Read Eleanor Of Aquitaine Online
Authors: Amy Kelly
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The King then put up for sale everything he had, castles, vills, and estates.
Hoveden
In spite of the ingratiating exertions of Queen Eleanor in her son's behalf, the British were not long in discovering that, so far as the newly arrived Count of Poitou was concerned, his coming to England had as its main object the gathering of a massy additional weight of sterling for crusade. Henry had already in the preceding year collected in Britain an abundant Saladin tithe, but this, regrettably for Richard, had been entrusted to the custody of the Templars. Coeur de Lion, however, found means of reaping harvests from fields already gleaned. Men of consequence, holding employment under Henry, redeemed their offices with ransom The chancellor recovered his seal with £3000. De Glanville, the incorruptible keeper of Henry's prisoners, including the queen, was so ruined by exactions that he was obliged to take the cross to compass his necessities
.15
Nobles and prelates who had been overborne by the popular enthusiasin to go upon crusade found they could buy immunity, and their compositions, says Devizes, "rolled like nuts into the exchequer." Jews were plundered. Public offices were sold. Bishops learned that fortunes accumulating in their sees could be profitably invested in lands and rents, and many a manor, many a castle with its honors, passed into the hands of prelates.
In the carnival of speculation, the Bishop of Durham, an elderly relative of the royal house, purchased the secular title of Earl of Northumberland to add to his ecclesiastical dignities. "Behold," exclaimed Richard, "how out of an old bishop I have made a new earl."
"I would sell London itself," declared the king, "if I could find a purchaser."
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Men whose memories reached back to Stephen's reign saw Henry's lifelong efforts to bring the great castles under royal control squandered in a few months, and the land committed again to such anarchy as had prevailed in those unhappy days.
While these transactions were going forward at a lively pace, Richard assembled in Dover and other southern ports all the seaworthy ships to be found from Hull to Bristol, for he had given up the overland route to Palestine for which Henry had procured safe conduct from the King of Hungary and the sublime Comneni.
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Perhaps Eleanor, remembering the perils and fatigues of that route, the crafty Greeks, the unspeakable Turks, and the wintry landscapes of Paphlagonia, dissuaded him. Also, with the queen's counsel, he planned for the safety of the Angevin empire during his absence, and for the firm observance of the Truce of God.
The policies of the Plantagenets were directed less toward outright benefits for their subjects than toward the appeasement or repression of possible troublemakers. Many of these were disposed of by the simple expedient of forcing them into the crusade.
18
The queen's gravest anxiety at this time in which Richard was exposing his life to peril was the matter of the succession. The Plantagenet race had dwindled and the long dalliance with the Princess Alais had left Richard at thirty-five without direct heirs.
In the meantime, until Richard could secure the future of his dynasty, there were three possible aspirants to the crown, and not one of these satisfied the queen. Among them, her grandson, Arthur of Brittany, the three-year-old son of Geoffrey Plantagenet, had, in a strict view of legitimacy, the highest claim; but he was without a powerful following, even abroad, and his house was, for reasons not fully understood, detested by the ruling Plantagenets. He was still a child. There would be time and occasion to deal with him.
The second was Geoffrey,
19
Henry's bastard son and his last chancellor, designated by the elder king on his deathbed as Archbishop of York. He had preferred no claims to recognition as of the royal line, and had promptly resigned his chancellor's seal upon the death of Henry. But he was bold, ambitious, unprovided, and determined to establish himself in the general distribution of the Plantagenet spoils. He had once, in the company of his familiars, set the lid of a golden bowl upon his head and called out with deprecating laughter, "Is not this skull fit to wear a crown?"
20
The law of legitimacy was stern, but Geoffrey was a man to rise in some hour of feudal anarchy, as had the bastard Conqueror. He was now beyond thirty five, unapt by every gift of nature, and by his nurture, for ecclesiastical preferment. But Richard and the queen, who might in other circumstances have prevented his elevation to the great See of York, actually promoted it, because his taking of orders rendered him ineligible for royal roles.
The third was lack-land John. John, since the first general alarm for the Holy Land, had sought royal leave to go upon crusade, but Henry had refused to offer the last of the eaglets to the perils overseas. Richard had no desire to have his broilsome cadet go with him to Palestine. For his renunciation of the crusader's vow, Lackland was contented with brilliant prospects nearer home. The Plantagenets appeased his lust for prestige with such enormous grants of land as seemed to fortify him against any rival claims to the succession. A chain of towns and fortresses running lengthwise through the midst of the island, together with estates in Cornwall, entrenched John in strategic strongholds and supplied him with a royal revenue.
