Louis: The French Prince Who Invaded England (7 page)

And so Louis remained an only child as he left the care of women and started his education. Most boys from his era, when they appear in contemporary writings, are depicted simplistically either as bellicose future warriors or as bookish future clerks, but – revealing not for the last time a personality which was complex and not easy to decipher – Louis seems to have enjoyed both scholarly and martial pursuits, and he had plenty of opportunity. Philip’s own education had been cut short when he was crowned at the age of fourteen, taking over the reins of government during his father’s last illness and then becoming sole king at fifteen; he was determined that Louis should have the complete education he missed out on, the best that the royal treasury could provide.

Paris, and northern France more generally, was a great centre of education and enlightenment. Many noble English boys were sent across the Channel (including, among others, the chroniclers Matthew Paris and Gerald of Wales during their youth) as the provision was better than anything which could be obtained in England. One of the most celebrated masters of the time, Amaury de Bène of the University of Paris, was engaged to teach Louis. We do not have any day-to-day details of Louis’s schedule, but thanks to a wealth of surviving educational literature we do know that the curriculum in vogue at the time was wide-ranging. It included the liberal arts – the
trivium
of grammar, rhetoric and logic, and the
quadrivium
of arithmetic, music, astronomy and geometry – as well as lessons in good conduct, fine manners and morals. In theory, much was expected of a prince. Gerald of Wales’s didactic text
On the Instruction of a Prince
, started during the 1190s and later to become influential across western Europe, noted that he should observe moderation, generosity, magnificence, justice and boldness, and also that he should be religious and devout.

The teachings of the Church were of great importance, but they may not have been a formal part of Louis’s education: as Christian belief permeated every aspect of everyday life, ‘religion’ was probably not taught or emphasised as a separate subject, but rather was something which underpinned everything else. Of course, not all monarchs showed the same reverence for every facet of the Church’s teachings (not when they had a war to fight or a wife they wanted to divorce, for example) but Louis showed himself, even at an early age, to be pious, and this would continue throughout his life. Hugh of Avalon, the eminent bishop of Lincoln (later to become St Hugh) visited Paris in 1200 and met the young prince, who listened to him with a gravity beyond his years. Possibly Louis may not have been quite as naturally shrewd or politically astute as his father, who had had to learn the hard way, but he did enjoy learning. This was all the more remarkable, says Gerald of Wales, because it is a rare quality in princes, who are often no more than ‘crowned donkeys’.

Also in the year 1200, around the time of his thirteenth birthday in September, Louis was presented with a book called
Karolinus
by its author Giles of Paris, in which the great emperor Charlemagne was promoted as an exemplar for his young descendant. The book described how Charlemagne cultivated each of the four cardinal virtues – prudence, justice, temperance and courage – and how Louis could learn from this. Later, both Rigord and William the Breton would dedicate their works to Louis, recognising his love of letters.

The academic and moral facets of Louis’s education were important, but of course he was going to be a king, not a cleric, so he also needed to learn the more martial skills. Henry Clément, the marshal of France, was appointed to oversee this area of Louis’s training and was an exacting taskmaster; a small man himself, he was no doubt able to help Louis develop a style of combat which did not rely exclusively on size and strength. Again, surviving contemporary evidence means that we know what was considered to be the best way of training a boy destined for knighthood. Intense training should wait until puberty, but in early youth the basic skills such as riding, balance and coordination should be learned. Boys should start to become familiar with weapons by using wooden replicas, practising against posts and later against each other in mock combat. Louis enjoyed learning these knightly skills from an early age: when he was ten he wrote to his godfather Stephen de Tournai to ask him for a horse for his birthday (Stephen apparently agreed, but only on the condition that Louis did not use it as an excuse to neglect his studies). Despite being relatively small and slight Louis developed great skill in combat, which was to stand him in good stead in later life, when he became renowned for his enthusiasm for military campaigns. Not for nothing did he become known as Louis the Lion.

