The Greatest Knight

by Thomas Asbridge

  William had never fought a campaign under Richard’s command, but once the siege of Nottingham began on 25 March 1194, the Lion heart’s qualities were immediately apparent. As an isolated outpost, Nottingham’s garrison had no real hope of victory, but the king orchestrated their defeat with chilling efficiency. He arrived at the head of a sizeable military force, and had the tools to crack the castle’s defences, having summoned siege machines and trebuchets from Leicester, twenty-two carpenters from Northampton, and his master engineer, Urric, from London. The garrison offered stern resistance, but on the first day of fighting the outer battlements fell. As had become his custom, Richard threw himself into the fray wearing only a ‘light hauberk [and] an iron cap’, but was protected from heavy crossbow fire by a number of ‘strong, thick and broad’ shields, borne by his bodyguards. By evening, many of the defenders were left ‘wounded and crushed’, which was, the History noted, ‘a source of great pleasure to those outside’, while a number of prisoners were also taken.

  Having made a clear statement of intent, the Lionheart sent messengers to the garrison in the morning, instructing them to capitulate to their rightful king. At first they refused, apparently unconvinced that the long-absent Richard had indeed returned. In response, the Lionheart deployed his trebuchets, then ordered gibbets to be raised and hanged a number of his captives in full sight of the fortress. Surrender followed shortly thereafter. According to Marshal’s biographer, the soldiers within were spared by the ‘compassionate’ king because he was ‘so gentle and full of mercy’. Other sources make it clear that at least two of John’s hated lackeys met their deaths soon after: one being imprisoned and starved, the other flayed alive.

  With this pocket of resistance overwhelmed, Richard was able to dedicate the next month to the more refined business of royal administration, reasserting crown authority within the realm. The Lionheart was eager to direct his attention towards the Continent, but with Eleanor’s encouragement, he made time for a public crown-wearing ceremony at Winchester on 17 April. After long years of absence, in which his English subjects had bankrolled his crusade and ransom, the Queen Mother rightly judged this ritual affirmation of sovereign power to be a politic move. With the kingdom returned to order, Richard appointed Archbishop Hubert Walter as his new justiciar, and empowered Geoffrey FitzPeter to serve as his deputy.

  William Marshal’s days as a ‘co-justiciar’ were over. The king needed all of his leading commanders for the coming war with the French, so William left the care of his English estates in the hands of Isabel and his household officers. In mid-May 1194, Richard I set sail for Normandy with a large fleet of a hundred ships ‘laden with warriors, horses and arms’. In the course of his reign, the great warrior-king had so far spent no more than six months in England. He would never return.

  THE BATTLE FOR NORMANDY

  With the Capetians on the rampage, King Richard found his Continental lands in disarray. As one chronicler observed, Philip Augustus had now ‘stolen the greatest and best part of Normandy’, seizing Gisors and the Norman Vexin, occupying much of the duchy north-east of the Seine and threatening Rouen itself. Count John had been placed in command of the major fortress at Évreux (though his Norman county of Mortain, in the south-west, now refused to acknowledge his authority). In Touraine, Tours had declared its allegiance to the French crown and the fortress of Loches had been lost, while to the south, in Aquitaine, the counts of Angoulême and Périgord had thrown off Angevin rule.

  King Philip was busying himself with the siege of Verneuil – the formidable fortress south of Rouen – that was one of the strategic lynchpins of Normandy. Its populace had been brazen in their resistance. At one point they threw open their main gates and challenged the French monarch to lead a direct attack into the castle, but he refused to take the bait. As a veteran of the great crusader investment of Acre, Philip had gained a more acute understanding of siege-craft. He brought powerful siege-machines and stone-throwing trebuchets to bear, and deployed sappers to tunnel underneath Verneuil’s walls, undermining their foundations. As a result, a section of battlements collapsed and the castle looked to be on the brink of defeat.

