Trying to second-guess Louis’s strategy, John concluded that the French prince’s next step must logically be an offensive against the West Midlands. He therefore began to advance northwards towards the end of July, moving from Sherborne (Dorset) to Bristol, Berkeley, Gloucester, Tewkesbury, Hereford and Leominster. Ever restless, ever the optimist, ever the pursuer of the chimera, he put out feelers for an alliance with the Welsh princes, but there were no takers. The peripatetic existence continued in August: Radnor (Wales), Clun, Shrewsbury, Whitchurch, Bridgnorth, Worcester, Gloucester.89 But still the expected French attack did not come. Unknown to John, Louis had decided that he must take Dover to regain his credibility so had shifted the theatre of operations east, not west. There were strong rumours that Philip Augustus had sent over a message taunting his son with being a strategic ignoramus: he was trying to unlock England without using the key (Dover).90 Louis decided on an all-out assault on John’s two vital strongholds at Dover and Windsor, reasoning that the blow to the king’s prestige if these two fell would have a multiplier effect. While he himself directed operations at Dover, he sent the counts of Dreux and Nevers, with some of the leading barons, to deal with Cigogne at Windsor. They proved spectacularly incompetent and still had nothing to show after two months of investment. 91 Louis did not fare much better at Dover, to the point where desertion rates in his army reached critical levels.92 Finally, on 8 August, there was a ray of sunlight on the horizon for him when Alexander of Scotland succeeded in reducing Carlisle. The euphoric Alexander sent word that he was marching south to meet Louis at Dover. But it took a month for the two armies to meet. Alexander wasted time on the way south by turning aside for an abortive siege of Barnard Castle, in the course of which Eustace de Vesci was killed. Other barons who were ineffectively besieging the citadel at Lincoln used the excuse of Alexander’s advent to break off an investment they had no idea how to conclude successfully. It was a large host that arrived in Canterbury from the north in the second week of September, but even the reunited army had no clue how to reduce Dover Castle, still stubbornly held by Hubert de Burgh.93
By the beginning of September the see-saw civil war, already nearly two years old, once more seemed to be favouring John. Relations between the French and the rebel barons had not improved; many apostates were returning to their previous loyalty to John, including the earls of Salisbury and York, surely two of the most short-term trimmers in history, as well as William Marshal’s son, despite the high honour Louis had done him. None of the royalist castles had fallen, and every day there were more reports of desertions in the French army. John had managed to win over the comte de Nevers, commanding the rebel forces at Windsor, as a double agent. Even the small things seemed to be going against the rebels, as when Geoffrey de Mandeville was killed in a pointless joust with a French knight.94 John sensed the changing pulse of events and by now had a clearer picture of French strategy and Louis’s military limitations. He decided to go over to the offensive and relieve Dover. Forced marches took him from Cirencester on 2 September via Burford, Oxford and Wallingford to Reading on the 6th. He feinted towards Windsor, causing momentary panic in the rebel besiegers there, then struck due east, having learned that the king of the Scots was returning homewards.95 John was hoping for a brilliant stroke whereby he would rout the Scots in East Anglia and then turn south to deal with Louis at Dover. Having dallied at Reading - some said this was to get proper intelligence from Nevers at Windsor96 - he made another of his lightning moves on 15 September, taking his armies at an incredible speed for a medieval host through Walton-on-Thames, Aylesbury and Bedford to Cambridge. Nevers and his confrères used this excuse to save face and raise the vain siege of Windsor; they pretended to be ‘pursuing’ John and did indeed come close to overhauling him; whether through luck, treachery or simple incompetence John ended up in Stamford while the pursuers bivouacked in Cambridge.97
At this point in the campaign something went wrong with John’s thinking, and there is a mystery here which no historian has ever satisfactorily cleared up. John’s strategy in making the lightning march east is clear enough, and seems eminently sound: had he caught Alexander of Scotland on the way home and crushed him, Louis at Dover might well have thrown in the towel. But suddenly we learn that the double agent Nevers is escorting Alexander north; that there is a rendezvous between the Scots and Gilbert de Gant’s army at Lincoln; and that John is in the throes of some kind of brainstorm.98 Matthew Paris tells a superficially wild story about John spending time gutting abbeys and monasteries in Oundle, Peterborough and Crowland, torching cornfields with his own hand, and berating Savaric de Mauléon for accepting money from monks instead of slaughtering them and burning their church.99 There is much that is obscure