Henry the Young King, 1155-1183

by Matthew Strickland

  Though often referred to in the narrative sources by names indicating their broad regional origins, such as Brabançons from the Low Countries, or Basques, Navarrese and Catalans from south of the Pyrenees, these routiers were in reality hybrid groups attracting a volatile mix of criminals, renegades and outcasts, all ‘armed cap-à-pied with leather, iron, clubs and swords’.44 Once out of the pay and direct control of a ruler or lord, these bands rapidly became a serious threat to local order, but equally their ruthless conduct on campaign was rarely restrained by their employers, who appreciated the political and military value of the terror which they inspired.45 These ‘legions from Hell’, as Geoffrey of Vigeois termed them, had a particularly evil reputation for cruelty and sacrilege.46 Walter Map, who had seen their handiwork in the Limousin in 1183, noted how they ‘lay monasteries, villages and towns in ashes, and practise indiscriminate adulteries with force, saying in their hearts, “There is no God”’.47 Likewise, to Ralph of Diss, they were ‘those wicked overthrowers of castles, slaughterers of peasants, burners of churches, and oppressors of monks’.48

  Local populations had attempted to organize resistance to these predators when they could, but the support of the powerful was crucial. In 1177, Abbot Isembard of St Martial’s had led a local peace guild against them, while the bishop of Poitiers had assisted Duke Richard’s forces to destroy a concentration of routiers.49 So grave had the depredations of these mercenary bands become that in 1179 the Third Lateran Council took drastic steps against them. Anyone who, under the guidance of bishops or priests, took up arms against these mercenaries was to be placed under the protection of the Church as if they were journeying to Jerusalem, and would gain remission from two years of penance. It was both licit and meritorious to kill such men, who were branded as heretics, while if captured they could be enslaved.50 Those who killed women, children, clergy and the old without pity deserved none themselves. It was not only the routiers, however, who faced the thunders of the Church. Those who took such mercenaries into their service, associated with them or supplied them were to be excommunicated, with the extinguishing of candles and ringing of bells, and any who owed obligations of service to such renegade lords were freed from their oaths of homage and fealty. Their lands were placed under interdict; save for baptism and penitence, they were to be denied the sacraments, including the viaticum.51 The primary target of these papal strictures had been those lords in southern France suspected of harbouring or supporting the dualist heretics increasingly known as Albigensians or Cathars, whose spread was perceived by the Church as an ever-increasing threat. Yet by taking the routier bands into his pay, the Young King himself was in violation of the canons of the Lateran Council and thereby was putting his mortal soul in grave peril.

  The War against Richard and the Siege of Limoges

  From their base at Limoges, the Young King and Geoffrey began to plunder and lay waste Richard’s lands.52 With his very survival at stake, the young duke’s response was typically bold. In the art of war, he had already learned much from his father, one of the greatest generals of the age, and knew the value of good intelligence and of the use of surprise to offset superior numbers ranged against him. A large body of routiers under Raymond ‘Brennus’ had moved north from Gascony and with Viscount Aimar were laying siege to the church at Gorre, a little to the south-west of Limoges. Apprised of this, Richard and a small force, probably comprising only his household knights, dashed south from near Poitiers and after almost two days’ hard riding they fell upon the unsuspecting enemy on 12 February. The mercenaries were routed, many were slain, and Richard himself laid low William Arnald, Raymond’s nephew. Had Richard been able to capture Aimar and other leaders he might have dealt the insurgents a fatal blow, but the horses of the Poitevins were exhausted from their forced marches, and the viscount and his allies were able to escape.53 Richard, however, also knew the value of terror: determined to make an example of the Basques who had fallen into his hands, he dragged his prisoners a few miles north-east to Aixe on the south bank of the river Vienne, virtually within sight of Limoges, where he had some drowned, others executed, and around eighty blinded.54 Richard’s actions were a direct challenge not only to Aimar but to the Young King and Geoffrey within the city. The slaying of these ‘sacrilegious people, detested by the Roman church’, as Roger of Howden called them, was not a cause for censure. It was a very different matter, however, when he ordered that if anyone belonging to the households of the Young King or Geoffrey was captured, they were to be beheaded at once, whatever their rank.55 To execute knights once taken prisoner was a major breach of chivalric convention, and took the war to a new level of ruthlessness. It was a revealing indication of how desperate Richard felt his position to be and the extent of hatred that now existed between the brothers.