  Upon his arrival at the Norman port of Barfleur, the Lionheart was greeted by a ‘great, dense, overpowering crowd of joyous folk’. Heartened by the sight of their famed crusader king, the throng was said to have chanted: ‘Good has come with all his might, now the French king will go away.’ The mob may have wanted to believe that Richard’s return presaged victory, but he was not so easily fooled. The monumental scale of the challenge now set before him would have paralysed many men. Even the Lionheart was not immune. William Marshal remained at the king’s side throughout this turbulent period and evidently recalled Richard’s disquiet, because the History noted that the monarch’s mind was ‘tormented’, and added that he ‘had not had a wink of untroubled sleep’ for days. Nonetheless, the king recognised that Normandy’s security had to be prioritised and so made haste to relieve Verneuil, travelling with Marshal and the rest of his forces through Bayeux and Caen, and on to Liseux. It was there that his brother John found him.

  The Lionheart’s arrival in Normandy shook John to his core. He had betrayed Richard’s trust and brought ruin to the Angevin realm; now a pariah, shunned in Normandy, defeated in England, the count had nowhere to turn. His ‘ally’ King Philip expected him to hold Évreux, but John realised that with his brother’s return, resistance was now all but futile. Rather than be captured, he abandoned his post and rode to Liseux. ‘Trembling with fear’, he threw himself at Richard’s feet and begged for clemency. According to the History: ‘The King lifted up by the hand his natural born brother and kissed him, saying: “John have no fear. You are a child and you had bad men looking after you. Those who thought to give you bad advice will get their just desserts!”’ At twenty-seven, John was hardly a ‘child’, but the Lionheart pardoned John’s indiscretions nonetheless, showing a remarkable lack of malice. The count was neither tried as a traitor, nor incarcerated, and though stripped of his lands and castles, he was allowed to serve in his brother’s army.*

  With John back in the fold, the king drove his troops on to relieve Verneuil. Once within striking distance, he readily outwitted his Capetian foe. Rather than commit his full strength to a frontal assault, risking heavy casualties, Richard cut Philip’s siege off at the legs. A heavily armed detachment of knights, infantry and crossbowmen were sent to break through French lines and reinforce Verneuil’s garrison; meanwhile, a second force circled east and broke the Capetians’ lines of supply. Isolated and exposed, Philip had little choice but to call off his investment on 28 May, prompting one English chronicler to proclaim that the French preferred ‘to flee rather than fight, [to their] eternal shame’. A few days later, Richard and William entered Verneuil amid uproarious celebration. The king reputedly was said to have kissed each member of the garrison in turn, one by one, in recognition of the steadfast defence they had mounted.

  Through speed of action and deft strategy, the Lionheart had scored an early and memorable victory. With a renewed sense of hope in the air, a massive Angevin army – reportedly numbering around 20,000 men – assembled at Verneuil in the weeks that followed, ready to march under Richard’s banner. The war was far from over, but at least the tide was beginning to turn. Around the same time, another success was achieved, though by questionable means. Count John had been instructed to recover Évreux for the Angevins. He had left it in the hands of a French garrison when he fled to Liseux, and they remained in control of the fortress when he returned barely a week later. According to one version of events, John launched a swingeing assault, broke into the castle and promptly had the same troops he had himself so recently commanded, rounded up and decapitated. Their heads were then paraded on spikes. This was characterised as a ‘shameful’ deed, because it transgressed the norms of war. A Breton chronicler offered an even more damaging explanation for Évreux’s capture. He asserted that, because the garrison rem
ained unaware of John’s reconciliation with Richard, the count was able to enter the castle in peace. Still posing as a Capetian ally, John sat down to feast with the troops, and only then had his own soldiers butcher the unsuspecting French. Both accounts convey the clear sense that the count was desperate to prove his military worth, bringing his brother a victory by any means, in the hope that he might recover some favour.

  In the years to come, John did slowly regain a measure of Richard’s trust, though some within the French and Angevin camps remained suspicious of his intentions and concerned by his apparent lack of judgement and integrity. Chroniclers would brand John ‘a very bad man’, and the History continued to criticise him at every turn, declaring that ‘from the heart of a bad man no good can come’. But much of this condemnation was informed by later events. Perhaps the clearest view of John’s rejuvenation towards the end of the 1190s was provided by the chronicler William of Newburgh, who died around 1198 and thus knew nothing of the count’s subsequent career. New burgh wrote that after 1194, John ‘served Richard faithfully and valiantly in the war against the king of France, thus expiating his former errors [and] completely recovering the love of his brother’.

