by Douglas Boyd
With a bandage to hold in place a poultice, Richard carried on directing the siege next day, unaware that infection had entered his tissues, whether on the quarrel itself or on the hands and knife of the medic. By the morning of 28 March the stench of gas gangrene and steadily increasing pain told him that an agonising death lay ahead. In his years of campaigning he had seen thousands of men, women and children dying at his command or in his cause. He therefore had no illusions about his condition and despatched to Eleanor at the abbey in Fontevraud a sealed letter written by his chaplain Milo, instructing her to hasten with all possible speed to Châlus.
Receiving the missive, Eleanor despatched the most discreet of messengers, Abbess Matilda of Bohemia, to fetch Berengaria from Maine. Once that duty had been discharged, Matilda’s orders were to seek out Prince John, wherever in the north he might be. Eleanor’s choice of a nun for the second part of this errand suggests that she had reason to suspect John of being in territory where an Angevin knight, or even a cleric from Fontevraud, might not be welcome.
Setting out herself with the abbot of Turpenay and a small escort, she covered the distance of more than 100 miles separating Fontevraud from Châlus by travelling day and night.8 Despite her speed, on her arrival at the siege the stink of the gases formed by bacteria in the wound and the discoloration of the necrotised tissue told her that her beloved son was beyond any help, apart from spiritual consolation from Pierre Milo, his chaplain and erstwhile crusading comrade.9
Ever the stateswoman, Eleanor had come not to give way to her feelings, but to safeguard the succession by recording discreetly the last wishes of the dying king of England. Who else was present is unknown. If a formal testament was dictated to Milo or the abbot of Turpenay, it was never to see the light of day, although Richard’s nephew Otto of Brunswick was afterwards said to have been generously remembered with the bequest of all Richard’s personal jewels and three-quarters of his treasure. What that was worth at this stage is a mystery. Bequests also went to Richard’s favourite religious foundations like the abbey of La Sauve Majeure. As to the succession to all Richard’s many titles, there is no record that the clause in the Treaty of Messina naming Arthur of Brittany was rescinded. Had Richard changed his mind and named John instead, Eleanor would almost certainly have acted differently in the immediate future.
The dying king had not confessed and been given absolution since 1194, before his second coronation at Winchester. This awkward fact was glossed over by the chroniclers pretending that the soul of the crusader king had been labouring under an un-Christian hatred for Philip Augustus, which he had not been prepared to renounce, and could therefore not make an act of contrition and receive absolution.10 The more likely reason is his refusal to pretend contrition for the forbidden practices against which the Norman hermit had warned him in order to take the sacrament. Only on his deathbed could he sincerely say that he would not sin again.
After the sap was fired and the wall breached – there is still a hollow in the hillside marking the spot – Richard told the mercenaries, who had slaughtered all the other defenders, to haul Pierre Basile before him in chains. As an act of charity before meeting his Maker, he then pardoned the sergeant-at-arms as being an instrument of God’s displeasure at the defiance of the Lenten truce constituted by the siege of Châlus.11 He ordered Basile to be given a purse of gold coins and released. Notwithstanding, the wretched sergeant-at-arms was later flayed alive by the mercenaries and hanged from the battlements of the castle he had defended, literally, to his last breath.12
As was the custom, Richard then ordered the disposal of the parts of his own body. His heart was to go to Rouen Cathedral, where Young Henry lay among the former dukes of Normandy. The rest of his body was to be buried in Fontevraud Abbey at the feet of Henry II, in symbolic atonement for a son’s betrayal of his father. To England he gave not a thought. In the early evening of 6 April, eleven days after suffering the fatal wound, he received absolution and communion from Milo the chaplain.
Thus, Eleanor’s favourite son died in agony at the age of 42, having bequeathed his genes only to one bastard, Philip of Cognac, who was alleged to be aged about 15 at this time. What happened to the treasure of Châlus, the greed for which had caused Richard’s death, is not recorded. Was the flaying alive of Pierre Basile an act of vengeance for daring to kill the king who pardoned him, or torture to make him betray the whereabouts of the treasure? Since it was never heard of again, either it never existed or else it was hacked up and shared out among the mercenaries, later being melted down as bullion.
