The Greatest Knight

by Thomas Asbridge

  Angevin authority held strong in this well-defended metropolis, but William was to discover that the Aquitanians were a proud, fiercely independent and quarrelsome people; little used to bending the knee to anyone, and certainly not happy to bow down before an outsider from the north like Henry II. Beyond Poitiers, in the neighbouring regions of Poitou, Angoulême and the Limousin, lawlessness was endemic. Here recalcitrant warlords expected to assert their own will and many had built small castles to dominate the untamed landscape. The Lusignans of Poitou were a case in point – a minor noble family with a small parcel of ancestral lands, centred on a stout fortress just fifteen miles south-west of Poitiers. They were hardly one of the great aristocratic houses of the south, but the new head of the dynasty, Geoffrey, was hungry for advancement. He was a fearsome warrior and had an equally ambitious and acquisitive brother, Guy, by his side. In early 1168 they began raiding the region around Poitiers, riding through the royal domains in a ‘violent manner’, pillaging as they went.

  This was precisely the kind of disorder that Henry II was unwilling to tolerate. When he arrived, with Earl Patrick’s military household in tow, the king fell on the Lusignans like a hammer. William Marshal now received an object lesson in the gritty realities of medieval warfare. This would be no chivalric contest fought on an open battlefield. Instead, Henry’s aim was to inflict maximum damage on the Poitevin rebels, using overwhelming force and brutal tactics to devastate their resources, thus crippling their military capabilities.

  A mainstay of this type of campaigning was the chevauchée or destructive horse raid, in which packs of mounted knights conducted vicious sorties into enemy territory, ravaging the landscape by torching crops and razing settlements. The primary victims of these ‘scorched-earth’ attacks were local peasants, farmers and townspeople, and it was they who suffered now as William and his fellow knights ranged across Poitou ‘destroying [the Lusignans’] towns and villages’. This was sadistic and remorseless work, but at times of war most twelfth-century nobles seem to have paid scant regard to the suffering endured by the ‘lower orders’ of society. No evidence survives to indicate how Marshal reacted to this first taste of open raiding – the History passed over this phase of the Aquitanian conflict in silence, and its details have only survived through a brief notice in a contemporary Norman account.

  Savage as this type of warfare may seem to modern sensibilities, chevauchées were employed in the vast majority of military campaigns conducted in twelfth-century Europe. Veteran commanders like Henry II and Earl Patrick knew that they were the fastest and safest way to bring any enemy to his knees. As the History later observed, ‘when the poor can no longer reap the harvest from their fields, then they can no longer pay their rent and this in turn impoverishes their lord’. The technique certainly worked for them in 1168. The Lusignans’ ‘rebellion’ was crushed in less than a month, Geoffrey and Guy submitted, their castle was surrendered and Poitou returned to a semblance of order. But Henry also recognised that this type of sharp punitive enforcement could not provide a lasting solution, so he turned to his wife. She had given birth to their eighth child, the boy John, in 1167 and was ready to play a more active role in the governance of the realm. The hope was that, as a native of Aquitaine, Eleanor might be able to inspire a greater measure of loyalty and compliance within the province. She was installed in Poitiers, with Earl Patrick as her lieutenant, while the king left for the north to hold a peace conference with Louis of France.

  Treachery on the road

  In early April 1168, William Marshal was guarding Eleanor of Aquitaine’s royal cortège alongside the rest of Patrick of Salisbury’s retinue, as the queen travelled through the forest-cloaked hills of Poitou. The purpose of her journey is unclear, but there seems to have been little sense of apprehension within the party on that spring day. Patrick and his men were not dressed in armour and only a small number of knights were present. In all probability, Eleanor had been touring the recently subdued Lusignan lands and was now returning to Poitiers.

  Without any warning the small column was attacked, seemingly from the rear, by a large party of heavily armed Lusignan warriors led by the brothers Geoffrey and Guy. The History of William Marshal described this as a calculated ‘ambush’, and although some aspects of its account can be verified in other contemporary chronicles, the exact causes of the sudden confrontation remain unclear and would later be hotly contested. Perhaps enraged by Henry’s recent campaign, the Lusignans were probably hoping to capture some valuable hostages, thereby securing ransoms and gaining leverage in future negotiations. They may well have imagined that Queen Eleanor herself could be taken prisoner.

