Henry the Young King, 1155-1183

by Matthew Strickland

  To lend his diplomacy the backing of military force, Henry II had ordered a muster of his armies in England and his continental territories.50 His aim, however, was to establish peace, not only between the rival factions around King Philip but between the Angevins and the new French monarch, for already King Philip had threatened to lead an expedition to assert his rights in the Auvergne, long contested with Henry II, and had gone so far as to raise forces.51 On 28 June, at the great elm tree which marked the traditional conference site between Gisors and Trie, Henry II, ‘partly by smooth words and partly by threats’, persuaded King Philip to restore Adela, her brothers and their supporters and to remit his ill will against them; Adela was promised an allowance as long as her husband King Louis lived, and possession of her dower lands on his death, saving only the castles.52 By way of security, Henry II took Philip of Flanders’ homage, but as a salve to the count he again renewed the Anglo-Flemish convention by which Philip was to receive an annual sum of £1,000, in return for providing 500 knights to serve if required.53 To complete the peace settlement, Henry II renewed the treaty of Ivry, which he had made with Louis in 1177.54

  The political situation in northern France, however, remained volatile, and during 1181 King Philip’s relations with the count of Flanders rapidly deteriorated.55 The threat of escalating hostilities arising from a quarrel between Count Philip and Raoul de Coucy, who enjoyed the French king’s backing, caused King Henry to delay his planned embarkation for England in late April and to respond to King Philip’s request for aid.56 Arriving with a small retinue, but one which included King William the Lion, he and the Young King met King Philip and the count of Flanders at Gisors, where Henry II successfully brokered a further peace settlement.57 ‘We have read’, noted Ralph of Diss wryly, ‘of four kings having fallen at the same time in one battle, but have very seldom heard of four kings having come to one conference in peace, and in peace having returned.’58 Yet Henry II was sincere in his attempts to establish a peaceful balance of power in northern France, and is even said to have counselled the young King Philip on the ways of government in imitation of his own successful policies.59 The Young King, moreover, was envisaged as playing a key element in maintaining this status quo, and before returning to England, Henry II devolved effective power in Normandy to him. As Dean Ralph noted:

  The elder king placed all of Normandy under the control of his son, the younger king, charging all the ministers of that land with obedience to him, and left him to watch over and protect Philip, king of France, should the need arise. Now that all the provinces were ordered according to his wishes and, respectful of his laws, were enjoying the benefits of peace brought by his rule, he returned to England on 28 July, making a visit to St Thomas in order to pray.60

  The Young King’s commission was an important indication of the renewed trust his father was willing to place in him. He was soon called upon to fulfil his role as protector, for, despite the settlement at Gisors, the breach between the king of France and the count of Flanders continued to deepen. The Angevin chroniclers saw Count Philip’s growing hostility to the French king as the result of his jealousy of the latter’s new alliance with Henry II. Flanders’ influence was certainly waning fast, but the count himself seems to have regarded Raoul, count of Clermont and constable of France, ‘who was very powerful in the counsels of the king’, as a principal fomentor of discord between them.61 When King Philip supported Raoul’s refusal to comply with Count Philip’s demand to return the castle of Breteuil, which he held from him, war broke out.62 Count Philip was able to assemble a powerful coalition of French and Flemish lords; this even included Stephen, count of Sancerre, Queen Adela’s youngest brother, reflecting the wider discontent of the Champagne faction against the king.63