Such reckless distribution of the castles that Henry had struggled to bring into the king's hands gave rise to unsettling rumors and to murmunngs of indignation among the magnates. It was said that Richard planned to abandon Britain to the youngest Plantagenet and content himself with the Angevin domains upon the Continent;
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that he would himself mount the throne of his great grandfather, Foulques of Jerusalem; that he was prey to a secret malady and would not survive the hardships of crusade;
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that he had had a premonition that, as a soldier of the cross, he would redeem with his life his crime of patricide.
In providing for the administration of the affairs of Britain, the Plantagenets followed the simple "hungry falcon" theories laid down long before for Henry's guidance by Matilda Empress — to place relatively obscure men in seats of responsibility where their ambitions, their dependence upon bounty, and their gratitude, in various combinations, could be expected to keep them vigilant and honest.
The elevation of William Longchamp, the chancellor, to the bishopric of Ely made him that coveted instrument, a business manager for royalty that might be expected in his character of prelate to keep the peace with ecclesiastical interests. Ely could, says Newburgh, "use both hands as right hands." He was a "hungry falcon" with a fanatical zeal for his king and such pride of office as only a parvenu could feel. He was especially relied upon to hold John in check. His physical limitations were calculated to keep him out of intrigue. Though it is not necessary to accept Giraldus' malicious description of him as malformed, low-browed, hirsute, and generally repulsive, he was by no means commanding — small of stature, lame, stammering.
25
His usefulness was his Argus-eyed vigilance where he felt the king's interest concerned. He could be counted on to be ruthless with the king's enemies. To the chancellor were added several justiciars, some of the old regime, some younger men, among these the dependable Guillaume le Maréchal , now Earl-elect of Pembroke. In the meantime important sees were filled.
At the heart of the structure the queen reigned supreme. Restored not only to her own dower, but to those of two predecessors as well, she lacked no resource to give effect to her will.
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As regent she trusted no testimony regarding events. The Countess of Poitou forgot that she was growing old and, like Henry in his prime, she bustled about with hastily mustered escorts and examined the state of the realm with her own ear and eye, and gave orders for the righting of grievances and the discipline of recreants. She was in her native role at last; and no sovereign in Europe had had a more varied experience with men and affairs than she.
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Richard's fleet comprised great ships with broadsides well protected, manned with stout crews well able to defend them. On board he put abundance of gold and silver, rich furs, utensils, precious vestments, arms of all sorts, supplies of bacon, wine, cheese, flour, biscuit, pepper, cumin, wax, electuaries, various drinks, spiced meats, and syrups.
Guillaume le Maréchal, III
While admirals looked to the lading of the ships, Richard hurried abroad to set affairs in order in his continental domains and to gather new resources for the expedition overseas,
28
and held his Christmas court in Bures.
29
Queen Eleanor followed him in February with the Princess Alais; and since Eleanor can hardly have desired that young woman's company at the gatherings of magnates among whom she showed herself with restored prestige as mistress of the Norman castles, it was probably at this time that Alais became the prisoner of the Plantagenets in the fortress of Rouen. From Bures Eleanor went with Richard to Anjou to put her urgent or restraining hand on the affairs of that region, woefully confused since the untoward death of Henry.
For the first time in years the queen escaped the fog and darkness of the English winter and breathed freely the delicious air of mild familiar lands. While Richard made a circuit of the counties of Poitou, she appears to have remained in Chinon or the neighborhood, where numerous charters bearing her seal attest her presence.
30
From the lofty heights of the treasure castle, where Henry had wrestled with death, she could look down upon the bridge, the road, the river valley, toward the y where the king slept quietly in the choir of the nuns, in that very refuge where he had designed to immure her as ss. In one of her charters, "for the repose of Henry's soul," she made a grant to Fontevrault.
After finishing a round of his provinces, Richard kept a rendezvous with Philip Augustus at Gisors to arrange details for the final muster of western Christendom for crusade. Here, in spite of the urgency of military matters, Philip insisted on raising the harassing question of Alais and harping upon her injuries. If Richard should not survive the hazards of the holy war, what then became of all the glittering promises made to that princess? The King of the Franks desired to see his sister married forthwith; or, if the Plantagenets were resolved to repudiate their reiterated vows, then at least he looked to see Alais returned to her kin, together with her marriage portion. The site where once the Gisors elm had spread its great branches over a place of truce and concord had become a spot marked for conflict. Richard did not succeed in pacifying Philip, but he circumvented him. Since the compact of Christian sovereigns forbade women to accompany the crusade, Coeur-de-Lion put the Capetian off with promises to fulfill his engagement on his return from Palestine; and in order that he might find his bride safe in that day, he held it best to keep her still in custody, together with her dower. In spite of the transparency of the subterfuge, the King of the Franks could not press the issue with the great movement of troops afoot all over Europe.
