The Conquering Family

by Thomas B. Costain

  John seems to have been a believer in the starvation method of getting rid of prisoners. He had employed it with the unfortunate knights captured at Mirabeau, he was to use it on later occasions, but there was something peculiarly repellent in his treatment of the wife and son of the man he now hated so thoroughly.

  After eleven days had passed the cell was opened. The two occupants were found dead, each lying in a propped-up position against the wall. It was apparent that the son had succumbed first, for one of his cheeks had been gnawed.

  William de Braose fled to France, where he published a statement on what had happened to Arthur. No copy was ever found, unfortunately, of this report of the only surviving eyewitness. A year later the fugitive died at Corbeil.

  The death of the unfortunate prince could not have been due to natural causes. In that event the body would have been produced promptly to clear the King of the charge of violence. The young contender was killed, then, and by his uncle’s orders.

  Although the story that the murder was committed in a boat on the Seine is a highly improbable version, it may have had some bearing on the truth. It may have been that the prince was removed from the citadel for a prison somewhere else and the opportunity was used to kill him on the way. It seems more reasonable, however, that the killing occurred within the citadel and that the body was taken in a boat and thrown into the water of the Seine. The exaggerated form the story took later was due, no doubt, to the additions achieved in the course of endless repetition.

  CHAPTER XII

  John Softsword

  WILLIAM MARSHAL and the leaders of the mercenaries, for whom a new name was being used, routiers, sat in enforced idleness at Rouen and knew that the war was being lost. Philip was concentrating his forces for a drive on Normandy up the Seine, the path his father had followed so often and so badly. This time, clearly, it would be different. John, agitated, angry, his neck weighed down with the relics hanging around it (a sure sign that he had a guilty conscience), was running about with feverish activity from castle to castle and accomplishing nothing. At intervals he would give up trying to be a leader and devote himself to the enjoyment of life with his beautiful young wife. It would have been hard for his harassed lieutenants to decide which aspect of the King they liked least.

  That the Angevin ship was foundering was clear from the stream of desertions. The King’s own seneschal, Guerin de Chapion, was the first to go over to the enemy. Every day after that there were reports of men who had left the banner of the much-hated King.

  A new symptom of weakness was revealed when the French army invested the castle of Vaudreuil. The garrison was commanded jointly by Richard Fitz-Walter and the Sieur de Quincy. To the amazement of all, the two captains surrendered without striking a blow. William Marshal’s handsome face went white with rage when he heard the news, and in London men sang ribald ballads on the streets about the knights who had disgraced their country; for the common people did not like the taste of defeat, although it seemed to sit easily enough on the stomachs of the baronage. It was at this point that the King was first called John Softsword.

  It was not entirely the fault of the King. All he had to use in opposing the French and the disloyalty in his own dominions were the few thousands of men scattered in garrisons along the borders of Normandy or gnawing their fingers in idleness about Rouen. No help could be expected from England.

  Aware that his hands were tied, John gave up. Isabella, nearing the end of her teens, had blossomed into a woman of ravishing beauty, and he seemed to find in her all the solace he needed for the way the Angevin empire was falling to pieces about him. Nothing his advisers could say roused him from his uxorious stupor.

  Once, in a fit of petulance, he answered the urgings of William Marshal by crying out, “Let be, Marshal, let be!” Then in a tone of confidence which carried some small hint of his father, he added, “One day, mark you, I shall take back all that he has won.”

  With calamity ringing them about, this was an idle boast, as both King and marshal knew. Gradually John was forced to the conclusion that peace must be made with the French. Better to concede something now than to let things drift until everything was lost. Accordingly he instructed the Archbishop of Rouen and William Marshal to go to the French King and discuss terms.

  2

  The time has come to tell something of this remarkable man, William Marshal. A younger son of a powerful Norman family, he had been given as a hostage to Stephen at a stage of the civil war in which his father fought on the side of the Empress Matilda. When the father’s conduct had been such that Stephen was reported to be ready to hang the six-year-old boy in reprisal, the unnatural father had one comment only to make, “I have the anvil still and the hammer to make more sons.”

  The boy had nothing to hope for from a father of this stamp. Being spared by Stephen, who for all his faults was not a cruel man, young William was sent to Normandy to be reared at the castle of an uncle named Tancarville. Lacking all prospects, he was trained to be a soldier and grew into a tall, handsome, and immensely strong youth with a knack in the use of all weapons. As soon as he had been admitted to knighthood, which was at an unusually early age, he began to cut an amazing swath in the tournaments which, in times of peace, filled the days and thoughts of all proper men. The word tournament had not at that period become limited to the kind of jousting which is most familiar, the formal breaking of lances in the lists, varied by an occasional mêlée in which the contestants took sides and hammered away at each other with sword and mace and battle-ax. The kind of contest in which young William won his spurs was a day of actual warfare, fought in the open and without any blunting of points. It was every man for himself. In the dusk, after ten hours of charge and countercharge, of ambush and sally, of hacking and hewing, in the course of which there would inevitably be some fatalities and a great deal of bloodletting, the judges would get together and decide who had been the winner.

