The Conquering Family

by Thomas B. Costain

  A troop of French men-at-arms had come into the Council Room and had stationed themselves between the English King and his son. They were not needed, however. Henry was too stunned to make any move. A very sick and weary man, he watched his son and the scornful young King of France walk out together, their arms on each other’s shoulders. It had not taken Philip long to carry out the threat he had made as a boy.

  The Crusade was forgotten and war began at once. The French came up to Le Mans where Henry had stationed himself with his small army, burning the towns and laying the country waste. Henry was in no position to meet the thrust. Most of his troops were mercenaries and they were few in number. He had made no effort to recruit a large army in England to oppose this threat to his continental possessions, knowing that the English, even the barons of Norman extraction, were weary of the continual struggle and unwilling to take any further part. He was too old and too ill to triumph over the difficulties which now faced him or to improvise ways of averting military disaster as he had done so often before. No longer was he opposed by a weak opponent. Without making any attempt to protect Le Mans, Henry retreated north. It is said that, looking back at the flames of the city which the French had proceeded to destroy, he cried out bitterly against the God who thus heaped humiliation and misfortune on him in his old age.

  The final stages in the life of this remarkable man had one redeeming note only. His illegitimate son Geoffrey had come over to France to be beside him. They rode stirrup to stirrup, and the son did everything in his power to raise the spirits of the sick monarch. He tried to anticipate his wants and to take all responsibilities on his own shoulders.

  Richard pursued them from Le Mans. He had set out in such haste that he was without armor. Overtaking the English rear guard, he suddenly realized that he had outridden his own men and that the English marshal was in a position to either kill him or take him prisoner. Reining in sharply, he called attention to the fact that he was without his hauberk.

  William the Marshal lacked the resolution of Joab, that stout Hebrew warrior who disregarded David’s orders and drove his darts into the suspended form of Absalom. Much as he would have preferred to end the family strife by killing the prince, he launched his lance instead into the neck of Richard’s horse and turned to ride away.

  “I leave you to the devil!” he said.

  Keep this knight William Marshal in mind. He will play a great part in later events.

  By nightfall the royal party was close to the borders of Normandy, and Geoffrey urged his father to ride on to safety. But the old lion was recovering some of his former resolution. He said no, he would stay where he was for the night and in the morning he would strike back for Anjou. Anjou was his own country, he declared, and nothing could compel him to abandon it. Geoffrey, in a panic, pointed out that to reach his Angevin provinces he would have to ride through territory now in the hands of the French. He would be killed or captured if he attempted anything as foolhardy as that. Henry’s answer to his son was an order to ride on into Normandy himself and to raise whatever forces he could. He was to come back as soon as possible, and in the meantime the King would stay where he was.

  Geoffrey followed his instructions and returned with more troops in a few days. He found his father as determined as ever to ride to Anjou. Shaking his head in despair, the young chancellor organized their scanty forces and led the way south.

  To the surprise of them all, they succeeded in reaching Chinon, which lies south and west of Tours, without encountering any opposition. This was the last thing the French had expected them to do, and so to the sheer insanity of the move they owed their success.

  Henry decided to remain at Chinon. Perhaps he did so because it was in this huge hilltop castle that all the trouble had started. Here his son Henry had left him the first time; here, then, the last act of the tragedy should be played out. He was a different Henry from the keen and far-seeing King who had always known the right thing to do, this silent man who thus sat down in the midst of his enemies and waited for them to strike. A fatalistic mood had taken possession of him. He did not fear them. Let them do their worst!

  He had not long to wait. Word reached the castle that Philip was marching down the Loire with his victorious troops. In the south and west the provinces were in revolt. Henry had no more chance of standing out against the clamoring forces of rebellion than had Canute when he faced the tidal waters. Nevertheless, he refused to move. Better to die where he was than to run away!

  The triumphant youth who now wore the crown of France summoned the deserted King to meet him at Colombières near Tours. Henry, after much unhappy thought and against the advice of Geoffrey, decided to go. He managed to get into his saddle but soon became too weak to complete the journey. Geoffrey sent word that the King was seriously ill and would not be able to reach the plains selected for the conference.

  Philip discussed the situation with Richard and his own military advisers. What was to be done under these circumstances? Should they wait until Henry recovered his strength or should they go to him and tell him the humiliating terms they had decided upon? The eyes of the youthful monarch had a resentful glow as he propounded the problem. He was thinking of those earlier conferences when it had been clear even to a boy that the King of France was being circumvented and forced into distasteful concessions and even hoaxed by the King of England. He did not want to wait any longer for the roles to be reversed.

  Richard’s opinion, spoken with no trace of filial anxiety, was exactly what the French King wanted to hear. He was sure that his father was not ill. He, Richard, knew all about the wiles he resorted to, his sly maneuverings, when he faced defeat. Demand that he appear at the appointed place and see how quickly he would come to heel: such was the advice of this dutiful son. It was accepted gladly, and a peremptory message was sent to the sick old man. He must present himself at Colombières the following day.

