The allied army stealthily made ready for an assault, with orders given in whispers. By chance, however, their preparations were spotted by a cleric high up in the city’s belfry, who rang ‘Ruvell’, the alarm bell which had been sounded each time an assault had been attempted on the city. Forewarned, the citizens rushed to arms. Some of the attackers had already climbed ladders and gained the top of the wall, but the defenders counter-attacked fiercely, and after much hard fighting, in which the besiegers suffered heavy losses, they were compelled to abandon the assault. Louis, noted Newburgh, ‘pinned the blame on the count of Flanders, but the stain of so foul a transgression clung more to the king’s person’.167 The use of such a breach of truce to seize a key town did not stand in isolation. In 1175, for example, Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, frustrated by his long but unsuccessful siege of the north Italian town of Alessandria, attacked it during a truce he himself had granted, not just in Lent but on Good Friday itself.168 The fact that Louis had now violated his patron saint’s day twice, at the two greatest sieges of the war, reflected the desperation of besiegers confronted by near-impregnable civic fortifications. Louis himself must have been acutely reminded of the dismal failure of the siege of Damascus during the Second Crusade, when the crusaders not only turned on a former ally but fatally mismanaged the siege itself.
But time was running out for the Young King and Louis. The very next day, 11 August, Henry II arrived at Rouen, relieving the city from the left bank.169 He had landed at Barfleur on 8 August and had marched directly on the duchy’s capital at the head of his army of Brabançons, some 1,000 Welsh troops and a force of knights from the royal military household led by Earl William de Mandeville.170 The day after his arrival, echoing his successful tactics at Chaumont-sur-Epte in 1167, Henry immediately sent his Welsh across the river, into the forest areas that lay to the south-east of the city, to wreak havoc with the French supply lines. Experts in guerrilla warfare, the Welsh soon ambushed a major supply train of forty wagons coming to re-victual the besiegers. Falling upon the terrified carters, capturing some and killing others, they made off with the draught horses and broke open the tuns containing wine.171 Rumours that the woods were alive with Welsh soon circulated, creating panic in the French camp, and supplies began to dwindle.172
The following day, Henry II had the city gates, which had been blocked up by the citizens, reopened, and in preparation for an attack on the allied camp he had the great ditch outside the walls filled up with stones, timber and earth, then made level so that 200 knights could cross it in formation.173 As at Verneuil the year previously, Henry was making his aggressive intentions clear, once more confronting Louis with the stark choice of withdrawing or engaging in what was certain to be a major pitched battle. If Louis and the Young King had shied away from such an engagement in 1173, by August 1174 their run of defeats and the collapse of the rebellion in England made the prospects of a bloody confrontation seem still more unpalatable. There was little choice but to retreat. Louis gave orders for his stone-throwers and other siege machines to be burned, a symbolic act to signify the end of the siege as well as a pragmatic move to stop these costly weapons from falling into Henry II’s hands.174 Henry II, however, was determined to harry the allied forces, and advanced towards King Louis’ tents. The French knights and serjeants who had been stood to arms sallied out to meet the oncoming Angevin knights, and fierce fighting ensued in which some were wounded and others captured.175
Had Henry pressed home his attack, the allies might well have found themselves in a grave situation, but the king was wise enough to let his son and King Louis escape comparatively unscathed. On 13 August, the archbishop of Sens and Count Theobald obtained his permission for the allied army to withdraw unmolested to Malaunay, some nine miles north of Rouen, pledging that, the day after, they would hold talks for peace there. The Young King and Louis had the army pitch their tents there, but, as Henry II probably suspected, they hurriedly slipped away under cover of darkness back into France.176 For young Henry, the retreat from Rouen must have seemed an all too inglorious end to what was to be his final action in the war.177
