The loss of Normandy
By the early summer of 1203, a mounting number of nobles were defecting to the Capetian cause. All the hopes of renewal briefly entertained after Mirebeau had been dashed, and to many it seemed that the battle for Normandy was already a lost cause. Nonetheless, a defence was mounted. Longsword was sent to hold the western frontier against the Bretons, while William Marshal joined King John in patrolling the duchy’s central and eastern reaches, ahead of an expected French offensive.
When the final blows came, they were shockingly effective. Philip Augustus launched a massive incursion from the region around Évreux in June, marching on Vaudreuil in the Seine valley–the fortress standing guard over the western approaches to Rouen. The castle was under the command of Robert FitzWalter, but its garrison surrendered to the French without offering any resistance. This gave Philip control of the left bank of the Seine, and critically, a position downstream from Les Andelys and the great stronghold of Château Gaillard. The Capetians were now in a position to hamper any attempts to resupply Richard the Lionheart’s famous military complex.
King Philip began to tighten the noose in August, laying siege to Gaillard and Les Andelys, along with his renowned military commander William des Barres. Here at least, the Angevin troops put up a hard-fought stand, with Gaillard’s garrison led by the formidable Roger of Lacy. King John and William Marshal began to plan an offensive of their own in September, hoping to break the French siege. This disastrous operation was not recorded in the History, and was only described in detail by a single Breton account. The plan called for a coordinated attack, with Marshal leading a land-based force (alongside John’s mercenary commander Lupescar), linking up with a second body of troops that had sailed up the Seine, thereby enveloping Philip’s army. Unfortunately, the French hold on Vaudreuil made it difficult to navigate the river in daylight, so the assault was timed for the early hours, just before dawn. It proved to be a depressing shambles. The sailors transporting the water-borne contingent misjudged the strength of the Seine’s currents, and their ships failed to arrive as planned. Isolated and outnumbered, Marshal’s division was badly mauled by William des Barres’ men, and soon driven off, and when the second force finally arrived on the river it was quickly decimated. It was one of the most humiliating reversals of William Marshal’s military career.
The failure to relieve Les Andelys and Gaillard delivered a crushing blow to Angevin morale. King John’s position in Normandy was now collapsing at a desperate rate. Sections of Upper Normandy around Arques and Marshal’s own estate at Longueville still held, but elsewhere losses were mounting. According to the History, William Marshal was sent on an embassy to discuss terms of truce with King Philip Augustus, but this was not mentioned in any other source and, in any case, met with no success. The Capetian knew full well that he was closing in on overall victory, so ‘there was no question of peace’. John’s deepening paranoia also left him increasingly fearful of treachery. He began to suspect that his own Norman vassals would take him prisoner and hand him over to the French and, according to one contemporary, refused to make any further attempt to save Château Gaillard, ‘through fear of treason of his men’.
With the approach of winter, John decided to return to England. The official line was that he was leaving ‘to seek advice and help from his barons [and would] then make a speedy return’, but according to the History, his decision to take Queen Isabella with him from Rouen meant that many ‘feared his stay would be a long one’. The great ducal city was left under the guardianship of William Marshal’s old associate, Peter of Préaux. By this point, Les Andelys had fallen to the French, but Gaillard remained under Roger of Lacy’s command, holding out against a close siege. Outside of a few remaining outposts, such as Arques in Upper Normandy and Verneuil on the southern frontier, the duchy had been overrun. On 5 December 1203, John set sail from Cherbourg with Marshal at his side. William’s biographer afforded this voyage only the briefest mention, but the atmosphere on board must have been desperately sombre, for the king’s departure was a tacit admission that Normandy was now lost.
11
A LORD IN THE WEST
William Marshal failed to turn the tide of the war in 1203, serving a king who could not command the loyalty of his Norman subjects, and who lacked the requisite vision and determination to face Philip Augustus. The final axe fell in 1204. Château Gaillard – the Lionheart’s grand ‘Castle of Impudence’ – surrendered on 6 March, the pitiful remnants of its garrison having been starved into submission. With no possible hope of holding out against the Capetians, Peter of Préaux opened the gates of Rouen on 24 June and returned to England. Philip swept up the rest of the duchy with ease.
