by Marion Meade
Lively and charming, polished at the court of Poitiers for her high calling, Eleanor Plantagenet had been only nine years old when she had bid farewell to her mother and departed for the Castilian court. During the three intervening decades, it is doubtful whether they had met, and now,in the winter of Eleanor’s life, it must have been a shock to see that the little damsel of her memories had become a thirty-eight-year-old mother of eleven children. For all her hurry to fetch a bride for the Capets, Eleanor seemed entranced once she arrived. The court of Alphonse VIII wore a civility and gaiety reminiscent of her own famous court at Poitiers; it was a place where troubadours gathered and poets still composed verse for a queen-patroness, who, like her mother, knew the value of beautiful words. With the Pyrenees between her and the maelstrom of problems in Europe, Eleanor settled into the sunny southern haven to renew thirty years of events with her namesake and make the acquaintance of her grandchildren. For two months, she tarried in her daughter’s company, and when finally the moment for departure could be delayed no longer, she did not leave with the grandchild for whom she had come. The queen of Castile had three daughters of marriageable age: The eldest, Berengaria, had already been betrothed to the heir of León (and would become the mother of Saint Ferdinand of Spain). The second girl, Urraca, had been set aside for Louis Capet, but Eleanor’s attention kept turning to the youngest of the three, twelve-year-old Blanche. There was something about the child that reminded her of herself, a streak of energy and ambition, perhaps that same vein of female strength that had safely borne Eleanor through the violent ebb and wash of twelfth-century politics. To justify her choice and prevent hurt feelings, it was necessary, however, to make diplomatic excuses. Urraca’s name, the official explanation went, was too Spanish for the French people, the very sound of it would seem harsh to them. Blanche, on the other hand, would roll easily in the langue d’oil. Thus, Urraca was promptly betrothed to the heir of Portugal, while Blanche set off with Eleanor shortly before Easter. The roads through the Pyrenees were crowded with Easter pilgrims making their way toward Compostela, and perhaps under other circumstances, Eleanor might have joined the procession and visited the shrine where her father lay buried. But she had no time to spare for personal business, and soon she and Blanche had arrived at Bordeaux, where they rested for a few days at the Ombrière Palace. Looking down at the Garonne River or out toward the hills of Larmont, she might have pointed out to Blanche the field where Louis Capet’s knights had raised their colorful tents and their banners fluttering the fleur-de-lis. Between the aged queen and the young girl, who, like Eleanor herself, would someday take her place as the queen of a Capet named Louis, there must have been many words, the oral history that women pass from one generation to the next, as well as the whole chronology of hatred between Plantagenet and Capet.
Tutoring her granddaughter for life among the Capets, the queen strolled in the dappled shade of the Ombrière gardens, but her strength suddenly began to diminish. Weary past weariness, she nevertheless participated in the Easter festivities and dutifully received her vassals, one of whom was the man upon whom she had relied so heavily in recent months, the mercenary Mercadier. Now, however, another prop was abruptly removed. “While she was staying at the city of Bordeaux on account of the solemnity of Easter, Mercadier the chief of the Brabantines came to her and on the second day of Easter week he was slain in the city by a man-at-arms in the service of Brandin.” Come to pay his respects and escort his liege lady through Poitou, he had been killed in a street brawl. “After this, Queen Eleanor being fatigued with old age and the labour of the length of her journey, betook herself to the abbey of Fontevrault and there remained; while the daughter of the king of Castile, with Archbishop Elias of Bordeaux attending her, proceeded to Normandy and there was delivered into the charge of King John, her uncle.” On May 23, 1200, Blanche and Louis were married at Portmort in Normandy, just across the border from France. The bride could not be married in her new land because the kingdom lay under an interdict as a result of Philip’s misdeeds with a mistress; indeed, the king himself was not permitted to attend the ceremony. Nevertheless, he provided handsomely for entertainment. The sun shone, the banners flew, and the fields rang with song and the clashing of arms from the jousting arena.
