Titans of History

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

  EDWARD III & THE BLACK PRINCE

  1312–1377 & 1330–1376

  The greatest soldier of his age.

  Jean Froissart, Chronicles (late 14th century) on the Black Prince

  Edward III and the Black Prince were the father and son who personified the glory, energy and triumph of English chivalry at its medieval apogee. Edward III was the most successful and heroic of English kings; the Black Prince—formally Edward, Prince of Wales—was the most chivalrous and celebrated knight in Europe. Along with King Henry V, they are the greatest princes in British history.

  Edward III displayed, throughout his extraordinary long reign, remarkable energy, daring and ambition, often distinguishing himself in the thick of the fighting. He grew up under the shadow of his disastrously weak father Edward II, who was deposed and murdered in 1327 by his mother, Queen Isabella, and her lover Roger Mortimer. The two then ruled despotically until the sidelined king, at just seventeen years old, arranged a successful coup d’état, personally leading the posse of his close friends to seize Mortimer, an act of characteristic derring-do.

  Dynamic, talented and athletic, Edward first waged war against the Scots, leading the conquest of much of the Lowlands and achieving a glorious victory at Halidon Hill in 1333. Like his grandfather Edward I, he tried to impose his own candidate, in this instance Edward Balliol, on the Scottish throne. In 1346, the king’s army won an even greater victory at Neville’s Cross, capturing King David II of Scotland, who was destined to spend many years as a hostage at the court in London.

  In 1338, Edward launched his new policy aimed at reasserting the English claim to the crown of France and the Angevin territories lost by King John. By 1340, he was acclaimed king of France and then won a naval battle at Sluys against the French, though he had to return to London to face a political and financial crisis which ended with his dismissal of his minister, John Stratford, Archbishop of Canterbury. He returned to France in 1346, conquering territory including Calais and winning the ultimate of his many victories at the Battle of Crécy, the achievement of his skill in command and his English archers. After Crécy, Halidon Hill and Sluys, and the conquest of Calais, Edward’s prestige as king and warrior were enormous. In 1350, hearing that Calais was about to be betrayed, Edward, at great risk to himself, secretly rushed there with an armed group, saved the town in a brief skirmish and destroyed the traitors—a virtuoso performance.

  When his eldest son and heir, Edward of Woodstock, was thirteen, the king allowed him to start campaigning abroad. As the English faced the French at Crécy in 1346, the king placed Edward’s company in the thick of the fighting. The French fell upon the prince and his men, and it took every ounce of strength to batter them back. Although later stories tell of the king refusing to help until the prince had “won his spurs,” in fact Edward III realized that his son was in grave danger and sent reinforcements of twenty senior knights. But when they arrived, they found the prince and his companions catching their breath, having already repulsed the French.

  The legend of the Black Prince—named for his black armor—was born at Crécy, and it was one that the prince was keen to maintain. One of the allies of the French, King John of Bohemia, had demanded to be brought into battle despite being totally blind. Not surprisingly, he did not survive long. But the prince was impressed with his chivalry and adopted the Bohemian ostrich feathers as his own heraldic device in the dead king’s honor. The ostrich feathers still form the crest of the Prince of Wales today.

  Edward appointed his son as prince of Aquitaine. Ten years later, in 1356, with a decade’s experience of command behind him, the Black Prince commanded another division of English troops to an even greater victory. Without his father to back him up, the prince was not particularly enthused by the idea of engaging the French king, John II; yet on September 19 he led his men into battle about five miles from Poitiers. The prince used his tactical nous to outflank his enemies, charging downhill at them and engaging them in hand-to-hand combat. The French king was captured, and a victory even greater than Crécy was won.

  Stories of the Black Prince’s chivalrous deeds spread across Europe: he famously deferred to the superior rank of his captive, King John, refusing to eat with him but rather serving him at table.

  Poitiers marked the high point of the prince’s career. As governor of Aquitaine he was hated for his harsh rule, and he also ill-advisedly became involved with Spanish politics in Castile. With his beautiful wife Joan, “The Fair Maid of Kent,” he gained a reputation for lavish indulgence and a lack of political finesse.