here, and the only solid ground is that John reached Lincoln on 28 September to find that Alexander and the Scottish host had already slipped past him and were in Yorkshire. Whether in response to this bad news or simply as continuation of the king’s madness, John set his troops to a mini-version of his scorched earth policy of the previous winter. His actions now were pure terrorism not linked to any strategic or tactical imperative. As wheat fields went up in smoke and the newly garnered harvests were wantonly destroyed, John seemed to be doing his best to match his legend as an evil king.100 But when he appeared in Lynn (King’s Lynn) on 9 October, he appeared to be once more a rational monarch. Relations between Lynn and John had always been good - he had sold the burghers privileges and made a lot of money from them over the years - and all attested that he was well satisfied with the lavish feasts the citizens laid on for him and their further contributions to his war chest.101 The news from the south was good too. Despite throwing everything he had at Dover Castle, Louis had failed to make any impression. Hubert de Burgh’s complement of 140 knights and more than a thousand men-at-arms were easily abreast of anything the French could bring against them. Louis swore that he would hang every last defender from the walls and even managed by a superhuman effort to capture one of the towers, but was as far away as ever from cracking the inner defences. Meanwhile there was more and more desertion from Louis’s army, and resistance to the French in Kent stiffened daily.102
It was at Lynn that the pendulum then swung back against John once more. First came news that Innocent III, the king’s most steadfast champion had died, opening the possibility that a successor might be elected who was more favourable to the barons. Then came word from Hubert de Burgh in Dover that the garrison could no longer hold out and asking John’s permission to conclude a truce with the French. Wearily John gave his assent.103 But then, even while he tucked into the sumptuous repasts provided by the burghers of Lynn, he fell violently ill with dysentery. Instead of trying to get over the illness by rest, John insisted on pressing on farther inland, and on 11 October he set off on the road to Wisbech ‘like a swiftly advancing storm’.104 His route then lay north-west and it was while his army was crossing the mouth of the River Wellstream (near the River Welland), which empties into the Wash, that probably the best-known incident in his reign (after Runnymede) occurred. Part of his baggage train was swallowed by quicksands on the morning of 12 October. That much is certain. Ralph, abbot of Coggleshall, relates: ‘He lost his chapel and its relics and some of his packhorses with divers household effects at the Wellstream, and many members of his household were submerged in the waters of the sea, and sucked into the quicksand there, because they had set out incautiously and hastily before the tide had receded.’105 But the exact circumstances of the disaster, its location and magnitude remain a subject of impassioned debate. One can readily see that the entire issue is problematical, for Coggleshall’s account is by far the most reliable one extant and yet it is itself confused. If you are drowned by the sea, you cannot at the same time be sucked down by quicksands. Yet the other main chroniclers of this event - Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris - simply compound the confusion. Wendover lurches into absurdity by a simultaneous assertion that not a single foot soldier got away to bring t
he news to the king and that John barely escaped with his life.106 Some authorities try to make sense of the disaster in the Wash by claiming that what overwhelmed John’s baggage train was not quicksands but a tidal bore, though this is a mere ‘educated guess’ with no sanction in the sources.107
Both Wendover and Matthew Paris portray a major disaster. The leading horses and pack animals get bogged down in the quicksands, but the vanguard cannot back up out of the danger for the rest of the train keep pressing them forward, so that more and more men and animals get sucked into the vortex.108 The first question then is: was the ‘disaster in the Wash’ a major debacle, as depicted by Paris and Wendover, or a more limited affair, as narrated by Coggleshall? This in turn hinges on where the fiasco was supposed to have taken place and on this too there is no agreement, with some authorities opting for the route across the estuary from Cross Keys to Long Sutton, others plumping for a narrow 40-yard stretch between Walsokes and Wisbech, and a third version preferring the area between Walpole and Tydd Gote.109 The change in the shape of the coastline in the last eight hundred years makes the location very hard to determine. And then there is another problem. Was John with the baggage train when the accident/disaster happened, or had he already split his forces? The fact that he reached Swineshead on the evening of 12 October argues powerfully against his presence with the stricken baggage train. It has therefore been hypothesised that the imbroglio with the baggage train happened very early in the day, possibly