At Fontevrault, the black-cowled figures silently trod the cloisters; the queen of England remained in her chamber, attended by her women. The chroniclers do not specify the nature of her illness, and perhaps at her age no explanation was necessary. Her travels during the past year had taxed her strength beyond the breaking point, and whatever maladies she might have suffered, no doubt exhaustion could be counted among them. From deep within herself she had dredged up unsuspected reserves of energy, and perhaps only when the crisis had passed did she allow herself to give way to natural fatigue. She had, for the first time, illusions about the future: She had secured the succession for John, she had placated Philip to some degree by doing homage for Aquitaine, she had married her granddaughter to the Capets. Henry’s empire—her empire—remained more or less intact. Although she did not underestimate Philip and his dream of Carolingian domination, there seemed to be nothing more that she could do for the moment.
In the first summer of the thirteenth century, there was peace. Secure in his relations with the Capets, John cautiously undertook a tour of Aquitaine, making sure, of course, to bring along a sizable army. He was in the merry mood of a man who has just become a bachelor after a decade of dull matrimony. For ten years, he and Isabelle of Gloucester had barely tolerated each other. She had not been crowned with him the previous May; indeed, she rarely saw him and had borne no children. Perhaps at Eleanor’s instigation, John had begun to consider his own posterity, and finding canonists to declare some glaring flaw in the marriage bond, he had become a single man again at the age of thirty-five. Undoubtedly, he had discussed with his mother the necessity of a second marriage as well as possible candidates, and their eyes had turned south to Portugal, where the king had a marriageable daughter. Early in 1200 tentative negotiations had begun, and during that quiet summer, John had dispatched an embassy to Lisbon for further discussions. Within weeks of its departure, however, the king’s eyes had settled elsewhere. In July, he was in Poitou visiting the ancestral castle of the Lusignans, who, now that they had unceremoniously wrested La Marche from Eleanor, were anxious to make peace with their overlord. Although John could not have been pleased with their fait accompli, he had no choice but to make the best of it. Arriving at Lusignan during one of those great fêtes for which the south was famous, he found that the gathering included Count Aymer of Angoulême, a traditional enemy of the Lusignans and until recently a rival contender for La Marche. Lately, however, the difficulties between these two unruly houses had been patched up, and Hugh le Brun of Lusignan had been betrothed to Aymer’s daughter, Isabella.
John, unlike Coeur de Lion, appreciated women, especially attractive ones. The twelve-year-old Isabella of Angoulême, as lovely and fresh as a newly budded rose, attracted him with a violence that completely knocked out of his head any marriage with an unknown Portuguese princess. Here, truly, was a feast to set before a king. Undismayed by Isabella’s youth, on the contrary probably aroused by it, he began to outline in his mind a bold plan. Under the roof of his unsuspecting hosts, he pulled aside Count Aymer and dangled before his astonished eyes the vision of his daughter on the throne of England, an offer that caused the count to immediately discard any idea of Hugh le Brun as a son-in-law. It was agreed, however, that in view of the well-known violent disposition of the Lusignans, their conversations should remain secret. “On seeing that the king of England had a fancy for her,” Aymer unhesitatingly removed the damsel from the household of her betrothed and whisked her back to Angoulême, while John found a pretext for dispatching the Lusignan brothers on missions to remote regions. Then he too left the region and continued south as far as Bordeaux. Not until August 23 did he casually arrive at Angouleme, but by this time he had added
to his entourage the archbishop of Bordeaux. On Sunday the twenty-fourth, the date originally set for Isabella’s marriage to Hugh le Brun, Archbishop Elias married the king to his child bride. Before news of this event could reach the Lusignans, John took the precaution of leaving the neighborhood and hastily beat a path to the safety of Chinon.
Later, the chroniclers would date John’s subsequent troubles from this unprecipitate marriage, charging that Isabella had bewitched him, that in the grip of passion he had forgotten questions of policy or the possibility of repercussions. Actually, this does not seem to have been completely the case, although as often happens in matters of political policy, personal factors certainly played a role. The idea of the two rival houses of Angoulême and Lusignan resolving their differences could only have distressed John, and further, the prospect of Hugh le Brun eventually becoming lord of Lusignan. La Marche, and Angouleme would have disturbed him even more deeply. With Hugh ruling an area as large as the whole duchy of Normandy, the balance of power in Aquitaine would have been threatened: one way to avert this danger was for John to marry Isabella himself. At the same time, however, the exploit appealed to his sense of humor; at one stroke he could curb the Lusignans, take revenge for their kidnaping his mother and stealing La Marche, and possess a nymphet for whom he lusted. These delights far outweighed any fear of Hugh le Brun’s indignation over the loss of his fiancee.
It has been suggested that John consulted Eleanor before he took this important step and that she gave her approval if not her joyful consent. But Eleanor’s attitude has not been recorded, and perhaps her illness prevented her from accurately gauging the risks that John was taking in alienating the Lusignans. In the hands of an adroit king, such an exploit could be conducted successfully, but with John one never knew. It is possible that she, too, felt overjoyed to see Hugh le Brun cut down to size after his presumption in accosting highway travelers. At any event, John and Isabella visited her at Fontevrault that autumn, and as evidence of her goodwill toward the couple, she dowered Isabella with the cities of Niort and Saintes. At the beginning of October, the newlyweds went to England, where they were crowned together in Westminster Abbey on the eighth. Across the Channel, it was easy to forget the Lusignans; the king and queen made a grand tour around the country, one of those sweeping trips Henry had so loved, with John poking his nose into the tiniest hamlets, accepting homage from his vassals, hearing law cases, visiting Bishop Hugh of Lincoln in his last illness and remaining to act as a pallbearer at his funeral. During these months, the English could not help but make comparisons, and after a decade of absentee kingship, no matter how glorious Coeur de Lion had been, they felt grateful for a king who liked them well enough to live in their midst. It was, some people said, almost like a return to the days of old Henry FitzEmpress. By the middle of March 1201, John and Isabella were still in England, and on Easter they made a pilgrimage to Canterbury, where they wore their crowns and attended a lavish banquet as the guests of Archbishop Hubert Walter.
With the royal couple thus occupied, Eleanor continued to watch for trouble in the Continental provinces. Weak and bedridden, she nevertheless retained her sensitivity to gathering storms, and one of the areas on which she trained her ears was the Lusignan fortress in Poitou; indeed, it would not have required a seeress to anticipate trouble. Curiously, however, the clan had nursed their injuries in silence since the previous summer, hoping perhaps that John would recompense them for their loss. But John had no such intention, and for that matter, success having bred overbearing confidence, he deliberately provoked them further by authorizing his officials to take back the county of La Marche from Hugh and to attack Ralph of Lusignan’s county of Eu and “do him all the harm they could.” Disturbed by rumors of imminent defections and conspiracies, Eleanor sent for Viscount Amaury of Thouars, a kinsman and one of the most powerful barons of Poitou. In the uncertain days after Richard’s death, he had joined Eleanor in her attack on Angers, and John, no doubt at his mother’s behest, had rewarded the viscount with the wardship of Chinon and also made him seneschal of Anjou and Touraine. Once the danger had passed, however, he had taken these offices away again. Now, fearful of war in Poitou, Eleanor hastened to remedy this blunder and to reattach the viscount to their side. Writing to John of her diplomatic triumph, she said:I want to tell you, my very dear son, that I summoned our cousin Amaury of Thouars to visit me during my illness and the pleasure of his visit did me good, for he alone of your Poitevin barons has wrought us no injury nor seized unjustly any of your lands.... I made him see how wrong and shameful it was for him to stand by and let other barons render your heritage asunder, and he has promised to do everything he can to bring back to your obedience the lands and castles that some of his friends have seized.
Both Eleanor and the viscount wrote to warn of impending trouble and urged John to return immediately to the Continent.