Knightly training also had a moral dimension. ‘Chivalry’ is a word which has changed greatly in meaning over the years; it originates from the French word
chevalerie
, meaning simply a body of knights or mounted warriors, and in its earliest incarnations it had none of the overtones of the distinctive and elaborate system of values which it would later gain. Put simply, in the twelfth century chivalry had very little to do with being polite to all men, gallant to all women or putting your cloak down over a puddle; the best description of it in this age and context is that it was a code which regulated the behaviour of knights
towards other knights
. Even the most cursory glance at contemporary events demonstrates that there was no particular requirement to behave respectfully towards commoners, women, non-Christians or heretics, as we shall see. However, there were by this stage some implicit rules regarding the keeping of one’s word and the importance of companionship among knights, of being loyal to one’s comrades, and this is a lesson which Louis took to heart, and which was later to have profound consequences for the kingdom of England.

In learning to be a knight Louis was not alone. It was the custom to gather together noble youths from the great houses into the royal household, so a number of companions of similar age were brought to Paris to be educated alongside him, among them Arthur, duke of Brittany and heir presumptive to the English throne; Louis’s second cousins Robert and Peter de Dreux, sons of Robert II, count of Dreux, whose father had been a younger brother of Louis VII; and their cousin Guy de Châtillon, eldest son and heir of Walter III, count of St Pol. This gathering of noble boys served a dual purpose: not only would Louis have companions with whom he could practise his skills, but these boys would be the great lords of the realm when he was king, so they would develop a personal loyalty to him.

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Meanwhile, events at court took a new turn. In 1196 King Philip married again, this time to Agnes, daughter of the duke of Merania in Bavaria (then part of the Holy Roman Empire), so Louis at last gained a new stepmother. The only problem was that the pope, Innocent III, had not recognised Philip’s repudiation of and separation from Ingeborg, and he declared the new marriage bigamous. So when Agnes gave birth in 1198 to a daughter, Marie, and in 1200 to Philip, a long-awaited second son for the king (known throughout his life as Philip Hurepel for his wild hair), their legitimacy was widely called into question. Again, the chroniclers expressed their disapproval: William the Breton dares to refer to Agnes as a ‘concubine’ and Rigord saw the marriage as ‘against the law and the will of God’. Eventually, with France under papal Interdict – the most severe punishment the Church could inflict, meaning that Mass could not be celebrated anywhere in the realm, and that the sacraments including weddings and burials in consecrated ground were forbidden to everyone – Philip caved in and sent Agnes away to a convent, where her death in 1201, in giving birth to a stillborn child, solved the question of bigamy. Much later, when as part of a negotiated settlement with the pope Philip would agree to restore Ingeborg to her official position as queen – though he never accepted her back personally as his wife – Innocent agreed to legitimise Marie and Philip Hurepel. King Philip would never marry again, though he did father at least one illegitimate son, known as Peter Charlot, sometime between 1205 and 1209. Peter was tutored by William the Breton; destined for a career in the Church, he later became bishop of Noyon. As the eldest son of Philip’s first and undisputed queen, Louis’s position as heir to the French throne was not affected by the births of his much younger half-siblings, but the legitimisation of Philip Hurepel (albeit surrounded by murmurs that he would never be ‘properly’ legitimate, as there were questions over the validity of his parents’ marriage at the time of his birth) meant that King Philip now had a second heir, which eased worries over the succession.

As Louis continued his scholarly pursuits and his chivalric training, his father began the momentous task of finding a bride for him. Matrimonial alliances were the best way of securing the ties between different houses and the control of lands, and Philip’s inclination was to find a suitable granddaughter of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine – and therefore niece of the current King Richard – of whom there were many. Some thought was given to Eleanor, daughter of Richard’s deceased brother Geoffrey and sister to Arthur, the duke of Brittany, who was one of Louis’s companions at court. But an ongoing conflict between Richard and Arthur made this match less attractive, so Philip turned his attentions to the daughters of Alfonso VIII of Castile (who was married to Richard’s sister Eleanor) of whom three were of a suitable age. Negotiations began in early 1199 but were interrupted by Richard’s sudden death in April at the siege of Châlus.

