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None of the pictures of Richard's outer or inner man which have come down to us date from a time quite so early as the year 1179; but the main features of his personality, outward and inward, were already marked enough to show us in those pictures a true likeness of the young conqueror of Taillebourg. In the sculptured effigies of Richard at Fontevraud and at Rouen the outlines of the face give so little indication of age as to suggest that in the living model they may have been--except for the beard and moustache--almost the same at forty-one as at twenty-one; the features are well proportioned and finely formed. In life they were crowned with a profusion of hair "of a colour midway between red and yellow"--in other words, of the rare golden or still rarer auburn hue. The young duke's stature was lofty, above the average height, his frame shapely and well proportioned, with long, straight, flexible limbs; "no arm was better adapted than his for drawing sword, nor more powerful to strike with it." His whole person had such an aspect of dignity that two independent observers, at different times, described it in the same words--"a form worthy to occupy a place of high command"; and the seemliness of his appearance was enhanced by that of his manners and dress. The stories of his gigantic strength all relate to the time of the Crusade, when that strength was in its maturity; but a man of whom such tales were told must have been a born athlete. On the other hand, it was certainly before his Aquitanian days were over that he contracted the quartan ague which, says Gerald of Wales, "was given him to repress the over fierce workings of his mind, but by which he, like the lion, yea, more than lion that he was, seemed rather to be influenced as by a goad; for while thus almost continually trembling, he remained intrepid in his determination to make the whole world tremble and fear before him."

In this sentence of Gerald's we have perhaps the earliest foreshadowing of the epithet which was to become attached exclusively to Richard's name. The king of beasts has in all ages been a common simile for a king of men, whether the kingship be material or metaphorical. But Gerald's words seem, from their context, meant to carry a special significance which is more distinctly implied in the special form of Richard's traditional surname. Richard is not the only hero whom poets and romancers, in the golden age of old French poetry and romance, credited with the possession of "a lion's heart," but he is the only one who became known to the world for all time as pre-eminently and absolutely "The Lion-Heart." We cannot tell precisely when the epithet came into general use; one writer used it within eight years after Richard's death. It had evidently fixed itself in popular tradition before a less high-souled generation of romancers sought to explain a surname, whose true meaning they were too far removed from the old epic spirit to appreciate or understand, by devising an origin for it in an impossible tale of their own clumsy invention. Its true origin need be sought no further than the character of him who bore it.

"Among the virtues in which he excels, three especially distinguish him beyond compare: supereminent valour and daring; unbounded liberality and bountifulness; stedfast constancy in holding to his purpose and to his word"--thus Gerald of Wales wrote of Richard some eight or nine years after the campaign of Taillebourg. The young duke's energy and daring had been proved before that expedition; and his lavish readiness to reward those who served him had contributed in no small degree to his military successes, by means of the crowd of highly trained soldiers whom it attracted to his standard. What medieval writers call "constancy" was one of the qualities most universally admired in the medieval world. Richard's "constancy" had, as yet, shown itself chiefly in a form which compelled the admiration and respect of all his Aquitanian subjects, but was not likely to win him the love of the Aquitanian baronage. From the hour when his father laid on him, a lad of scarce sixteen years and a half, the task of restoring the ducal authority in Aquitaine, his aim was to rule and govern what Gerald truly calls "that hitherto untamed country" in such wise "that not only might he establish within its borders a far more complete and unbroken peace than was wont to reign there, but also, recovering what in time past had been lopped off and separated from it, restore all things to their pristine condition." The barons of the duchy were for the most part far from regarding "peace within its borders" as a thing to be desired; and Richard's ideal of a well-ordered state, while thus differing from theirs, was not made more attractive in their eyes by the methods which he employed to realize it. Unlike his elder brother, he did not court popularity; he was indeed absolutely indifferent to it, if not contemptuous of it. "Strictness and firmness, gravity and constancy," were the characteristics in him which men contrasted with the young king's easy good-nature, indulgent temper, and pleasantness towards all who approached him. Richard's generosity and graciousness were of a higher type than young Henry's; they were displayed only where they were deserved. With him everything was earnest. Even martial sports had no charm for a lad who, while other young knights of his day--his brothers among them--were acquiring the use of arms in an endless round of tournaments, was serving his military apprenticeship in real warfare; a warfare which he waged with tireless persistence and relentless severity for nearly ten years, "that he might quell the insubordination of an unruly people, and make innocence secure amid evildoers."

His zeal for public order and justice, his ruthless application of the utmost rigor of law to those who in his eyes deserved punishment, naturally provoked the hatred of his opponents, and laid him open to the charge of cruelty. No instances, however, are recorded; the Aquitanian chroniclers say nothing on the subject, and there is no real ground for supposing that his sternness towards the barons who withstood his will was other than what Gerald represents it to have been--part of a wholesome and necessary discipline. In 1183 they are said to have accused him of crimes of another kind; but this accusation rests only upon an English writer's report of the pleas by which they sought to justify their own treason. That some at least of the worst details of the charge were a product of that "recklessness of tongue" for which the men of the south were notorious, may with much probability be inferred from the silence of the Aquitanian chroniclers on this point also. The only comment made by a contemporary local writer on Richard's character and conduct during these early years of storm and stress is a tribute of praise even more impressive, considering the period and the circumstances in which it was written, than the panegyrics that were lavished from all quarters upon his later achievements. Geoffrey of Breuil seems to have been a member of a junior branch of the knightly family of Breuil in Poitou; his father's house was at Ste. Marie de Clairmont, near Excideuil in P?rigord. He made his profession as a monk at S. Martial's abbey at Limoges in 1160, was ordained priest in 1167, and ten years later was made Prior of Vigeois in the Limousin. His sketch of Aquitanian history ends abruptly at the year 1185. In that year he, as he says, decided to insert in his work "the names of the kings who are ruling the world in this our age." After mentioning by name Prester John, the two Emperors, the kings of Jerusalem, France, England, Scotland, Denmark, Sicily, Morocco, Spain, and Hungary, he continues: "In the list of the kings let there be written down the duke of Aquitaine and Gascony, Richard, who has never been slack in deeds of prowess, and whose youth is distinguished by great strenuousness of life."

A cessation of war between duke and barons in Aquitaine was usually followed by trouble with the mercenary troops who were always employed by one party or the other, sometimes by both parties, and who when such employment was lacking fell to raiding on their own account. This occurred in the summer of 1179 during Richard's absence in England after the fall of Taillebourg. Bordeaux was ravaged and burnt by some "Basques, Navarrese, or Brabantines," evidently soldiers of this class. With the barons Richard seems to have had no particular trouble for the next two years or more. On July 7, 1179, old Count William of Angoul?me and his stepson Aimar of Limoges, "with many others," set out on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. William died a month later at Messina; Vulgrin, who had surrendered the city to Richard, thus became head of the family, but the dignity and authority of count of Angoul?me seems to have been shared between him and his brothers.