  Edward III now reveled in his chivalric glory as he held two kings—of France and Scotland—to ransom in London and earned vast sums from both. He celebrated his success by founding the Order of the Garter, playing up to his legend as a latter-day King Arthur. Yet despite these astonishing victories, Edward now found it hard to dominate Scotland and hold on to his conquests in France—signing an unsatisfactory treaty with the latter in 1360.

  Edward had been happily married to Queen Philippa, with whom he had many children. But he now embarked on an affair with Alice Perrers, who was soon notorious for her greed and corruption in partnership with the unscrupulous Lord Latimer. The court was now in decline. Edward suffered strokes and the Black Prince returned from Aquitaine and his unsuccessful Castilian enterprises incapacitated by illness. John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, who also became entangled in the Castilian intrigues—hoping to become king of Castile—took control of government as Edward III’s next ranking son. After Queen Philippa died, Alice Perrers became more brazen and wealthy.

  By 1376, the glorious reign, blessed with so many victories, had turned sour. The Black Prince died—the most famous knight in Europe. Edward was sick and John of Gaunt’s attempts to defend his father and the crown were clumsy. In 1376 and 1377 the “Good Parliament” effectively demanded the dismissal of Alice Perrers and the trial of Lord Latimer. Edward III and John of Gaunt were tainted with scandal and humiliation.

  In 1377, Edward finally died after a reign of fifty years, succeeded by his ill-starred grandson Richard II, son of the Black Prince. Nonetheless, Edward had proved a brilliant monarch and military commander, with a winning personal charm and glamour, remarkable courage, luck in war and politics and a feel for theater and pageantry. The Black Prince was less politically astute—but no less glamorous. The English rarely dub their kings great, but if any deserve this soubriquet, it is Edward the Great.

  TAMERLANE

  1336–1405

  He loved bold and valiant soldiers, by whose aid he opened the locks of terror, tore men to pieces like lions, and overturned mountains.

  Arab writer Ahmad ibn Arabshah, describing Tamerlane

  Tamerlane was a statesman and military commander of astonishing brilliance and brutal ferocity who built an empire stretching from India to Russia and the Mediterranean Sea. Never defeated in battle, he ranks alongside Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great as one of the great conquerors of all time, leaving in his wake both pyramids of human skulls and the aesthetic beauty of his capital Samarkand.

  Timur—meaning iron in Turkic—was born in Kesh, south of Samarkand, in 1336. His father was a minor chief of the Barlas tribe, settled in Transoxiana (roughly present-day Uzbekistan), at the heart of the crumbling Mongol empire, which was breaking apart into warring factions ruled by descendants of Genghis Khan, chief among them the Jagatai, the il-Khanid dynasty and the so-called Golden Horde. The situation within the Jagatai khanate—of which the Barlas were a part—was further complicated by tensions between predominantly nomadic tribes and those wanting a settled life of peace and trade. Tribal infighting was consequently common, and participating in a raid as a young man, Timur—described by contemporaries as strong, with a large head and long beard of a reddish hue—sustained wounds that left him partially paralyzed down one side and with a distinctive limp, hence the nickname Timur the lame, later abbreviated to Tamerlane. He nonetheless became a skilled horseman and su
perior soldier, quickly building up a substantial following. According to the Arab writer Arabshah, he was “steadfast in mind and robust in body, brave and fearless, firm as rock … faultless in strategy.” Intellectually he was equally adept, speaking at least two languages, Persian and Turkic, and having a keen interest in history, philosophy, religion and architecture, as well as being an enthusiastic chess player.

  In 1361, Timur was put in charge of the area round Samarkand, having sworn allegiance to Tughluq, who had taken over the Jagatai khanate. When Tughluq died soon afterward, Timur cemented his position by forming a coalition with Hussein, another tribal chief, whose power base was in Balkh. The two carved up much of the surrounding area as their armies swept aside rival tribes, but simmering tensions in their relationship—previously kept in check by family ties—erupted after the death of Timur’s first wife, Hussein’s sister. Timur—who had won popular support by generously rewarding loyalty—turned on and defeated his former ally, only to release him shortly afterward, overwhelmed at the sight of his old friend in shackles. Such leniency, however, was short-lived. Timur subsequently had two of Hussein’s sons executed, taking four of his wives for his own, and hunting down his prominent supporters throughout the region, beheading them and sharing their wives and children among his men like gifts.

