by Marion Meade
Three days after Christmas, the whereabouts of the tardy Richard Plantagenet became known, not at Westminster but at the Cité Palace in Paris. On December 28, Philip Augustus received an astounding letter from his good friend Henry Hohenstaufen, the Holy Roman emperor:We have thought it proper to inform your nobleness that while the enemy of our empire and the disturber of your kingdom, Richard, King of England, was crossing the sea to his dominions, it chanced that the winds caused him to be shipwrecked in the region of Istria, at a place which lies between Aquila and Venice.... The roads being duly watched and the entire area well-guarded, our dearly beloved cousin Leopold, Duke of Austria, captured the king in a humble house in a village near Vienna. Inasmuch as he is now in our power, and has always done his utmost for your annoyance and disturbance, we have thought it proper to relay this information to your nobleness.
Shortly after the first of the new year, 1193, the archbishop of Rouen was able to send Eleanor a copy of the letter, accompanied by a covering note in which he cited whatever comforting quotations he could recall from Scripture to cover an outrage of this magnitude.
Eleanor’s most imperative problem—finding the location where Richard was being held prisoner—she tackled with her usual energy and resourcefulness. From all points, emissaries were dispatched to find the king: Eleanor herself sent the abbots of Boxley and Pontrobert to roam the villages of Bavaria and Swabia, following every lead and rumor; Hubert Walter, bishop of Salisbury, stopping in Italy on his way home from the Crusade, changed course and hastened to Germany; even William Longchamp, the exiled chancellor, set out at once from Paris to trace his master. It was not until March, however, that Richard’s chaplain, Anselm, who had shared many of the king’s misadventures, arrived in England, and Eleanor was able to obtain authentic details.
According to Anselm’s story, Richard had set sail in early October with Anselm himself, a clerk, the noblemen Baldwin of Bethune and William l’Etang, and a number of Templars, or men disguised as Templars. His original destination was Marseille, but three days out, perhaps while putting in at Pisa for news and supplies, he had learned on good authority that Count Raymond of Toulouse, still smarting over old wrongs, had ambushed the Mediterranean ports. Since stormy weather prevented him from traveling through the Pillars of Hercules and around Spain to his own provinces, he was forced to backtrack down the Italian peninsula and head for the island of Corfu off the Greek coast. There, approached by two Rumanian pirate ships, he came to terms with the brigands and arranged for them to take him up the eastern coast of the Adriatic, where he may have had some notion of crossing into his brother-in-law Henry’s friendly territory of Saxony. But once again the weather turned rough, and the king’s party, washed ashore at Ragusa in Rumania, had boarded another vessel only to be shipwrecked. About December 10, they landed in territories held by Count Mainard of Gortz, a vassal of Duke Leopold of Austria. Considering that he was on the worst possible terms with Leopold, Richard understood the potential danger of his situation. Adopting the disguise of a merchant, he sent a ruby ring to Count Mainard and asked permission for pilgrims to pass through his lands. The count, not unnaturally, asked for the names of these wealthy pilgrims. Baldwin of Béthune, he was told, and the merchant Hugo.
Mainard, as if he possessed some uncanny psychic powers, turned the ruby ring over between his fingers. “His name is not Hugo,” he said, “but King Richard. I swore that I would arrest any pilgrims who set foot on my shores. However, in view of the value of this gift and the high condition of him who thus honors me, I shall return the gift and give your lord leave to continue his journey.”
Distrusting such unusual magnanamity, Richard and his party hired horses and fled that very night. Several days later, still keeping his disguise as a merchant, Richard was recognized and very nearly taken, but his captor, a native of Normandy, burst into tears and sent him on his way. By this time, rumors of the king’s presence had flown through the region. Leaving behind Baldwin of Bethune to draw attention to himself as a person of consequence and perhaps be mistaken for a king, Richard took with him only William l’Etang and the young clerk, who spoke German, and headed for Vienna. After three days of riding without rest, they came to the small town of Ginana, a suburb of Vienna, where Richard, worn out and shaking from a recurrence of malaria, found lodgings at a tavern and fell into a fevered sleep. Meanwhile, his German-speaking clerk went out to buy provisions, but since he had no Austrian currency and attempted to make purchases with a gold bezant of the type used in Syria, he was detained and sharply questioned by authorities. Insisting that he was merely the servant of a very wealthy merchant, he was able to secure his release and run back to the tavern, where he urged the king to flee. But Richard, in a stupor, could not be roused. By December 20, the clerk was again compelled to return to the marketplace for food. This time he made the mistake of appearing with the king’s handsomely adorned gloves thrust into his belt, an accessory that immediately attracted attention. Arrested and tortured, he finally confessed the identity and whereabouts of his master.
In Vienna, Duke Leopold was holding his Christmas court when he received news that the insolent Coeur de Lion had miraculously fallen into his grasp, and he lost no time in ordering the tavern surrounded. Hearing the commotion, Richard improvised a new disguise. Running to the kitchen and pulling on a servant’s smock, he sat by the hearth, where he busied himself with turning some birds on a spit. His disguise fooled nobody, of course. Outnumbered and cornered, he demanded that Duke Leopold himself be fetched to accept his surrender. Two days later, he was taken from Vienna to Durrenstein, a remote castle in the hills above the Danube, and placed in strict confinement, his guards having been ordered to watch him day and night with their swords drawn.