The recent humiliation of Vulgrin and the absence of Aimar of Limoges and his fellow pilgrims may help to account for the fact that the year 1180 is almost a blank in the chronicles of Aquitaine. King Henry's presence in Normandy from April 1180 to July 1181 may also have had a pacific effect throughout all his continental dominions. It is, moreover, probable that some of the pilgrims had come to an agreement with Richard before they started; it seems almost certain that Aimar had done so, for when he returned, in December 1180, he was solemnly welcomed at Limoges on Christmas Day in a manner which implies that he had been reinstated in his former position of authority there, and we hear of no further hostilities between him and Richard for more than six months. We hear indeed of no further military movements in Aquitaine till after King Henry's return to England at the end of July 1181. Then Richard marched into Gascony and took possession of Lectoure, the chief town of the viscounty of Lomagne. He was seemingly on his way thence to Dax when V?zian of Lomagne, in the middle of August, came and submitted himself to him at S. Sever. V?zian was probably a very young man, for he was not yet a knight. His submission was not only accepted as frankly as it was offered, but it was rewarded by the bestowal of knighthood from Richard's hand. In November Richard joined his brothers in punishing the count of Sancerre for his rebellion against the young King Philip of France, whom Henry had charged his sons to protect and support during his own absence over-sea.

The castle of Hautefort, on the border of the Limousin and P?rigord, was the joint patrimony of Constantine and Bertrand de Born. They lived in it together, but in continual discord, till Constantine drove Bertrand out, seemingly in the latter part of 1181 or early in 1182. Bertrand, however, soon made his way back, and expelled Constantine in his turn. Constantine appealed for help to their immediate feudal superior, the viscount of Limoges, and also, it seems, to the duke. Both took up his cause; but at the moment they were at enmity with each other--probably about the Angoul?me succession--so "Richard made war against Aimar, and Richard and Aimar made war against Bertrand and ravaged and burned his land." Constantine was "a good knight as regards fighting"; Bertrand was something more--"a good knight, and a good fighter, and a good squire of dames, and a good troubadour, and wise and well-spoken, knowing how to deal with bad and good--and all his time he was at war with all his neighbours." The condition of things described in these last words was to Bertrand an ideal condition: "I would that the great men should be always quarrelling among themselves," he said. It was the ideal of a typical Aquitanian baron; and that ideal had become much less easy of realization now that the young duke was master of the land than it had been while the ducal interests were represented only by a woman or left in charge of mere seneschals. Bertrand seems to have conceived a project of so working on the minds of the other malcontents as to band them together with himself in a conspiracy whose primary and ostensible object was to be the overthrow of the duke, but which by uniting all its members in a sworn alliance with each other and therefore with its originator, Bertrand, should enable him to maintain his position as master of Hautefort. If Aimar of Limoges could be bound to Bertrand in a sworn league against Richard, Bertrand would be at once rid of one of his present antagonists, and another and a greater one would--so at least the allies might hope--soon have his hands too full of other work to trouble himself further about Hautefort.

Aimar and his three half-brothers, being already banded together against the duke for the preservation of Angoul?me to the male line of Taillefer, were naturally quite ready to embrace Bertrand's project--if indeed the project had originated with Bertrand. It seems to have first taken shape in a meeting at Limoges: "in an ancient minster of S. Martial," says Bertrand, "many rich men swore to me on a missal." They seem to have sworn that no individual among them should make terms with Richard for himself independently of his allies. Among the earliest members of the league thus formed were, besides the brothers of Angoul?me and their half-brother of Limoges, the three other viscounts of the Limousin--Ventadour, Comborn, and Turenne--the count of P?rigord, and William of Gourdon in Quercy. To these were soon added "other barons of P?rigord and of the Limousin and Quercy whom Richard was disinheriting." In one of his most vigorous sirventes Bertrand made a stirring appeal to the great nobles of Gascony, Gaston of B?arn, V?zian of Lomagne, Bernard of Armagnac, Peter of Dax, Centol of Bigorre: "if they will it, the count will have enough to do in those parts; and then, since he is so valiant, let him come with his great host this way and measure himself with us!" The effect of Richard's repressive measures in Saintonge and in Poitou are indirectly acknowledged in the poet's next words: "If Taillebourg and Pons and Lusignan and Maul?on and Tonnay were fit for action, and if there were a stirring and stalwart viscount at Sivray, I will never believe that they would not help us. He of Thouars, too, whom the count has threatened, should join us if he be not a dastard." Of Richard's relations at this period with Aimeric of Thouars, Ralf of Maul?on, and the lords of Tonnay and Sivray, we know nothing. The head of the house of Lusignan was that same Geoffrey who had been a prominent leader in the Poitevin rising of 1167, and had also joined in the revolt of 1173. Since then a new cause of strife had arisen between him and the Angevin rulers of Aquitaine. At the time when Adalbert of La Marche sold his county, according to his own statement, there was "no one protesting and indeed no one existing who had a right to protest" against the sale. But on the actual annexation of La Marche to the ducal domain Geoffrey of Lusignan "with his brothers"--he had five--did more than protest; he "resisted, saying that La Marche belonged to him as heir--and," adds Geoffrey of Vigeois, "he got it." How and when he got it we do not know, but it was probably not earlier than the autumn of 1182, since Bertrand de Born shortly before that time evidently did not regard the Lusignans as being in a position to afford much practical help to the league, and in June of that year Henry was still sufficiently master of the county to make a peaceful visit to Grandmont for the third time within sixteen months. Obviously, however, the league would have the sympathies of the claimant of La Marche and his brothers. It seems to have also had those of some at least of the towns; "the burghers are shutting themselves in all round"--that is, rebuilding or strengthening their town walls--said Bertrand.

The darkest secrets connected with the league did not come out till after Christmas. The festival week was spent by the two Henrys, Richard, and Geoffrey, at Caen. On January 1, 1183, the young king, "of his own accord, no one compelling him," publicly took an oath on the Gospels that he would serve his father loyally and faithfully from that time forth; "and because--as he asserted--he desired to retain in his mind no malice or rancour whereby his father might afterwards be offended, he made known to him that he was bound by an agreement with the barons of Aquitaine against his brother Richard; having been moved thereto because the castle of Clairvaux had been built against his will, in the patrimony which was his rightful inheritance, by his said brother; wherefore he besought his father to take that castle from Richard and retain it in his own keeping." Richard, when admonished by his father on the subject, at first refused to give up the castle, but afterwards at his father's desire "freely made it over to him to dispose of it according to his good pleasure."

