north and west of England renounced their allegiance to Stephen and
swore allegiance to Maud. London and the east remained faithful to the
king. A stream of men-at-arms, hired by both factions, poured from the
neighboring coast of Normandy into the disputed realm. Each side had
promised them, for their pay, the lands and wealth of the other. Like
vultures to the feast they came, with little heed to the rights of the
rival claimants and the wrongs of the people, with much heed to their
own private needs and ambitions.
In England such anarchy ruled as that land of much intestine war has
rarely witnessed. The Norman nobles prepared in haste for the civil war,
and in doing so made the English their prey. To raise the necessary
funds, many of them sold their domains, townships, and villages, with
the inhabitants thereof and all their goods. Others of them made forays
on the lands of those of the opposite faction, and seized cattle,
horses, sheep, and men alike carrying off the English in chains, that
they might force them by torture to yield what wealth they possessed.
Terror ruled supreme. The realm was in a panic of dread. So great was
the alarm, that the inhabitants of city and town alike took to flight if
they saw a distant group of horsemen approaching. Three or four armed
men were enough to empty a town of its inhabitants. It was in Bristol,
where Maud and her foreign troops lay, that the most extreme terror
prevailed. All day long men were being brought into the city bound and
gagged. The citizens had no immunity. Soldiers mingled among them in
disguise, their arms concealed, their talk in the English tongue,
strolling through markets and streets, listening to the popular chat,
and then suddenly seizing any one who seemed to be in easy
circumstances. These they would drag to their head-quarters and hold to
ransom.
The air was filled with tales of the frightful barbarities practised by
the Norman nobles on the unhappy English captives in the depths of their
gloomy castles. "They carried off," says the Saxon chronicle, "all who
they thought possessed any property, men and women, by day and by night;
and whilst they kept them imprisoned, they inflicted on them tortures,
such as no martyr ever underwent, in order to obtain gold and silver
from them." We must be excused from quoting the details of these
tortures.
"They killed many thousands of people by hunger," continues the
chronicle. "They imposed tribute after tribute upon the towns and
villages, calling this in their tongue _tenserie_. When the citizens had
nothing more to give them, they plundered and burnt the town. You might
have travelled a whole day without finding a single soul in the towns,
or a cultivated field. The poor died of hunger, and those who had been
formerly well-off begged their bread from door to door. Whoever had it
in his power to leave England did so. Never was a country delivered up
to so many miseries and misfortunes; even in the invasions of the pagans
it suffered less than now. Neither the cemeteries nor the churches were
spared; they seized all they could, and then set fire to the church. To
till the ground was useless. It was openly reported that Christ and his
saints were sleeping."
One cannot but think that this frightful picture is somewhat overdrawn;
yet nothing could indicate better the condition of a Middle-Age country
under a weak king, and torn by the adherents of rival claimants to the
throne.
Let us leave this tale of torture and horror and turn to that of war. In
the conflict between Stephen and Maud the king took the first step. He
led his army against Bristol. It proved too strong for him, and his
soldiers, in revenge, burnt the environs, after robbing them of all they
could yield. Then, leaving Bristol, he turned against the castles on the
Welsh borders, nearly all of whose lords had declared for Maud.
From the laborious task of reducing these castles he was suddenly
recalled by an insurrection in the territory so far faithful to him. The
fens of Ely, in whose recesses Hereward the Wake had defied the
Conqueror, now became the stronghold of a Norman revolt. A baron and a
bishop, Baldwin de Revier and Lenior, Bishop of Ely, built stone
intrenchments on the island, and defied the king from behind the watery
shelter of the fens.
Hither flocked the partisans of Maud; hither came Stephen, filled with
warlike fury. He lacked the qualities that make a king, but he had those
that go to make a soldier. The methods of the Conqueror in attacking
Hereward were followed by Stephen in assailing his foes. Bridges of
boats were built across the fens; over these the king's cavalry made
their way to the firm soil of the island; a fierce conflict ensued,
ending in the rout of the soldiers of Baldwin and Lenior. The bishop
fled to Gloucester, whither Maud had now proceeded.
