by David Boyle
As Henry was embarking on his successful invasion, the Austrian share of the ransom money had also arrived in Vienna. Leopold immediately put it to work to pay masons to build a proper stone wall to defend the city and a new military colony on the marshy plain of Steinfeld to the south, called Wiener Neustadt. The new town was designed as a major fortification to prevent incursions from Hungary and was laid out like a parallelogram, with four main streets converging on a rectangular plaza in the centre, and a canal that took river water into the city and into a moat between the inner and outer walls. With its strong new walls, the money also transformed Vienna from a small outpost of Western Christendom into a splendid trading city. The influx of stone masons had a more lasting effect. Once they were lodged in Vienna, they began to be employed to rebuild the city's wooden houses in stone, changing its character for ever.
One of the last letters Richard wrote after his second coronation in Winchester, before leaving for Normandy, was to the Pope, asking him to put pressure on Leopold of Austria to liberate the hostages and to return his part of the ransom. By June 1194 the elderly Celestine was openly intriguing against the emperor and there was no point in pretending otherwise — imperial agents were imprisoning or slitting the throats of the agents of the Pope. So finally Celestine did as he was asked. He sent Adelard, Bishop of Verona, to remonstrate with the Duke of Austria, urging him not just to pay back the money but to go on crusade for the same length of time that Richard had spent in prison. It was a tough year in Austria, with a succession of floods and plagues, but Leopold resisted the injunction. He had already spent 26,000 marks andwas expecting another 20,000 when Richard's niece Eleanor of Brittany arrived, as agreed, to marry his son. In fact, seven months after Richard's release, he was becoming nervous that Eleanor would never arrive and he sent one of the hostages — Baldwin of Bethune — home to England with a message for Richard, threatening to execute the other hostages unless she was sent.
The threat worked. Baldwin set off back towards Austria in December, bringing with him not just Eleanor of Brittany but also the Cypriot princess, Isaac Comnenus's daughter, who had been released under the same agreement. He was in Germany when a message reached him that changed everything, and he turned straight round and took the two princesses back to England.
What had happened was that, the same day that the emperor's young son had been born, 28 December, Leopold had fallen from his horse while he was out riding near Graz and the horse had crushed his foot. The following day the foot was black and his surgeons advised an immediate amputation. Unfortunately for Leopold, nobody in his entourage could summon the strength of mind necessary to carry out the painful operation. Not even his son, Frederick, was prepared to do it, and the smell from the gangrenous limb was growing worse. Eventually Leopold was forced to hold an axe against his ankle himself, while a servant drove it through his leg with a mallet. The amputation took three heavy blows, and by then it was too late. The gangrene had spread upwards.
When he realized the Duke was dying, Adalbert, Archbishop of Salzburg, hurried to his bedside and heard his full confession, which included a promise to return the hostages and the 4,000 marks left of the ransom money that had not yet been spent. Leopold died on 31 December and was buried in the habit of a Cistercian monk. At the graveside in Heiligenkreuz, Adalbert forced Frederick to repeat his father's deathbed oath. One of Leopold's minnesingers, Reinmar of Hagenau, wrote a moving song about his death. 'Summer has come,' he wrote, but 'what use to me this time of bliss, since he of all joys Lord Liutpolt in earth lies, who never for one day I saw sorrowful.'
At least one of Leopold's hostages had a lasting effect on his hosts. The first Arthurian story in German about Lancelot, a poem in rhymed couples called Lanzelet by the Swiss priest Ulrich von Zatzithoven — which has Lancelot kidnapped as a baby and raised as a sea fairy — was translated from an Anglo-Norman manuscript brought to Austria by Hugh de Morville. Hugh was the hostage who was probably the same man who had helped to murder Thomas Becket in his youth, and was expiating his sin — not just by acting as a hostage for the king but by spreading the Grail legend across Germany.*
Tancred and Leopold were not the only ones to die. It is a strange irony about the story of Richard's imprisonment, but within five years many of the leading figures in the tale were dead.