The question of Clairvaux was thus settled for the lifetime of the elder king; the settlement was that which the younger one had himself proposed, and it ought to have led to his immediate withdrawal from his engagements with Richard's enemies. But the incident had a further significance which filled Henry II with dismay. It showed him that on his death not only might this particular dispute between young Henry and Richard be reopened, but a crowd of other disputes might arise among all his sons about their feudal relations with each other, and that unless these relations were fixed beforehand, all his schemes for preserving the integrity of the Angevin dominions would probably come to nought. As soon as the festival season was over he set out with his sons for Anjou. When they reached Le Mans, he expressed his desire that young Henry, as the future head of the family, should receive the homage of Richard and Geoffrey for their respective duchies. It seems that the proposition was made privately to the young king, and was at least tacitly accepted by him. Accordingly, on arriving at Angers, Henry II took measures for confirming once for all "a bond of perpetual peace" between the three brothers. First, each of them swore to keep his fealty to his father always and against all men, and always to render to him due honour and service. Next, they all swore that they would "always keep peace among themselves according to the disposition made by their father." Whatever may have been the case with regard to Geoffrey and Britanny, it appears that Richard, at least, was thus far wholly unaware that the "disposition" which he was thus pledged to respect implied any arrangements beyond those which already existed concerning his tenure of Poitou or of Aquitaine. The elder king now publicly called upon the younger one to receive Geoffrey's liege homage for Britanny. To this neither of the brothers objected, and the homage was duly rendered and received. Next, the father "used his utmost endeavours that the young king should grant the duchy of Aquitaine to his brother Richard, to be held by Richard and his heirs by an undisputable right." Richard at first declared he would do no homage to his brother, who was no more than his equal either in personal distinction or in nobility of birth; but afterwards, yielding to his father's counsel, he consented. Thereupon, however, the young king drew back. He seems to have explained more fully the nature and extent of his entanglement with the malcontent barons of Aquitaine, and to have urged that he could not thus desert their cause without a guarantee that his father would make a settled peace between them and Richard. The final settlement between the brothers was therefore postponed till the Aquitanian barons could meet the king and his sons at Mirebeau. Henry promised that he would then confirm peace on the terms settled in the preceding summer, or, if this did not satisfy the barons, he would judge their cause in his own court. Geoffrey of Britanny was sent to invite or summon the barons to the meeting. With these arrangements young Henry professed himself content, and he promised that he would, at Mirebeau, accept Richard's homage, but on one further condition: that Richard should, after performing the homage, swear fealty to him on some holy relics. This last requirement, being a plain insinuation of lack of confidence in Richard's honour, was an insult to which Richard could not submit. He "broke out in a white heat of passion," and not only again refused to perform the homage at all, but--so it was said--declared that it was unmeet for him to acknowledge, by any kind of subjection, a superior in a brother born of the same parents, and that as their father's property was the due heritage of the first-born, so he himself claimed to be, with equal justice, the lawful successor of their mother. "Leaving nought but insults and threats behind him" he quitted the court, hurried into his own duchy, and prepared for defence. His vehemence kindled the wrath of his father, who hastily bade the young king "rise up and subdue Richard's pride," and sent orders to Geoffrey to "stand faithfully by his eldest brother and liege lord."

Neither young Henry nor Geoffrey needed a second bidding. Geoffrey, sent into Aquitaine as a messenger of peace, had carried thither, as a contemporary writer says, not peace but a sword. He and his eldest brother were already in collusion, and instead of executing his father's commission to the malcontent barons, he had secretly used the opportunity which that commission gave him to renew the alliance between them and the young king, whom they were now eager to set up as duke in Richard's stead. At the beginning of February the young king set out for Limoges; it seems to have been arranged that his father, with a small force, should travel by another route and join him there later. Geoffrey was there already; the viscount, Aimar, at once joined them, and endeavoured to terrify the burghers of the castle into doing likewise. His threats were emphasized by the neighbourhood of a host of Routiers who seem to have been secretly engaged to be in readiness for a call from Geoffrey. That call Geoffrey now gave, and one body of these ruffians, with some of his own vassals, swooped down from Britanny upon Poitou and began plundering and burning the demesnes of the count, who retaliated by making similar raids into Britanny, "and if any man of that troop fell into his clutches, that man's head was cut off without respect of persons." Another body of Routiers had come up from Gascony under a certain Raymond "Brunus, or Brenuus" at the call of Aimar, and were with him engaged on February 12 at Gorre, some few miles south of Limoges, in besieging a church--probably fortified by the villagers for use as a place of refuge--when the duke fell suddenly upon them. From a castle somewhere beyond Poitiers he had ridden for two days almost without stopping; his force was small, but the enemies were caught at unawares; many of them were made prisoners; a nephew of their commander, Raymond, was laid low by Richard's own hand; Aimar and the rest of the band escaped only because the horses of the Poitevins were too exhausted for pursuit.

The English chronicler who records Richard's treatment of the captured invaders may have been shocked at the indiscriminate ruthlessness which slew mercenaries and knights all alike; but the Prior of Vigeois evidently saw nothing more than just retribution in the fate of the sacrilegious "children of darkness" who were made prisoners at Gorre. Richard dragged them to Aixe and there "caused some of them to be drowned in the Vienne, some to be slain with the sword, and the rest to be blinded." It was almost a necessity to get rid of these men. The league was no longer secret; many of the conspirators were delivering up their castles to the young king. The danger was evident enough to make Richard send an urgent message to his father asking him to come to the rescue at once. Henry accordingly advanced towards Limoges. A watchman on the castle wall cried out that the city folk were bringing up troops to destroy their rivals of the castle; someone else spread a report that Geoffrey of Britanny was in great danger outside the walls; the townsfolk rushed out and began a fierce fight which was with difficulty stopped when the royal banners were recognized. The king withdrew to Aixe. At night young Henry--still maintaining a pretence of loyalty--went to his father and tried to excuse the blunder of the townsfolk; but his excuses were rejected. "Then, at the viscount's command, the people swore fealty to the young king in the church of S. Peter of Carfax."

All concealment was now flung aside. Walls and ramparts, turrets and battlements, rose with incredible speed all round Limoges; the material being of course mostly wood, derived, it seems, from some half dozen or more churches which castle folk and city folk alike pulled down without scruple. Another horde of Routiers, hired by the viscounts of Limoges and Turenne, and commanded by one Sancho "of S?rannes" and another leader who seems to have adopted the heathen appellation of Curbaran, appeared at Terrasson in P?rigord, crossed the Limousin frontier, seized Yssandon, and swept across the viscounty of Limoges as far north as Pierre-Buffi?re, which they wrested from King Henry's soldiers and restored to its rebel owner and to the viscount; thence they went south again and after an unsuccessful attempt on Brive took up their quarters at Yssandon. Other "Tartarean legions" poured in from the north, sent by Philip of France to support the cause of his brother-in-law. If these Routiers could have been controlled by their employers, Henry and Richard might probably have been easily surrounded and captured. Nothing of the kind was, however, attempted. Instead, "the whole assembly of malignants, gathered together from divers parts," were left to take their own way and spread themselves over the whole of P?rigord, the Angoumois and Saintonge; the country was ravished, shrines were plundered, altars desecrated, and expelled monks fled with the relics of their patron saints as in the days of the heathen Northmen. Meanwhile King Henry had called up the feudal forces of his other continental dominions to deal with the rebels in Limoges. On Shrove Tuesday, March 1, he entered the city, broke down the bridge behind him, and disposed his forces for a siege of the town. That siege dragged on till midsummer. Shortly before Easter the young king went to secure Angoul?me by filling it with "a crowd of malignants," hired with the proceeds of a forcible seizure of the treasures of S. Martial's Abbey. On account of this sacrilege the town guard of S. Martial's castle, when he returned thither, pelted him ignominiously away; but Aimar and Geoffrey continued to hold the place.