Thus far the king had kept the field, while his rival lay intrenched in
her strongholds. But her party was earnestly at work. The barons of the
Welsh marches, whose castles had been damaged by the king, repaired
them. Even the towers of the great churches were filled with war-engines
and converted into fortresses, ditches being dug in the church-yards
around, with little regard to the fact that the bones of the dead were
unearthed and scattered over the soil. The Norman bishops, completely
armed, and mounted on war-horses, took part in these operations, and
were no more scrupulous than the barons in torturing the English to
force from them their hoarded gold and silver.
Those were certainly not the days of merry England. Nor were they days
of pious England, when the heads of the church, armed with sword and
spear, led armies against their foes. In this they were justified by
the misrule of Stephen, who had shown his utter unfitness to rule. In
truth, a bishop ended that first phase of the war. The Bishop of Chester
rallied the troops which had fled from Ely. These grew by rapid
accretions until a new army was in the field. Stephen attacked it, but
the enemy held their own, and his troops were routed. They fled on all
sides, leaving the king alone in the midst of his foes. He lacked not
courage. Single-handed he defended himself against a throng of
assailants. But his men were in flight; he stood alone; it was death or
surrender; he yielded himself prisoner. He was taken to Gloucester, and
thence to Bristol Castle, in whose dungeons he was imprisoned. For the
time being the war was at an end. Maud was queen.
The daughter of Henry might have reigned during the remainder of her
life but for pride and folly, two faults fitted to wreck the best-built
cause. All was on her side except herself. Her own arrogance drove her
from the throne before it had grown warm from her sitting.
For the time, indeed, Stephen's cause seemed lost. He was in a dungeon
strongly guarded by his adversaries. His partisans went over in crowds
to the opposite side,--his own brother, Henry, Bishop of Winchester,
with them. The English peasants, embittered by oppression, rose against
the beaten army, and took partial revenge for their wrongs by plundering
and maltreating the defeated and dispersed soldiers in their flight.
Maud made her way to Winchester, her progress being one of royal
ostentation. Her entry to the town was like a Roman triumph. She was
received with all honor, was voted queen in a great convocation of
nobles, prelates, and knights, and seized the royal regalia and the
treasures of her vanquished foe. All would have gone well with her had
not good fortune turned her brain. Pride and a haughty spirit led to her
hasty downfall.
She grew arrogant and disdainful. Those who had made her queen found
their requests met with refusal, their advice rejected with scorn. Those
of the opposite party who had joined her were harshly treated. Her most
devoted friends and adherents soon grew weak in their loyalty, and many
withdrew from the court, with the feeling that they had been fools to
support this haughty woman against the generous-hearted soldier who lay
in Bristol dungeon.
From Winchester Maud proceeded to London, after having done her cause as
much harm as she well could in the brief time at her disposal. She was
looked for in the capital city with sentiments of hope and pride. Her
mother had been English, and the English citizens felt a glow of
enthusiasm to feel that one whose blood was even half Saxon was coming
to rule over them. Their pride quickly changed into anger and desire for
revenge.
Maud signalized her entrance into London by laying on the citizens an
enormous poll-tax. Stephen had done his utmost to beggar them; famine
threatened them; in extreme distress they prayed the queen to give them
time to recover from their present miseries before laying fresh taxes on
them.
"The king has left us nothing," said their deputies, humbly.
"I understand," answered Maud, with haughty disdain, "that you have
given all to my adversary and have conspired with him against me; now
you expect me to spare you. You shall pay the tax."
"Then," pleaded the deputies, "give us something in return. Restore to
us the good laws of thy great uncle, Edward, in place of those of thy
father, King Henry, which are bad and too harsh for us."
Whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad. The queen listened to
the deputies in a rage, treated them as if they had been guilty of
untold insolence in daring to make this request, and with harsh menaces
drove them from her presence, bidding them to see that the tax was paid,
or London should suffer bitterly for its contumacy.