The first to go was Saladin. He had intended to make a pilgrimage to Mecca as soon as Richard left Palestine, but — although he was completely exhausted — first he had to visit Damascus, where he found four years of work that had built up there without him while he was with the army. His health began to fail through the winter of 1192, and on 19 February 1193 — while Richard was still in Diirnstein — he came home with a fever from a bitterly cold day out meeting returning pilgrims. On 1 March he became unconscious. Two days later, while most of his closest associates had left his bedside to seize power, and as the words from the Koran were read over him — 'There is no God but God and in him do I trust' — he opened his eyes briefly, smiled and died. Saladin was devout, trustworthy and merciful, but his legacy did not survive him. The empire he had built began to crumble under the combined rule of his seventeen sons and the unity of the Islamic world was fractured. Acre did not fall to the Muslims until 1291.*
In Germany, Richard's brother-in-law Henry the Lion had been reconciled to the emperor as part of Richard's diplomatic intrigue. They were due to meet the month of Richard's release, but the Duke of Saxony fell off his horse shortly before and was taken to the monastery of Walkenried. Believing this to be a trick, the emperor postponed their meeting. But the day before Easter 1195, Henry the Lion had a stroke. He died in August in Brunswick Castle and was succeeded by his son Henry, now also Count Palatine.
In northern Syria Isaac Comnenus, the former ruler of Cyprus, died suddenly and mysteriously, apparently poisoned. He had been released at last from the Hospitaller castle of Marqab as part of the ransom agreement and had made his way directly to Constantinople, where he began to collect allies for an attempt on the Byzantine throne. His death took place in the summer of 1195, as he tried to involve the Sultan of Konya in his plot.
Eighteen months later saw the end of William Longchamp, still chancellor of England, sent on yet another mission by the king -this time to put his case to the Pope in a dispute with Walter of Coutances over the ownership of the land where Chateau Gaillard was being built. But Longchamp was sick by the time he reached Poitiers and died there in January 1197. He was buried in a nearby Cistercian abbey, but his heart was taken to Ely — where he had been bishop — and was buried in front of the altar. He was mourned, according to the chronicles, by nobody except his loving chaplain Milo.
But there was more death to come. The next surprise took place in Acre, where Richard's nephew Henry of Champagne, left behind as king ofjerusalem until he could return to Outremer, was facing an attack on Jaffa by Saladin's brother al-Adil — part of a series of skirmishes with some recently arrived German crusaders. On 10 September 1197 he gathered what troops he could in his palace courtyard in the city and reviewed them from a window in the upper gallery. While this was happening, some envoys from Pisa offering reinforcements were ushered into the room. Henry turned to greet them but, for a brief second, he forgot where he was and stepped backwards. As he hurtled out of the window, his dwarf servant Scarlet grabbed his clothes in a desperate attempt to rescue him, but Henry was a large man and he was too heavy, and Scarlet was carried out of the window and on to the pavement below. Both were killed instantly.
His heartbroken widow, Isabella, with three small daughters — one of them by Conrad of Montferrat — was still heiress to the throne ofjerusalem, but the barons could not decide whom she should marry. On the advice of Richard's friend the Archbishop of Mainz, they finally offered the throne — and Isabella — to the recently widowed King Amalric of Cyprus, the older brother of Guy of Lusignan. So the beautiful Isabella found herself married off for the fourth time, but even her fourth husband
did not last long. He died in 1205 in Acre after eating too much fish. She reigned in her own right briefly and died shortly afterwards at the age of only thirty-three, and was succeeded by Conrad's daughter Maria, then only thirteen.
At the height of his powers, wealthy beyond his dreams thanks to Richard's ransom, and still in Sicily planning his crusade, the Emperor Henry VI was also feeling unwell. In the spring of n 97 he had uncovered another plot to assassinate him — almost certainly with the tacit support not just of the Pope but also of his wife, Constance. The next six months were spent in the brutal hunting and execution of the rebels: one of them was skinned alive and another one crowned using iron nails through the temple. Then, on 28 September 1197, Henry died unexpectedly of fever — probably malaria — in Messina. On his deathbed, he offered to compensate Richard for the money that had been paid. He was only thirty-one. Pope Celestine seized his opportunity for revenge andforbade the burial of his body until the ransom money had been returned.