Almost instantly the league fell asunder. The object which its non-Aquitanian members had in view was to break the power of Henry II; they had found a priceless tool for their purpose in his eldest son, who, being like himself a crowned and anointed king, could be set up as a rival head of the Angevin house; the Aquitanian revolt had offered a promising opportunity for using that tool to their advantage. When young Henry was gone, their purpose in joining the league was ruined; the internal quarrels of Aquitaine and its rulers had no interest for them. Accordingly Hugh of Burgundy and Raymond of Toulouse "hurried away after their own affairs"; and instead of the great coalition which was to have ringed in the Angevins from the Pyrenees to the Channel, Henry and Richard had now only to face the enfeebled remains of a local revolt. The news came to Richard when he was besieging Aixe, which young Henry had seized a few weeks before. The king, when the first shock of grief was over, resumed the siege of Limoges; Geoffrey seems to have slipped away to Britanny; once more, on Midsummer day, Aimar surrendered the town and renounced all dealings with his brothers of Angoul?me "till they should deserve grace of the king and the duke"; and once more the new fortifications were levelled to the ground. For what remained to be done Henry's presence was needless. At the end of the month he went back to his northern dominions, while Alfonso of Aragon joined Richard in laying siege to Hautefort. In a week Bertrand de Born was forced to surrender it; and a punitive harrying of P?rigord by Richard brought the revolt to an end.

Brief as the war had been, it was not without results. A few at least of the insurgent barons had made their profit out of the general confusion. It must have been during this time that the Lusignans gained a hold on La Marche which they never entirely lost. Richard's efforts to establish Maud as countess of Angoul?me may have been continued for a while longer, but they were doomed to fail sooner or later by reason of Philip's grant of the city to the rival claimant. Bertrand de Born, in spite of the warning given him some months before by the duke himself, had persisted in his defiance to the uttermost. He was captured with his castle, brought before his conqueror, and compelled to resign his claim to its ownership. He implored the duke's mercy, and Richard at once granted him his full forgiveness, but gave back Hautefort to Constantine. This decision, however, was reversed by King Henry, probably on an appeal from the troubadour. Richard appears to have acquiesced without difficulty in his father's decision on the point; and Richard, not Henry, was destined to reap its results. Bertrand had already declared that if the duke would be gracious and generous to him he should find him as true as steel, and he kept his word; for he perceived that his talents for fighting, and for setting others to fight, might after all be exercised not less actively, and with less danger of disastrous consequences to himself, on the side of the duke than on that of the duke's enemies.

KING HENRY'S HEIR

Et vos, patres, nolite in iracundiam provocare filios vestros.

It was into the life of Richard himself that his brother's death brought the most important change. He was now the eldest son of Henry II, heir to the headship of the houses of Anjou and Normandy and to the crown of England. Some re-adjustment of his feudal relations both with his father and with the King of France would seem to be a probable consequence of this change in his prospects. Henry was not likely to repeat the mistake which he had made thirteen years before in crowning his heir; but Richard might naturally expect that the other measures which had been taken to secure the Angevin and Norman heritages for young Henry would be renewed in his own behalf. He was evidently quite unprepared for the step which his father actually took. In September or October Henry summoned him to Normandy, and on his arrival "bade him grant the duchy of Aquitaine to his brother John and receive John's homage for it."

In all Henry's plans for the future of his dynasty there was assumed a fundamental principle, implied rather than expressed, because too self-evident to need expression: that the territories which he had inherited from his parents, Anjou, Normandy, and England, must remain united under the direct control of the head of the family. Any deviation from this principle would, he saw, endanger the stability of the Angevin dominion, for it would be a breaking-up of the foundation on which that dominion was based. The devolution of Aquitaine and of Britanny to junior branches of the Angevin house, under the overlordship of its head, would not involve the same danger; and thus after his agreement with Conan of Britanny in 1166 Henry had ready to his hand the means of making a fair and substantial provision for two younger sons; but when a fourth son was born, he saw so little chance of being able to provide for the child on anything like the same scale that he at once called him "John Lackland," and, it seems, placed him when little more than a twelvemonth old as an oblate in the abbey of Fontevraud. At the age of six years, however, if not sooner, John was brought back to his father's court, and in the next ten years scheme after scheme for his future was planned by Henry, but without success. Now at last, just when John had reached an age at which he must have begun to feel keenly the difference between his prospects and those of Richard and Geoffrey, the death of the eldest brother opened a possible way--possible at least in Henry's eyes--for redressing this inequality. We cannot tell what was the precise form of the proposition made by Henry to Richard; but if the report of it given by a contemporary English chronicler be correct, it clearly involved a tacit, if not an explicit, recognition of Richard as heir to the headship of the royal house of England and Anjou, and, as such, to the overlordship of the whole of the Angevin dominions, including Aquitaine. The chronicler's words do not, on the other hand, necessarily or even probably imply that Henry contemplated an immediate transfer of the fief which he desired Richard to "grant" to John. John was not yet seventeen; he seems to have been brought up partly in England, partly in Normandy; it would have been sheer madness to think of setting him to take the command of affairs in a country which the united energies of Richard and of Henry himself scarcely sufficed to keep under control. In all likelihood the settlement which the king desired to make had reference, like that of 1169, wholly to the future, and was designed to confirm the earlier settlement, only with a change of persons; as Richard must take the place of the dead Henry, John was to take the place of Richard.

The execution of this project required the consent of two persons: Richard and the King of France. Richard's consent proved harder to win than Henry seems to have expected. There was a fundamental though unexpressed difference between the views taken by the father and the son of the place actually held by the son in Aquitaine. Henry's intention apparently had been from the outset, and was still, that Aquitaine should during his own lifetime be governed by his son--whether Richard or John--as his representative, and after his death should become an underfief of the Angevin dominion--as Britanny already was--in the hands of that same son and his heirs. Unluckily he had allowed one part of this intention to be obscured, and in practice well-nigh defeated, by his anxiety to secure the fulfilment of the other part. From Henry's point of view, Richard in 1183 was simply his homager for the county of Poitou, his lieutenant over the rest of the duchy, heir to the whole of it when he himself should die, and, after young Henry's death, heir also to the headship of the royal house of England, Normandy and Anjou. But Richard could, and did in effect, claim to be already duke of Aquitaine in his own right, by virtue of his homage to France and his investiture at Limoges. Moreover, Eleanor's duchy held a different place in the estimation of her son--the son who from his infancy had been her recognized heir--from that which it held in the estimation of her husband. Henry looked upon it as a mere appendage to his ancestral territories; Richard looked upon it as his own especial possession, and a possession which ought to rank in the future, as it always had ranked in the past, on a footing of equality with them. The same feeling which made Henry shrink from reducing the heritage of Geoffrey Plantagenet or that of Maud of Normandy to the position of an underfief would make Richard shrink from contemplating a like alteration in the status of the heritage of his mother. The tragedy of the last summer and the sudden change in his own prospects had so far chastened his impetuous temper that he did not at once refuse his father's demand, but asked for two or three days delay that he might consult with friends before giving a reply. Then he withdrew from the court; at nightfall he mounted his horse, and rode southward with all speed, sending word to his father that "he would never grant Poitou to be held by anyone but himself."