  Henry rose from his couch when this word reached him. His face was a sickly gray, his eyes were dull and full of distress, his hands trembled as he fumbled with his sword. He still had a little of his indomitable spirit left, however, for he muttered as his squires lifted him to the saddle, “I will win my land back in spite of them!” Geoffrey had wanted him to ride in a litter, but the suggestion had been brushed aside impatiently.

  Even Philip felt some compunction when Henry arrived at Colombières. The mark of death was on the gray face and the stooped back of his father’s foe. He asked Henry to take a comfortable seat. The English King refused. He remained in his saddle and demanded, with the sharp impatience of physical suffering, that he know their minds at once. So weak that he had to grip the horns of the saddle, he was hearing a boyish voice say, “When I am grown up, I will take back all of which you have deprived him.” The same voice, not yet having achieved a full mature note, was proceeding now to tell him the bitter terms on which he might have peace.

  First he must do homage to Philip for all his possessions in France. The sick man straightened instinctively in his saddle when he heard this. He had always refused to recognize Louis as his suzerain. Could he swallow such a bitter pill? He glanced at the circle of hostile faces about him. Pay homage to France? He would do so, he said finally in a low voice, if the oath were so phrased that his honor would not be compromised, nor the dignity of his kingdom.

  The words were scarcely out of his mouth when a roar of laughter went up from the followers of the French King. Richard and his men joined in. Henry was startled and glared about him at the guffawing crowd. Ah, if he were only younger! He would teach these jeering fools to show him respect. Then the reason for their amusement flashed into his mind; his answer had been almost identical with that which Thomas à Becket had given him when he demanded the obedience of the servants of the Church. What was it his recalcitrant primate had said? Saving our order. Yes, the meaning was the same. He had not realized it when the words rose to his lips. No wonder they were laughing at him.

  A disturbing t
hought entered his mind perhaps. Was this, then, a part of his punishment? Would the evil he had done pursue him as long as he lived?

  The French King was going on with the rest of the terms. He, Henry, must acknowledge Richard as his successor and see that the prince received homage at once from his future subjects. Henry nodded his head to this. Granted.

  Princess Alice must be placed in the care of the Archbishop of Canterbury or His Grace of Rouen until the Crusade was over, at which time her future would be decided. There was silence for a moment and then a slow nod of the head. Granted.

  Philip and Richard were to hold all the lands they had conquered, Touraine and Le Mans and Maine, as pledges that the terms of the peace would be carried out. Granted.

  Henry was to pay France as compensation for the costs of the campaign the sum of twenty thousand marks. Granted.

  It must be agreed that the barons of England would force him to compliance if at any time he showed a tendency to repudiate the treaty. Henry’s face flushed angrily. The barons, his own subjects, were to force him to live up to these terms? He said nothing, however. Even this humiliation, he realized, must be borne. Granted!

  Finally, he must forgive all his subjects who had thrown in their lot with Richard against him. Granted.

  He had given in and accepted these debasing terms without a protest. His spirit was so broken, in fact, that he said nothing when Geoffrey ordered his squires to lift him from the saddle and place him in a litter. He seemed glad he would not have to endure again the agony of the long ride.

  When they arrived at Chinon that night, Henry was so weak that he had to be lifted from the litter, the faithful Geoffrey taking him by the shoulders and two squires taking his feet. On a relatively low hill, which was still a part of expansive Chinon, there stood a small chapel. It was not more than six feet wide and perhaps twelve feet long. The sick monarch motioned toward the entrance which was narrow and arched and barely high enough for a man to pass through without bending.

  “Here,” he whispered.

  They placed a couch in an angle of the walls beside the entrance and laid him there. He sighed heavily and glanced about him with an air which suggested that he never expected to leave.

  The King’s eyes were closed when Geoffrey returned with a copy of the terms agreed upon, French Philip having lost no time in getting them there. Henry listened as his son read the clauses aloud. Everything was stated with the bluntness which a victor feels entitled to assume in addressing the loser. Geoffrey read slowly and reluctantly, still finding it hard to believe that the great King had suffered a complete defeat. When he came to the list of those who had conspired with Richard and who must now be forgiven, his voice dropped to a note of disbelief.

  “My lord,” he exclaimed, “it is impossible!”

  The dying King expressed no interest. When there had been so much treachery and breaking of vows, did it matter about the names on this list?

  “My lord,” whispered Geoffrey, “I must tell you that the first name given is—John, Count of Mortaigne!”

  The King’s eyes opened. “John?” he cried hoarsely. “John, my heart, my loved son! It can’t be! He for whose sake I have suffered all this! Has he also forsaken me?”

  “My lord, the name is here.”

  The broken man turned his face to the wall. “Let the rest go as it will,” he whispered. “Now I care not what becomes of me!”

  For seven days he lay on his couch, growing weaker with each hour, his eyes fixed on the wall. Once his strong spirit roused from the lethargy of approaching death. “Shame!” he was heard to mutter. “Shame on a conquered king!”

  He died with his head on Geoffrey’s breast, after speaking for a moment rationally and affectionately and giving him a ring of great value from his finger. Perhaps he said again, “Thou art my true son.” Certainly the last days of his life had made the truth of that abundantly clear.

  The body was removed to the Abbey of Fontevrault, and here Richard came to look on his father as he lay in state before the altar. All the chronicles of the day agree that blood flowed from the nose and mouth of the dead King and that Richard fell to his knees and began to weep, denouncing himself as the cause of his father’s death.

  It has always been the way of court officials and servants, when they hear the solemn cry, “The King is dead: long live the King!” to lose no time in bowing the knee of submission to the new occupant of the throne. There have been many instances in history when the body has been left alone while the lickspittle crew rushed to curry favor, and in some cases thieves took advantage of the chance to rob the royal clay.

  It is said that the corpse of Henry II was plundered in this way and that the officials responsible for the funeral arrangements found it necessary to resort to sorry expedients; that they used an old and battered scepter and a ring of small value for his finger and even had to take a strip of gold fringe from a lady’s undergarment and twist and flute it into a semblance of a crown, so that the great monarch went to his final rest as grotesquely arrayed as a street mummer.

  This is denied in other versions. It is asserted that Henry was properly prepared for his lying in state, that a dalmatic of crimson, powdered with gold flowers, covered him to his ankles, that over this was a mantle of deep chocolate with a gold brooch fastening it at the shoulder in the accepted fashion, and that his hands were covered with elaborately jeweled gloves while his feet were in boots of green leather with spurs of gold.

  The second version is the easier to believe. It is certain that Geoffrey remained with the body to prevent any indignities being perpetrated. Nor should any belief be put in the story so often told that the face of the dead King was contorted with the feelings of rage and hatred which had filled his mind while he breathed his last. The medieval custom of exposing the bodies of kings and queens for long periods of time so that all their subjects who so desired might see them was dependent on the making of wax replicas for the purpose. It was done secretly, however, and the people always believed that they had seen the actual bodies. It is related that when the effigy of a much-loved queen was surrounded by four thousand wax candles it began to show the effects of so much heat and had to be hastily removed.

  It is probable that the body which lay in state in the Abbey of Fontevrault was not that of the King who had striven so hard to be a good king. All that was left of the real Henry had almost certainly been at rest long before the last of his curious subjects had filed by the bier. The expression they saw on his face may have been of their own beholding or a proof of the art, or lack of it, of the one who fashioned the wax.

  CHAPTER VII

  The Milch Cow of the Third Crusade

  ALLTHOUGH historians have done their best to present Richard I as a bad king and a man of extraordinary selfishness and cruelty, it has been impossible to shake the popular view which places Coeur de Lion on the highest pedestal. That he was a sagacious general as well as a great fighting man has more than balanced in the scales of public opinion the fact that he was worthless as a ruler.

  It is not surprising that he lacked most of the qualities which made his father so outstanding. Henry II was raised in an atmosphere of struggle and dissension and of continual uncertainty as to the future. This toughened his mental fiber and at the same time lent him resolution and a practical and realistic viewpoint. When he ascended the throne he faced conditions which called for the exercise of wisdom, determination, and courage. Richard grew up as the Angevin sun mounted ever higher in the sky, and all his years he lived in an atmosphere of adulation and glory. He was the handsomest of men, or so those who flocked about him said; he was the greatest fighter, the deadliest wrestler, the fastest runner, the finest poet, and the most beguiling troubadour in the whole wide world. His mother worshiped him, and this confirmed the sycophantic chorus of the court. Richard was taught to believe in his own omnipotence. He knew victory only and was ready to pay any price for it.

  Still more fatal to the development in
him of the qualities needed in a ruler was the Code of Chivalry which guided him throughout his life. Chivalry was a shield of two sides, the outer a shining promise of high honor and courage and self-sacrifice, the hidden side a hideous picture of darkness and superstition and cruelty. The exultant glow of the one has triumphed over the reverse, and the word chivalry has come to mean everything fine and loyal and brave. But time has been a false interpreter. Richard was the perfect product of the code, and all his life he was base and cruel to those under him and willing to be dishonest in his dealings with his subjects in order to achieve a few moments of high triumph on the field of battle. Such was chivalry, such was Richard.

  Efforts have been made to judge the King separately from the knight and to keep the callousness of the former from sight by thinking only of the exploits of the crusading leader. But Richard was in everything the knight. It was always the knight who sat at the head of the Curia and passed on matters of state. The King did not make a belated appearance when the knight laid aside his heavy iron helmet and unlaced his body armor. It was the knight who lavished the gold of the kingdom on his Palestine adventure and sold everything for which a buyer could be found from a royal castle to a decision in a lawsuit. It was the knight who came back after his long imprisonment and reinstated the bad minister thrown out by his irate subjects. Richard was always the knight and, except for brief moments near the end when he displayed flashes of statesmanship, never the King.

  But the facts of his ten-year reign will speak for themselves.