The citizens of Rouen, by contrast, gave thanks to the Virgin for their liberation, for the great besieging army had departed on the eve of the feast of the Assumption.178 The significance of Marian feasts in the peace process was again indicated when, the day after the allies’ departure, French envoys met with Henry II and arranged for peace talks to be held at Gisors on 8 September, the Nativity of the Virgin.179 The History of William Marshal recounts how the archbishop of Sens and his party found Henry between Conches and Verneuil, and that on hearing their message he remarked wryly, ‘“Who will repair the damage I have sustained, the great losses sustained by my lands, destroyed through all this war-mongering of theirs?”’180 The intended summit at Gisors failed to take place, and a new meeting was arranged at Montlouis, on the river Loire just to the east of Tours, for 29 September.181 Henry made it clear, however, that in the intervening period he would again march against Richard, who was still putting up resistance in Poitou. The Young King and Louis VII pledged that neither they nor any of their supporters would give Richard assistance.182 Left isolated both militarily and diplomatically, Richard’s position quickly became untenable. When his father moved with a large army into Poitou, the young count fled, not daring to face his father in the field and abandoning those fortifications he had taken earlier.183 Incensed to discover that his elder brother and Louis had made a truce with Henry II from which he was specifically excluded, and now with no hope of external aid, Richard bowed to the inevitable. On 23 September he came to submit, throwing himself at his father’s feet and begging pardon. Henry treated his son affectionately, giving him the kiss of peace, and at once sent him to inform Louis and the Young King that he had made peace with his father.184 It cannot have been a happy encounter; though in truth after the debacle at Rouen the younger Henry and King Louis had had little option but to withdraw support from Richard in order to secure peace, Richard felt himself betrayed and no doubt looked askance at the military failings of his elder brother and his allies in Normandy. Whatever the feelings between the brothers had been before then, the events of September 1174 may well have sown the seeds of a lasting enmity.
The Young King’s gambit had failed, despite an ambitious strategy that had exploited the widespread opposition to Henry II and kept up a war on several fronts. Insurrection throughout the empire had been crushed, many of young Henry’s supporters, including the king of Scots, had been captured and his mother, Queen Eleanor, was now a prisoner of her husband. The repulse of the combined forces of Count Philip of Flanders and King Louis laid bare as never before the dominant power and resources of Henry II. The Young King’s ability to prosecute the war had remained completely dependent on the fiscal and military aid of Louis, Count Philip of Flanders and the great barons of France, as well as on loans. But Louis himself was feeling the fiscal burden of funding so sustained a series of campaigns: the siege of Rouen alone had represented a huge investment, and the impact of the war on Capetian finances may go far in explaining Louis’ quiescence in the later 1170s.185 The allies had poured their resources into the struggle, but now had little to show for two years of war save ruinous debt. As the History of William Marshal recalled, young Henry’s supporters ‘were in such a sorry state that the great majority of them had nothing to put in the hand of the smallest creditor. Nor could they find credit, despite securities offered and pledges made … and their debts were on such a scale that they had not the wherewithal to pay them off.’ Some were reduced to such penury that they were forced to sell their arms, horses and pack animals.186
Henry II’s command of greater financial resources had been a crucial element in his ability to overcome his son’s rebellion.187 The continuing operation of the sophisticated administrative machinery of government, made possible by the resolute loyalty of sheriffs, baillis and other regional officers, had allowed him to supply and pay garris
ons in a network of royal castles in his English and continental lands, field a powerful force of mercenaries and even to undermine the allied coalition by suborning leading French nobles.188 While the allies had achieved some successes in taking castles on the Norman frontier and in northern England, the chain of royal fortresses that formed ‘the bones of the kingdom’, in William of Newburgh’s famous phrase, had succeeded in their primary wartime function of keeping groups of active rebels from uniting, containing the incursions of invading forces, and acting as bases for the effective operations of royalist field forces. Though much less can be recovered of the warfare within Henry’s continental domains, the pattern appears similar. Both here and in England, the royalists succeeded in maintaining their lines of communication, while Henry II’s continued control of the Channel and ability to ship over forces and treasure had been instrumental in moving his armies swiftly to the points of greatest danger.189