Henry meanwhile had come to an agreement with the king of France which was likely to have an important influence on the future of Richard and of his duchy. On December 6, 1183, the two kings held a conference, and Henry did a thing which he had never before consented to do: he did homage to Philip for "all his territories on the French side of the sea." Philip's acceptance of this homage constituted a legal recognition on his part, as lord paramount, of Henry as--among other things--duke of Aquitaine. The kings then proceeded to make a new settlement about the dowry of young Henry's widow. As she was childless, that portion of it which was in the hands of her father-in-law--Gisors and the rest of the Norman Vexin--legally reverted to France on her husband's death. Philip, however, in consideration of an annuity to be paid by Henry to Margaret, "quit-claimed Gisors to the English king, so that he might give it to whichever of his sons he should choose, with the French king's other sister," Aloysia. Henry evidently hoped to keep Aloysia and her dowry by substituting John for Richard as her bridegroom, and thus to facilitate the winning of Philip's assent to the further substitution of John for Richard as heir of Aquitaine. Richard was probably quite willing to relinquish his personal claim upon Aloysia; there is no indication that he had ever cared for her; and on the other hand there are indications that about this time he formed an attachment to another maiden of royal birth, Berengaria of Navarre. On the subject of Aquitaine, however, he was immoveable. In vain Henry alternately besought and commanded him to grant "if not the whole of Aquitaine, at least a part of it," to John. Richard's answer was always the same: never, so long as he lived, would he give any part of the duchy to anyone. At last, in a burst of anger, Henry gave John leave to "lead an army into Richard's land and get what he wanted from his brother by fighting him." The words were probably uttered without thought of their consequences, in a fit of ungovernable impatience at Richard's obduracy; but John was quite ready to take them literally, and knew that his next brother, Geoffrey--who had been formally reconciled to his father and to Richard in July 1183--both could and would supply him with means for his purpose. No sooner had the king returned to England in June 1184 than Geoffrey and John collected "a great host" and marched plundering and burning into Richard's land. Henry, when he learned what was going on, peremptorily summoned all the three to England, brought them to a public reconciliation in November, and then sought to dispose for a while of Geoffrey where he could make no further mischief between the two others, by sending him, not back to Britanny, but to Normandy, as a nominal assistant to the officers who were in charge of that duchy. It was not till after Christmas that Richard received permission to return to Poitou. He crossed from Dover to Wissant; whether on his way through Normandy and Anjou he met Geoffrey--who was certainly the evil genius of the family--and what may have passed between them if he did, we know not; we only know that on April 16 Henry himself went back to Normandy, and straightway "gathered a great host to subdue his son Richard, who had fortified Poitou against him and attacked his brother Geoffrey, contrary to the king's prohibition."

Henry's military preparations were in reality only a part of a new scheme which he had devised for making Richard surrender Poitou. In the preceding June Queen Eleanor, after eleven years of captivity, had been released by her husband's order and permitted to join their eldest daughter and her husband the duke of Saxony, now for the second time driven into exile. At the end of April Henry sent for her, and also for their daughter and son-in-law, to join him in Normandy; "and when they arrived, he sent instructions to his son Richard that he should without delay surrender the whole of Poitou with its appurtenances to his mother Queen Eleanor, because it was her heritage; and he added that if Richard in any way delayed to fulfil this command, he was to know for certain that the queen his mother would make it her own business to ravage the land with a great host. And Richard, when he had heard his father's command, yielded to the wholesome advice of his friends; and laying down the arms of iniquity, returned with all meekness to his father, and surrendered all Poitou, with his castles and fortresses, to his mother."

Henry's scheme seemed to be on the verge of success. Richard had at last been induced to surrender, nominally to his mother, but practically to his father--for Eleanor was clearly a mere cipher in the matter--the fief for which he was his father's homager, and which was the material basis of the ducal power over all Aquitaine; he had set his father free to make a new grant of that fief to whomsoever he would. If a grant of it were made to John, with the sanction of the lord paramount, Richard would soon be unable to stand his ground in the duchy, should he even attempt to do so. For the time being Richard was utterly passive. It was his nature to do nothing by halves, and his submission seems to have been as whole-hearted as his defiance had been; "he remained," says an English chronicler with evident admiration, "with his father as an obedient son." Henry kept him in suspense for eleven months. Then, on March 10, 1186, the two kings held another conference, and the treaty made in December 1183 was confirmed, but with a modification of one article. In 1184 Henry had either made overtures, or readily accepted overtures made to him, for a marriage between Richard and a daughter of the Emperor; but the maiden had died before the end of the year. This project had been succeeded by another whose originator is most likely to have been Richard himself; it can hardly have been at any other time than during his brief period of freedom from his engagement to Aloysia that he received a promise of Berengaria's hand from her father, King Sancho. His inclination, however, was overridden by his father's imperious will and by the exigencies of the family policy. If Philip knew or suspected anything of Henry's projects for John, he was probably keen-witted enough to perceive their futility and to prefer running no risk of a family alliance with a Lackland. On the other hand, the retention of Aloysia's dower-lands was a matter of interest to Henry's heir as well as to Henry himself. The sequel was to show that Henry had no real intention of marrying Aloysia to either of his sons; he may therefore have privately intimated to Richard that the sacrifice now required of him was only temporary. At any rate, in the treaty with Philip as ratified on March 10, 1186, it was distinctly stated that Aloysia and her dowry, the Vexin, were to be given to the bridegroom for whom she had been originally destined, Richard.

An agreement with France was at that moment especially important for Henry because he was anxious to return to England. He began his preparations for departure over sea by making some changes in the custody of his various demesne lands and castles; in particular, he appointed new castellans of his own choosing to the charge of the principal fortresses of Aquitaine. It was hardly possible for Richard not to feel hurt by this measure, "yet his father met with no complaint from him." Suddenly the king again changed his mind, or at least his policy. We cannot tell whether he was moved by Richard's unwonted meekness, or whether some unrecorded occurrence opened his eyes to a fact which in all likelihood Richard's southern counsellors, when they advised the young duke to accede to his father's demand, foresaw would be made manifest ere long: the fact that Richard was the only person who could preserve anything like administrative order and political security in Aquitaine when Henry himself was out of reach. We only know that at the end of April the king "entrusted to his son Richard an infinite sum of money, bidding him go and subdue his enemies under him," and then himself sailed for England, taking the queen with him.

Richard's surrender of Poitou was thus practically annulled. It may have been merely verbal, so that no formal act was necessary to reinstate him as count. The particular enemies whom he was to subdue are not named, but it seems plain that the chief of them was Raymond of Toulouse; for Richard "straightway departing collected a great multitude of knights and foot-soldiers, with which he invaded the lands of the count of S. Gilles and not only ravaged, but conquered, the greater part of them." Geography suggests that the part of Raymond's lands which Richard "conquered" at this time was probably the northern part, that is, the Quercy, where Richard as suzerain had already had to chastise more than one of Raymond's subfeudataries; and this inference is strengthened by later indications. Raymond, helpless before the sudden violence of the duke's onset, fled from place to place and despatched messenger after messenger to their common overlord, King Philip, imploring succour from France. Philip, however, was just then in no mind to quarrel openly with the king of England or his son; it suited him better to plot secretly with one of the younger sons against the father and the eldest son, and this was what he was actually doing with Geoffrey when in August their plotting was cut short by Geoffrey's death. A question at once arose whether Henry, the immediate overlord of Britanny, or Philip, the lord paramount, should be guardian of Geoffrey's child. An embassy sent from England to treat with Philip on this subject met with a very uncivil reception, and went back accompanied by two French knights charged with a message to Henry that he must expect no security from attack in Normandy unless Count Richard of Poitou ceased to molest the count of S. Gilles. What Raymond had done to excite the wrath of both Henry and Richard we are not told, but it is clear that Henry did not disapprove Richard's proceedings; he made no attempt to check them, and did not return to Normandy till February of the next year. Richard met him at Aumale, and accompanied him on Low Sunday, April 5, to a conference with Philip "from which they withdrew without hope of peace or concord, on account of the intolerable demands made by the king of France." These demands were, first, that he should receive Richard's homage for the county of Poitou; and secondly, that Aloysia and her dowry, Gisors, should be restored to France.