because John gave orders that he wanted the baggage with him in Lincolnshire that night, that the commanders of the train did not wait long enough for the tide to go out, but that they sustained only significant damage rather than outright disaster. Faced with a surplus of baggage over pack animals, John might then have decided to send the surplus baggage to Lincolnshire by sea, only to discover that the necessary seamen were all in Wisbech, to which place he hastened to expedite matters.110 Admittedly, all is hypothesis piled on supposition. But the most likely course of events is that quicksands claimed some of the baggage train but not all, that the occurrence was more accident than disaster, and that John did indeed split his forces, even though this was risky in territory that was far from staunchly royalist. What, then, of the extent of losses? Did John really lose his crown and his treasure in the Wash? We know from royal inventories that the baggage train was carrying the coronation regalia and a huge collection of precious objects - gold and silver goblets, jewelled belts, candelabra, pendants, robes.111 The fact that these objects were missing when sought for the coronation of Henry III in 1220 creates the inference that they did indeed vanish into the Wash. Some sceptics, however, say that only the royal regalia and some other artefacts were lost, and that most of the jewels were stolen in the confusion surrounding John’s death.112
The loss of valuables would have had a peculiarly piercing impact on John, already suffering from dysentery as he was. He was reported as oscillating between rage and grief at Swineshead Abbey but the third of misfortune’s legendary trios was lying in wait for him that night; whether to assuage his grief or simply through his habitual gluttony, he managed to overeat when supping on a collation of peaches and new cider - an incredible dietary choice for one suffering from dysentery.113 On 14 October he could barely sit in the saddle, and the whole journey to Sleaford was agony. Urged to rest, he would have none of it, and insisted on pressing on to Newark. But on the 16th he finally had to admit defeat: having ridden just three miles, he dismounted from his horse panting and groaning, and ordered his followers to make a litter on which he could be carried. There were no decent artisans or carpenters to hand, so his household knights struggled to make a crude cradle of willows which they chopped down at the roadside; their inexpert weaving was topped off with the addition of a horse blanket. Moreover, the so-called litter had no cushions or straw to relieve its hardness. The unrelieved pressure on the king’s back would have been painful enough but in addition, lacking carriage-horses, his men slung the cradle between some skittish destriers.114 Soon the jolting and bumping was making John cry out in agony; to relieve him the foot soldiers took it in turns to carry him shoulder-high, like African bearers in the era of Victorian exploration. The king’s cries of pain and rage made for very slow going. It may be that now for the first time was uttered the prophetic rhyme, said to have been composed by a French seer in the time of Henry II, which so appealed to Matthew Paris: ‘Henry the fairest shall die at Martel; Richard the Poitevin shall die in the Limousin; John shall die a landless king, in a litter.’115
Alas for Paris’s neat formulations, John avoided the fate thus portended; making a slight recovery, he was able to ride the last few miles to Newark on an ‘ambling nag’. But there, in the bishop of Lincoln’s castle, he collapsed and took to his bed. It is possible that he then suffered at least one heart attack, but the paucity of records and the crudity of medieval medical diagnosis makes certainty on the cause of death impossible. The abbot of Croxton, who had a reputation as a doctor and healer, was sent for but could do little except offer words of spiritual comfort and persuade John to confess and take the last sacraments.116 He named his son Henry as his heir and extracted an oath of fealty to him from the assembled lords. Then he appointed William Marshal as regent and guardian of his two sons (the younger, Richard, was at Corfe Castle). He also dictated a brief will, expressing ritual remorse for his sins but not, contrary to the legend, forgiving the barons. He also asked to be buried in the Church of the Blessed Virgin at St Wulfstan in Worcester.117 Shortly after midnight, in the early hours of 19 October 1216, John died; perhaps appropriately a strong gale howled outside. The abbot of Croxton took away the king’s heart and intestines and had the body hastily embalmed.118 Little sorrow was in evidence around the deathbed. A monk named John of Savigny, who came to Newark at daybreak to mount vigil over the body and say Mass for the king’s soul, testified that the sole interest of John’s household seemed to be to make away with as much loot as they could before some official arrived to seal the royal chambers.119 John’s corpse was then richly caparisoned, and a company of his mercenaries in full armour escorted it on the long journey from Newark to Worcester. There they laid it before the altar of St Wulfstan.