Treachery was rife not only in Germany but in Paris and Rouen; it even percolated rapidly in the queen’s own family. Before Eleanor could take steps to secure Coeur de Lion’s release, she was faced with more immediate catastrophes in the form of Philip Augustus and his newest ally, her son John. These two proceeded on the assumption that Richard, king of England, was dead. Or as good as dead. But before Eleanor could take her youngest son in hand, he fled to Normandy, where he declared himself the king’s heir, an announcement the Norman barons greeted with disdain. John did not wait to convince them, proceeding instead to Paris, where he did homage to Philip for the Plantagenet Continental domains and furthermore agreeing to confirm Philip’s right to the Vexin. Heartened by these developments, Philip apparently felt justified in abrogating the Truce of God; on April 12, a few days after Easter, he once again fronted the fortress at Gisors and this time the seneschal surrendered it without protest. From Gisors, Philip moved directly to Rouen, where he demanded the immediate release of his sister. The seneschal of Rouen, a man whose lands had recently been restored to him through Eleanor’s intervention, knew on which side his security lay. He had no orders to release Alais, he said, but he would be happy to escort Philip, alone and unarmed, into the princess’s quarters for a visit. In the course of some on-the-spot reflections, it did not fail to occur to Philip, who had as keen an imagination as Eleanor, that he had only to step unarmed across the drawbridge at Rouen and the queen would have a superb hostage with whom to barter for her son. Furious at the realization that the queen had thwarted him, he smashed his own siege engines and spilled casks of wine into the Seine. Rouen, he swore, had not seen the last of him. In the meantime, Eleanor, “who then ruled England,” had taken the precaution of closing the Channel ports and ordering the defense of the eastern coast against a possible invasion, her hastily mustered home guard being instructed to wield any weapon that came to hand, including their plowing tools.
At this point, Eleanor’s dilemma in regard to her sons would have taxed the most patient of mothers. John, returning to England, swaggered about the countryside proclaiming himself the next king of England—perhaps he sincerely believed that Richard would never be released alive—and, never known for his sensitiv
ity, constantly regaled Eleanor with the latest rumors concerning the fate of her favorite son.. Her actions during this period indicate clearly that she failed to take John seriously. Although he was twenty-seven, she thought of him as the baby of the family, always a child showing off and trying to attract attention. Her attitude was probably close to that of Richard’s when, a few months later, he was informed of John’s machinations: “My brother John is not the man to subjugate a country if there is a person able to make the slightest resistance to his attempts.” With one hand, Eleanor deftly managed to anticipate John’s plots and render him harmless; with the other, she worked for Richard’s release. After Easter, the king had been removed from Durrenstein Castle and the hands of Duke Leopold and, after some haggling, had been taken into custody by Leopold’s suzerain, the Holy Roman emperor. As the emperor’s prisoner, Richard found himself the object of high-level decisions. His death, it was decided, would achieve no useful purpose; rather the arrogant Plantagenets, or what remained of them, should be made to redeem their kin, but at a price that would bring their provinces to their knees: 100,000 silver marks with two hundred hostages as surety for payment. The hostages, it was specified, were to be chosen from among the leading barons of England and Normandy or from their children.
Relieved as Eleanor must have felt to learn that her son could be purchased, she could only have been appalled at the size of the ransom. The prospect of collecting such an enormous sum, thirty-five tons of pure silver, seemed impossible after Henry’s Saladin tithe and Richard‘s great sale before the Crusade. Where was the money to be found? Where were two hundred noble hostages to be located? At a council convened at Saint Albans on June 1, 1193, she appointed five officers to assist with the dreaded task. During the summer and fall, England became a marketplace to raise the greatest tax in its history. The kingdom was stripped of its wealth: “No subject, lay or clerk, rich or poor, was overlooked. No one could say, ‘Behold I am only So-and-So or Such-and-Such, pray let me be excused.’ ” Barons were taxed one-quarter of a year’s income. Churches and abbeys were relieved of their movable wealth, including the crosses on their altars. The Cistercians, who possessed no riches, sheared their flocks and donated a year’s crop of wool. Before long, the bars of silver and gold began slowly to pile up in the crypt of Saint Paul’s Cathedral under Eleanor’s watchful eyes. But not quickly enough to comfort her. Even more painful was the job of recruiting hostages from the great families, their lamentations and pleadings rising like a sulphurous mist all over the kingdom and providing constant agony for the queen.
From Haguenau, where Richard was incarcerated, came a flood of letters to his subjects and most especially to his “much loved mother.” He had been received with honor by the emperor and his court, he is well, he hopes to be home soon. He realizes that the ransom will be difficult to raise but he feels sure that his subjects will not shirk their duty; all sums collected should be entrusted to the queen.