  Earl Patrick recognised at once that his forces were heavily outnumbered and immediately ‘sent the Queen on to the castle’ – probably in Poitiers itself. Patrick, William Marshal and the remaining members of the Salisbury mesnie now had to hold the road so that Eleanor could reach safety. Within moments a vicious skirmish began as Patrick, still un-armoured and riding only his palfrey, cried out for his warhorse to be brought forward and ‘launched himself furiously into [the] midst’ of the Lusignan troops. In the heated confusion of this first contact, the earl seems to have been isolated from the majority of his knights, as many of the Salisbury warriors, William included, were holding back, trying to hurriedly don armour. Nonetheless, Patrick seems to have survived the first burst of fighting unscathed and, as his destrier arrived, he leapt down and prepared to mount his warhorse and re-enter the fray. He was halfway into the saddle, his back turned to the enemy, when disaster struck. A Lusignan knight drove forward and skewered the earl with a piercing lance strike; un-armoured, as he was, the point of the weapon drove straight through his body. The History described, in horrified tones, how as a result of this terrible blow from a ‘treacherous assassin’ Patrick ‘died on the spot’.

  The world must have stopped for a fraction of a second, as the enormity of what had just happened dawned on both sides. It is exceptionally unlikely that the earl of Salisbury’s death was ever part of the Lusignans’ plans. Men of Patrick’s standing were simply too valuable to kill in such an offhand manner and, in any case, everyone knew that properly armoured knights were virtually immune to severe injury. In those first moments, Geoffrey and Guy may already have understood that this dark deed would have grave consequences – certainly they would later argue that the incident had been a terrible accident, not deliberate murder.

  But for the remaining Salisbury knights – William Marshal in their midst – that was exactly what it looked like. A wave of shock and blinding rage washed over them. According to the History, William ‘almost went out of his mind with grief’, despairing that ‘he had not been able to reach the man who killed [Patrick] in time’ to halt his attack. By now Marshal was wearing a mail hauberk, but he ‘did not wait until he was fully armed’; instead, possessed by an almost berserk fury, he charged into the frantic mêlée, ‘bent on exacting violent revenge’. William fought first with his lance and then, after his horse was killed under him, with his sword, scything down enemies and their mounts. His biographer likened him to a ‘starving lion’ ripping into its prey. But the number of opponents ranged against him eventually proved overwhelming. With the other Salisbury troops either beaten into retreat or battered into submission, Marshal took his last stand, backed up against a hedge, like ‘a boar before a pack of wolves’, desperately trying to hold back a ring of foes at sword-point. It was only when a Lusignan knight circled round to attack from behind – shoving a lance through the hedgerow that ‘went clean through [William’s] thigh and out the other side’ – that he was felled.

  When Marshal finally collapsed, the Lusignans warily closed in to take him prisoner. The lance was pulled from his thigh, and ‘once it was out, blood ran from his wounds down his leggings and breeches’, leaving ‘the whole ground beneath him . . . covered in blood’. As the physical pain of his injury hit home, a dreadful realisation must have settled over William. In th
is far-flung, unfamiliar corner of the Angevin realm he had lost everything; the lifeless body of his lord and uncle lay just yards away. The raw anguish of that loss can only have been deepened by the certain knowledge that, with his patron’s demise, his own future lay in ruins. All his hopes of security and success had come to nothing. Marshal was a largely unknown and severely wounded knight, and the prisoner of a desperate band of rogue Poitevins – men who could surely guess that they would now be labelled outlaws. As the Lusignans prepared to take flight they made no move to tend to William’s injury. Instead, his blood-soaked body was unceremoniously strapped to an ass and led off into the wilds of Aquitaine.