The news from the south was equally grim. Queen Eleanor died at Fontevraud on 1 April, and with her demise, the last link to the glory days of Angevin authority was broken. The barons of Aquitaine paid homage to Philip Augustus, leaving him free to occupy Poitiers in August, while Iberian forces from Iberian Castile crossed the Pyrenees to claim Gascony. By year’s end, only a string of ports on the Atlantic Coast, running north from Bayonne to La Rochelle, remained in Angevin hands. The garrisons of Chinon (under Hubert of Burgh) and Loches made brave efforts to stave off defeat, but were eventually overrun. Barely a shadow remained of the once mighty empire forged by King Henry II. His youngest son – the ‘Softsword’ – had presided over a period of catastrophic decline.
A REALM DIVIDED
King John’s personal prestige and reputation now lay in tatters, and the disastrous events of 1202 to 1204 would hang over the remainder of his reign. The collapse of the Angevin realm, and the previously unimaginable loss of Normandy, would also have far-reaching consequences for the history of England. But in the immediate wake of these events, William Marshal, and his fellow barons, had to face an unsettling new reality. The vast majority of the ‘Angevin’ English nobility was Anglo-Norman by birth. When the duchy fell to the French, their Norman ‘homeland’ was effectively lost, and this heralded a crisis of identity and allegiance. As many magnates held land on both sides of the Channel, they now had to decide where their loyalties lay. Most followed the preponderance of their estates. The Préaux family was a case in point. The elder brother, John of Préaux, relinquished his English lands and remained in Normandy, retaining control of his family’s major lordship (north-east of Rouen) and becoming a vassal of Philip Augustus. His sibling Peter gave up the small parcels of property he held in Normandy and lived out the rest of his life in semi-retirement on his far larger estates in southern England. King John made some attempt to soften the blow of this partition by reapportioning English territory to barons such as Baldwin of Béthune (who now lost the honour of Aumale), but a significant level of disruption to long-established patterns of landholding was unavoidable.
A step too far
The sudden contraction of the Angevin realm forced William Marshal to reconsider his own position and the future of his nascent dynasty. It was now obvious that any hopes of strengthening and extending the Marshal power base would have to be redirected, away from the Continent. But William was also one of the few magnates who sought to resist the forfeiture of his Norman estates. Like so many of his peers, Marshal felt a strong affinity for Normandy – the land of his adolescence and a region in which he had spent much of his adult life, and unlike Peter of Préaux and Baldwin of Béthune, William was not willing to relinquish his valuable lordship at Longueville, in Upper Normandy.
In May 1204, Marshal was sent, along with Earl Robert of Leicester (who also held major estates in Normandy), across the Channel by King John to discuss terms of peace with Philip Augustus. The French monarch remained disinterested in negotiation, but he saw a valuable opportunity to sow seeds of discord within the Angevin ranks. William and Earl Robert were given a chance to salvage their Norman estates, but had to agree to the strict provisions laid out by King Philip. The terms settled upon were described in the History, but were also preserved i
n a copy of the contract, lodged in the French royal archive. Marshal and the earl of Leicester were to surrender their property to Capetian forces, on the understanding that it would be returned, so long as they ‘paid homage’ to Philip Augustus for these lands within the space of a year. For the privilege of this period of grace, both men had to pay the sum of 500 silver marks.
By giving ‘homage’, William and Robert would formally acknowledge King Philip’s overlordship in Normandy – and hold their Continental lands from him – yet remain servants of King John in England. There was some precedent for this type of arrangement. In the past, a small number of nobles who held lands on either side of the Norman-French border had paid homage to both the Capetians and the Angevins; but crucially they had always identified only one king as their primary ‘liege-lord’ – the monarch alongside whom they would fight at times of war. This might seem like an arcane, legalistic argument, but for medieval noblemen like William Marshal, the traditions surrounding feudal obligations could be of critical importance. They offered a mechanism for reconciling the day-to-day realities of landholding, with the more ephemeral notions of allegiance. In May 1204, Marshal seemed to have found a way to retain the estate of Longueville, and he had twelve months in which to persuade King John to accede to this arrangement.