In Normandy on 7 April William the Marshal received a letter dictated by Richard after his injury, appointing William castellan of the castle of Rouen and guardian of its treasure. Staying at the priory of Notre Dame du Pré across the river was Archbishop Hubert Walter. Guessing that the wound must be serious, they discussed the succession. With William supporting John and the archbishop’s vote going to Arthur of Brittany, these two men, who both knew Richard’s last surviving brother well, mirrored Eleanor’s dilemma.13 On 10 April another messenger brought them the news of Richard’s death. When this reached Paris, Philip proclaimed as suzerain of the continental possessions that Arthur of Brittany took precedence over Prince John as the son of his elder brother Geoffrey.
Eleanor knew that the succession must be settled before the news of Richard’s death sparked disaffection among his vassals, inciting Philip Augustus to profit from the death of his great enemy. For the second time, a king’s death had left her the only figure of regal authority in England and the continental possessions. Torn between the unsuitability of both Prince John and Arthur of Brittany, now a 14-year-old puppet of Philip Augustus, as successor to all Richard’s titles, she rode back to Fontevraud at the slow pace of the funeral cortège, hoping to find a way to ensure that the empire she and Henry II had built would not crumble to dust one short decade after his death.
Soon after the cortège reached Fontevraud, Berengaria arrived to officially mourn the husband she had hardly known, and whom she was to survive by a celibate widowhood of thirty-one years devoted to good works, including the foundation of the Cistercian convent of L’Épau near Le Mans, where her effigy can still be seen in the chapter house. With her came Matilda of La Perche, daughter of Matilda of Saxony, to press the case of a third contender for the succession: her brother Otto of Brunswick. Of the three, he had been the nearest to Richard, and for a while had acted as duke of Aquitaine, but Eleanor had found his performance sadly lacking in statecraft. The pendulum swung towards John, who at least spoke the language of England that Richard had never learned and even Henry had never properly mastered, using an interpreter for any important conversation.
Tracking John down, Abbess Matilda encountered Bishop Hugh of Lincoln on the road and took him into her confidence,14 which caused him to hurry south to Fontevraud, where he took precedence over the bishops of Agen, Poitiers, Angers and a host of lesser clergy swarming to the royal funeral like bees to honey. With them were the seneschals who had served Richard and now waited anxiously to know who was their new master: Arthur, John or Otto?15
The news of his brother’s death reached John as he dallied in treason yet again, attempting to form a new power bloc by exploiting Constance of Brittany and the Breton lords’ mistrust of Richard, Philip and anyone else who was not a Breton. Hurrying south, he first stopped at the castle at Chinon to find the treasury empty. Meeting Bishop Hugh returning from the funeral, he attempted to enlist the venerable churchman-diplomat’s support in his cause as Richard’s successor.16 Although he had enjoyed a relationship of mutual respect with Henry, the bishop disapproved of all the king’s sons and especially of John, whose experience as an oblate made him hostile to the Church. Despite John’s offer of bribes, Hugh consented only to return to Fontevraud with him and see how matters lay.
On arrival, John hammered on the abbey door demanding to be shown his brother’s tomb17 until restrained by the bishop, who diplomatically
obtained permission for them to enter. On 18 April, Easter Sunday, Bishop Hugh gave a sermon in the abbey church on the duties of kingship. It was normal for the noble congregation to fidget and chatter among themselves – except at the three great feasts of Easter, Whitsun and Christmas, they did not take communion, but only attended the service – but John’s behaviour exceeded normal bounds. He twice yelled at the bishop to cut his sermon short, and was taken aback the third time when ordered to leave the sanctuary.18 It was an inauspicious beginning for a prince who needed all the support he could get from the Church.