The deputies withdrew with a show of respect, but with fury in their
hearts, and repaired to their council-chamber, whence the news of what
had taken place sped rapidly through the city. In her palace Queen Maud
waited in proud security, nothing doubting that she had humbled those
insolent citizens, and that the deputies would soon return ready to
creep on their knees to the foot of her throne and offer a golden
recompense for their daring demand for milder laws.
Suddenly the bells of London began to ring. In the streets adjoining
the palace loud voices were heard. People seemed gathering rapidly. What
did it mean? Were these her humbled citizens of London? Surely there
were threats mingled with those harsh cries! Threats against the queen
who had just entered London in triumph and been received with such
hearty enthusiasm! Were the Londoners mad?
She would have thought so had she been in the streets. From every house
issued a man, armed with the first weapon he could find, his face
inflamed with anger. They flocked out as tumultuously as bees from a
hive, says an old writer. The streets of London, lately quiet, were now
filled with a noisy throng, all hastening towards the palace, all
uttering threats against this haughty foreign woman, who must have lost
every drop of her English blood, they declared.
The palace was filled with alarm. It looked as if the queen's Norman
blood would be lost as well as that from her English sires. She had
men-at-arms around her, but not enough to be of avail against the
clustering citizens in those narrow and crooked streets. Flight, and
that a speedy one, was all that remained. White with terror, the queen
took to horse, and, surrounded by her knights and soldiers, fled from
London with a haste that illy accorded with the stately and deliberate
pride with which she had recently entered that turbulent capital.
She was none too soon. The frightened cortége had not left the palace
far behind it before the maddened citizens burst open its doors,
searched every nook and cranny of the building for the queen and her
body-guard, and, finding they had fled, wreaked their wrath on all that
was left, plundering the apartments of all they contained.
Meanwhile, the queen, wild with fright, was galloping at full speed from
the hostile beehive she had disturbed. Her barons and knights, in a
panic of fear and deeming themselves hotly pursued, dropped off from the
party one by one, hoping for safety by leaving the highway for the
by-ways, and caring little for the queen so that they saved their
frightened selves. The queen rode on in mad terror until Oxford was
reached, only her brother, the Earl of Gloucester, and a few others
keeping her company to that town.
They fled from a shadow. The citizens had not pursued them. These
turbulent tradesmen were content with ridding London of this power-mad
woman, and they went back satisfied to their homes, leaving the city
open to occupation by the partisans of Stephen, who entered it under
pretense of an alliance with the citizens. The Bishop of Winchester, who
seems to have been something of a weathercock in his political faith,
turned again to his brothers side, set Stephen's banner afloat on
Windsor Castle and converted his bishop's residence into a fortress.
Robert of Gloucester came with Maud's troops to besiege it. The garrison
set fire to the surrounding houses to annoy the besiegers. While the
town was burning, an army from London appeared, fiercely attacked the
assailants, and forced them to take refuge in the churches. These were
set on fire to drive out the fugitives. The affair ended in Robert of
Gloucester being taken prisoner and his followers dispersed.
Then once more the Saxon peasants swarmed from their huts like hornets
from their hives and assailed the fugitives as they had before assailed
those from Stephen's army. The proud Normans, whose language betrayed
them in spite of their attempts at disguise, were robbed, stripped of
their clothing, and driven along the roads by whips in the hands of
Saxon serfs, who thus repaid themselves for many an act of wrong. The
Bishop of Canterbury and other high prelates and numbers of great lords
were thus maltreated, and for once were thoroughly humbled by those
despised islanders whom their fathers had enslaved.
Thus ended the second act in this drama of conquest and re-conquest.
Maud, deprived of her brother, was helpless. She exchanged him for King
Stephen, and the war broke out afresh. Stephen laid siege to Oxford, and
pressed it so closely that once more Maud took to flight. It was
midwinter. The ground was covered with snow. Dressing herself from head
to foot in white, and accompanied by three knights similarly attired,
she slipped out of a postern in the hope of being unseen against the
whiteness of the snow-clad surface.