An undercurrent of hubris appears to have blinded William to the inherent danger of these dealings. He evidently believed that he could manipulate ‘feudal’ custom, and exploit his eminent position, to achieve what others could not, and thereby maintain his foothold in Normandy. The extent of his fidelity to John must also be questioned, because it is clear that Marshal put his own interests ahead of those of the crown in this period. William had not followed others into open acts of ‘treachery’ by disavowing the Anegvin king, but his dedication to the capricious ‘Softsword’ seems to have wavered.
It looked, at first, as though the plan to retain Longueville would pass without a hitch. Marshal and Robert of Leicester returned to England, and when the latter died in late 1204, the task of convincing John to sanction the bargain fell to William alone. According to the History, he succeeded, receiving official letters of authorisation from the king in the spring of 1205. Marshal apparently pleaded, saying: ‘You can see that the time is nearly up as regards my land in Normandy. I do not know what to say: if I don’t pay [King Philip] homage, I will sustain [a] heavy loss’ of land. John supposedly replied: ‘I know you to be . . . a loyal man [and] I am very willing for you to pay him homage, [for] the more you have, the greater will be your services to me.’ No official record of this endorsement survives, though Marshal’s heirs would later testify to the existence of a formal royal licence. It is unlikely that William would have been foolish enough to take the next step without permission, but he had failed to account for John’s changeable nature and the guile of Philip Augustus.
In April, William Marshal travelled to France with the intention of giving his oath to the Capetian king. But when they met at Anet (the scene of some of Marshal’s most famous tournament triumphs) Philip insisted upon a more binding promise – one that went far beyond a mere acknowledgement of overlordship. William was required to recognise the French monarch as his liege-lord ‘on this side of the sea’ (in France), or else forfeit Longueville. This would be tantamount to Marshal declaring that he had two masters: one, King Philip, whom he would serve on the Continent; the other, John, who would remain his liege-lord in England. When looked at in the cold light of day, there was no escaping the fact that this represented a grave division of loyalty – not least because the Capetians remained the arch-enemies of the Angevin dynasty. Yet backed into a corner, William agreed nonetheless. By this act, Marshal preserved his hold over the valuable lordship of Longueville – an estate that he would now be able to pass on to his heirs. He had defended the rights of his dynasty, but he had also made a serious miscalculation.
Sailing back to England, William seems to have convinced himself that any difficulties with King John could be smoothed over, not least because he had carried the monarch’s letter of licence. On arrival, however, he discovered that one of the archbishop of Canterbury’s representatives (who had also been in France) had returned ahead of him, and had informed the king of the specific terms of Marshal’s oath. John was understandably furious and accused William of ‘acting against me and against my interests’. Not surprisingly, the History sought to defend William’s reputation, condemning those who spoke against him at this point as ‘base flatterers and traitors’, and maintaining that Marshal had not ‘committed the slightest crime’.
Standing before his incensed king, William reputedly protested: ‘My lord, I can tell you straight out that I did nothing against you, and what I did, so it please you, I did with your leave.’ In one respect Marshal was right – John had consented to an act of homage. But he had not condoned the far more serious liege-oath demanded by the wily Philip Augustus. William also was foolish to think that a man of King John’s unpredictable and suspicious nature would easily be persuaded to see reason. As it was, the English monarch flatly denied ever issuing ‘this permission of mine you speak of’ and the History observed that from this point onwards ‘the Marshal was on bad terms with the king for a long time’.