The Young King’s failure to win the support of London, Rouen or other towns, save for Leicester and Huntingdon which were dominated by their rebel earls, proved critical. Fearful of a reversion to the miseries of the reign of King Stephen and mindful of the liberties granted to them by Henry II, their citizens’ loyalties to the Old King remained steadfast.190 Allied attempts to take key towns by force, as at Verneuil, Sées and Rouen, had been costly failures. By contrast, Henry II’s forces were compelled to undertake only a limited number of sustained sieges. The efforts required by the justiciar to reduce the town of Leicester in 1173 and the continuing resistance of its castle revealed how fortunate the Old King was that William the Lion’s capture led to a landslide of surrender of rebel garrisons in England, and that he was not forced to engage in a prolonged campaign of reduction of a series of powerful baronial castles in 1174. Yet if castles and fortified towns had dominated the strategy of the war and much of the fighting, the outcome of the campaigns of 1173–74 had been largely decided by the engagements in the field at Dol, Fornham and Alnwick.191 Henry II’s lieutenants had shown a marked willingness to engage in battle to exploit tactical advantages as well as their superiority in professionalism and sometimes in numbers. With the exception of the ambush of William the Lion at Alnwick, however, the principals of the conflict had not been directly involved in such engagements, and the Young King and Louis VII had baulked at engaging in a major pitched battle with Henry II both at Verneuil in 1173 and at Rouen in 1174. Yet Henry II’s aggressive proffer of battle on both occasions had been a bluff, a cool and calculated act of brinksmanship. For in reality, the very real fear that he would be betrayed by some of his own nobles in the heat of combat made resort to pitched battle all the more hazardous for the Old King, as it did for other rulers facing a major baronial rebellion. Even if he had not been captured or killed, a victory by the Young King might well have caused Henry II’s position to collapse. Yet young Henry, whether through scruple or the unwillingness of Louis to commit his forces to so dangerous an undertaking, had been unable to join in an ultimate confrontation with his father and so exploit such a weakness. As battle was seen as an ordeal – a judicial combat writ large, with God awarding victory to the side whose cause was more just – to be seen to refuse such arbitration not once but twice could only undermine the Young King’s position and strengthen that of Henry II.192 Not only that, but St Thomas had declared for his father through the miraculous defeat of William the Lion. Not only had Young Henry lost the war, but the justice of his cause had been thrown into deep doubt.
CHAPTER 10
A Fragile Peace, 1175–1177
The son honoureth the father, and the servant his master: if then I be a father, where is my honour? and if I be a master, where is my fear?
– Malachi 1:6
LATE SEPTEMBER 1174 was a time of fear and deep misgiving for the Young King. On the advice of King Louis, young Henry and his brothers had placed themselves at their father’s mercy (in misericordia), thereby acknowledging a state of unconditional surrender.1 Henry II had received Richard, defeated and humbled, into his grace. But as the focus of the great rebellion, could young Henry and his leading supporters expect similar clemency? In view of the great threat the war had posed to the Old King’s position, the scale and cost of the hostilities, and his undoubted feeling that he had been betrayed by his own wife and children, Henry II might be expected to be vengeful. Contemporaries were fully aware that righteous anger was a prerogative of kings, firmly grounded in biblical precedent. According to Peter of Blois, in the aftermath of the rebellion Henry II told the abbot of Bonneville that ‘I read in the Old Testament of leaders, kings and even prophets frequently pursuing very harsh vengeance against their enemies … Have I no right to become enraged when anger is a virtue of the spirit and a natural power? By nature I am a son of anger, why then should I not grow angry? God himself becomes angry …’2 As Becket had been reminded in 1169, the king had not been beyond having the rebel Manceaux lord Robert de Sillé captured and imprisoned even after granting him the kiss of peace.3 Displays of royal anger – the ira regis – were an integral element in the exercise of kingship, and Henry II knew as much as any ruler about the conscious manipulation of anger as political theatre. Yet Henry’s notorious outbursts of fury could also be genuine and uncontrolled: his fateful reaction to Becket’s excommunication of the bishops in December 1170 was spontaneous and exasperated rage, with disastrous and wholly unplanned consequences.4
Rebellious sons might hope for clemency from their wronged fathers, but it was by no means a foregone conclusion. It was only with great difficulty and after powerful intercession from leading nobles and ecclesiastics that William the Conqueror had been persuaded to make peace with Robert Curthose after his first rebellion.5 Their reconciliation, moreover, was of brief duration, and Robert soon left Normandy for an exile that lasted until his father’s death. In the aftermath of the rebellion of his illegitimate son Jordan, c.1083–84, Count Roger of Sicily had ordered twelve of the ‘depraved young men’ who had led his son astray to be blinded. Then summoning Jordan to court, Roger pretended he would do the same to him, having arranged beforehand for his vassals physically to restrain him from harming the terrified young man.6 In 1234, Frederick II would treat his rebellious son still more harshly: despite Henry’s complete and humiliating abasement, he was imprisoned for many years. When finally released, he feared even worse punishment and chose instead to take his own life by riding over a cliff, aged only thirty.7