Stephen's camp was asleep, its sentinels alone being astir. The scared
fugitives glided on foot through the snow, passing close to the enemy's
posts, the voices of the sentinels sounding in their ears. On foot they
crossed the frozen Thames, gained horses on the opposite side, and
galloped away in hasty flight.
There is little more to say. Maud's cause was at an end. Not long
afterwards her brother died, and she withdrew to Normandy, glad,
doubtless, to be well out of that pestiferous island, but, mayhap,
mourning that her arrogant folly had robbed her of a throne.
A few years afterwards her son Henry took up her cause, and landed in
England with an army. But the threatened hostilities ended in a truce,
which provided that Henry should reign after Stephen's death. Stephen
died a year afterwards, England gained an able monarch, and prosperity
returned to the realm after fifteen years of the most frightful misery
and misrule.
_THE CAPTIVITY OF RICHARD COEUR DE LION._
In the month of October, in the year of our Lord 1192, a pirate vessel
touched land on the coast of Sclavonia, at the port of Yara. Those were
days in which it was not easy to distinguish between pirates and true
mariners, either in aspect or avocation, neither being afflicted with
much inconvenient honesty, both being hungry for spoil. From this vessel
were landed a number of passengers,--knights, chaplains, and
servants,--Crusaders on their way home from the Holy Land, and in need,
for their overland journey, of a safe-conduct from the lord of the
province.
He who seemed chief among the travellers sent a messenger to the ruler
of Yara, to ask for this safe-conduct, and bearing a valuable ruby ring
which he was commissioned to offer him as a present. The lord of Yara
received this ring, which he gazed upon with eyes of doubt and
curiosity. It was too valuable an offer for a small service, and he had
surely heard of this particular ruby before.
"Who are they that have sent thee to ask a free passage of me?" he asked
the messenger.
"Some pilgrims returning from Jerusalem," was the answer.
"And by what names call you these pilgrims?"
"One is called Baldwin de Bethune," rejoined the messenger. "The other,
he who sends you this ring, is named Hugh the merchant."
The ruler fixed his eyes again upon the ring, which he examined with
close attention. He at length replied,--
"You had better have told me the truth, for your ring reveals it. This
man's name is not Hugh, but Richard, king of England. His gift is a
royal one, and, since he wished to honor me with it without knowing me,
I return it to him, and leave him free to depart. Should I do as duty
bids, I would hold him prisoner."
It was indeed Richard Coeur de Lion, on his way home from the Crusade
which he had headed, and in which his arbitrary and imperious temper had
made enemies of the rulers of France and Austria, who accompanied him.
He had concluded with Saladin a truce of three years, three months,
three days, and three hours, and then, disregarding his oath that he
would not leave the Holy Land while he had a horse left to feed on, he
set sail in haste for home. He had need to, for his brother John was
intriguing to seize the throne.
On his way home, finding that he must land and proceed part of the way
overland, he dismissed all his suite but a few attendants, fearing to be
recognized and detained. The single vessel which he now possessed was
attacked by pirates, but the fight, singularly enough, ended in a truce,
and was followed by so close a friendship between Richard and the
pirate captain that he left his vessel for theirs, and was borne by them
to Yara.
The ruler of Yara was a relative of the marquis of Montferrat, whose
death in Palestine had without warrant been imputed to Richard's
influence. The king had, therefore, unwittingly revealed himself to an
enemy and was in imminent danger of arrest. On receiving the message
sent him he set out at once, not caring to linger in so doubtful a
neighborhood. No attempt was made to stop him. The lord of Yara was in
so far faithful to his word. But he had not promised to keep the king's
secret, and at once sent a message to his brother, lord of a neighboring
town, that King Richard of England was in the country, and would
probably pass through his town.
There was a chance that he might pass undiscovered; pilgrims from
Palestine were numerous; Richard reached the town, where no one knew
him, and obtained lodging with one of its householders as Hugh, a
merchant from the East.