Richard also addressed correspondence to his captor, Henry Hohenstaufen: As a king, he had no need to account for his actions to anyone but God, but nevertheless, he wished to set the emperor straight. What were his crimes that he should be held against his will like a common highroad robber? “It is said that I have not taken Jerusalem. I should have taken it, if time had been given me; this is the fault of my enemies, not mine, and I believe no just man could blame me for having deferred an enterprise (which can always be undertaken) in order to afford my people a succour which they could no longer wait for. There, sire, these are my crimes.”
As for Philip Capet’s calumnies upon the king’s good name, “I know of nothing that ought to have brought on me his ill-humour, except for my having been more successful than he.”
Like his mother during her imprisonment, Richard never allowed his spirit to be broken. He was “always cheery and full of jest in talk. ... 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.” Deeper feelings were expressed, however, in a sirventès that he composed for his half sister Marie of Champagne and that must have sorrowed Eleanor to the quick.
Feeble the words and faltering the tongue
Wherewith a prisoner moans his doleful plight;
Yet for his comfort he may make a song.
Friends I have many, but their gifts are slight;
Shame to them if unransomed I, poor wight,
Two winters languish 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.
Eleanor, sixteen years in confinement, read the despair behind those lines of verse. It is said that in her anguish she addressed three letters to Pope Celestine III imploring his assistance in securing Richard’s release and in her salutation addressed the pontiff as “Eleanor, by the wrath of God, Queen of England.” One of the letters reads:I am defiled with grief, and my bones cleave to my skin, for my flesh it is wasted away. My years pass away in groanings, and I would they were altogether passed away.... I have lost the light of my eyes, the staff of my old age.
My bowels are torn away, my very race is destroyed and passing away from me. The Young King and the earl of Brittany sleep in the dust, and their most unhappy mother is compelled to live that she may be ever tortured with the memory of the dead. Two sons yet survived to my solace, who now survive only to distress me, a miserable and condemned creature: King Richard is detained in bonds and John, his brother, depopulates the captive’s kingdom with the sword and lays it waste with fire. In all things the Lord is become cruel towards me and opposes me with a heavy hand.... I long for death, I am weary of life; and though I thus die incessantly, I yet desire to die more fully; I am reluctantly compelled to live, that my life may be the food of death and a means of torture.
Why, she demands, does the sword of Saint Peter slumber in its scabbard when her son, a “most delicate youth,” the anointed of the Lord, lies in chains? Why does the pope, a “negligent,” “cruel” prevaricator and sluggard, do nothing?
These letters, supposedly written for her by Peter of Blois, are so improbable that it is surprising that many modern historians have accepted them as authentic. While preserved among the letters of Peter of Blois, who is undoubtedly their author—they are characteristic of his style and use his favorite expressions—there is no evidence that they were written for Eleanor or that they were ever sent. Most likely they were rhetorical exercises. No contemporary of Eleanor’s mentioned that she wrote to the pope, and not until the seventeenth century were the letters attributed to her. From a diplomatic point of view, they are too fanciful to be genuine; Eleanor, clearheaded and statesmanlike, was never a querulous old woman complaining of age, infirmities, and weariness of life. On the contrary, her contemporaries unanimously credit her with the utmost courage, industry, and political skill. A second point to notice is that the details of the letters misrepresent the facts of Richard’s imprisonment. He was never “detained in bonds,” and as both she and the pope knew, Celestine had instantly, upon receiving news of Richard’s capture, excommunicated Duke Leopold for laying violent hands on a brother Crusader; he had threatened Philip Augustus with an interdict if he trespassed upon Plantagenet territories; and he had menaced the English with interdict should they fail to collect the ransom. Under the circumstances, Celestine had done all he could. In the last analysis, the letters must be viewed as Peter of Blois’s perception of Eleanor’s feelings, a view that may or may not be accurate.
In December 1193, Eleanor set sail with an imposing retinue of clerks, chaplains, earls, bishops, hostages, and chests containing the ransom. By January 17, 1194, the day scheduled for Richard’s release, she had presented herself and the money at Speyer, but n
o sooner had they arrived than, to her amazement, Henry Hohenstaufen announced a further delay. He had received letters that placed an entirely new light on the matter of the king’s liberation. As the gist of the problem emerged, it seemed Philip Augustus and John Plantagenet had offered the emperor an equivalent amount of silver if he could hold Coeur de Lion in custody another nine months, or deliver him up to them. These disclosures, and Henry’s serious consideration of the counteroffer, provoked horror from the emperor’s own vassals, and after two days of argument, Henry relented. He would liberate Richard as promised if the king of England would do homage to him for all his possessions, including the kingdom of England. This request, a calculated humiliation, would have made Richard a vassal of the Holy Roman emperor, a degradation that the Plantagenets were hard put to accept. Quick to realize the meaninglessness, as well as the illegality, of the required act, Eleanor made an on-the-spot decision. According to Roger of Hovedon, Richard, “by advice of his mother Eleanor, abdicated the throne of the kingdom of England and delivered it to the emperor as the lord of all.” On February 4, the king was released “into the hands of his mother” after a captivity of one year six weeks and three days.