The Greatest Knight

by Thomas Asbridge

  King John also had the misfortune to come to power just as his main rival, Philip Augustus, was reaching the height of his strength. After twenty years on the throne, the French king had grown in stature and experience. At thirty-four, he was only marginally older than John, but in real terms, he was already one of the elder statesmen of Western Europe. Contemporaries were only too aware of this shift, with the esteemed English prelate Hugh, bishop of Lincoln, declaring that ‘as the ox eats the grass down to its roots, so shall Philip of France entirely destroy this people’. Through Philip’s dutiful husbandry, the Capetian realm was enjoying a period of significant territorial growth, and the wealth of the French crown could at last match, even eclipse, that of the Angevins. In the early thirteenth century, Philip was able to amass a war chest of more than 85,000 marks; financial reserves that allowed him to win the arms race by recruiting large numbers of mercenaries and developing the most advanced siege weaponry. Richard I had found the Capetian king to be an implacable and determined enemy, but the Lionheart had been able to match, and usually exceed, Philip’s skills in the arts of war and diplomacy. John lacked this quality when he came to power and had little or no time to hone his abilities. In the years that followed, he would be outplayed by King Philip at almost every turn. As the History wistfully observed, the Capetian monarch ‘turned [John] upside down’. William Marshal was now following a king who was plainly incapable of matching his opponent.

  The first significant move came with the Treaty of Le Goulet, agreed between John and Philip on 22 May 1200. On the face of it, this two-year truce favoured the Angevins. By its terms, John was recognised as Richard I’s rightful heir, and Arthur was required to pay him homage for Brittany. The question of the succession appeared settled. But the French king had learnt in 1194 that John had a tendency to make shortsighted concessions, and he now exploited that weakness. The price he extracted through the Treaty of Le Goulet was emasculating. First, and most importantly, Philip asserted his feudal rights over the Angevin realm when John agreed to pay homage to the Capetian monarch for all of his Continental French lands. Henry II and Richard had both performed similar submissions, but their subservience had always been symbolic. Philip cannily drove home the harder reality of John’s subordinate status by requiring him to pay 20,000 marks as the fee for succeeding to these lands. Such a demand would have been unthinkable in the past, yet John acquiesced, reinforcing the powerful sense that the French king was indeed his overlord; and if John owed his power to the Capetians – as the terms of Le Goulet implied – any ‘misbehaviour’ on his part in France might legally be punished.

  Alongside this reassertion of Capetian royal rights, Philip negotiated three additional stipulations that, by increments, undermined John’s position. Territory in the Norman Vexin and the region around Évreux was conceded, leaving Normandy dangerously exposed to future aggression. John also agreed to sever the valuable alliance with Flanders that William Marshal had helped to engineer in 1197 (and the king later broke with Boulogne in a similar fashion), thus shifting the balance of power in northern France back in Philip’s favour. The treaty was sealed by a final condition: a new marriage alliance between the French king’s son and heir-apparent, Louis, who was then twelve, and John’s eleven-year-old niece, Blanche of Castile (the daughter of his sister Eleanor, who had married into the Castilian dynasty thirty years earlier). This union promised to further strengthen Capetian claims to Angevin territory and would come to have deep significance in the latter stages of William Marshal’s career.

  Through this complex array of provisions, King Philip subtly outmanoeuvred his rival, carefully preparing the ground for the more open and decisive confrontation to come. John seems to have been largely oblivious to these dangers, but the Treaty of Le Goulet marked an important turning point. Chroniclers later recognised its significance and began to mark John with a humiliating new nickname. As a young man, without territory of his own, he had been known as ‘Lackland’. Now he was branded with another moniker – the ultimate put-down for the Lionheart’s little brother – John ‘Softsword’.

  An uneasy peace held in the wake of Le Goulet, but steps were soon being taken to prepare Normandy for the onset of war. William Marshal’s lordship of Longueville lay in the far north-eastern reaches of the duchy, and he assumed a broader responsibility for this area of Upper Normandy in the early thirteenth century. This region, to the west of Dieppe and the River Béthune, effectively constituted the duchy’s second line of defence, lying some twenty miles back from the main frontier of the River Bresle. Marshal held two small castles at Longueville and Meleurs, but the main stone fortress protecting the Béthune valley was at Arques (just south of Dieppe). In the early spring of 1201, Marshal sent Jordan of Sauqueville – a recently recruited member of his military retinue – to oversee the strengthening of Arques’ already formidable battlements. Then in May, William himself crossed over to Normandy with a force of 100 knights, furnished by the king. By this stage, an invasion of Normandy was looming, because King John had been lured into making another significant diplomatic blunder.

  The allure of Isabella of Angoulême

  In the first years of his reign, John benefited from the support and guidance of his elderly mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Before Richard I’s death, she had been living in semi-reclusion at Fontevraud Abbey, but the succession crisis brought her back on to the political stage and, despite being in her mid-seventies, she had retained much of her vigour and mental acuity. It was Eleanor who helped to enforce John’s authority in Aquitaine in 1199, and then deftly secured the support of the Lusignan dynasty by granting them the disputed county of La Marche in early 1200. She even found the energy to cross the Pyrenees and fetch her young granddaughter, Blanche of Castile, from Spain, so as to seal the terms of Le Goulet – though she had been unable to prevent John from agreeing to such damaging concessions. Understandably exhausted by this grand excursion, and suffering from illness, Eleanor returned to Fontevraud to rest and recover.