He also needed Eleanor, as dowager queen and witness to Richard’s last wishes, to rebut Philip’s announcement that Arthur was the legitimate successor, but she withdrew into retreat instead. Was that to hide her grief? Given her six decades in political life, it is more probable that she was still wrestling with the problem of the succession. On 21 April, three days after John’s angry exchanges with Bishop Hugh, she resumed her public duties, granting to the abbey of Turpenay a fish farm at Langeais in consideration of its abbot’s help at Châlus. John was one of the witnesses to this charter, but is described in it only as her ‘very dear son’ and ‘count of Mortain’.19 Why was the abbot being rewarded at this fraught time, when there were matters of great import in abeyance? Had he been present when Richard dictated a will naming Arthur of Brittany or Otto of Brunswick to succeed him? Was the gift a reward for silence? Three months later, on 21 July, Richard’s confidant the chaplain Milo was also rewarded by gifts to his abbey of Le Pin. Was this for his silence too?
At Fontevraud, the time for mourning Richard was curtailed by news that a consortium of Breton vassals under Arthur and his mother Constance had been reinforced by barons from Maine and Anjou. Marching against Angers, only a day’s ride from Fontevraud, they took it without opposition.20 Le Mans and several other cities went over to them and Viscount Aymar of Limoges took revenge for Richard’s unjustified siege of Châlus by lining up too on Arthur’s side. Reluctantly, Eleanor gave her backing to John, who hurried north to be invested on 25 April by Archbishop Walter of Rouen with the ritual sword and golden crown of the dukes of Normandy. The ceremonial was a farce, John joking with his cronies throughout and even dropping the sword but, once officially duke of Normandy, he sent the ever-loyal William the Marshal and Archbishop Hubert Walter across the Channel with orders to see every royal castle in England prepared for civil war21 and to force all free men to swear an oath of fealty to Henry II’s last surviving son.
Apart from John’s few partisans, the Anglo-Norman magnates gathered in council at Nottingham could find little good in him, deciding to accept him on conditions that laid the foundation for Magna Carta sixteen years later. In Normandy, so little confidence did his vassals have in John’s ability to keep Philip at bay that many barons and knights avoided taking sides before the political-military situation had stabilised by going on pilgrimage or taking the Cross for the Fourth Crusade.22
So John had Normandy and was king-designate of England, but Eleanor was not prepared to give him Poitou and Aquitaine. Luckily she had Mercadier, who ordered his mercenaries back from the Limousin and led them against the coalition forces invading from the north in the rare phenomenon of two medieval armies confronting each other, each in the service of a woman. Constance’s forces fell back on Le Mans, leaving Angers to be sacked by Eleanor’s men under Mercadier, whose reward was to hold its principal citizens for ransom.
Meanwhile, John, as duke of Normandy, was leading a force of Normans into Maine. In retaking Le Mans, fire and sword were again the order of the day, but Constance had slipped away with Arthur to Tours, where Philip Augustus again took charge of the boy as an important piece to be saved for later in the game. The immediate danger over, Eleanor wheeled south to make a regal progress through her own domains of Poitou and Aquitaine accompanied by an impressive retinue of bishops and barons. She did not solicit her vassals’ loyalty to John, who was to them a distant figure who had spent much of his life on the wrong side of the Channel and had neither Richard’s valour nor his poetic prowess to commend him. Instead, she reintroduced herself to her vassals – most of whom had not been born when she inherited the duchy in 1137 – as mother of one legendary dead hero and granddaughter of the great crusading troubadour-duke William IX.
Maintaining that Richard’s title to the duchy had been valid for his lifetime only and was not therefore part of his inheritable estate to be claimed by John, she reasserted plenary powers for herself on the grounds that she had never actually renounced her titles as countess of Poitou and duchess of Aquitaine, even during the fifteen agonising years when Henry used every trick to force her to do so. She then ceded Poitou and Aquitaine to John on condition that he swear fealty to her and renounce all his rights for the duration of her lifetime or until such earlier time as might suit her. Her price was that he confirm all her prerogatives as queen of England, which kept her still the richest woman in the world. That was the best she could do; after that, she retired to Fontevraud for the rest of her days. There, although she did not seek the world, it came to her in the persons of nobles and churchmen who brought her news – none of it good.
NOTES
1. J. Vaissete, Abrégé de l’histoire générale de Languedoc (Paris, 1799), Vol 3, pp. 219–40.
2. Richard, A., Histoire, Vol 2, p. 299.
3. Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon Anglicarum, p. 96.