  John remained a duplicitous schemer, but the same could be said of both his parents, and all of his brothers. Perhaps he was more prone to cruelty and casual barbarism, but the real problem was his lack of political sense and military skill. Whatever his failings, he remained the Lionheart’s primary heir. After three years, Richard’s marriage to Berengaria of Navarre showed no prospect of producing any issue, male or female, not least because the couple were rarely, if ever, together. Other than the boy, Arthur of Brittany, John was the king’s only possible male successor.

  William Marshal seems to have been deeply conscious of this fact. With John pardoned by Richard, William began, once again, to manoeuvre cautiously around the count, adopting the appearance of ‘courtly’ neutrality and detachment. In fact, Marshal had taken a rather slippery approach to the issue of Ireland even before John’s absolution at Liseux. While still in England, Richard had asked Marshal to swear fealty to him for the Irish lordship of Leinster. But William refused, stating that because he had already paid homage to Count John for those lands, he would be ‘marked by treachery’ if he transferred allegiance. From one perspective Marshal was holding to the letter of custom, but that did not stop William Longchamp from openly accusing him of ‘planting vines’ – that is, preparing the ground for future reward.

  RECLAIMING THE ANGEVIN REALM

  Much of 1194 passed in a blur of fast-paced, ceaseless campaigning, as King Richard ranged through western France reclaiming Angevin territory. Like most of those serving in the Lionheart’s army, William Marshal had never conducted a campaign of this scale and merciless intensity, yet in spite of his advancing years he held his own. Richard’s valuable alliance with Navarre helped to secure the south, with Berengaria’s brother, Sancho, leading ‘a large army, including 150 crossbowmen’ into Aquitaine to defend Angevin interests. This left the Lionheart free to focus on the north. The powerful host assembled at Verneuil was spilt in two, with one force sent to recover the key fortress of Montmirail, on the eastern border of Maine, while Marshal and the bulk of the army marched with Richard on Touraine. There the burghers of Tours – who had recently accepted Capetian overlordship – quickly reassessed their position, welcomed the Lionheart and offered up a payment of 2,000 silver marks by way of apology for their disloyalty. Moving south-east, Richard launched a blistering frontal assault against the castle of Loches on 13 June, seizing the fortress in just three hours and taking 220 prisoners.

  By this point, Philip Augustus had regrouped and looked set to invade Maine, so as to claim the border town of Vendôme – one of those ceded by John in January 1194 – from where he would be well-placed to threaten the whole of the Loire Valley. In response Richard and William marched north into the region in early July. Vendôme itself was not fortified, so the Angevins threw up a defensive camp in front of the town. The two armies, seemingly well matched in numerical terms, were now separated by only a matter of miles. The Lionheart had gained hard-won experience of precisely this type of tense stand-off in the Holy Land, and understood the realities of military incursions and troop movements far better than his Capetian rival. In the days that followed, the extent of Richard’s martial genius and the trust that he placed in William Marshal would become clear.

  Philip Augustus did not realise it at first, but from the moment that the Lionheart established his defensive position before Vendôme, the Capetians were in a deadly trap. If Philip wanted to hazard a direct confrontation, he would have to march south-west along the road to Vendôme and assault the Angevin encampment – a risky proposition that would also leave him exposed to the same flanking and encircling manoeuvres that Richard had used at Verneuil. On the other hand, should the French monarch seek to cut his losses by pulling back from the front line, his retreating armies might fall prey to ravaging attacks, and be easily overrun in the relatively open landscape of this region.

  King Philip thought initially to scare Richard off on 3 July, sending an envoy to declare that he was about to launch an offensive. But the Lionheart happily responded that he would await the Capetians’ arrival, adding that ‘should they not appear, he would pay them a visit in the morning’. Disconcerted by this brash response, Philip hesitated. When the Angevin army took to the field the following day, the French king panicked and ordered an immediate retreat back north-east, along the road to Fréteval (twelve miles from Vendôme). Richard was eager to inflict the maximum possible damage on his fleeing enemy, but he also recognised the inherent danger of a headlong pursuit. Should things go badly, his own troops might easily become disordered and prone to a counter-attack. What the Lionheart needed was a disciplined reserve force that could shadow his own advance, yet hold back from the hunt itself and thus be ready to counter any lingering Capetian resistance. The king appointed William Marshal to fulfil this challenging role, and around midday on 4 July the chase began.