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Had ye but seen the host when forth it came! The earth trembled with its coming.
Ambrose
Richard's contingents for the holy war were mustered in Tours,
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where he had first taken the cross without his father's knowledge
32
and whither he now returned to receive his staff and scrip. The ovation to the king, dedicated at the very outset of his reign to his heroic mission, passed all bounds. The city could hardly contain the armies, to say nothing of the folk gathered to bid farewell to the soldiers of Christ. They came from every side, says the chronicler, "as thick as drops of rain." Tears flowed freely in the streets as men signed with the cross broke from the embraces of their kindred and, turning from the groans and cheers of their beloved, took place, each under his own knight's banners, and set their faces for Jerusalem. Though the chroniclers are silent, the queen must have been there to bedew her "third nestling" with pious tears. "Saint Leonard" and "Saint George" and "
Dix nous aide
." To the strains of that crusaders' song, "Wood of the Cross," the host was lost to sight on the route for Vézelay.
Satan, jealous of the auspicious beginning of the crusade of Christian princes, sowed discord among them
.
Guillaume de Nangis
THE HOST THAT GATHERED on the slopes of Vézelay in the early days of July 1190, "when the rose was sweetly blowing,"
1
was no such penitential throng as had swarmed under Louis's banners at the summons of Bernard in the mid-century. There were, for the time being, few mendicants, no paroled convicts, no Amazons, no curious travelers, no devouring camp followers in this new stirring of the Christian world. This was cleanly a military enterprise, its armies better calculated to frighten Saladin and the kings of Babylon than any that had heretofore pitched its countless tents on the hillsides of Burgundy. On the 30th of June the English fleet raised its sails in the harbor of Dover, taking off for Mediterranean ports.
The chronicler, reviewing the grand muster, concluded that it was the devil that stirred up enmities between the Kings of the Franks and the English before they left Vézelay. If these rancors were indeed the work of Satan, the betrayer of mankind never had more golden opportunity to ply his malice. In the last months of preparation Philip's enthusiasin for the holy war had declined. He had recently lost his queen, Isabelle of Hainaut,
2
and her death gave him new anxieties over her inheritance in the Low Countries for the son she had bequeathed to him. The Carolingian dreams that he had confessed to his vassalage at the outset of his reign had so far not materialized. But grosser afflictions than these brought his spirits down. He was consumed by a venomous jealousy of his vassal and brother-in-arms, the King of England.
In Vézelay Richard, without having done anything to merit his peculiar fortunes, was the observed of all observers. He was ten years older than his liege lord; his exploits as a warrior were already legendary, his treasure past reckoning, his trappings magnificent. He was more prepossessing, too, more commanding in presence, more eloquent, more openhanded with his bounty. The knights, even those of the Frankish banners, sought his counsel on practical details of the journeys and the campaigns that lay ahead, and these colloquies left Philip gnawing a reed on the edge of the field. Why should the King of the English, assuming a divine election, undertake the direction of the holy war, which the two kings had publicly sworn to share and share alike? Not far below the surface of the royal intercourse rankled the insult to the Capets in the matter of the disprized Alais, now Queen Eleanor's prisoner in the fortress of Rouen and the topic of unseemly talk among those familiar with the courts of kings. The interests that before the death of Henry had made Coeur-de-Lion and Philip bedfellows and trencher-mates in Paris had dissolved with Henry's death, and Richard himself had become the irreconcilable Angevin enemy of the Capets. The chronicler saw the work of the devil in these strange mutations.
From Vézelay the armies of the Franks and the English proceeded together as far as Lyon en route for the final gathering of the fleets in Sicily. All along the way the folk came out to speed with gifts and cheers that vast host signed with the cross whose destination was the holy place of Zion. Women brought jugs of drinking water to the roadsides and lifted up their babes to the pilgrim-soldiers for a laying on of hands. Shouts went up as mothers and wives caught last glimpses of their own in the ranks that flowed like a river through Burgundy.
From Lyon, to facilitate the provisioning of so vast a host, the kings parted company. Philip, who had inherited his father's horror of the sea, went overland as far as possible.
3
Richard proceeded to Marseille to embark with his fleet.