4. Richard, A., Histoire, Vol 2, p. 324.
5. J. Bradbury, The Medieval Archer (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2002), p. 77.
6. Ibid.
7. Roger of Howden, Chronica, Vol 4, p. 83.
8. Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon Anglicarum, p. 96.
9. Ibid, p. 98.
10. Ibid, p. 96.
11. Roger of Howden, Chronica, Vol 4, p. 83.
12. Ibid, p. 84.
13. Meyer, Guillaume le Maréchal, Vol 3, pp. 159–60.
14. Magna Vita Sancti Hugonis Episcopi Lincolniensis, ed. J.F. Dimock, Rolls Series No. 37 (London: Longmans, 1864), pp. 282–3.
15. Richard, A., Histoire, Vol 2, p. 332–3.
16. Dimock, Vita, pp. 286–7.
17. Ibid, p. 288.
18. Ibid, pp. 290–3.
19. Richard, A., Histoire, Vol 2, p. 333.
20. Recueil, Vol 18, p. 325.
21. Roger of Howden, Chronica, Vol 4, p. 88.
22. Powicke, The Loss of Normandy, p. 128.
22
Of a Siege, Sex and Saddles
The troubadour Gaucelm Faidit composed a planh lamenting the death of Richard. The first verse runs:
Fortz chausa es car cel q’era de valor caps e paire
lo rics valens Richartz, reis dels Engles
es mortz. Ai Dieus, cals perd’e cals dan es!
Cant estrains motz e cant greus ad ausir.
Ben a dur còr totz hom qu’o pot sofrir.
[It is an awful thing, for the very father-figure of valour, /
brave Richard, king of the English, / is dead.
God knows, ’tis terrible news to hear. / Only the hardest-hearted man can learn such cruel news without shedding a tear.]
That was conventional lip service on the lines of the lament on the death of the Young King composed by Bertran de Born. There were many who recalled instead Richard’s arrogance and the heedless avarice that had caused his death. As to his boast that the most costly castle in the world was impregnable, over the winter of 1203/04 a six-month siege of Château Gaillard by Philip Augustus forced the capitulation of the castellan Roger de Lacy. About 2,000 civilians took refuge inside the walls at the start of the siege when their homes in the village below were destroyed by the invaders. Twice de Lacy evicted groups of 500 of these ‘useless mouths’ to economise food stocks and these people were allowed to pass through the siege lines. After Philip Augustus learned of this, he forbade any further clemency, so when de Lacy evicted the remaining 1,000 civilians – mainly old men, women and children – the besiegers opened
fire on them, driving them back to the castle walls, where they were trapped with the gates firmly closed against them. Hundreds died in the midwinter cold, including at least one woman in childbirth, and the others from starvation and exposure, until Philip took mercy on the few gaunt survivors and allowed them to leave.
The castle was finally taken after the wall of the outer bailey was undermined through the solid limestone bedrock. One of Philip’s men then led a storming party through the breach into the second bailey through an unguarded latrine chute associated with a chapel, said to be a modification by John of Richard’s original design. The small group of attackers lit fires once inside, which panicked the garrison into thinking the whole building was on fire. This enabled the invaders to lower the drawbridge over the dry moat. De Lacy’s force retreated into the inner bailey. When the wall of this was also breached, they withdrew into the donjon itself. There, running out of food and everything else, de Lacy and twenty knights with 120 men-at-arms surrendered on 6 March 1204.
The fall of Château Gaillard was followed, a fortnight later, by the death of Eleanor of Aquitaine, which spared her the sight of the Plantagenet Empire she had made with Henry II subsiding into the quicksands of time.
How is one to sum up Richard’s life? It is impossible to use modern criteria to assess a prince living in a period that more resembled the Dark Ages than, say, the time of Henry V or VIII. In his time, each lord and baron may have inherited title to his land and the people on that land, but he was only master of it and of them so long as he could dominate his vassals, fight off his neighbours and take part in greater struggles, aligning himself with this or that powerful suzerain. On that score, Richard comes out well. He spent his whole adolescence and adult life in warfare. Lacking Henry II’s statesmanship, he did not expand the Plantagenet Empire, but neither did he directly contribute to its demise.