  The victory at Gorre only bought Richard a breathing space. Realizing that alone he had little chance of withstanding so powerful a coalition of enemies, he appealed to his father for aid.56 Henry II, admitted Roger of Howden, had allowed his sons to fight against each other for some time, but he too now saw that Richard might be forcibly deposed. Indeed, so bitter had the conflict become that he was said even to have feared for Richard’s life should he fall into the hands of his brother’s forces.57 Nevertheless, the Old King still believed the Young King’s protestations that he was acting as a peacemaker on behalf of the rebel lords and, on his eldest son’s advice, he travelled to Limoges with only a small retinue.58 By the later twelfth century, the city of Limoges had developed into two distinct areas, situated adjacent to each other on the north bank of the river Vienne. The oldest district, known as the Cité, was established on the site of the Roman town of Lemovincensium and had grown up around the cathedral church of St Etienne. Defended by its own circuit of walls and gates, it contained the episcopal palace and the residences of the canons. An intense rivalry existed between the inhabitants of the Cité and those of the thriving and more populous urban centre surrounding the great abbey of St Martial, a little to the north-west, which was known as the Château of St Martial (or the Château of Limoges). The Château’s separate defensive perimeter also enclosed the castle of the viscount of Limoges, held as fief of the abbot of St Martial’s, but with whom the viscounts were often in dispute.59 The Young King and his allies had established themselves in the Château, and Viscount Aimar had intimidated the burgesses into joining them against Richard.60

  On his arrival at Limoges, Henry II expected to be welcomed into the Château by his sons. Instead, he was suddenly met by a hail of arrows, one of which pierced his surcoat. A sally in force by the defenders of the Château drove the king’s retinue back, preventing them from entering either the Château or the Cité, and in the resulting skirmish one of Henry II’s household knights was wounded.61 According to Geoffrey of Vigeois, the defenders of the Château had mistakenly believed – or so they claimed – that they were being assaulted by the burgesses of the Cité, while in the confusion the cry was raised that Duke Geoffrey was outside the walls and in great danger. It was only when an English knight recognized the king’s standards and his arms that a full-scale attack by the forces within the Château was prevented and the fighting stopped.62 Henry II now took up residence in the Cité, but when he rode out to talk peacefully with the Young King and Geoffrey, he was again shot at, and would have received a potentially fatal wound had not his horse suddenly raised his head and been struck by the arrow or bolt intended for Henry.63 Enraged and badly shaken, the Old King withdrew across the Vienne to Aixe.64 That evening, the Young King visited his father, but he came wearing his hauberk and declined his father’s invitation to dinner – clear signs of renewed tension between father and son.65 In turn, Henry II refused to listen to the Young King’s excuses and entreaties on behalf of the burgesses of the Château, for in attacking the person of their overlord they had committed a grave offence.66 The Young King may have been genuinely distressed by the attack on his father, but as Roger of Howden was quick to poin
t out, while he condemned those responsible, he neither avenged his father nor handed the guilty over to the Old King for punishment.67

  Map 8 Aquitaine, to illustrate the war of 1183

  Henry II’s refusal to excuse those in the Château seems to have been a crucial turning point, marking the shift from war against Richard to overt rebellion against Henry II himself. At the command of Viscount Aimar, ‘the people swore fealty to the Young King in the church of St Peter du Queiroix’, then immediately began to strengthen the defences of the Château and the viscount’s castle. Walls were constructed, ditches of exceptional depth were dug and the ramparts reinforced with hoarding and brattices of wood.68 Though swiftly erected and only of timber, such defences could be formidable. Everything outside them was ruthlessly levelled to deny cover to attackers and to obtain materials for the defences, creating a bleak wasteland between the Château and the Cité. Not even churches were spared, for these could be used as extemporized fortifications. Prior Geoffrey recorded a graphic picture of an urban landscape devastated by the demands of war:

  They entirely uprooted the garden of St Martial’s, full of trees of many different varieties, together with those trees which surrounded the Château. But why should these trees be the cause of wonder? Putting aside reverence for the divine, they pulled down the church of Mary the Mother of God [Sainte-Marie-des-Arènes], the basilica of the Hospital of St Gerold, the house of St Valéry, the church of Saint Maurice and certain others. They burned up in flames – for shame! – the wooden spire and signa of Saint Martin’s, and almost completely destroyed the stone belfry, enclosure walls and outbuildings, the monastery itself and its adjacent bourg. The vill and church of Saint Symphorien of the Bridge were demolished in a similar fashion, together with certain other churches, both by the men of the Château as well as by those of the Cité.69

  Now dug in, the rebels in Limoges were soon reinforced by further bands of routiers summoned by Viscount Aimar and Raymond, viscount of Turenne.70 Prominent among their leaders were Sancho de Savannac, and Curbaran, who with grim irony had adopted the name of the Muslim emir Kerbogha who had given battle to the men of the First Crusade at Antioch.71 The strategy of the Young King and his allies at this time and in subsequent months is far from clear: the chroniclers record only sporadic and isolated incidents, resulting in the (probably mistaken) impression of uncoordinated and apparently purposeless campaigns of devastation. One immediate goal, however, appears to have been to reverse some of the gains made by Henry II and Richard at the expense of the viscounts of Limoges and Périgord the year previously, for Ademar immediately led the forces of Sancho and Curbaran to lay siege to Pierre-Buffière, which commanded the approach to Limoges from the south-east.72 They succeeded in capturing the town, upon which Peter of Pierre-Buffière negotiated terms and surrendered the castle and its keep. There followed one of those striking rituals which, though rarely glimpsed in the sources, were a common feature of such warfare. First, the banners of Ademar, the Young King and Curbaran were flown from the battlements, thereby proclaiming their legal ownership of the castle and all spoils taken within. Then, after the viscount had celebrated his triumphal capture for a day and a night with the sounding of trumpets, the castle was promptly returned to Peter.73 The whole affair represented a public assertion by Ademar of his direct lordship of Pierre-Buffière; this was contested with the abbey of St Martial, which claimed the viscount held it only as its vassal. Like Bertran de Born’s feud with his brother Constantine over possession of Hautefort, local turf wars were inexorably bound up with the wider struggle of young Henry and his Aquitanian allies against Richard. Similarly, it was on behalf on the viscount of Turenne that the routiers next attempted, but failed, to take Brive, before establishing a base at Yssandon.74

  Still more mercenaries flocked towards Limoges from the north-east, sent by Philip Augustus to aid young Henry, his brother-in-law. Philip had begun his attempts to undermine Plantagenet lordship in Aquitaine the year previously by accepting the homage of the count of Angoulême, which was claimed by Richard as duke.75 Yet though this was a serious challenge to both Richard and Henry II, Philip did not dare to openly declare war or to send French troops. But Capetian silver paid – initially at least – for a large but heterogeneous force of routiers, known collectively as ‘Palearii’ or ‘strawmen’, an allusion either to their lowly status or perhaps to their rapacity, as they stripped victims of their goods down to the very straw.76 They marked their arrival in the Limousin by sacking the town of Noblat, putting over 150 of the townspeople to the sword, and plundering the famous pilgrimage church dedicated to St Leonard, the patron saint of prisoners.77 Soon after, they moved into the Périgord, plundering the town and monastery of Brantôme, while other routier bands extended their ravages to the Périgord, Angoumois and Saintonge.78