Such reactions reflected the dilemma which filial rebellion, even when defeated, posed to ruling fathers: how to punish a dangerous act of disobedience severely enough to deter its recurrence, yet without inflicting lasting harm on the person or the authority of the heir.8 In such circumstances, the trope of a young prince flawed only through immaturity, and led astray by ‘evil counsellors’ from his inherent good nature and filial duty, was an invaluable fiction.9 Thus in the History of William Marshal the French ambassadors seeking peace in September 1174 urge Henry II: ‘“Dear lord, you should not show your anger to your son or those in his company, but to those who advised him to act as he did. The ones to suffer for it should be those who advised him to turn traitor, and they should be considered the more base for what they did.” “Upon my soul!” Henry replies. “That is how it will be: never will there be a single day that [my anger] will not be shown to them and their heirs, either in the morning or the evening.”’10 Writing much closer to events, Guernes of Pont-Sainte-Maxence stressed how the Angevins’ enemies had played upon the Young King’s immaturity:
[T]he whole of England was heading for disaster … they did not want to have a powerful king over them but preferred to have a mere suckling amongst them whom they could twist around their little finger like a glove. By their loyalty to him they had a malevolent influence, and they used the child as a cover for their own treachery. The child was incapable of governing the kingdom. No one could be a more reliable guardian of it than his father. For any right-minded person, father and son are one. Thos
e who sought to separate son from father wanted to deprive each one of his hereditary rights.11
Such sentiments were intended to help exonerate young Henry, but by stressing his youth in such terms they must have further undermined his authority and the view that he was ready for independent rule.
The Establishment of Peace: The Treaty of Montlouis, 1174
In the event, Henry II treated his sons and their supporters with a clemency that elicited both surprise and admiration from contemporaries, as well as later historians.12 Wace, writing in the immediate aftermath of the rebellion, noted of the rebels that ‘the king had their vineyards and their woods destroyed, their houses burnt and their castles laid waste. The only thing they had to show for their efforts was their shame; nevertheless, they were lucky to escape as lightly as they did.’13 He believed that those who had been taken prisoner were particularly fortunate to avoid heavier punishment: ‘he put them in chains and fetters, but, being such a noble man, he did not want to hang them or tear them limb from limb … They were indeed treated much more mercifully by him than they deserved.’14
The tone was set by the settlement drawn up at Montlouis on 30 September.15 A summary of its principal terms was circulated to the king’s men, in which Henry declared peace to have been made with his sons and with the king of France ‘to God’s honour and my own’.16 King Louis and Count Philip had agreed to give up the fortresses they had taken in Normandy, but the treaty now drawn up was concerned exclusively with Henry’s own domains.17 It was a statesmanlike settlement, designed to heal the wounds of two years of civil war and to return Henry’s realms, in so far as was possible, to the status quo ante bellum. King Henry and his men, and those who had fought against him, were to hold the lands and castles they had held fifteen days before the outbreak of the war.18 All prisoners on both sides were to be freed, but Henry reserved the right to take any hostages he should choose from those released, or to accept security by fealty or oath from them and their friends.19 Those, however, of Henry’s prisoners, such as William the Lion, Ralph of Fougères and the earls of Leicester and Chester, who had already made terms with Henry II were to remain at the king’s will, and were specifically exempted from this agreement, as were those who had already pledged to stand surety for them.20 As a mark of affection to his sons, Henry conceded that all those whose lands or goods had been forfeited on their departure to join the Young King were to be restored to the king’s peace; they were not to answer for any chattels they had removed on their departure, but would have to stand to right according to the law of the land for any acts of murder, mutilation or treason. Similarly, any who before the war had fled, for whatever reason, and had subsequently entered the service of his sons, were, for the love he bore his eldest son, to be restored to the king’s peace, provided they gave pledges to stand to right for the offences for which they had been outlawed.21
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