15_] of all the rights of the French crown in Berry, Auvergne,

and Gascony, and an undertaking to make restitution of certain

portions of Norman territory then in Philip’s hands, in exchange for

a similar quit-claim from Richard to Philip and his heirs of Gisors

and the whole Norman Vexin except the fief of Andely,[1203] which

belonged to the metropolitan see of Rouen. The little town of Andely

was insignificant and unfortified, but its command of the traffic

up and down the Seine, from which its holder was entitled to take

toll, made it a valuable possession from a financial point of view,

and its geographical position and surroundings offered strategical

advantages which had already caught the attention of one, if not

both, of the rival kings. Philip tried to get Andely included in

the territory ceded to him; “but this could on no account be done.”

Nor did he succeed in obtaining Archbishop Walter’s fealty for

the other lands in the Vexin belonging to the see of Rouen.[1204]

Walter’s own narrative of the scenes which took place between himself

and both the kings with reference to his suretyship for Richard’s

fulfilment of the treaty[1205] seems to indicate that Richard was

really desirous for peace with France at the moment, but that neither

he nor Philip intended the peace to last any longer than it suited

their own convenience. It was in fact merely an expedient for giving

both parties a breathing-space in which to gather fresh forces and

make fresh plans for war. Within three months Richard was [Sidenote:

_April 15_] sending to England for reinforcements “because”—so he

wrote to Hubert Walter—“we think we are nearer to war than to peace

with the king of France.”[1206]

Richard was at that moment striving to subdue Britanny. Ever since

the death of Henry II the wardship of little Arthur and of his duchy

had been in dispute between Richard and Philip; but the boy’s mother,

Constance, supported by the Breton people, had hitherto managed to

keep both her child and her country under her own control. In the

spring of 1196 Richard summoned, or invited, her to a conference

with him in Normandy; at the frontier she was met, captured, and

imprisoned by her husband, Earl Ranulf of Chester.[1207] The Bretons

at once rallied round their child-duke, in his name threw off

all allegiance to Richard, and began to make raids on the Norman

border.[1208] Richard set out to punish them[1209] in the ruthless

fashion habitual to him when dealing with rebels, “sparing neither

grown man [Sidenote: _Good Friday April 19_] nor child, not even on

the day of our Lord’s Passion.”[1210] They fled before him, carrying

Arthur with them, to the remoter fastnesses of their country, and

thence conveyed the boy to the court of France.[1211] Thereupon

the treaty of Louviers was flung to the winds. Richard infringed

it in the Vexin by building a castle on an island in the Seine at

Porte-Joie, between Louviers and Pont-de-l’Arche, and in Berry by

calling the lord of Vierzon to account to him on a matter which

(according to Philip’s historiographer) belonged to the jurisdiction

of the French Crown, and when the man refused to obey him, making a

raid on Vierzon and levelling it to the ground.[1212] Philip again

laid siege to Aumale. Richard ordered all property held within his

dominions by four abbots who had been Philip’s sureties for the

treaty to be seised into his own hands,[1213] bribed the French

garrison of Nonancourt to give up that fortress to him, and then

went to relieve Aumale. He was, however, repulsed in an attack on

Philip’s camp, and went off to lay siege to Gaillon, which was held

for Philip by a famous mercenary captain, Cadoc. A bolt from Cadoc’s

crossbow struck the king’s knee as he was reconnoitring the place.

The wound disabled him for a month; before he had recovered, Aumale

had surrendered after a seven weeks’ siege, and Philip had razed its

walls and regained Nonancourt.[1214]

Richard arose from his sick-bed in a towering rage,[1215] and with

a grim determination which gave a new character to the war. The

successes achieved by the French while he lay helpless had borne in

upon him the fact that if he was to retain what was still left to him

of Normandy—nay, if the House of Anjou was to retain its continental

power at all—some better plan of campaign and of diplomacy must

be devised than the alternation of border-fighting and treaties

or truces, made only to be broken, in which his personal energies

as well as his material and military resources had been frittered

away during the last two years. He must by some means bar the way

to Rouen, laid open to Philip by the cession of the Vexin. He must

shield and supplement his military resources, consisting as they

did only of mercenary troops stiffened by a small band of loyal

Normans, by securing at least the neutrality, if not the direct

active assistance, of France’s other feudataries and neighbours. From

England there was no help to be got. No action seems to have been

taken by Archbishop Hubert on the king’s demand addressed to him in

the spring for troops from that country. In November the demand was

renewed in another form; Richard bade Hubert send him either three

hundred knights to serve beyond sea at their own expense for a year,

or money wherewith to pay three hundred mercenaries three English

shillings a day for the same period. A great council was convened

at Oxford on December 7; Hubert, instead of laying before it the

alternatives offered by the king, simply proposed that all the barons

and bishops should furnish three hundred knights for a year’s service

over sea. This Bishop Hugh of Lincoln at once refused on behalf of

his own see; its tenants being bound to military service only in

their own country. The bishop of Salisbury followed Hugh’s example.

The justiciar lost his temper and broke up the assembly; and all

that Richard gained was a heavy fine paid by Herbert of Salisbury

in redemption of the property of his see, confiscated by the king’s

order on Hubert’s report. The property of the see of Lincoln was

confiscated likewise, but in this case the order remained a dead

letter owing to the profound reverence universally felt for the

bishop.[1216]