  The winner was always William Marshal. The men who rank highest in history—Richard Coeur de Lion, the Black Prince, Bertrand du Guesclin, Jacques de Lalain, the Chevalier Bayard—could not in point of achievement compare with this almost forgotten English knight. In his declining years the old lion would often fall into reminiscence. One day he did some reckoning and found that he had fought in five hundred tournaments, or in single combat bouts, and that he had been the winner on each occasion, taking his opponent’s horse and armor as his prize.

  When he was sixty-six years old and was charged by John with a treasonable utterance, the old man threw down his gauge and offered to settle the matter by the arbitrament of battle. There were plenty of knights about the King who were in the prime of life, but they looked askance at the unbeaten champion and none picked up the iron glove.

  His success on the field of honor provided him at first with a certain competence. He could live on the sale of his prizes, particularly as a ransom came his way occasionally. He was in due course assigned by Henry II to serve in the train of the heir of England, the Prince Henry who was later known as Li Reys Josnes. The young Henry had a keen appetite for everything pertaining to chivalry and he received with delight the Englishman who had already won such a resounding reputation. William proceeded to teach his royal master all the tricks of the tournament: the angle at which to hold the heaume in order to deflect a lance thrust, the use of the new ball-and-spike spur, how to sit most securely in the saddle, how to conserve his strength in a mêlée and then strike at exactly the right moment.

  When Li Reys Josnes died, the King took William back into his service and promised him, among other things, the hand of the young heiress of Pembroke and Striguil, one of the wealthiest as well as the most attractive wards in the gift of the monarchy. The death of Henry II occurred before this particular agreement could be carried out. As William had unhorsed Richard in the pursuit from Le Mans, he did not expect anything in the way of favors from the new King. Richard had an eye for martial valor, however, and he not only car
ried out his father’s wishes but appointed him marshal of England as well.

  Marriage with the pretty heiress brought William Marshal into the overlordship of that thumb of land which protrudes out from Wales into the South Channel and points directly at Ireland. Pembroke Castle, with its seventy-five-foot tower, stood like a mighty sentinel on the inlet of Milford Haven. All about it clustered Norman castles which had been raised to hold this important stretch of water: the keep of Haverford, Tenby, Castle Martin, Lewhaden, Narberth, Stackpole. There were large land grants also in Ireland, and so the once landless knight came into an inheritance which promised him comfort and dignity for the rest of his days. Fortunately the heiress of Pembroke was well pleased with her very much older but justly famous husband and they lived happily together.

  This, then, was the man, now in his sixtieth year or thereabouts, on whom John depended in military matters. If there had been any prospect of proper assistance from the barons of England, William Marshal might have driven Philip out of Normandy and regained the Angevin provinces. But the people of England were tired of this endless fighting, and John had trampled on their rights so often that it was impossible to develop any sense of loyalty to him. The old soldier, unable to serve the Crown in the capacity for which he was best fitted, had little stomach for the errand on which his royal master was now sending him. He was sufficient of a strategist, moreover, to know that John had lost and that the task imposed on him was the distasteful one of asking the victor for terms.

  3

  As the two unwilling envoys entered the courtyard of the castle below Amiens where the King of France had located himself, they were surprised to see that among those seeking audience with the King were merchants in plain woolen tunics and flat caps and humble priests from Picardy and the Dordogne. On the stairway they passed an acrobat with the padded shoulders of his trade and a petition in his hands and an old man escorting a boy who also carried a petition, an orphan being brought to ask a favor. They would not have been surprised at the station of these humble seekers for a word with Philip if they had understood the French tradition that a king must make himself accessible to his people. Anyone with a grievance could have a word with the ruler of the country. The kings lived in full view of their subjects, eating at intervals in the open so that the gaping commonalty could watch the viands carried in and see them vanish down the royal throat. They were attended constantly by court officers who helped them to dress and undress, who slept in the royal chamber and even accompanied their master to the bath and to the cold, dark nooks of the back stairs.

  William Marshal had never seen the French King and he eyed him with the closest interest as he made his way across the audience chamber, through the mass of spectators assembled to watch that most grateful sight for Gallic eyes, the humbling of Englishmen. Philip was sitting on a chair which had some of the dignity of a throne. He was a big man, now showing signs of portliness. His hair had been fair once, but there was little of it left (the hot sun of the Holy Land was blamed for his early baldness), and he was rather handsome, with ruddy cheeks, a strong, straight nose, and a mouth which was both determined and petulant. This very capable King was watching the advance of the Englishmen with as lively satisfaction as any of his subjects.

  There was probably a craning of necks as William Marshal passed, for few there had cast eyes on this great soldier who had never been worsted, who had unhorsed scores of Frenchmen in his day without losing a stirrup. They were undoubtedly puzzled by the lack of embroidery on his surcoat and the plain quality of his gray tunic, as well as impressed by the length and apparent weight of the sword which clanked against his long legs.