  4

  THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

  William Marshal was fortunate to survive his encounter with the Lusignans and the long, painful months of captivity that followed. Much of the time he was roughly treated, even by the standards of the day – led, astride an ass, on a seemingly endless journey through ‘the length and breadth’ of Poitou’s densely forested hills by his fugitive captors, the grave wounds to his thigh untended. The History of William Marshal described how none of the Lusignans ‘spared him a thought as they jolted along through the wooded land like men with much to fear’, because there ‘was no safety for them in any spot’. As wanted outlaws, their first concern was to evade Angevin retribution, so they remained constantly on the move, never staying in one place more than a night. Their prisoner, William, had little value – no one expected his ransom to be paid and a knight of such modest status was of limited use as a bargaining chip. They were not so vicious as to butcher him in cold blood, but would make scant effort to save his life.

  In the first days after Earl Patrick’s death, William therefore had to fight for his own survival. At first, he fashioned strips of his own clothing into makeshift bandages, hoping to arrest his bleeding. Later he begged the Lusignans for a scrap of sackcloth and ‘swabbed and plugged his wounds with it’, but these dressings were soon ‘completely soaked in the blood that welled from his body’, and Marshal had to wash them as best he could and then reuse them. It is a remarkable testament to William’s physical resilience that he did not succumb either to blood loss or infection. Years later, these desperate days became a half-remembered blur of agonising pain and incessant discomfort, but Marshal’s recollections were punctuated by two notable incidents.

  The first had the air of an embroidered chivalric tale, though it could be true. According to the History, one of the Lusignans’ allies offered them sanctuary for the night and the ‘noble-hearted, kind lady’ of the house apparently took pity on William: ‘she brought a loaf of bread from her room, removed the inside with her fingers and then filled the crust . . . with fine linen bandages’. Once this gift had been smuggled to Marshal he was better able to dress his wounds and his condition slowly improved. The second story is curious and comical, but perhaps offers an authentic sense of William’s intensely competitive personality. Weeks had passed and Marshal was all but ‘cured of the wounds which had given him such great pains’. He seems to have become more familiar with his captors and was allowed some freedom to move about the camp. On this particular night, some of the Lusignan warriors were passing the evening playing ‘la pere geteient’ – a simple game in which each man tried to throw a heavy stone as far as possible. William could not resist asking for a turn, but although his effort supposedly won the contest, it also caused his wounds to ‘burst open again’, leaving him in excruciating agony and delaying his recovery.

  For William, this whole period must have been a nightmare of bleak uncertainty; his mind darkened by a growing suspicion that he had been forgotten and discarded by his Angevin overlords. But then, abruptly, Marshal’s fortunes improved beyond all expectation. News arrived that Queen Eleanor was willing to pay a ransom in return for his release. No surviving evidence explains this sudden decision: perhaps William had caught Eleanor’s eye during the first stage of the Aquitanian campaign, or it may be that she had heard of his heroics during the roadside ambush. For whatever reason, William was now freed into her care and, better still, once fully healed he was offered a place in the queen’s own military retinue. This was a spectacular transformation – the forsaken captive had become knight to one of the most eminent women in the world. William soon found himself dressed in fine clothes and newly armed, furnished with horses and money. As Marshal’s biographer put it, he could hardly believe his luck, reckoning he was now ‘in the gold’.

  TO SERVE THE YOUNG KING

  Almost nothing is known of the next two years of William Marshal’s life. The History suggested that ‘he moved about through many lands’ seeking ‘fame and fortune’, but it is also clear that he remained a member of Eleanor’s household. Perhaps William did attend tournaments in this period, but in all likelihood he stayed in Aquitaine, helping to impose Angevin authority in the region.* By the time of his release, Earl Patrick’s body had been buried with great honour in the church of St Hilary in Poitiers, but the feud with the Lusignans had not been laid to rest with him. Fighting continued across Aquitaine until the summer of 1169, but Poitou and the surrounding provinces were eventually subdued, though Geoffrey and Guy of Lusignan remained free.

  One thing is certain: by 1170, Marshal had cemented his reputation with Queen Eleanor as a valiant and skilful warrior and was regarded as a trusted member of her entourage. He may well have come to the notice of her husband, King Henry II himself. William now had the favour of the Angevin royal family. In the space of just four years, he had gone from being a penniless knight, shunned by the Tancarville household, to an esteemed warrior serving Europe’s most powerful dynasty.