  In her absence, John suddenly decided to take a new wife. His union with Isabella of Gloucester had been annulled on the grounds of consanguinity soon after his coronation, and he now alighted upon the daughter of Audemar, count of Angoulême, as a suitable bride. This girl, Isabella of Angoulême, was perhaps twelve years old (and possibly as young as eight), and though some suggested that John was driven to marry her by a ‘mad infatuation’, he was perhaps equally attracted by the prospect of confirming Angoulême’s support, a step that would secure the region between Poitiers and Bordeaux. So it was that the couple were duly wed on 24 August 1200. At first glance this appeared to be a rather shrewd political match, but there was an underlying problem. Isabella had already been betrothed to Hugh of Lusignan (Geoffrey of Lusignan’s nephew), and he now went into open rebellion. William Marshal was with the king at this point, but it is not clear whether he offered any counsel on the issue of the marriage. However, according to two well-informed contemporaries, John decided to wed Isabella ‘on the advice of his lord, Philip, king of France’, so it may well be that the Capetian monarch had deliberately primed a trap for his enemy and then watched contentedly as it snapped shut.

  After John’s and Isabella’s wedding, Hugh of Lusignan protested vehemently at the grave offence caused to his honour, arguing that his binding betrothal had been illegally overturned. Ultimately, he brought his grievance to the Capetian royal court in Paris, and not surprisingly, Philip Augustus offered Hugh a sympathetic ear. Whether by devious design or simple fortune, Philip now had the perfect excuse to move against his Angevin opponent. After John’s submission in the Treaty of Le Goulet, the French king had every right to summon his Angevin vassal to answer the Lusignans’ charges. John wriggled, evaded and ultimately refused to appear in the Capetian court. This left King Philip free to formally declare the confiscation of John’s Continental lands in April 1202. The Capetian monarch later knighted Arthur of Brittany (who was now fifteen) with his own hand, and
accepted his oath of homage for all of the Angevin lands; the sole exception being Normandy, which Philip now claimed as a crown possession. The French king had been gifted a legal cause to drive John out of France.

  The crisis of 1202

  Philip Augustus launched an immediate invasion of eastern Normandy, alongside Baldwin of Flanders. Together, they quickly pushed over the first line of defence in the Eu valley, taking the fortresses of Eu and Aumale, and marched on to seize Neufchâtel. A more sustained siege of Gournay followed, but that too fell in July. Upper Normandy was thus on the brink of collapse when Philip turned north to assault the major royal castle of Arques, in the territory guarded by William Marshal and the earl of Salisbury, William Longsword.

  Marshal had been hard at work bolstering the stronghold’s defences: financial records show that in the middle weeks of June alone, he spent 1,600 Angevin pounds (drawn from the crown treasury) on improving its fortifications and strengthening its garrison. This level of frantic expenditure gives a clear sense of the alarm now felt throughout eastern Normandy. William Marshal seems to have recognised that he was likely to be badly outnumbered in the conflict ahead. When the Capetians marched on Arques, around 20 July, the fortress itself was left under the command of King John’s castellan, William Mortimer, while Marshal and Longsword pulled back west. Together, they held a sizeable mobile force in the field, and launched a succession of skirmishing attacks against the French forces investing Arques. This was a sound strategy, but ranged against the full force of Philip Augustus’ army, their cause still looked hopeless.

  Then in early August, news of an extraordinary Angevin victory reached Upper Normandy. While King Philip attacked in the north, Duke Arthur of Brittany had opened up a second front to the south, invading Anjou with an army of Breton knights and other supporters, including Andrew of Chauvigny. The aged Queen Eleanor had been trying to maintain a grip over the region, but soon found herself besieged in the castle of Mirebeau. When King John heard of this attack, he took decisive action – prosecuting a lightning-quick forced march south from Le Mans, alongside nobles such as William des Roches and William of Briouze. Together they covered eighty miles in just two days, and fell on Arthur of Brittany’s unsuspecting troops at dawn on 1 August 1202. Briouze captured the young duke, and another 252 knights were taken prisoner. Eleanor was saved and Mirebeau secured; it was the greatest triumph of John’s reign.

  The king immediately dispatched a messenger north to inform William Marshal of this success. Philip Augustus also heard the tidings from Mirebeau and broke off his siege of Arques, fearing that John would now be able to pour an overwhelming concentration of forces into Upper Normandy. The Capetians had still made important gains along the eastern frontier, but the duchy had been saved. The History described, in gleeful terms, how Marshal and Longsword withdrew with their troops to Rouen and enjoyed a lavish feast of celebration that included no small quantity of fine wine.