Richard’s youngest brother John immediately claimed the throne of England, as his brother’s heir, but this was challenged by Arthur and his supporters in Brittany, Anjou and Maine; Arthur’s late father, Geoffrey, had been John’s elder brother, so if the laws of primogeniture were to be strictly interpreted then Arthur’s claim was superior. However, primogeniture was not yet the exact science it would later become, and it was more open to interpretation about whether the younger son of a former king had a better claim to the throne than a grandson whose own father had never ruled – the question of
casus regis
(this related only to royal inheritance, not non-royal succession to other estates, which muddied the waters still further). Norman custom favoured the son and Angevin custom the grandson, thus setting the barons of Normandy and Anjou against each other; there was little point in looking to England for a precedent as the line of succession there had been bent and twisted almost out of all recognition over the preceding two hundred years. In general there was a preference for an adult man over a child, and consideration also needed to be given to the practicalities of the situation. In this particular case Eleanor of Aquitaine, John’s mother, who was duchess of Aquitaine in her own right and therefore had many resources at her disposal, favoured her son over her grandson, which tipped matters in John’s favour. Meanwhile, Arthur’s claim was hampered by the inconvenient facts that he had never been to England and that he was twelve years old.

All of this provided Philip with an opportunity to profit, so he suspended the marriage negotiations and invaded Normandy. During the next few years he would switch his support from John to Arthur and back again depending on what was more politically convenient at the time.

A truce was declared in October 1199. John, by then in desperate need of peace with Philip, agreed to the marriage of one of his nieces with Louis, promising 30,000 marks of silver, the castle and lands of Gisors, the county of Evreux and those castles and lands which had been occupied by the French king at the time of Richard’s death. Philip agreed, and French representatives were dispatched to Castile, where they encountered the elderly Eleanor of Aquitaine, who had been enlisted by John to help with the marriage arrangements. She met the princesses and after careful consideration recommended Alfonso’s third daughter Blanche as the future queen of France. The French ambassadors accepted her choice and returned to Philip with the news; Eleanor undertook to bring the girl north.

Further negotiations took place in early 1200 to arrange a more long-term peace between Philip and John, and a treaty was sealed at Le Goulet on 22 May. Louis, who had presumably been awaiting with some interest the outcome of the decision on his future life partner, was summoned, and he and Blanche were married the next day; they were both twelve. As we will see in later chapters, this was to be one of the most successful royal marriages of the Middle Ages; Blanche and Louis would form an effective partnership which would go from strength to strength. But neither of them could know that as, no doubt dazed by events, they returned to Paris to start their life together.

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When Eleanor of Aquitaine had met her three granddaughters she held long conversations with them and considered their looks, personality and suitability for the demanding life ahead before arriving at a decision. Eleanor, of course, was something of an expert on the role of queen of France, having been Louis VII’s first wife before their divorce and her subsequent marriage to Henry II of England. She knew that looks were important – no king would stand for an ugly bride – but also that more was needed. Berengaria, the eldest of the three sisters, was already betrothed to King Alfonso IX of León (her father’s cousin) and so discounted from consideration, although one suspects that this might not have stopped Eleanor if she had really decided that Berengaria was her preferred candidate. That left Urraca and Blanche, who was known in Castile as Bianca. We do not know exactly what Blanche looked like, but although she was born in what we would now call Spain, her ancestry meant that she may well have been blond; certainly the only surviving contemporary portrait of her has blue eyes. Whatever she looked like, Eleanor judged that Urraca was the more beautiful of the two, but she selected Blanche anyway. One Spanish chronicler put this down to her name: Bianca (meaning ‘white’) could easily be rendered into the more French Blanche, but Urraca would sound foreign however it was pronounced. However, given Eleanor’s reputation as one of the shrewdest women of the Middle Ages, she may be credited with more imagination than to choose a future queen based merely on her name. She evidently saw something in Blanche.