  The full scale of William’s mercurial ascent became clear when he accompanied Eleanor of Aquitaine back to England in the summer of 1170. The queen had travelled to London to attend the coronation of her son, Henry, on 14 June in Westminster Abbey – an event that would shape Angevin history and change the course of William Marshal’s own career. Henry II was determined to avoid both the uncertainty that had followed his grandfather King Henry I’s death and a return to the ruinous days of civil war witnessed during King Stephen’s reign. The succession plans for the new Angevin dynasty were to be clear and indisputable, and the king’s eldest surviving son and namesake stood at the very heart of these designs. In 1170 the young Henry was just fifteen years old, but already tall and incredibly handsome. Contemporaries admired his broad shoulders, long elegant neck, pale freckled skin, striking blue eyes and golden red hair. It was as if a great mythical hero of the ancient world had been brought to life; one who possessed Paris’ good looks, Hector’s bravery and the unrivalled martial skill of Achilles – at least, that was the view espoused by one of Henry II’s fawning courtiers.

  Henry the Young King

  This dashing prince became one of the central figures of William Marshal’s life and, for the next decade and more, the pair would be virtually inseparable. Henry had been groomed for power from an early age. At first, his father, Henry II, was content to use him more as a pawn in the great rivalry with Capetian France. To secure an advantageous truce with King Louis VII in 1160 guaranteeing Angevin rights to the disputed territory of the Norman Vexin, King Henry married his son – then barely just five years old – to Louis’ daughter Marguerite (a product of Louis’ second marriage to Constanza of Castile). Marguerite was even younger than the boy Henry – two years old at most and little more than a baby. The wedding was a scandal, being in direct contravention of Church law, and it was later joked not only that Marguerite had been presented in a cot, but that both children wailed through the ceremony.

  Nonetheless, as the years passed, Henry II began to prioritise his son’s education – sending him to be schooled for a time in Thomas Becket’s household – and to involve him in acts of governance. In January 1164, young Henry (then eight) attended a great assembly of magnates and churchmen at Clarendon. The meeting confirmed a document listing the ‘customs and privileges of the crown’ (
what became known as the ‘Constitutions of Clarendon’) and care was taken to record that this controversial legislation had been drawn up ‘in the presence of Lord Henry, and of this father, the lord king’. By this time, Henry was already entertaining the idea of having his eldest son crowned and anointed while he himself lived, so that the boy’s status as heir could not be disputed. Indeed, financial records show money being spent in 1162 to prepare a special diminutive crown and set of royal regalia. However, after Thomas Becket’s alienation from King Henry, the scheme had to be put on hold because the rite of coronation had long been deemed the archbishop of Canterbury’s prerogative.

  The clearest expression of Henry II’s master plan for the Angevin Empire came in January 1169 at a grand peace conference with King Louis VII, convened at Montmirail, to the east of Le Mans. In a wide-ranging treaty, King Henry specified without equivocation that his eldest son would succeed him as king of England, duke of Normandy and count of Anjou. Provisions were also made for two of Henry II’s other sons: Richard, the next eldest, was to inherit the duchy of Aquitaine, his mother Eleanor’s homeland, while Geoffrey was designated as heir to the duchy of Brittany. In return for Louis’ confirmation of these arrangements, the Angevins paid him homage for their Continental French lands and Henry agreed to another marriage alliance with the Capetians, this time involving young Richard’s betrothal to another of Louis’ daughters, Alice.

  It seemed after Montmirail that the Angevin house had been put in order, though some questions remained. No territory had been allocated to Henry II’s youngest son John, then barely two years of age, earning him the nickname ‘Lackland’, and the intended balance of power between Henry’s heirs was also unclear. Even so, the king appeared to have shown commendable care and foresight. By this stage he had also started marrying off his daughters to secure valued political alliances. In 1168 Matilda wed Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony, cousin of the German emperor – even though she was twelve and he almost forty. Plans were also afoot to finalise the younger Eleanor’s betrothal to the Iberian King Alfonso VIII of Castile.