The death of John ‘stilled war’s raging storm’, as Wendover put it,120 in the sense that the barons had no compelling reason to oppose the coronation of his nine-year-old son Henry. The real loser by the king’s death was Prince Louis, as one by one the English rebels gradually drifted back into a grudging fealty to his son and the new regime headed by William Marshal. Louis found himself deserted on all sides, particularly by the clergy, and his claims to the throne widely regarded as nugatory.121 The crucial turning point was a meeting of magnates at Bristol on 11 November, when Magna Carta was reissued in the young king’s name. A few of the more radical clauses of the Charter were omitted or held in abeyance, but its essential spirit remained.122 Louis’s only chance now was to achieve some striking success that would win over the still large number of fence-sitting waverers. Any chance of this disappeared when William Marshal decided to take vigorous steps to expel the French invaders. Lincoln Castle still held out, and in May Marshal and a strong army burst through the French lines to relieve it; in a short but bloody battle Louis’s knights were routed and his infantrymen cut down ‘like pigs’ in the streets of Lincoln. 123 The defeat at Lincoln on 20 May 1217 effectively ended Louis’s hopes, and the coup de grâce came shortly afterwards when a second invasion fleet under the infamous Eustace the Monk was heavily defeated at sea by Hubert de Burgh and Richard of Chilham; Eustace was taken and beheaded and his corpse dragged through the streets of Canterbury.124 Louis promptly ended the siege of Dover and entered peace talks with William Marshal. He managed to avoid humiliation in the Treaty of Lambeth and secretly received 10,000 marks compensation for abandoning his claim to the English throne. Louis returned to France, campaigned in the Cathar region of Toulouse,125 and survived to be a shortlived king of France (1223-26) after the death of h
is father. But John, by his opportune death, ensured that his son, Henry III, would succeed to become one of the longest-reigning of all English monarchs (1216-72). Truly it could be said of John that nothing in his life became him like the leaving it.
20
Richard and John, Conclusion
IT IS A STRANGE thing to be at once the victim of academic orthodoxies and political correctness, but such appears to be the fate of Richard the Lionheart. No English (or later British) monarch ever made the impact on his or her contemporaries that Richard I made on his. His fame and reputation were known in lands from the Orkneys to the Atlas Mountains and from Cork to Baghdad. He had a direct or indirect impact on the politics of many different lands: Scotland, Ireland, France, Flanders, Spain, Germany, Austria, Italy, Sicily, Cyprus, Byzantium and the Middle East. At the same time he held together an unwieldy Angevin empire that was beginning to come under severe threat from the Capetian dynasty in France. His achievements as a warrior were stupendous. And yet in the twentieth century his star dimmed even as his brother John’s rose. His very status as a military hero made him suspect and out of line with the main currents in academic thought. The ‘great man’ theory of history was suspect to Marxists, who stressed instead socio-economic structures and class struggle; his very machismo was a standing affront to feminists; structuralists denied the importance of the human subject anyway; while psychoanalysis often unduly stressed the psychopathological element in heroes and rulers, to the point where one recent writer can with a straight face refer to Richard as ‘to modern minds . . . a kind of maniac’.1 At the same time Richard is indelibly associated with the Crusades, which to modern sensibilities are the high point of western imperialism and racism - a naked attempt to apply supposedly superior military technology for the purpose of loot, rapine and economic exploitation. Moreover, from the 1960s on, the idea of heroism itself became suspect, and the courage evinced by those who fought in 1939-45 for the very freedom to be sceptical about courage is often dismissed with a quiet contempt. Liberals like the idea that between the so-called hero and the so-called coward there is not the thickness of a sheet of paper. Political correctness, and the feeling that we would all do better if we remained quietly in our rooms, shades into Little Englanderism. Richard is condemned for his exotic foreign adventures and blamed for not being an effective king of England. It has become a cliché of commentary on the Lionheart to point out po-facedly that he spent no more than six months in England. Typical is this, from a widely-used and influential textbook: ‘He used England as a bank on which to draw and overdraw in order to finance his ambitious exploits abroad.’2
Richard & John: Kings at War Page 63