  By 1370, as the undisputed leader of an ever-expanding domain centered on Samarkand—where he had opulent temples and beautiful gardens constructed behind new defensive walls and a moat—Tamerlane began to dream of greatness. Claiming descent from Genghis Khan (though he was probably Turkic), he announced his goal of re-establishing the Mongol empire. First, though, he had to bring stability to his new regime, so he married Hussein’s widow, Sarai Khanum, and used only the title emir—commander, ruling through Genghizid puppets. He re-established and monopolized the Silk Road, by which trade had once passed from China to Europe. Through this strategy of war abroad and peace at home, he could satisfy those who longed for new conquests as well as those who wanted prosperous stability.

  Tamerlane presided over a highly efficient war machine, divided into tumen, units of 10,000 men, a skilled cavalry—including, eventually, an elephant corps from India—equipped with supplies for lengthy campaigns and heavily armed with bows and swords, as well as catapults and battering rams for siege warfare. His soldiers—whose livelihoods depended on conquest—were composed of an eclectic ethnic mix, including Turks, Georgians, Arabs and Indians. Between 1380 and 1389 Timur embarked on a series of campaigns in which he conquered a colossal empire, embracing Persia, Iraq, Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, Anatolia, Syria, all of central Asia, northern India, the approaches to China and much of southern Russia: his longest struggle was against Tokhtamysh, khan of the Golden Horde, whom he finally defeated and destroyed in 1391.

  Terror was a key weapon in Tamerlane’s armory. He sent secret agents ahead of his troops to spread rumors about the atrocities he had committed—such as the vast pyramids of decapitated heads constructed by his soldiers to celebrate victories in battle or the mass killing of around 70,000 citizens in Ifshahan, 20,000 at Aleppo, the beheading of 70,000 in Tikrit and 90,000 in Baghdad, the incineration of a mosque full of people in Damascus and wholesale destruction of cities in Persia following a revolt there in 1392. Fear alone was often sufficient to ensure compliance—though many millions were killed in his campaigns. Yet he beautified Samarkand, created the game of Tamerlane chess, practiced religious tolerance and engaged scholars in learned debates on philosophy and faith. He was altogether an extraordinary man, contradictory, a force of nature.

  In 1398—extending his empire further than either Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan had achieved—Tamerlane invaded India and captured Delhi. A hundred thousand civilians were massacred there, and a similar number of Indian soldiers murdered in cold blood after their surrender following the Battle of Panipat. Still Tamerlane pressed on. In 1401, his men conquered Syria, rampaging through Damascus; in July 1402, after a huge and bloody battle near Ankara, Tamerlane defeated the Ottoman sultan Bayezid I, looting, among other treasures, the famous gates from the Ottoman palace of Brusa; and later the same year he annihilated the Christian city of Smyrna, floating the severed heads of his victims out to sea on candlelit dishes. By 1404, even the Byzantine emperor John I was paying him tribute in return for a guarantee of safety.

  In his late sixties, Tamerlane embarked on his final adventure—an attempted invasion of China—but he became ill on the march and died in January 1405. His body was returned to Samarkand, where a mausoleum was erected to him. After his death, his sons and grandsons fought for control of the empire, before his younger son, Shahrukh, finally assumed power in 1420 as the sole survivor of the family. His most illustrious descendant was Babur, founder of the Timurid dynasty that ruled India as the Mughals until 1857. A ruthless killer, whose armies were responsible for unrivaled pillage and brutality, Tamerlane was equally a shrewd statesman, brilliant general and sophisticated patron of the arts. Revered in Uzbekistan to this day—his monument in Tashkent standing where Marx’s statue once presided—Tamerlane was buried in a beautiful simple tomb in Samarkand. Legend said that the disturber of his tomb would be cursed: in June 1941, a Soviet historian opened the tomb. Days later, Hitler attacked Soviet Russia.