4
There he learned that the ships he had forwarded from Dover and other Channel ports, together with the squadrons recruited in continental harbors, were still laboring with adverse winds off the Pillars of Hercules.
5
Impatient of delay, he decided not to await his transports. Having dispatched the rank and file of his armies by various routes, he himself hired some solid Pisan boats, and, setting sail with an elect company, he made the most of opportunity to visit the famed Italian shores.
6
From his galley,
Piombone
, he dropped in at points of interest; then pursued his journey for a day or two by land; then caught his ship again at some remoter port. He took the time it needs to appreciate the Bay of Naples, Vesuvius with its white plume, Amalfi, Salerno, and the islands. But presently, having learned that the winds delaying his ships had enabled Philip Augustus to reach Messina ahead of him, he diverted his vessels to Sicilian ports and made haste to cross the Faro lest the King of the Franks should take advantage of his earlier arrival. The suspicion was well grounded, but it came too late. When, amidst the press of painted sails and the blare of trumpets, Coeur-de-Lion's lead ship emerged in the harbor of Messina, and the king himself stepped forth from the silken canopy that sheltered him, the populace gathered on the shores acclaimed him as a sovereign non pareil; but the actual custodians of the island to his surprise directed him to pitch his tents outside the walls of the city,
8
for the King of the Franks had already established himself in the palace of Count.
Tancred; and Tancred had recently, and without benefit of any suffrage, seated himself upon the throne of Sicily.
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Until the autumn of 1189, Sicily had been the happy and prosperous realm of that good and liberal King William, who in 1174 had made Joanna Plantagenet his queen. William had been signed with the cross and his resources in men and ships and especially in treasure, were immense. His untimely death in the previous November had deprived the crusade of one of its richest and most ardent leaders. The widowed Joanna, still young and regally dowered, kept her residence in the palace of Palermo, and Coeur-de-Lion, in the circumstances, had expected a hearty reception in the island. But the situation he found upon landing was so unexpected and so urgent that he was compelled to divert his energies from the crusade for the time being and employ them in the interests of Joanna.
King William, who had deceased without issue, had made a liberal provision for his queen; but he had designated as his heir his aunt Constance, who in 1186 had been married to Henry Hohenstaufen, the heir of Frederick Barbarossa and of the Holy Roman Empire. But Henry was in Germany at the time of the landings in Sicily, engrossed by the confusions attending his succession to his father. Taking advantage of the emperor's preoccupations on the other side of the Alps, Tancred, Count of Lecce, the bastard nephew of the late King William, seized what seemed a good chance to usurp the Sicilian throne and the vast properties of his uncle. He was well known, on the spot, preferred by the islanders to a foreign overlord, and he was thus entrenched for a firm stand. The marshaling of the crusaders in Sicily at this juncture of affairs was, from his point of view, embarrassing. As a measure of precaution he was detaining Queen Joanna in Palermo. The approach of Coeur-de-Lion's incomparable army would have made him more uneasy than he was, if he had not already divined that he could count upon a certain support from Philip Augustus. Hence the King of the Franks was installed in Tancred's palace in Messina when Coeur-de-Lion made his resplendent landing on the Sicilian shores.
Richard's first act, after mastering the main features of his sister's situation, was to issue a peremptory demand upon Tancred to render up the captive Joanna, together with her dower, which was very handsome indeed.
10
With the forces of the famous Plantagenet king encamped upon the island, Tancred could not be arrogant. He therefore sent the young queen from Palermo to Messina with her widow's portion, her bed and its furniture, and a decent sum for her expenses. But he retained the rich revenues with which William had endowed her; and he also forgot to include with the shipment the valuable legacy which William in his testament had bequeathed to the late King Henry Plantagenet, for whom he had always cherished the highest admiration, a legacy Richard now claimed by inheritance.
Coeur-de-Lion went out to sea to meet Joanna and bring her into Messina with the honors due a queen. He had perhaps not seen his sister since he had escorted her through Poitou, when, as a maiden of eleven, she had journeyed from Normandy to Saint Gilles on her way to her marriage and her coronation. Even then the Sicilian envoys sent to negotiate the alliance had been charmed with her distinction of mind and the grace of her bearing. As a child she had been bred in Fontevrault
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and polished occasionally in the court of Poitiers. Joanna was now twenty-five, spirited, accomplished, beautiful, like all the daughters of Henry Plantagenet and Queen Eleanor. Her lot, as marriage prize, had deposited her, like her sisters, beyond the borders of the Angevin world, but in one of the richest regional cultures of her time; for Sicily lay on the crossway where the Mediterranean civilizations of Greek and Saracen enriched the more somber heritage of northern Europe, and William and his forebears had been hospitable to both. In this realm of luxury and light, Joanna had rooted and bloomed; and kin and homeland, even native dialect, had grown strange to her.
The queen's arrival brought an access of splendor to the establishment of Richard, which was not unremarked, if Benedict may be believed, even by the King of the Franks. A sudden inspiration attaching to his Carolingian dream seemed for a moment to take shape in Philip's mind. Observers, says Benedict, thought they noticed a sudden unaccountable warmth between the crusading kings after the arrival of the lovely young widow of William. When the King of the Franks went ceremoniously to greet Joanna in the hospice where (for want of a palace) she was lodged, Philip's countenance "glowed with a joyful expectation." But the conjecture must have been some Frank's wishful surmise, since nothing ever came of it. In the course of a few days, Richard seized the priory of La Biniare on the mainland of Calabria for the queen's residence, and so put Scylla and Charybdis between Philip and Joanna.
In the meantime, Coeur-de-Lion sent messages anew to Tancred specifying what additional properties belonging to his sister were to be dispatched to Messina. Among the articles especially coveted were a gilded table more than twelve feet long, a golden chair, and a dinner service of twenty-four gold and silver plates and cups.
While Tancred was hesitating over the next step he ought to take to protect his prospects, he appears to have received some suggestions from Philip that encouraged him. It was revealed to him that he might, to further his own larger purposes, play upon a certain hostility that kept cropping up between the kings destined for crusade. Acting intuitively on this line, he sent Philip some handsome presents. To Richard he had offered not so much as an egg. The zigzag behavior of Tancred at this time betrays an ingenious improvisation of plan as events unfolded. He now invited Coeur-de-Lion on a pilgrimage to see Mount Etna and some especially venerated shrines in the vicinity. At Taormina, on the way back, Tancred displayed confidentially letters which he alleged he had lately received from Philip with the latter's seal dangling from them in which the King of the English was painted as a troth breacher on whom no reliance could be placed, and in which the writer offered to aid Tancred if the latter should see fit to repel Richard's unreasonable demands with reference to the properties of the Queen of Sicily.
Tancred's openness in thus exposing to him the black heart of Philip Augustus so moved Coeur-de-Lion that he made up his mind at once to regard the usurper of Sicily as a friend. Though stickling for Joanna's furniture and plate, he mitigated some of his other demands; and since he had now had an opportunity to talk with Joanna, he agreed, in return for valuable considerations in movables, and without much regard for the Hohenstaufens in Germany, to recognize Tancred's claim to Sicily.
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But so that the kingdom might not pass out of the orbit of Plantagenet interests and presently become a prey to the predatory Hohenstaufen, he improvised an alliance on the spot. He agreed to affiance Tancred's infant daughter to his own child nephew, Arthur of Brittany, whom he promised to recognize as his heir in default of issue of his own.
19
As token of an enduring compact, he then offered to Tancred Excalibur,
20
the priceless sword of fabled King Arthur, which some recent archaeological researches of the late King Henry were said to have unearthed in Glastonbury.
21
Altogether these manifestations of good will were much more than Tancred had expected.
When Richard returned to Messina and fronted Philip with the evidence of his perfidy, the King of the Franks denounced the letters to Tancred as forgeries gotten up by collusion to discredit him. From this beginning he worked himself up to a fever of indignation by reciting the whole chronicle of his wrongs at the hands of the Plantagenets. Richard, he maintained, was fabricating excuses to quarrel with him so that he might find a pretext for repudiating the Princess Alais. "Let the King of the English know this for certain," he cried, "if he puts aside my sister Alais and marries another woman, I will be the enemy of him and his, as long as ever I live!"
This attack upon his honor roused Richard's Angevin choler and incited him to review publicly the history of that hapless woman, which heretofore, although it had been whispered in courtly closets and been no secret to anyone, had not been thus openly proclaimed by any of the principals. Coeur-de-Lion affirmed that Alais had been his father's mistress and that she had borne him a child and that it was for this reason that he had forborne to marry her. This deposition having been certified by credible witnesses "after much exchange of language," the bishops and barons all agreed that Richard should be freed from his intolerable compact; but they also held that he must restore the dower lands to Philip with the injured Alais and offer a financial compensation to the princess for the final extinction of hopes so fair. Richard consented to accept his penalties in the judgment, but only after his return from crusade. For the time being, Alais remained in the tower of Rouen and her dower in the custody of the Plantagenets.