Henry's son, Frederick, was only three, and was too young to be elected to the position of Holy Roman Emperor. The Archbishop of Cologne and his northern allies invited Richard to Germany to take part in the election, but he decided not to go. Perhaps it was just too soon after his release to face a visit to the land of his imprisonment. Instead he sent two of his comrades from the journey across the Alps, Philip of Poitou and Baldwin of Bethune, to represent him. Before the election there were even rumours that Richard would be offered the imperial throne himself. In the event, two rival elections were held, the first early in 1198. One of them elected Henry VI's younger brother, Philip of Swabia, with the support of the king of France; he was assassinated a few years later. Three months later, in June 1198, and packed by Richard's northern allies, the German court elected Richard's favourite nephew, Otto of Brunswick, who was already both Earl of York and Count of Poitou. Payments in silver to facilitate his successful bid began flowing once more out of England and down the Rhine. He was crowned Otto IV in Aachen later that month. 'O splendid deed of a splendid man,' wrote one French chronicler about Richard at the time, 'who acquired the empire of the whole world for his nephew.' But although Otto did rule outright for some years, the ensuing struggle between the rival claimants to the imperial throne lasted fifteen years and devastated large parts of Germany, causing widespread inflation and famine.
Six months before, on 8 January 1198, Pope Celestine finally died in Rome at the age of ninety-four. His enemies whispered that this had been caused by complications from syphilis. The cardinals elected the vegetarian and teetotaller John de Salerno to succeed him, but he refused the position. After another round of voting, Celestine's successor was named as the 38-year-old Lotario de Segni. He took the title Innocent III and became one of the most powerful and ambitious Popes of the Middle Ages. His first act was to allow the burial of Henry VI's body, which had then been decomposing for eight months. His second was to crown thechild Frederick II as king of Sicily at the age of four. He then took up the cause of abandoned wives and widows like Philip's Ingeborg of Denmark, Raymond VI's Beatrix, now shut up in a convent, and Richard's Berengaria.
The curse of Blondel's song, which saw the deaths of so many players in the saga within five years of Richard's release, had certainly afflicted Richard's friends and allies — Longchamp, Henry the Lion, Henry of Champagne and Tancred of Sicily. But most of all, it had destroyed his enemies. One by one, those who were responsible for his imprisonment, or who had failed to act to shorten it, had died.* He also had reason to be satisfied with his progress in France, forcing Philip back in Normandy, securing Aquitaine and his southern possessions. But it was an intense, exhausting and increasingly bitter process. Richard's strategy, isolating Philip with his intricate diplomatic alliances across northern Europe, was paying off. But Philip's strategy — encouraging dissent inside Aquitaine and the south — was effective too. So it was that, in March 1199, with the peace negotiated by Peter of Capua agreed, Richard marched south to deal with the growing difficulties there, including the disaffected Aimar, Viscount of Limoges.
Tradition has it that Richard's visit to the viscount's castle at Chalus-Chabrol was a greedy bid to seize some treasure that had been discovered there, but modern scholarship has undermined the story as a deliberate piece of misinformation. The dispute with Limoges was an old-fashioned one between vassal and overlord, part of the complex series of competing strategies that was drawing in castles and territories right across what we now know as France. After supper on 26 March, when the daylight was beginning to fade, Richard left his tent to join Mercadier outside the walls of the castle, to give orders to the sappers who were tunnelling underneath and to practise with the crossbow. He was not wearingany armour, except for an iron helmet, though as usual a large shield was carried in front of him. When he reached the castle -actually just a tiny stone tower containing just two knights and a handful of soldiers — he was told that nobody inside had summoned up the nerve to show themselves on the walls all day, except for one man with a crossbow, who was protecting himself with nothing except a frying pan. And suddenly there he was again. As the courageous crossbowman shot off another bolt, Richard could not help applauding, and was therefore just a fraction of a second late before ducking behind the shield. The bolt penetrated his left shoulder.