The king, for whatever reason, took his good time in answering their appeals and delayed his arrival until June, at which time he must have decided that his ailing mother’s anxieties were completely groundless. It was true that Ralph and Hugh le Brun of Lusignan had renounced their allegiance and appealed to the king of France with complaints that John had unjustly attacked them. But even though Philip accepted the appeal, he handled the matter cautiously. When John arrived at Barfleur, Philip persuaded the Lusignans to suspend their attacks against the Poitevin government and went to meet John personally at Chateau Gaillard, where they talked the matter over. And a few days after that, John and Isabella paid a state visit to Paris, where they were entertained lavishly at the Cite Palace, Philip himself having vacated the palace in their honor and retired to Fontainebleau. In this atmosphere of conviviality, the two kings worked out a reasonable compromise on the question of the Lusignans: Philip would not press their appeal for redress if John would give them the chance to submit their grievances at a formal trial. Having reached a sensible solution and drunk vast quantities of champagne, the rivals parted with embraces and protestations of brotherly love.
In the summer of 1201 not a cloud marred John’s horizons. His mother’s fears had proved baseless: Philip Augustus had behaved like a lamb; Aquitaine had been secured by John’s friendship with Amaury of Thouars and his new father-in-law Aymer of Angoulême; Constance of Brittany had died, and hopefully there would be no further trouble with Arthur. His future, at last, seemed secure. That summer, too, no more was heard from Eleanor, who seems to have vanished among the shadowy cloisters. Unfortunately, security had the effect of arousing John to further exhibitions of high-handedness, or perhaps it was only a manifestation of his bizarre sense of humor. Instead of giving the Lusignans their day in court, he charged them with treason and invited them to prove their innocence by fighting a duel. The ordeal of battle, while no longer fashionable, was nevertheless still recognized as legally proper. The Lusignans, however, scorned to fight the professional duelists whom John had recruited, insisting that they were answerable only to their peers. Once more, they protested to Philip Augustus that they were being denied justice. Throughout the autumn and winter, the diplomatic farce continued, with John fixing dates for trials and then inventing elaborate excuses why the trials could not take place. Again Philip intervened, and again John promised the Lusignans justice.
Normally an impatient man, Philip Augustus had personal reasons for staying his hand. For the past decade, he had been involved in a distressing scandal with women. In 1192, the widowed Capetian had married Princess Ingeborg, sister of the king of Denmark, and had her crowned queen of France. The day after the wedding, however, he changed his mind and attempted to send her back to Denmark, but the outraged queen retreated only as far as a convent at Soissons, where she sped an appeal to Pope Celestine. While the aged Celestine did little for her restoration, he was succeeded by the more forceful Innocent III, who supported Ingeborg’s claims, and in 1200, lowered an interdict on Philip’s lands, not only for having forsaken Ingeborg but also for contracting an
illegal union with a German heiress, Agnes of Meran, who had borne the king a daughter. Overwhelmed by these marital and extramarital problems, Philip spent much of his time negotiating with Rome. In the previous year, he had been forced to take back Ingeborg as his lawful wife, but he imprisoned her and continued to live with Agnes, who had a second child, a son. It was not until July 19, 1201, that “his German adulteress” relieved him of his problems by conveniently dying. Now only one legal entanglement remained—Rome’s recognition of Agnes’s children as legitimate—and until he received a favorable response from Innocent, he dared not make a move against the Plantagenets lest he jeopardize his case.
In March 1202, just as Philip’s patience with John neared its limit, he received word that the papal curia had legitimized his son and daughter as royal heirs of the house of Capet. On April 28, Philip was ready to realize the ambition of his life, the destruction of Plantagenet power. Using the Lusignans as his pretext, he ordered John to answer charges in Paris and to undergo sentence by a court of French barons. John airily replied that, as duke of Normandy and king of England, he could not be summoned to a Parisian court, to which Philip retorted with equal aplomb that he had addressed the summons to John as duke of Aquitaine, count of Poitou, and count of Anjou. It was not his fault that John happened to be duke of Normandy and king of England as well. John, quite understandably, did not appear in Paris on the appointed day, and therefore “the assembled barons of the King of France adjudged the King of England to be deprived of all his land which he and his forefathers had hitherto held of the King of France.” Fifty years earlier, John’s father had treated a similar summons with scorn when he had married without the permission of his overlord—but John was not Henry, and Philip Augustus bore little resemblance to Louis Capet. Philip could hardly be called a man of courage—he would mount only the most docile horses, and he saw assassins behind trees—nor was he a venturesome military tactician. But what he lacked in boldness he made up for in cunning and persistence.