As it happened, the lord of the town had in his service a Norman named
Roger, formerly from Argenton. To him he sent, and asked him if he knew
the king of England.
"No; I never saw him," said Roger.
"But you know his language--the Norman French, there may be some token
by which you can recognize him; go seek him in the inns where pilgrims
lodge, or elsewhere. He is a prize well worth taking. If you put him in
my hands I will give you the government of half my domain."
Roger set out upon his quest, and continued it for several days, first
visiting the inns, and then going from house to house of the town,
keenly inspecting every stranger. The king was really there, and at last
was discovered by the eager searcher. Though in disguise, Roger
suspected him. That mighty bulk, those muscular limbs, that imperious
face, could belong to none but him who had swept through the Saracen
hosts with a battle-axe which no other of the Crusaders could wield.
Roger questioned him so closely that the king, after seeking to conceal
his identity, was at length forced to reveal who he really was.
"I am not your foe, but your friend," cried Roger, bursting into tears.
"You are in imminent danger here, my liege, and must fly at once. My
best horse is at your service. Make your escape, without delay, out of
German territory."
Waiting until he saw the king safely horsed, Roger returned to his
master, and told him that the report was a false one. The only Crusader
he had found in the town was Baldwin de Bethune, a Norman knight, on his
way home from Palestine. The lord, furious at his disappointment, at
once had Baldwin arrested and imprisoned. But Richard had escaped.
The flying king hurried onward through the German lands, his only
companions now being William de l'Etang, his intimate friend, and a
valet who could speak the language of the country, and who served as
their interpreter. For three days and three nights the travellers
pursued their course, without food or shelter, not daring to stop or
accost any of the inhabitants. At length they arrived at Vienna,
completely worn out with hunger and fatigue.
The fugitive king could have sought no more dangerous place of shelter.
Vienna was the capital of Duke Leopold of Austria, whom Richard had
mortally offended in Palestine, by tearing down his banner and planting
the standard of England in its place. Yet all might have gone well but
for the servant, who, while not a traitor, was as dangerous a thing, a
fool. He was sent out from the inn to exchange the gold byzantines of
the travellers for Austrian coin, and took occasion to make such a
display of his money, and assume so dignified and courtier-like an air,
that the citizens grew suspicious of him and took him before a
magistrate to learn who he was. He declared that he was the servant of a
rich merchant who was on his way to Vienna, and would be there in three
days. This reply quieted the suspicions of the people, and, the foolish
fellow was released.
In great affright he hastened to the king, told him what had happened,
and begged him to leave the town at once. The advice was good, but a
three-days' journey without food or shelter called for some repose, and
Richard decided to remain some days longer in the town, confident that,
if they kept quiet, no further suspicion would arise.
Meanwhile, the news of the incident at Yara had spread through the
country and reached Vienna. Duke Leopold heard it with a double
sentiment of enmity and avarice. Richard had insulted him; here was a
chance for revenge; and the ransom of such a prisoner would enrich his
treasury, then, presumably, none too full. Spies and men-at-arms were
sent out in search of travellers who might answer to the description of
the burly English monarch. For days they traversed the country, but no
trace of him could be found. Leopold did not dream that his mortal foe
was in his own city, comfortably lodged within a mile of his palace.
Richard's servant, who had imperilled him before, now succeeded in
finishing his work of folly. One day he appeared in the market to
purchase provisions, foolishly bearing in his girdle a pair of richly
embroidered gloves, such as only great lords wore when in court attire.
The fellow was arrested again, and this time, suspicion being increased,
was put to the torture. Very little of this sharp discipline sufficed
him. He confessed whom he served, and told the magistrate at what inn
King Richard might be found.
Within an hour afterwards the inn was surrounded by soldiers of the
duke, and Richard, taken by surprise, was forced to surrender. He was
brought before the duke, who recognized him at a glance, accosted him
with great show of courtesy, and with every display of respect ordered
him to be taken to prison, where picked soldiers with drawn swords
guarded him day and night.