  Map 7 Northern France in the late twelfth century

  The threat posed by the proximity of Count Philip’s territories to Paris and the Capetian heartlands soon became clear when, shortly before Advent, 1181, the count burned Noyon, while an elite garrison based at his castle of Crépy-en-Valois devastated royal lands ‘and brought fear to the French all the way to Paris’.64 His ally, Baldwin, count of Hainault, similarly devastated the lands around the contested castle of Breteuil from his base at Montdidier.65 Acting in unison, the Young King, Richard and Geoffrey quickly mustered their forces and marched to King Philip’s aid.66 Young Henry himself led the Norman host, aided by the expert guidance of the Constable Humphrey de Bohun, the veteran commander of the war of 1173–74.67 Launching their attack from Anjou and Poitou, the Angevins first targeted the lands of Count Stephen, laying them waste, destroying villages and castles, and stripping them of their livestock. Some 5,000 yoke of oxen were said to have been seized as booty by the Brabançon mercenaries in their army.68 Even allowing for chroniclers’ exaggeration, the removal en masse of so many plough beasts would have caused massive disruption to the arable economy and long-term economic damage. Overwhelmed by superior forces and with his seigneurial revenues in ruins, Stephen was forced humbly to surrender to his nephew King Philip.69 The Young King and Philip then moved against the duke of Burgundy and the recently widowed Marie, countess of Champagne, ‘the sister of both kings’, inflicting great damage on their lands before moving to Senlis from where they confronted Count Philip himself.70 Ralph of Diss states that the count of Flanders retreated in the face of the Young King, and took refuge in the castle of Crépy, where he would have been forced to surrender within a few days through want of supplies, had not it not been – or so it was said – for the ‘deceitful counsel of the king of England’s familiares’.71 Gilbert of Mons, however, presents a more credible account, indicating that a major battle had been narrowly averted. Count Philip had taken the offensive to reinforce his castle of Crépy and, faced with the rapid approach of King Philip and the Young King at the head of some 600 knights, the count had summoned all his available forces, including the count of Hainault. Both sides now drew up their formations and readied for battle.72 Yet, as so frequently occurred in such situations, they flinched at the last from actual engagement. Few of those present could have relished the prospect of a bitter and bloody encounter; Howden noted that Count Philip did not wish to fight a battle against the Young King, and Henry in turn must have been very reluctant to attack in earnest his old ally and mentor in chivalry.73 Though Gilbert is silent on the matter, intermediaries must have persuaded both sides to parley, and a truce was arranged to last over Christmas.74

  The situation was further aggravated shortly before Easter 1182, by the death of the Count of Flanders’ wife Elizabeth. Count Philip had held the Valois and the Vermandois only by right of his wife, and King Philip moved swiftly to seize these lands, ostensibly in the interests of Elizabeth’s sister Eleanor of Beaumont, to whom they should have legally reverted.75 When the count of Flanders refused to relinquish them and a renewed war loomed, it was the Angevins who again brokered a peace. After crossing from England to join the Young King, Henry II and his son held initial talks in early April with Count Philip and Baldwin of Hainault at Gerberoy before helping to negotiate a settlement between King Philip and the count at La Grange-Saint-Arnoul, between Senlis and Crépy, around 11 April.76 Here it was agreed that Count Philip would retain the Vermandois during his lifetime, but Eleanor was granted the Valois, while the count ceded Amiens to the king, and promised reparation for war damages.77

  While waiting at Bishop’s Waltham to cross to Normandy for these negotiations, Henry II had drawn up his testament.78 As was customary, his bequests did not relate to the succession to his lands, but were restricted to gifts of land and money to religious houses and other institutions for the benefit of his soul. These totalled the massive sum of 41,000 marks of silver (£27,333 6s. 8d.) and 500 marks of gold (£3,000).79 Had the Old King died soon thereafter, the Young King would have found himself in a serious dilemma, having to decide how far he was prepared to honour his father’s lavish legacies, which would have enormously depleted the Angevin treasury.80 De
spite such intimations of mortality, however, Henry II was only forty-nine and still in good health. Almost a decade had now passed since the inception of the great war, yet despite his recent role as his father’s deputy in Normandy, the Young King was still no nearer to achieving his longed-for goal of direct rule over a part of his father’s great empire. Though the revenues granted to him were generous, they remained but an allowance. By contrast, his younger brothers Richard and Geoffrey had become increasingly established in their respective territories. After Richard’s triumph over a rebel coalition in 1179, Henry II had officially restored his title as count of Poitou, recognizing the de facto authority he had long since wielded.81 In October 1181, Geoffrey had strengthened his hold on Brittany by finally marrying Constance; he assumed the title ‘dux Britanniae et comes Richemundie’, and was allowed by his father to exercise direct lordship over the greater part of the duchy, though not the county of Nantes.82 Unlike the Young King, he was now no longer entirely dependent on his father’s beneficence but could command his own resources in lands, men and money.83 The war of 1173–74 had painfully reinforced the fact that, even with a great coalition of allies, the Young King could not wrest England, Normandy or Anjou from his father by force. Petition and plea had equally failed, and his father remained in robust good health. In such circumstances, the Young King increasingly looked with envious eyes on the duchy of Aquitaine. Henry II had received Normandy as his maternal inheritance in 1151 while his father Count Geoffrey still ruled Anjou. If the Old King would not part with rule of any portion of the Anglo-Norman and Angevin heartlands in his lifetime, why by this analogy could not the Young King, as the eldest son, assume direct rule of Aquitaine as his maternal inheritance?84 Had not Charlemagne made his eldest son Louis king of Aquitaine?85 Once his father died and young Henry gained control of the heartlands of the empire, perhaps Aquitaine or other territories might revert to Richard. The Young King knew that his younger brother would not willingly accept such a move, and that their father might only do so if presented with a fait accompli. One powerful factor, however, drove forward the Young King’s designs – the seething discontent of many of the Aquitanian nobility with Richard.