  Map 9 Limoges in the late twelfth century

  It was now evident to Henry II that the situation in Aquitaine was spiralling dangerously out of control. Until the reinforcements he had summoned arrived, he was forced to wait at Aixe, but by the end of February he had summoned Alfonso of Aragon to his aid, and his own forces, raised from the feudal hosts of Normandy and Anjou, as well as from other bands of routiers, were assembling in strength.79 As the History of William Marshal noted, Henry II

  quickly assembled a big army on horse and a great body of knights. They were Normans and men from Anjou, men from Flanders and from Picardy and men from Poitou, and mercenaries of many sorts (e rotiers de maintes manieres) and many a pennant and banner you would have seen gleaming as it fluttered in the wind. The king rode on in a great fury to meet his sons in Limoges. There were so many tents, pavilions and marquees, that no man could give an account of them, for the King did things there on a very grand scale.80

  The king began his siege of the rebel forces in the Château of Limoges on Shrove Tuesday, 1 March. He had the fine stone bridge over the Vienne cleared of any buildings that would obstruct the constant flow of supplies necessary to maintain this great host. Henry took up residence in the Cité, while Richard encamped with his troops in the suburb of St Valéry, between the Château and the river.81

  Meanwhile, the Young King continued to act as an intermediary between the rebel lords and Henry II. He told his father that if he could not persuade them to seek peace at Henry II’s feet, he would abandon the Aquitanian lords. Won over by his son’s assurances, the Old King accordingly renewed the terms he had previously offered them. Yet when young Henry carried this news back to Geoffrey and the nobles in the rebel camp, he appeared to meet with no success in persuading them to submit. Denouncing the allies as disobedient rebels, the Young King returned to his father, promising to serve him faithfully.82 Soon afterwards, however, Geoffrey led a force of Brabançons out of Limoges in a campaign of devastation, burning lands, laying waste towns and villages, plundering churches, and slaying indiscriminately.83 The hostile Roger of Howden believed the Young King to be complicit in these actions, but it was Geoffrey who increasingly appears as the driving force of the rebels’ military actions in the spring of 1183. Indeed, Gerald of Wales regarded him as ‘the moving spirit of the whole evil venture’, using his smooth tongue to corrupt and deceive, while the senhal ‘Rassa’ given to him by Bertran de Born may derive from the Occitan noun rassa, meaning to plot or intrigue.84 Given the markedly hesitant and indecisive nature of young Henry’s own actions during these critical months – at least as they can be glimpsed from Howden’s partisan account – Geoffrey may well have been the prime mover in the Young King’s attempt to wrest Aquitaine from Richard. It is likely that the Young King had promised to grant him the county of Nantes and the honour of Richmond to gain his support in 1182–83.85 Yet Geoffrey seems to have had grander ambitions, and sought to exploit the war between his two elder brothers to realize them. Bertran de Born, disillusioned by the Young King’s lack of decisive action, regarded the count as the best of Henry’s sons, declaring, ‘I wish Count Geoffrey … were the firstborn, fo
r he is courtly (es cortes), and I wish the kingdom and duchy were in his command’.86 Geoffrey doubtless welcomed such sentiments, but for the present he saw in Richard’s disinheritance the opportunity for a partition of the Angevin lands along new lines.87 If young Henry was established as duke of Aquitaine as well as future king of England and duke of Normandy, might he not cede Poitou or perhaps even Anjou to Geoffrey, to be held of him after their father’s death?88

  On hearing of Geoffrey’s raiding, the Young King disavowed these actions, claiming that whatever his part had been in the undertakings, it had been at Geoffrey’s counsel. He voluntarily surrendered his horse and arms as a symbol of his submission, and stayed with his father for a number of days.89 Howden regarded such actions as wholly disingenuous, claiming that the Young King had been intent on treachery from the start.90 This is not, however, how things appeared to Bertran de Born, who, incensed by young Henry’s apparent abandonment of the league, composed a biting sirventes: