Eleanor Of Aquitaine (54 page)

For Queen Eleanor in her travail and bereavement, there was no respite for fatigue or grief. In the midst of requiems she gathered her counsels and in these she did not spare herself. Mercadier had accompanied the king's cortege from Châlus. He at once drew his
routiers
from their operations in the Limousin. With these forces, and under the escort of that tough old campaigner of Henry Fitz-Empress and Coeur-de-Lion, Eleanor went herself to the recovery of Angers. At her approach Constance and Arthur and the ringleaders fell back upon Le Mans, while the
routiers
ravaged the capital of Anjou and took from the citizenry a throng of prisoners.

In the meantime John with another force went northward from the region of Fontevrault to secure Le Mans. There the insurgents were too hastily rallied to withstand the seasoned troops of the Plantagenets, even within the fortifications of the mount. John, when he had forced the gates, took a terrible vengeance upon the traitors. The old capital of Maine reeked as it had reeked thirteen years before when Henry in his last battle fled from its walls. What was not burned was razed, and many of the citizens were taken captive. But Arthur and Constance, who had escaped from Eleanor at Angers, eluded John also in Le Mans.

The sagacious Plantagenets had long been seeking to secure the person of Arthur, if only to keep him from the "protective" custody of Philip Augustus. They had no sooner brought John back to the bosom of his own dynasty by agreeing among themselves on his succession than, for John's sake, they began efforts to win control of Arthur. Twice they had bungled. Three years before his death, Richard had made a strong move to gain custody of the young count, so that he might rear him in his own court to a proper view of his destiny. At this time he had summoned Constance to Normandy to do homage for herself and the boy, who until then had been in her tutelage. On her way from Nantes to Rouen a curious incident cut her journey short. As she moved along the marches, Ranulf of Chester, the husband that Henry Fitz-Empress had bestowed upon her to keep her within the Plantagenet confederation,
¹⁴
arrested her, for reasons not related, and shut her up in his castle of Saint James de Beuvron in Normandy near the Breton frontier, with the consequence that Arthur was not remanded by the Bretons to the Norman court.

This Bluebeard proceeding, the significance of which is itself obscure, had however a sequel that affected the destiny of Arthur; for Constance was presently separated from Ranulf of Chester and married Guy, a younger brother of the Count of Thouars.
¹
The huge fief of the family of Thouars lay on the marches of Brittany and Poitou, a bridge between the two provinces; and the counts were bound by ancient ties of relationship and feudal service to the house of Poitou. The marriage of Guy and Constance occurred at about the time of Richard's death, and the sudden alliance gave new anxiety to the Plantagenets, since it pointed to possible new understandings between Philip Augustus in connivance with the Bretons and Queen Eleanor's rebel vassals in the Limousin, and to a new guardianship for Arthur. It was perhaps in some connection with this disturbing alliance that John was found, at the time of Richard's death, in the company of Arthur in Le Mans. But the sudden emergency of his own succession led him, as the
Magna Vita
observes, "incautiously" to allow his nephew for a second time to escape the custody of the Plantagenets.

In the taking of Le Mans, in spite of his triumphs, John failed to get possession of his nephew, who now eluded the Plantagenets for the third time. In the night by stealth Constance and Guy, with the help of the Count of Thouars, spirited the lad away to Tours, where Philip, who was conveniently waiting there, took him into his protection and at once sent him to the greater security of Paris.
¹⁷
The boy was now thirteen and fit for knightly exercise. Philip established him in his palace, where, as boon fellow of his own son and heir, who was about the same age, Arthur made what he could of dialectic under the best of tutors. Like any loyal Frank, he made his pilgrimage to Saint Denis, besought the suffrage of that patron saint, and as token of his piety and devotion, offered a silken mantle upon the altar.
¹⁸
In Paris the Count of Brittany was bred to delusions of grandeur. He learned to regard himself as the incontestable heir not only of Brittany, but of Maine, Anjou, Touraine… of Poitou, when his grandmother Queen Eleanor should be dead or dispossessed. England and Normandy floated more distantly in his vision.

*

Eleanor, turning back from the rout of the Bretons in Angers, at once set forth again from her headquarters in the y, this time to secure her own provinces from the anarchy that Richard's last campaigns in the Limousin had reawakened and that his death had unloosed. She had the makings of an escort among those gathered about her in Fontevrault, and to these she added recruits along the way. With an imposing retinue of bishops and nobles, she moved majestically into her own estates. Avoiding the region of Richard's last exploits, she cleared a wide swath through her domains from Poitiers to Bordeaux and the frontiers of Spain. Henry Plantagenet himself could hardly have covered more ground nor accomplished more objects in the same space of time.

On this journey she did not exploit John as her heir, as she had once paraded Richard, for her vassals were weary of Angevins. She went through her provinces as duchess of her own domains, showing herself a paragon of largess and magnanimity on the highways and in the towns where feasts and fairs drew gatherings of the people. Wherever she arrived came those who had supplication
¹
; to make, old grievances to redress, claims to adjudicate. With whatever pangs of secret dread, she paid out, like jewels plucked from her coronet, domains and tithes and privlieges that once enriched her inheritance, buying therewith the support of seigneurs and abbés who flocked to her presence as fast as their hackneys could bring them, each eager to grasp his portion while the treasure was abundant. In these barters she laid hands on some of the properties with which the Plantagenets had dowered the futile Berengana; and when she could, she traded mere estates for strongholds; thus she exchanged even the favorite hunting grounds of the Counts of Poitou and the Angevin kings in the Talmont for assets more practical.

However, her most striking success was popular. As at the time of Richard's accession, a sound instinct advised her to appeal for the suffrage she needed to the nascent third estate. In that earlier crisis, "knowing how irksome it is to be a prisoner," she had emptied dungeons and relaxed laws that Henry had let fall oppressively on common folk. Now, with like prescience, she addressed herself to the aspirations of that
bourgeoisie
rising in wealth and power in all the larger centers. She turned her eyes on those agglomerations of merchants and artisans that in her lifetime had settled haphazardly outside the episcopal walled towns that marked the main thoroughfares of trade and pilgrimage, those huddled urban populations distinct from clerks, yet free from serfdom on baronial soil. To those anomalous folk, troublesome by their very nature to prelate and seigneur, she showed her favor. In the course of a journey that lasted from late April to mid July, she visited Loudun and Poitiers, Niort, Andelly, La Rochelle, Samtes, Saint Jean d'Angély, Bordeaux, and many other populous places, and presently at least five of these received from their duchess their charters as communes.
¹⁰
Did she understand that these new associations of the burghers at the cross roads of travel were presently to impose law on the ancient brigandage and anarchy of the elder estates?

On this good will tour
²⁰
the duchess did not of course overlook the religious foundations of the south. Among others she visited the Grande-Sauve near Bordeaux. There she was shown a deed of privliege that recalled old times. It was fixed with the seal of Thomas Becket the Chancellor and it revived the memory of the sanguine days when she and Henry had made their first
chevauchée
through her patrimonial estates. In commemoration of those days, she indited a new letter patent to the monastery.

"Eleanor, by the grace of God, Queen of England, Duchess of Normandy and Guienne, Countess of Anjou, to the archbishops, bishops, s, salutation. The late King Henry, our very dear husband of gracious memory, and we ourselves long ago took the monastery of the Grande Sauve under our special protection. But that Henry, as well as our son Richard, who succeeded him, having both since died, and God having left us still in the world, we have been obliged, in order to provide for the needs of our people and the welfare of our lands, to visit Gascony. We have been brought in the course of our journey to this monastery and we have seen that it is a holy place. For this reason we have commended both ourselves and the souls of those kings to the prayers of this community, and that our visit may not have been unserviceable, we hereby confirm the ancient privlieges of this foundation."

When she had reassured and tranquilized her own domains, the queen set forth directly on the most difficult part of her whole mission, this time to Tours. Here in the city whose castle and bourg belonged to the heritage of Anjou, her painful necessity brought her face to face with her unspeakable overlord, Philip Augustus, Dieu Donné, scion of Louis Capet, the betrayer of Coeur-de-Lion, the suborner of John, the custodian of her grandson, Arthur of Brittany. Eleanor saw clearly that the odious thing she had determined upon would have to be done, and somehow she got through with it. In Tours the old queen rendered her homage in person to Philip for all her patrimony south of the Loire. This legal act, however painful, was indispensable to her design, for it had the merit of excluding John explicitly from any present claim to her inheritance. However, for the sake of the future, as soon as the ordeal of homage had passed, she had a new document prepared in which she designated her "very dear son John" as her heir in Poitou and Aquitaine, but withheld to herself sole sovereignty over her provinces for the days of her life. Thus ended any possibility of Arthur of Brittany's laying claim to Poitou in prejudice of John, no matter what might occur in the Angevin domains north of the Loire.
²²
In the interests of the Angevin empire, the queen had made in three months of summer heat a progress of more than a thousand miles.

Having by these acts regulated the prospects of her posterity, she closed her chancellery on the Vienne for the time being and hastened before the end of July to rejoin John in Rouen; for her dearest hope was still unrealized — the consummation of that compact made before Richard's death for the marriage of her granddaughter of Castile to the heir of Philip. To this alliance she especially looked as a means of checking for a blessed interval the aggressions of the Capets.

*

In Rouen as autumn approached the remnants of the Plantagenets forgathered with their magnates to review events and coordinate their enterprise. But here domestic matters upset the routine of chancelleries. The court was distracted by the disasters of Joanna. The remarriage of the former Queen of Sicily, which had retrieved Toulouse for the Plantagenets, had been ill starred, and her prosperity had rapidly declined.

Joanna had rejoined Eleanor in Niort, in the course of the queen's recent Poitevin tour, in a state of desperation. Her story was that, while Count Raymond was off on the edges of creation in warfare with some of his vassals, she had been called upon herself to suppress revolt in another quarter of the south. She had had good lessons in military strategy on crusade, but here in a corner of Toulouse she had fallen victim to a treachery that no science and no valor could forestall. Some of Raymond's own knights had betrayed her to the very castellans upon whom she had brought her siege engines to bear, had provided them with victuals and men, and then, as a climax of perfidy, had set fire to her bivouac. Joanna had escaped by the skin of her teeth. She had been on her way to bespeak redress from Coeur de Lion, when, hearing of the calamity at Châlus, she had turned aside to find the queen in Niort. From Niort Eleanor had sent her to recuperate in care of the nuns in Fontevrault.

Joanna now arrived in Rouen to make her affairs a matter of consideration in the counsels of the Plantagenets.
²⁸
Especially, since Raymond had not provided for her needs, she required a living allowance from the royal exchequer. When she arrived she was in an advanced state of pregnancy, sick, worn with fatigue and desperation, convinced that her days were numbered. She insisted on making her will, designating the small gifts at her disposal to the abby that had been her nursery and her refuge, for the maintenance of the nuns' kitchen that had been built through the liberality of Queen Eleanor.

Then, to the consternation of the pious persons at her bedside, she demanded to be made a nun of Fontevrault so that she might put off vainglory and end her days in the trappings of poverty and humility. Her demand was of course irregular, but majesty was imperious. Joanna so persisted that a messenger was sent to Fontevrault to fetch the ss for consultation. When it was realized that Matilda might not arrive in time to receive the postulant, Joanna summoned the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was in the court, and entreated him to consecrate her to the order. Hubert Walter was, like all the others, edified by the aspirations of Joanna and moved by the anguish of Queen Eleanor, but he demurred from presuming upon the functions of Matilda, who might at any time arrive. In reasoning with the Countess of Toulouse, he kept as far as possible to generalities, explaining that there was nothing in the canons to provide for the admission of one spouse to a religious order while the other lived, and nothing to cover the case of her unborn child. But Joanna was not to be thwarted by obscurations of the law. She insisted with so much zeal and fervor that she wore down the canonists who were obviously not to be given much time for dialectic. A conference was called of nuns and clerks and all agreed that such conviction of vocation was inspired by heaven. With the consent of this council, the archbishop offered the countess to God and the order, in the presence of Queen Eleanor and many pious witnesses. There was just time. In September 1199 Joanna, aged thirty-four, closed her eyes upon the world.
²⁴
A few minutes after her death, she was delivered of a son, who survived long enough to receive baptisin. She had already in 1197 borne Count Raymond a son and heir;
²⁵
but the adherence of Toulouse, for which such efforts had been made, again became, through the inconstancy of Raymond, uncertain and tenuous.