  Henry II had singularly failed to incorporate leading nobles from Poitou and Aquitaine into the wider governance of his great conglomeration of territories.86 Feelings of political marginalization and exclusion from the court, with its opportunities for royal favour and personal advancement, only served to fuel the resentment still felt in Aquitaine at being under the sway of the ‘king of the North’, whose designs for ever-increasing dominance of the region had seemingly been confirmed by his purchase of the county of La Marche from its count, Adalbert, in 1177.87 Nevertheless, Angevin control of La Marche had been fiercely contested by the powerful Lusignan family, and by the autumn of 1182 Geoffrey de Lusignan had succeeded in taking possession of it, claiming that it belonged to him by right of inheritance.88 Yet if Henry II’s overlordship was resented, the nobility of Aquitaine chafed still more at the direct and increasingly masterful rule of young Duke Richard. He ‘oppressed the Poitevins’, noted Ralph of Diss, ‘with unaccustomed burdens and violent domination’.89 Any hopes, raised by his proactive role in the rebellion in Aquitaine in 1174, that Richard would be a protector of the duchy’s independence and customs had been dashed. He had showed himself to be fully the heir of his father’s policies of enforcing rights of overlordship, notably wardship and marriage of heirs, contrary to local custom.90 Indeed, the period from 1175 onwards had witnessed a marked intensification of such intervention by both Henry and Richard, and a corresponding incidence of rebellion within Aquitaine.91 On each occasion Richard’s daring generalship, military skill and superior resources had crushed the opposition. Rebels’ castles were slighted, city walls torn down, and leading opponents had quit the duchy on what may well have been involuntary or penitential pilgrimages.92 In 1181, the fragile peace which had prevailed in the duchy since late 1179 had again been ruptured when, on the death of Count Vulgrin of Angoulême, Richard had seized his young daughter into his wardship, thereby claiming control of the comital lands, a high-handed act which set the duke at war with the girl’s uncles, Aimar and William.93 Richard’s opponents, moreover, claimed that he had ‘carried off his subjects’ wives, daughters and kinswomen by force and made them his concubines; when he had sated his own lust on them he handed them down for his soldiers to enjoy. He afflicted his people with these and many other wrongs.’94 Such charges were the stock-in-trade of political defamation and were used to justify a vassal’s renunciation of homage: similar accusations had been levelled against Henry II by his Breton opponents, as they would be against King John by his baronial enemies. Yet though brief and sometimes formulaic, the reports of the English chroniclers leave little doubt that Richard was regarded by many of his Aquitanian subjects as a tyrant. Tellingly, in an early version of his De principis instructione written after Richard had become king, Gerald of Wales felt obliged to excuse at some length an evident reputation for harshness, acknowledging that he had been ‘generally hated for his cruelty’.95

  Conversely, the Young King held out the promise of change: Poitevins had been welcomed into his mesnie for the great tourneys in which he was winning a glowing reputation for his his franchise, or greatness of chivalric spirit. Young Henry’s reckless generosity struck a deep chord with the nobility of southern France. Acts of conspicuously extravagant spending at a great court festival held at Beaucaire in 1174, supposedly in celebration of Henry II’s establishment of peace between Raymond of Toulouse and Alfonso of Aragon, had already become the stuff of legend and epic exaggeration by the time Geoffrey of Vigeois denounced them:

  The count of Toulouse gave 100,000 sous to Raimon d’Agout, a liberal knight, who at once divided the thousands by a hundred and distributed single thousands to a hundred individual knights. Bertran Raimbaut had the castle grounds ploughed by twelve pairs of oxen, and then had coins to the value of 30,000 sous sown into it. Guilhem the Fat of Martello, who had 300 knights with him [the court in fact comprised about 10,000 knights], is reported to have cooked all the food from the kitchen with wax and pitchpine torches … Raimon of Vernoul burned thirty horses in a fire with everyone watching, because of a boast.