Seeing that he could get no satisfaction by negotiation, Philip prepared for war. Marching from the French part of Berry into the Aquitanian part, he seized Issoudun and Gra?ay and advanced upon Ch?teauroux. It is doubtful whether Henry and Richard set out together to check him, or whether Henry sent forward Richard and John, each at the head of a body of troops, to defend Ch?teauroux till he himself could join them. At any rate, by midsummer the combined action of father and sons had caused Philip to raise the siege and decide upon trying his fortune against them in the open field. On the eve of S. John the two armies were drawn up facing each other in battle array, ready to engage next morning. At the last moment, however, the kings made a truce and withdrew each to his own domains. Two English authorities assign the most important part in the preliminary negotiations to Richard. According to Gervase of Canterbury the first overtures came from the French side, and were addressed to the count of Poitou; Count Philip of Flanders contrived to get speech with him and urged upon him the importance, for his own future interest, of making a friend of the king of France; after some discussion Richard followed Flanders back through the French lines to the tent of Philip Augustus, held a long private colloquy with him, and "at length returned, with his mind at rest, to his own comrades in arms." He had gone without his father's knowledge; Henry, when he heard of the incident, "suspected that it meant treachery, not peace," and sent a request to some of the French nobles that they would come and confer with himself. They complied; he commissioned them to ask Philip for a truce of two years, on the plea of a vow of Crusade; Philip consented, but when his consent was announced Henry declared he had changed his mind--he would have no truce. Philip on hearing this ordered an attack at break of day. Henry grew alarmed; the midsummer daybreak was very near, for it was already past midnight, when he hurriedly called his son. "What shall we do? what counsel dost thou give me?" "What counsel can I give," said Richard, "when thou hast refused the truce which yesterday thou desiredst? We cannot ask for it again now without great shame." Moved, however, by his father's evident distress, he offered to face the shame. He went; he found Philip already armed for battle; bare-headed he knelt before him, offered him his sword, and begged him for a truce, promising that if Henry should break it in any way he, Count Richard, would submit his own person in Paris to the judgement of the French king. On this condition Philip gave a reluctant consent to the truce. Gerald of Wales, on the other hand, represents the first advances as having been made by Henry in a letter to Philip proposing peace on the following terms: that Aloysia should be given in marriage to John, with the counties of Poitou and Anjou and all the other territories held by Henry of the French king, except Normandy, which was to remain united to England as the heritage of the eldest son. Philip sent the letter to Richard, who, when he had mastered its contents, was naturally moved to deep indignation on learning that his father was thus scheming to deprive him of the larger part of his heritage at a time when they were actually in camp together and he was loyally fulfilling his duties as vassal and son. Caring no longer to fight for his father against Philip, he seized an opportunity which presented itself at the moment to bring about a truce.

Neither of these two accounts seems to imply that Richard at Ch?teauroux acted otherwise than loyally and in good faith towards his father. In one of them, however, the father is distinctly charged with plotting behind his son's back to deprive him of half his inheritance. The proposal which Henry is said to have made to Philip is indeed utterly at variance with the policy implied in all his previous arrangements for the future of his dynasty; it is a proposal to disintegrate the foundations of the edifice which he had been building up all his life, by putting asunder what the marriage of his parents had joined together, Anjou and Normandy. We are not told whether it provided that John should hold his share of the Angevin territories under his brother's overlordship, or not. If it did, its fulfilment would have reduced the original Angevin patrimony to the rank of a mere underfief; if not, the scheme would seem to imply nothing short of a deliberate intention on Henry's part of rending in twain with his own hands the dominion which he had been for thirty years labouring to weld together into a solid whole. Yet that Henry would, if he could, willingly have gone as far as this or even farther, in his infatuated partiality for John, seems to be the only possible explanation of his attitude, or rather of his endless shifts and changes of attitude, towards both Richard and Philip through the six years which followed the death of the young king. When the end came, he himself summed up the tragic story of those years in one significant sentence: "For the sake of John's advancement I have brought upon me all these ills." His paternal affection had been concentrated mainly upon two of his sons, the eldest and the youngest; after young Henry's death it was concentrated upon John alone; Richard, though of all the four he was certainly the least unworthy, seems never to have enjoyed more than a comparatively small share of it. The story of the letter may have been a fiction, or the letter may have been a forgery; but whether the falsehood--if there be one--were Gerald's or Philip's, it was a lie which was half a truth.

The formal terms of the truce--which was to last for two years--were arranged by the papal legate then resident in France, and some other men of religion acting "on the orders of the Pope and the advice of the faithful men of both kings." When the agreement was signed, the French king, "by way of shewing to all men that concord was attained," invited Richard to accompany him to Paris. Richard accepted the invitation; and he stayed so long, and--so at least it was reported--on terms of such close and affectionate intimacy with Philip that Henry "marvelled what this might be," and delayed his intended journey to England "till he should know what would be the outcome of this sudden friendship" between his overlord and his son. He sent messenger after messenger to call Richard back, promising "to do all that might be justly required of him." Richard answered that he was coming, but instead of doing so he went to Chinon, where the treasure of Anjou was kept; in spite of the treasurer's opposition he carried off "all the treasure that he found there"--which indeed is not likely to have been much--proceeded with it into Poitou, and there used it to fortify or revictual his castles. His contumacy, however, as usual, did not last long. His father "ceased not to send messengers to him till they brought him back; and when he came, he submitted to his father in all things and was penitent for having consented to the evil counsels of those who strove to sow discord between them. So they came both together to Angers; and there the son became his father's obedient man, and swore on the holy Gospels, before many witnesses, fealty to him against all men; and he swore also that he would not go against his father's counsel."

Early in November Richard was at, or near, Tours, when suddenly the tidings of an event which had occurred in Holy Land four months before changed the whole current of his aspirations and desires. On July 7 the Saracens under Saladin had won a great victory at Hattin over the Latin king of Jerusalem, Guy of Lusignan, and captured not only Guy himself, but also the most sacred relic in all Christendom, the relic of the Holy Cross. This news arrived in France about the end of October or beginning of November. It came to Richard's ears--so the story goes--one evening; his resolve was made at once and with his whole heart; early next morning he received the Cross from the hand of Archbishop Bartholomew. When Henry, who seems to have been in Normandy, was informed of his son's action, he appeared exceedingly perturbed, and for several days would scarcely see anyone. Not a word of comment on the matter, however, passed his lips till Richard rejoined him. Then, after a few days, he said: "Thou shouldst by no means have undertaken so weighty a business without consulting me. Nevertheless, I will not oppose thy pious design, but will so further it that thou mayest fulfill it right well." Philip on the other hand was quick to seize the opportunity for bringing up again the matter of Gisors and Aloysia. That Aloysia's plighted bridegroom should betake himself to far-off Holy Land while that question was still unsettled was a thing not to be tolerated; so Philip "gathered a great host" and threatened that he would harry all the English king's lands on the French side of the sea unless either Gisors were surrendered or Richard married to Aloysia without more ado. Henry, on hearing this, hurried back from the Norman coast to the border for a meeting with Philip at Hilary-tide . Their conference was interrupted by the arrival of the Archbishop of Tyre, who had come to Europe to plead as only one who had personal knowledge of the state of affairs in Holy Land could plead, for a Crusade to check the advance of Saladin. Carried away by his appeal, both kings took the Cross and separated to prepare for the enterprise on which they agreed to set out together at the next Easter twelvemonth; that is, Easter 1190.