  It seemed that King John had regained the initiative. His mother, Eleanor, had been left drained by the effort of holding Mirebeau, and now went into permanent retirement in Fontevraud Abbey. But in all other respects, John’s position had been transformed. He had affirmed his military competence; he now held more than 250 valuable hostages, each of whom could be ransomed either for money or strategic advantage; and he had his rival Arthur of Brittany in captivity. If John took the right steps, moving with shrewd caution, the fortunes of the Angevin Empire might be restored. At this moment, perhaps more than any other, he had a chance to steer his reign back on to a steady course.

  As it was, the king squandered this crucial opportunity, and a dreadful corner was turned in his career, from which there would be no return. Even as William Marshal rejoiced in Normandy, John began to mistreat the hundreds of captives taken at Mirebeau. Under normal circumstances, these nobles would have been kept in confinement, but treated with respect and allowed to live in relative comfort, while the terms of their release were negotiated. In 1202, the vast majority of John’s prisoners – including Arthur of Brittany – simply disappeared. Many were sent to castles in Normandy and southern England, and starved to death. Andrew of Chauvigny’s exact fate is uncertain, but he was dead by 1203.

  The king’s merciless behaviour caused a serious scandal. The History recorded that John treated his captives ‘so vilely and in such evil distress that it seemed shameful and ugly to all those who were with him and who saw this cruelty’. William des Roches had been a friend, and even kinsman, to scores of the knights seized at Mirebeau, and a former supporter of young Duke Arthur. At first, des Roches entreated the king to observe the normal conventions, and report on prisoners’ whereabouts and well-being, but his requests met with a stony silence. The king seems to have assumed that he could flout accepted custom with impunity, but he was mistaken. As one chronicler noted, his ‘pride and arrogance . . . so blurred his vision that he could not see reason’.

  William des Roches was so disgusted by John’s behaviour that he abandoned him – transferring his allegiance to Philip of France – and the leading nobles in the Angevin heartlands soon followed suit. Through late 1202 and early 1203, the thin veneer of support that John had enjoyed in the south shattered, and he rapidly lost control of Maine, Anjou and Touraine. Even in Normandy, nobles began to question the king’s judgement and reconsider their positions. In January 1203, the lord of Alençon (on the southern border with Maine) declared for the Capetians; many others would follow. William Marshal’s biographer loathed King John, but he also despised turncoats, and he now likened these renegade Norman nobles to stinking pieces of rotten fruit, infecting all around them. For now, Marshal remained loyal and returned to defend Upper Normandy, but the crisis had barely begun.

  The fate of Arthur

  After his capture at Mirebeau, Duke Arthur of Brittany – John’s fifteen-year-old nephew – was held in confinement in Normandy. He seems to have been taken first to the castle of Falaise (in the centre of the duchy), and probably remained there at least until early 1203. The king appears to have been unsure of how to deal with this young prisoner, the rival claimant to the English crown and wider Angevin realm. With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that the wise choice would have been either to commit Arthur to lifelong imprisonment in England, but afford him a relatively comfortable existence, or to use him as a powerful bargaining chip in negotiations with Philip Augustus over the fate of Normandy. But John’s suspicious nature trumped reason. He did not trust his servants to hold the duke in indefinite captivity, and he seems to have doubted his own ability to secure advantageous terms from the Capetians.

  According to the chronicler Ralph of Coggeshall, unnamed ‘counsellors’ initially advised the king to have Arthur blinded and castrated, ‘thus rendering him incapable of rule’. Three men were sent to Falaise ‘to perform this detestable act’, but John’s chamberlain, Hubert of Burgh, intervened at the last moment to save the duke, ‘having regard for the king’s honesty and reputation’. Through the early months of 1203, the questions being asked about Arthur’s treatment became increasingly voluble, and dark rumours began to circulate. At some point before the start of April, he seems to have been moved to the citadel at Rouen, probably by William of Briouze, who would later claim that he could ‘no longer answer’ for Arthur’s safety once he had been delivered into custody.

  The duke’s exact fate from this point forward remains a mystery. Two contemporary accounts, seemingly based on the oral testimony of Briouze, indicated that, on 3 April, John confronted his prisoner in a drunken rage, and ‘possessed by the Devil’, proceeded to crush his skull with a rock. Arthur’s body was weighted down and thrown into the Seine, only to be later found by a fisherman, and discreetly buried at the nearby priory of Notre-Dame-des-Pré. The king may have committed this act of murder, with Briouze as an eyewitness; or it could be that Briouze did the terrible deed himself, following John’s orders, and only later sought to transfer the blame. The truth will never be known, but Du
ke Arthur of Brittany was not seen again.

  William of Briouze certainly appears to have been complicit in Arthur’s disappearance, and was evidently told to remain silent on the matter. In the years that followed, John continued to promote Briouze’s interests and add to his lands, keeping him close to the crown. But William was carrying a dangerous secret – one that would ultimately lead to his ruin. The king would also be haunted by the rumours surrounding Arthur’s death for the remainder of his reign, with accusations of treachery and foul play multiplying. He had handed his enemies a significant advantage. From this point forward, Philip Augustus was able to respond to any overtures towards diplomacy with the damaging demand that John must produce Duke Arthur – alive and well – before any talks could begin. The History remained silent on this whole episode, but given the course of later events, it is possible that William Marshal eventually came to know the truth of the matter.