  The contrast between the characters of the two brothers had never been more evident. As Gervase of Canterbury explained:

  The nobles of Aquitaine hated their lord, Count Richard, on account of his great cruelty. They planned to drive him by force from the duchy of Aquitaine and the county of Poitou, and greatly desired to transfer the principality to the good and benign Young King … For he was amiable to everyone, of handsome countenance, and especially famous for his military glory, to such an extent that he appeared second to none. He was self-effacing, responsive and affable, so that he was loved with very great affection by those both near and far. By contrast, Count Richard was most hateful to almost everyone, and they desired to eradicate him from the land.96

  If the less heavy-handed rule of the Young King offered the Aquitanian nobility the prospect of greater autonomy, a conflict between the brothers also afforded a chance to settle local scores. Thus the minor Limousin lord and troubadour Bertran de Born, whose poems provide a precious glimpse into the thought-world of the aristocracy, saw in the developing struggle an opportunity to take control of the family castle of Hautefort, disputed with his younger brother Constantine, who in turn sought the support of Duke Richard.97 War, moreover, opened the purse strings of the great lords. ‘Don’t take me for a troublemaker,’ remarked Bertran, ‘if I want one great man to hate another; then vavasors and castellans will be able to get more sport out of them. I swear it by the faith I owe you, a great man is more free, generous and friendly in war than in peace.’98 For members of the lesser aristocracy such as the castellan of Hautefort, such times of open hostilities held out the prospect not only of wages, but also of plunder, booty and brigandage, as Bertran frankly admitted:

  Trumpets
, drums, standards, and pennons and ensigns and horses white and black we shall soon see and the world will be good. We’ll take the usurers’ money, and never a mule driver will travel the roads in safety, nor a burgher without fear, nor a merchant coming from France. He who gladly takes will be rich.99

  Seen in such a light, it is little wonder that the nobility of Aquitaine jealously guarded its right to wage ‘private’ war. Yet Bertran also gave voice to a fierce sense of local independence, and anger against Richard’s harsh rule. ‘Let us challenge him for the territory he took out of our hands,’ he would later proclaim to his fellow nobles in Aquitaine in 1183, ‘until he gives us justice.’100

  By 1182, a major rebellion was being fomented, led by William and Aimar of Angoulême, and their half-brother Aimar, viscount of Limoges. An oath of mutual support was pledged on a missal in the church of St Martial in Limoges, and the league soon grew to include the three other viscounts of the Limousin, Eble IV of Ventadorn, Archambaut V of Comborn and Raymond II of Turenne, together with Elias, count of Périgord, William of Gourdon, and the lord of Montfort.101 Bertran de Born called on leading Poitevin lords to join the rising, including Geoffrey de Rancon, Geoffrey de Lusignan, Aimery IV, viscount of Thouars, and the lords of Mauléon and Tonnay, and also looked further south to Gascony for support from Gaston IV of Béarn, the viscounts of Dax and Bigorre, and the count of Lomagne.102 Catching wind of the allies’ plans, however, Richard launched a surprise attack on Puy Saint-Front, the thriving settlement beyond the city of Périgueux, then, striking north up the valley of the L’Isle to Excideuil, one of Count Elias’ principal castles, he devastated his lands from there to Cornac.103 By mid May, the counts of Périgord and Angoulême, and Aimar of Limoges had opened peace negotiations, not with Richard, but with his father, meeting Henry II at the king’s favoured monastery of Grandmont after 16 May.104 The talks, however, came to nothing as it became clear that, instead of curbing his son, Henry had brought his forces to Richard’s assistance. Aiming to drive a wedge between the areas under the control of Aimar of Limoges and Count Elias, the king took first Saint-Yrieix, then Pierre-Buffière after a siege of twelve days, while Richard attacked Excideuil, taking the town but not the powerful castle. The duke then invested Périgueux itself with a large army, and was soon joined by his father.105 The gravity of the rebellion led Henry II also to summon the Young King to bring further aid, hoping that the brothers might work as well together against the Aquitanian rebels as they had against Stephen of Sancerre.