Whether Richard had been present at the conference does not appear; he was, however, at Le Mans with his father a few days afterwards, when Henry issued the ordinance for the "Saladin tithe" to raise money for the Crusade. The kings might require a delay of fifteen months to make their preparations; but the count of Poitou had no mind to be so long detained from fulfilling his vow. He now came to his father with two requests. First, he begged that the king would either lend him money for his expedition on the security of the county of Poitou, or would give him leave to raise the needful sum by pledging that county to some safe and trustworthy man known to be loyal to both father and son, and would confirm the transaction by a royal charter. Secondly, he prayed that "forasmuch as the journey that lay before him was long and perilous, lest aught should be maliciously plotted to his disadvantage during such a lengthy absence" he might be permitted to receive the fealty of the nobles of England and of Henry's continental lands, "saving in all things the fealty due to his father." To the former of these requests Henry answered that his son should go to Palestine with him; they would have in common all things needful for their journey, and "nought should separate them but death." No answer could Richard get but this, which in regard to his second request was tantamount to a refusal. Yet he had asked nothing beyond what was natural and reasonable; nothing, indeed, beyond what he might have fairly expected to receive without needing to ask for it. A public confirmation of the rights of King Henry's eldest surviving son as heir to the crown of England and to the headship of the house of Anjou, such as would safeguard those rights until the son's return from Holy Land in case the father should die before the Crusade was over, was a measure of obvious prudence not merely for the personal interest of the heir but also for the security of the Angevin dominion as a whole. Henry's obstinate silence when the measure was suggested to him was one more indication that his sense of right and his care for the future of his house were both alike obscured by his infatuation for John. Richard understood it only too well, and "finding that he could get no other answer, he departed from his father in heart as well as in body."

No considerations either of policy or of self-interest, however, had any influence on his resolve to fulfil his vow without delay. While his father returned to England, he hurried back to Poitou, sent messengers to his brother-in-law, King William of Sicily, to expedite arrangements for the equipment of the ships needful for his voyage, and busied himself with preparations for setting out in the coming summer. But his plans were checked by a new outbreak of revolt. Geoffrey of Lusignan, it is said, laid an ambush for one of Richard's most intimate friends and treacherously put him to death. Richard of course marched against Geoffrey, and punished him by taking several of his castles and slaughtering a number of his men, only those being spared who purchased their lives by taking the Cross. Geoffrey's outrage proved to be part of a concerted rising which ran what had now become the ordinary course of an Aquitanian revolt. The rebels, headed as usual by Aimar of Angoul?me and Geoffrey of Rancogne, harried the domains of the count of Poitou, and the count retaliated by overrunning their lands, capturing and destroying their castles, burning and wasting their farms and orchards, till he had once more subdued them to his will. The leaders took refuge in Taillebourg, and there they were surrounded by Richard's forces. The damage inflicted by him on that famous stronghold in 1179 had doubtless been long ago repaired; but this time the siege lasted only a few days, though the place was occupied by "more than seventy picked men of might." They surrendered on the only condition which Richard would grant--that every one of them should join him in his Crusade. This was an excellent practical expedient for increasing the force which he hoped to lead to Palestine, and at the same time withdrawing from Aquitaine the men who were most likely to cause a disturbance if left there during his absence.

Whatever may have been Henry's real share--if indeed he had any real share at all--in the origin of the quarrel, matters had by this time reached a pass at which his personal sympathies could hardly fail to be on the side of his son. Richard had taken no less than seventeen castles in the territory of Toulouse, and was almost at the gates of its capital city--that famous city which both he and his father had always longed to call their own, and of which he still considered himself the rightful owner as being through his mother the legal representative of Count William IV--and was actually preparing to lay siege to it. Both Raymond and Philip were so much alarmed that Philip, at Raymond's entreaty, sent envoys to the invader to tell him that if he would desist, "he should receive his rights and be justly compensated for his wrongs in the Court of France." The French king's distrust of Henry's attitude in the affair was shown by his despatch at the same time of another mission, to the seneschals of Normandy and Anjou, warning them that they must either "recall count Richard" at once, or consider themselves no longer protected by the truce between the two kings. Henry, no doubt urged by the terrified seneschals, sent to admonish his son; but his admonitions and Philip's threats were alike unheeded. To Henry, indeed, Richard's answer was that "he had done no ill in the lands of the count of S. Gilles except by leave of the king of France, forasmuch as the count refused to be in the truce and peace which the two kings had made."

The king of France, however, was now gathering his host for an invasion of the Angevin lands. Directing his attack against the unprotected north-eastern frontier of Aquitaine, after seizing some of the border castles of Touraine, he advanced into Berry, and by the middle of June was master of its northern part as far as Ch?teauroux, which he captured on June 16. On that day Henry, perplexed and terrified alike by what he heard of Philip's doings and of Richard's, despatched four envoys to the former "to entreat for peace in some form or other." If they ever reached the French king, their mission was fruitless; he continued his conquests till he was master of everything that Henry possessed or claimed in Berry and Auvergne as far as Montlu?on.

On July 11 Henry returned to Normandy with an armed force of English and Welshmen, and at once summoned the Norman host to a muster at Alen?on. Richard meanwhile had abandoned his attack on the lesser foe to march against the greater one, and was advancing northward with fresh forces towards Berry. Philip, probably fearing to be caught between two fires, hereupon retired into France, leaving Ch?teauroux in the custody of William des Barres. Richard, "by way of doing something," began to devise schemes for regaining the place. One day some of its garrison who had been out on a foraging expedition found on their return the gate blocked by him and his troops. They, however, cut their way through and stirred up their comrades within the castle to make a sally in force. The Poitevins, taken by surprise, were repulsed with heavy loss; the count himself was in such danger that he fled for his life. Thrown from his horse, he was rescued by a sturdy butcher, and with the remnant of his troops rejoined his father, seemingly somewhere in Touraine. The defence of Henry's frontiers was clearly the matter most in need of attention now; father and son accordingly led their combined forces back to the Norman border. At Trou, in the south-eastern corner of Maine, they were all but overtaken by Philip "with a great host"; they escaped, however, and the loss of forty knights and the burning of Trou were compensated by Richard's capture of a neighbouring fortress, Les Roches, with its garrison of twenty-five knights and forty men-at-arms. This place was in the dominions of Count Burchard of Vend?me, who was an adherent of the king of France. Philip dropped the pursuit, and on August 16 met Henry in conference at Gisors, but they came to no agreement. Among other proposals there seems to have been one for a settlement of the disputes between the two kings by a combat of four champions on either side. Four names on the English side were suggested to Henry by William the Marshal; Richard was offended because his own name was not among them. "You have done me grievous wrong; of all the men of my father's lands I was deemed one of the best to defend him; but you give him to understand otherwise." The Marshal protested that Richard misinterpreted his motive: "You are our lord the king's most direct heir; it would be an outrage and crime to risk your life in such a business." "It is true, Richard," interposed Henry, "what he has said is but right"; and therewith it seems the whole project fell to the ground. At the end of the month Richard, hearing that Philip was at Mantes, proposed to attack that place. The expedition, however, resulted merely in a skirmish between Richard himself, Earl William de Mandeville, and some of Henry's followers on the one side and a few French knights on the other, in which William des Barres, who had been commandant of Ch?teauroux for Philip at the time of Richard's recent adventure there, was made prisoner by Richard, but broke his parole and escaped. Next day Richard took leave of his father, "promising that he would serve him well and faithfully," and set out again for Berry. What he did there we are not told; but he seems to have recovered at least one--Palluau--of the castles which Philip had captured in the spring.