  RICHARD II

  1367–1400

  He threw down all who violated the royal prerogative; he destroyed heretics and scattered their friends.

  Richard II’s chosen epitaph for his tomb in Westminster Abbey

  Richard II’s reign was a personal and political tragedy. As a ruler, he was rigid, inept, inconsistent, paranoid, untrustworthy and vindictive—yet he was also a refined patron of the arts and the boy king who bravely faced the terrifying rebellious mobs of the Peasants’ Revolt. Richard’s tragedy was to succeed to the throne as an unprepared, callow and foolish child in the shadow of his heroic grandfather Edward III and father, the Black Prince.

  Born in Bordeaux to Edward, Prince of Wales, and the beautiful Joan the Fair Maiden of Kent, Richard became next in line to the throne after his father following the death of his elder brother in infancy. When his father died in 1376 and then his grandfather shortly afterward, Richard became the new king in 1377, at just ten years old, assisted by his tutor, a loyal family friend, Sir Simon Burley. For the first four years of his reign, power was unofficially devolved to three royal councils but much of the government of the country fell to John of Gaunt, Richard’s uncle, a controversial but capable statesman.

  Richard was tall, fair and handsome but regarded as effeminate, more interested in elaborate forms of etiquette—he demanded that spoons were used at court and was said to have invented the handkerchief—than success on the battlefield, a betrayal of the warrior tradition of English kings. In January 1382 the king married the docile and popular Anne of Bohemia and, two years after Anne’s death in 1394, the seven-year-old princess Isabella, daughter of Charles VI of France. But Richard never fathered a legitimate heir and his reign was characterized by his controversial relationship with a series of male favorites—men such as Michael de la Pole and Robert de Vere, with whom Richard was alleged to have had a homosexual affair.

  Following a series of costly wars with France, Richard’s advisers raised levels of taxation, leading to the Peasants’ Revolt of June 1381, led by Wat Tyler, in which bands of peasants and artisans from Essex and Kent marched to London, sacking the city and demanding a charter of rights. On June 16, 1381, at just fourteen, Richard negotiated directly with the rebels at Smithfield. When a violent altercation broke out and Wat Tyler was murdered by the king’s men, Richard took control of the crowd, declaring, “You shall have no captain but me.” As hundreds followed him away from the scene, his men rounded up and murdered the remaining rebel leaders. Richard had shown bravery and initiative but he had also participated in what was almost certainly a pre-planned and violent betrayal of his suffering subjects, in which hundreds were executed on the streets and many more were hange
d over the following weeks.

  Having dealt successfully with the Peasants’ Revolt, Richard faced a more serious problem: opposition from some of the most powerful barons of the realm. In 1386, after Richard had made a botched attempt to invade Scotland, a group of these nobles in Parliament—calling themselves the Lords Appellant, because of their calls for good governance—demanded that Richard remove his unpopular counselors. Led by the king’s uncle, Thomas of Woodstock, duke of Gloucester, the other Lords Appellant were Thomas Beauchamp, earl of Warwick; Richard FitzAlan, earl of Arundel; Thomas Mowbray, earl of Nottingham; and his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, earl of Derby, son of John of Gaunt and a potential rival for the throne.

  When Richard accused them of treason, the Lords Appellant revolted, eventually defeating Richard’s armies at Radcot Bridge, outside Oxford, and briefly imprisoning him in the Tower of London. In February 1388, eight of the king’s counselors were executed by the so-called Merciless Parliament. De la Pole and de Vere fled England as the Lords Appellant took control, arguing that Richard was still too young to govern the country.

  The Lords Appellant failed in military campaigns against the Scots and the French—and in 1389, when John of Gaunt returned to England from Spain, Richard rebuilt his authority; Mowbray and Bolingbroke defected back to the king who, now twenty-two, sidelined the Appellants and seized control. Increasingly arrogant and authoritarian, he believed that he had a God-given right to rule. In 1397, Richard invited Warwick to a banquet and arrested him, gave assurances to Arundel that he was not at risk, only to arrest him too, and also had Gloucester arrested in France. Arundel was executed, Warwick exiled and the earl of Gloucester smothered to death in Calais.