  Towards dusk, Richard caught up with the French rearguard and wagon train near Fréteval, and as the Angevins fell on the broken Capetian ranks, hundreds of enemy troops were slain or taken prisoner. With Philip’s retreat turning into a rout, Marshal held an iron-grip over his reserve battalion as they ‘rode in close formation over the countryside’. Around them they could see their compatriots seizing all manner of plunder, from ‘pavilions . . . tents, cloth of scarlet and silk, plate and coin’ to ‘horses, palfreys, pack-horses, sumptuous garments and money’, yet they kept to the task at hand. Drawing upon his long years of experience from the tournament circuit, William understood the value of this discipline and was able to command the respect and obedience of his troops.

  That evening Philip Augustus suffered a desperately humiliating defeat. Much of his supply-train was lost, including many of his own possessions, and even the royal seal and a section of the Capetian royal archives; and a significant portion of his army was either captured or put to the sword. The Lionheart hunted the fleeing French king through the night, using a string of horses to speed his pursuit, but when Philip pulled off the road to hide in a small church, Richard rode by and missed his quarry. It was a shockingly narrow escape for the Capetian. The Angevins returned to Vendôme near midnight, laden with booty and leading a long line of prisoners, and William received a special commendation from his king.

  The long war beside the Lionheart

  King Richard made considerable gains in 1194, saving Normandy and the Angevin heartlands from full-scale French invasion. The Capetians had been bloodied and shamed. But Philip Augustus still held north-eastern Normandy and, more importantly, controlled Gisors and the Norman Vexin, which left Rouen vulnerable and the French in the ascendant. The Lionheart dedicated the next four years of his reign to a grinding war in northern France, campaigning to recover and counteract these losses; determined to reset the balance of power in the Angevin’s fav
our. In 1196 he forged a new alliance with the count of Toulouse (through his marriage to Richard’s younger sister Joanne), thus ending decades of rivalry in the south, and leaving the Lionheart free to focus on Normandy and the north. It is also notable that, after 1194, the king finally overturned the long-established ban on knightly tournaments in England, introducing a number of crown-sponsored contests – an acknowledgement of the invaluable preparation for war offered by these events.

  For the vast majority of this protracted conflict, William Marshal either fought at the Lionheart’s side, or served as one of his leading military commanders. Marshal can only be placed back in England on a few occasions – in the autumn of 1194, the spring of 1196 and the autumn of 1198. For the rest of the time, he had to rely on his wife and members of his household, like Master Joscelin, to oversee his English estates. Isabel does appear to have visited her husband in Normandy, outside of the summer fighting season, and she continued to conceive and bear their children (with a second son, Richard, and daughter, Matilda, being born early in this period). Some members of William’s military retinue can also be placed with him in Normandy. John of Earley, who had now been knighted, probably remained with Marshal throughout; others, like Nicholas Avenel and William Waleran, may have rotated between England and service on the front line. Marshal’s ‘nephew’, John Marshal – the bastard son of his late elder brother – had also joined the household by this point, and enjoyed considerable favour.

  It was in the years following the defence of Vendôme that William developed an intimate bond of familiarity and friendship with King Richard. Marshal may have missed the Third Crusade, but in the course of the northern-French campaigns, he and the Lionheart became comrades in arms, William earning his monarch’s abiding trust. In the past, Marshal had served as an envoy and ambassador for King Henry II and, in the summer of 1197, he was empowered to perform the same role for Richard: leading a delegation that also included Peter of Préaux, and his own nephew John Marshal, to the new count of Flanders, Baldwin IX. William was charged with persuading the count to break with his predecessor’s policy of supporting Philip Augustus; he was also given more than £1,000 to cover expenses – a sign of the luxury and largesse that would be used to win Baldwin over. William had a vested interest in the deal, given that his former claim to the revenues of St Omer (a town previously held by the count of Flanders) must have been rescinded when King Philip took over Artois in 1193. If Flanders realigned itself with the Angevins, then the French might well be shouldered out of St Omer, and Marshal’s valuable stake in the town reasserted. The lavish embassy proved fruitful, and later that summer Count Baldwin formally ‘abandoned the king of France’ and allied himself with Richard in return for a payment of 5,000 silver marks – a significant blow to Capetian interests in northern France.