Into the cold
William Marshal’s fall from royal favour was sealed in June 1205. By this time, King John had laid plans for a major military offensive, hoping to recover ground in the Angevin heartlands by sailing with a large fleet to Poitou, and then launching a full-scale invasion inland. This was a bold scheme, and the king had taken careful steps to assemble ships, supplies and arms, but it was also deeply unpopular with a large section of John’s leading barons. According to the contemporary chronicler Ralph of Coggeshall, the proposed campaign was seen as an act of folly that would leave England exposed to invasion, and it was feared that John ‘would lose what he held, by trying to recover what he had lost’. Many also doubted that the king could actually defeat Philip Augustus in the field.
As the expedition was being debated, the king confronted Marshal. According to the History, he commanded William to follow him to Aquitaine and join in the ‘fight against the king of France’. But the earl demurred, stating that to do so would be both ‘wicked’ and a ‘crime’, because outside of England he was now King Philip’s ‘liegeman’. A bitter and protracted argument ensued, in which both parties sought to defend their positions in front of a crowd of nobles. John accused Marshal of being ‘the king of France’s man’, while William offered to defend his honour in a trial by combat. The History suggested that Marshal prevailed in this argument: his old ally Baldwin of Béthune spoke in his favour, and no one was willing to take up William’s challenge. But the biographer could not conceal the underlying equivocation of the assembled knights and magnates. Most had no desire to sail to Poitou, but they also had good cause to question William’s motives and his claim that he had never intended to be ‘disloyal’ to the crown. Tellingly, the History described how ‘the barons looked at one another, and then drew back’ in silence, shocked by the spectacle of such a quarrel. No one, it seems, quite knew how to react to this public confrontation between the king and one of the greatest magnates in England – a man so long esteemed as a paragon of fidelity.
The dispute ended in stalemate, with Marshal maintaining his innocence and John nursing a cold fury. William was said to have warned his peers: ‘Be on your alert against the king: what he thinks to do with me, he will do to each and every one of you.’ Archbishop Hubert of Canterbury later implored the king to ‘abandon the expedition’ to Poitou ‘lest the whole kingdom be thrown into confusion by his departure’, and lacking the general support of his nobles, John reluctantly agreed to cancel the offensive – much to the dismay of the thousands of sailors who had assembled at Portsmouth.
Marshal had been able to stand behind the shield of his reputation when confronted by the king, but in real terms, the balance of power remained with John. And, as the History obs
erved, he now sought to ‘exact his revenge’. His first step was to request that William hand over Young William Marshal – ‘the eldest son who was most dear to him’ – so that he might be taken into the care of the crown. The boy was now around fifteen, so this could be passed off as a form of royal wardship, but it was obvious that he would be held as a hostage – as surety for Earl William’s reformed behaviour. Perhaps this awoke painful memories of Marshal’s own time as a child captive in the early 1150s, but he was in no position to refuse this request. To do so would have been tantamount to declaring himself a traitor – thereby allowing the king to confiscate his lands, and subject him, and perhaps the rest of his family, to imprisonment. The biographer admitted that William ‘surrendered [his son] readily to the king’, adding that he did so because ‘he was a man who would have nothing to do with evil-doing, or ever thought of such’ – a clear indication of the type of accusations that would have been levelled against Marshal had he declined. Nonetheless, the grim rumours circulating about John’s treatment of Duke Arthur, and the other prisoners taken at Mirebeau in 1202, must have caused William to feel a degree of anxiety about his son’s safety.
In the months that followed, King John gradually edged Marshal out of the Anegvin court. There appears to have been no grand ostracism, just the slow, but unmistakeable, withdrawal of royal favour and support. The rewards of land and office ceased and were replaced by blank disregard. For the first time in more than twenty years, William experienced the powerful effects of this type of estrangement. He had flourished under Henry II and Richard I, and enjoyed manifold rewards at the start of John’s reign. Now he was pushed out into the cold. In 1206, Marshal disappeared from royal records altogether, having withdrawn to Striguil. With the collapse of the Angevin realm on the Continent, and his rift with the king, there would be no prospect of advancement in France or England. If William wished to strengthen his position, and secure the future of his dynasty, he would have to look to the west.
The Greatest Knight Page 31