Not wanting to cause any alarm, Richard went back to his tent as calmly as he could as though nothing had happened. He tried to pull out the bolt himself, but it just broke off in his hand. A surgeon arrived and removed it by the flickering light of torches, fighting his way through the excess fat on Richard's torso, and bandaged up the wound. On closer examination, the bolt turned out to have been shot originally from his own side, collected up and returned from whence it came.
Richard knew all about gangrene. He had seen it creep into the wounds too many times to have any illusions when the signs began to appear clearly on his own shoulder, and he knew he was going to die. He wrote to his mother — now withdrawn from the world at the abbey in Fontevrault — and urged her to come as quickly as she could. In the meantime he stayed in his tent, allowing only four people inside, to make sure the news did not leak out. When the castle fell a few days later, he asked to see the crossbowman with the frying pan — known variously as Peter Basil or Bertrand de Gurdon — and he was ushered into the tent.
'What wrong have I done you that you should kill me?' he asked.
'With your own hand you killed my father and two brothers and you intended to kill me,' said Bertrand. 'Take your revenge in any way you like. Now that I have seen you on your deathbed I shall gladly endure any torment that you may devise.'
Richard forgave him and set him free. He then confessed his sins and was given the last rites. He died at 7 p.m. on 6 April, at the age of forty-one. It was just five years and three weeks since he had landed at Sandwich. After his death, Mercadier recaptured Bertrand the crossbowman and had him flayed to death.
Richard left his jewels to his favourite nephew, Otto, now Holy Roman Emperor, and asked for his brain and entrails to be buried at Charroux, on the border between Poitou and Limousin, his heart at Rouen and the rest of his body — together with the crown and regalia he had worn in Winchester Cathedral — at Fontevrault at his father's feet. The saintly Hugh of Lincoln, Richard's self-appointed father confessor, was near enough to Fontevrault to preside over the funeral mass on Palm Sunday, and hurried north as soon as it was over to break the news to Berengaria.
Eleanor had arrived in time, but John was too late. He had received an urgent message from his mother, sent in Richard's final hours, telling him to take control of the treasure fortress of Chinon. He arrived after the funeral was over and hammered on the door of the abbey, demanding to be allowed to see his brother's tomb. He was told that the abbess was away and nobody could be admitted without her permission. Instead he stood on the porch with Bishop Hugh, took the amulet from his neck and told him that, as long as he owned it, the Plantagenets would never lose t
heir empire. Hugh urged him to trust in God not in stones. Three days later, John was subjected to a long sermon from the bishop about the difference between good and bad kings, and shocked the congregation by interrupting to tell him to hurry up because it was dinner time.
William the Marshal took the news to Hubert Walter, then in Normandy. Late at night, four days after Richard's death, he knocked on his lodging door in Vaudreuil and immediately began discussing the problem of the succession. Hubert Walter wanted Richard's nephew Arthur of Brittany to succeed, but the Marshal wanted John. 'So be it then,' said Walter. 'But mark my words, Marshal, you will never regret anything in your life as much asthis.'* Walter pursed his lips with disapproval as he crowned John as Duke of Normandy in Rouen shortly afterwards. The ducal lance slipped through John's fingers as it was handed to him, because he was laughing so much with his friends in the pews opposite, and clattered on to the flagstones.
Richard's last days had coincided with a crisis in the short marriage of his sister Joanna and Raymond VI of Toulouse, which — despite its romantic start — had become bitterly unhappy. She had already given birth to one son, the future Raymond VII -another nephew of Richard's destined to play a heroic role in the next century — and was pregnant again. But her husband had abandoned her to deal with his barons and she had fled for protection to her brother. Joanna managed to find Eleanor, still in Aquitaine after Richard's funeral, and was told the terrible news of her brother's death. This seems to have been the final straw for her. She went to Fontevrault, demanded to be made a nun — despite being married and pregnant — and she and the baby both died during the birth a few months later in Beaucaire in September 1199. The child lived long enough to be christened Richard.