  Philip, who had an arrogant way of speech, pretended surprise when they stood in front of him. He asked:

  “Where is Arthur of Brittany?”

  There was no answer they could give to that, so neither Englishman made any comment. After a moment, however, the marshal countered with a shrewd verbal thrust. He had noticed the great number of deserters in the chamber, the men who had left the Angevin dominions to throw in with the French: counts from Anjou, rics-barons from Poitou, captals from Gascony, bishops from everywhere. He had met the eyes of some of them and had observed that without exception they flushed and looked away.

  “My lord,” he said in a tone loud enough to carry to all parts of the room, “I see many men with you who have broken their oaths and forsworn their allegiance, for which they would lose their heads or at least their eyes in the country from which I come.”

  It was a bold speech, but it pleased rather than offended the King. Philip had been glad to detach these men from the English cause, but at the same time he had an open contempt for those who broke their vows; a privilege he reserved for himself.

  “It is nothing,” declared Philip in a tone of equal distinctness. “I think as little of them as I do of the torch I carry to the secret at night and throw inside when I am through.”

  Having said this, the King burst into loud laughter and glanced about the room at some of the more conspicuous members of the company he had thus insulted publicly. William Marshal laughed with him. It was one of the admirable traits of this English knight that he looked everyone straight in the eye, kings and cardinals as well as the humblest of men, and never hesitated to speak his mind. He felt himself free to laugh when the King did.

  The peace negotiations could not be said to have started on a good basis, for Philip then proceeded to a long tirade which made it clear that he was in a belligerent mood. He made it very clear that he had little interest in the errand which had brought them to his court.

  This became still more apparent at the discussions held on succeeding days. There was one concrete lesson Philip had learned under the oak of Gisors, and he was now using it. He had been taught the art of making a demand and, when it had been conceded, of finding other conditions which would have to be agreed to as well, so that there was never any end to a discussion. In this way, instead of starting with the impossible and being forced gradually to recede, he built his demands up higher and ever higher until they reached a point where an adversary conceded everything in sheer desperation or broke off the negotiations in disgust.

  This was the course he followed with the English envoys. If they agreed to one of his demands, they immediately found that the acceptance entailed other concessions. If he could think of nothing else, Philip would proclaim that as the first essential to peace they must produce Arthur of Brittany. They were forced finally to the conclusion that he had no intention of coming to terms. He did not want peace; he was set on war, and war he intended to make until John and the English-Normans had been driven out of Gaul.

  As soon as the two envoys were absolutely convinced that he was playing a game of cat-and-mouse with them, they demanded their safe-conduct and left the court.

  4

  The decisive stage of the fight for Normandy came with the siege of Château Gaillard, the fair child who had pleased Richard so much on her first birthday. Philip had sworn he would take this fort if the walls were of steel and, during the first stages of the envelopment, it looked as though his boast would be put to a literal test. The walls were as strong as though made of steel and the whole structure perched so high on its rock that it seemed like a castle in the clouds. The conclusion was soon reached that it could not be taken by storm. A group of bold young Frenchmen swam out at night and broke the communications between castle and mainland; and after that the French army settled down to starve out the garrison, which was commanded by a good soldier named Roger de Lacey.

  John now proceeded to demonstrate that he had some of the military skill which ran so conspicuously in the family, conceiving an excellent plan for the relief of the garrison. In the execution of this plan William Marshal marched down the left bank of the Seine with a force consisting of three hundred knights, three thousand mounted men-at-arms, and four thousand foot soldiers, with an auxiliary troop of routiers under a man named Loupescaire. At the same
time a fleet of seventy river boats, which had been assembled at Rouen in Richard’s reign for just such an emergency, were to bring the King down the river to attack simultaneously. The marshal arrived promptly and struck the French such a devastating blow that he drove them across the pontoon bridge the French engineers were building. The bridge broke under their weight, and it looked as though the attack would result in a rout of Philip’s forces. But John had not taken the tides into consideration and had found himself unable to get away with the fleet. By the time the tide had turned and the flotilla started, the relatively small army under the marshal had sustained the weight of the whole French army and been driven back. John had been late as usual.

  It was clear now that the great castle could not be relieved except by an army large enough to engage the French on something like even terms. The marshal advised that they retire instead of remaining in close proximity to an army capable of demolishing them. This opinion was delivered at a council called to discuss the situation, and an affirmative chorus followed the marshal’s speech. John, refusing to accept the inevitable, glared about him.

  “Let them who are afraid flee,” he exclaimed. “I shall stay for yet a year.”

  The marshal realized that the time had come for plain speech. It must be accepted as fact, he declared, that no reinforcements would join them. John disputed this. He expected additional forces from England. The old soldier gave him a negative shake of the head. “You who are wise, mighty, and illustrious,” he said, “to whom it has been given to rule over us, you have offended too many. You lack friends to rally to you now.”