The war languished partly because the counts of Flanders and Blois and some other chief nobles of France refused to fight against princes who, like themselves, wore the Cross; and in October Philip asked Henry for another conference. It took place on October 7 at Ch?tillon, on the border of Touraine and Berry. A proposition that all conquests made by Philip from Henry and by Richard from Raymond of Toulouse since the beginning of the truce should be restored came to nothing through Philip's demand for a security which Henry would not grant. Then, it seems, Richard offered to do what Philip had in vain required of him a few months before--to go to the French king's court and stand to its judgement on all that had taken place between himself and the count of S. Gilles, "in order that peace might be made between his father and the king of France." The action of the French magnates may have opened Richard's eyes to the unseemliness of all this strife between fellow-soldiers of the Cross and led him to see that peace, at almost any price, was absolutely necessary for the purpose which he had most at heart, the fulfilment of his vow of Crusade. His proposal, however, "greatly displeased" his father, and Philip seems to have deemed the moment a favourable one for seeking to impose upon Richard some other requirements whose nature we are not told, but which led to "high and bad words" and finally resulted in the count of Poitou giving his lord paramount the lie direct and calling him a "vile recreant," whereupon the conference broke up with a mutual defiance. Philip went into Berry, re-took Palluau, and proceeded to Ch?teauroux, but only to withdraw the mercenaries whom he had left there and lead them back to Bourges, where he dismissed them.

For military and political reasons alike Philip did not want to fight with Richard. He knew that Richard would be compelled ere long to make a friend of him, for nothing but his friendship could enable Richard to secure his rights as Henry's heir; and Richard himself now saw that until those rights were secured it was impossible for him to venture on leaving Europe. He therefore resolved on bringing matters to a crisis. At his suggestion the two kings arranged to meet again on November 18 at Bonmoulins. Meanwhile, as an English writer says, he "was reconciled to" Philip--which probably means that he made, and Philip accepted, an apology for what had occurred at Ch?tillon--and "endeavoured to soften the mind of the French king, that in him he might find at least some solace if his own father should altogether fail him." Accordingly he had a private interview with Philip before the formal conference, and went to the place of meeting in his company, "for the sake," so he told his father, "of concord and peace." Philip opened the colloquy with a proposal that all the results of the fighting since a certain event--which is stated as "the taking of the Cross," but seems to have been really the agreement at Gisors on March 10, 1186--should be wiped out, he himself setting the example of restitution, "and after this, all things should continue as they were before" the specified date. This Richard opposed; "it seemed to him unmeet that he should by the acceptance of these terms be compelled to restore Cahors and its whole county, and many other places forming part of his domain, which were worth a thousand marks a year or more, in exchange for Ch?teauroux and Issoudun and Gra?ay which were not ducal domains, but merely underfiefs." Philip's proposal and Richard's answer may have been arranged between them beforehand, and may have been merely intended to prepare the way for the introduction of the crucial question which Richard was determined to bring, with Philip's help, to a decisive issue once for all. He now asked his father for an explicit recognition, to be confirmed by an oath, of his rights as heir. Furthermore, as such a recognition would, so far as Henry's continental territories were concerned, be ineffectual without Philip's sanction as overlord, and as it was now clearly understood that Philip's sanction depended on the marriage of Aloysia, her hitherto reluctant bridegroom at last made up his mind to the sacrifice and asked his father to give him at once the bride who was lawfully his, "and the kingdom"--that is, the assurance of succession to the Crown. In these requests he was supported by Philip. Henry answered "that he would on no account do this in existing circumstances, since he would appear to be acting under constraint rather than of his own free will." Richard persisted in his entreaties, but in vain. At last he exclaimed: "Now what I hitherto could not believe looks to me like truth." Ungirding his sword, he turned to the French king and, "imploring his aid that he might not be deprived of his due rights," did homage to him as his "man" for the whole continental dominions of the Angevin house and swore fealty to him against all men, saving Henry's right of tenure for life and the fidelity due from son to father. Philip responded by promising that Ch?teauroux, Issoudun, and all the other castles, lands, and fiefs which he had taken from Henry in former wars should be restored to Richard. Henry was, it seems, too thunderstruck to say or do anything except consent without more ado to a truce with Philip till S. Hilary's day.

"Thus began the quarrel that never was fought out," says a contemporary poet of the fateful conference at Bonmoulins. The meeting had been held, according to custom, in the open air and in public, the two kings and Richard, with the Archbishop of Reims, standing in the middle of a wide and dense circle of their followers and other spectators. To some of these the symbolical action which accompanied homage must have been visible; and when the central group broke up and father, son, and lord paramount were seen to move away, each in a different direction, "all men marvelled." Richard's homage to Philip was an act of filial undutifulness, since it was done in opposition to the known wishes of his father; but it involved no further breach of duty, if he really intended--and there is nothing to show that he did not, at that time, intend--to abide by the saving clause which reserved his father's rights. Fairly interpreted with that clause, the homage would be merely prospective in its effect; and some prospective measure of this kind had been made almost necessary as a matter of self-protection on Richard's part, by the conduct of both Henry and Philip. We cannot tell precisely to what it was that Richard alluded in the words which he spoke immediately before the homage; but it can only have been one, or both, of two things: the sinister rumours about Henry and Aloysia, and the suggestion that Henry aimed at making John his heir instead of Richard. As to the truth or falsehood of the former charge against Henry we have no means of judging; but of the truth of the latter charge it is impossible to doubt. The anathema said to have been pronounced by the Legate Henry of Albano against Richard as a disturber of the peace which the pope was anxious to secure for the furtherance of the Crusade might have fallen more justly upon Richard's father; perhaps, too, not less justly upon their overlord.

Richard had no sooner set out for Poitou than his father sent messengers to recall him; but it was too late. Either for the same purpose, or to secure, if possible, some of the fortresses of Aquitaine, Henry himself went as far south as Le Dorat in La Marche; there, however, he "did nothing"; and indeed nothing could be done till the truce expired. It had been agreed at Bonmoulins that the two kings should then, on January 13 meet again to discuss terms for a lasting peace. When the time came, Henry on the plea of illness postponed the meeting, first till Candlemas, and then till after Easter. This was too much for the patience of either Philip or Richard. Philip, it is said, had already promised that he would assist Richard in any attempt to gain possession of Henry's continental dominions. Accordingly, after the expiration of the truce he and Richard made a joint raid across Henry's borders. Henry in alarm sent the Archbishop of Canterbury to confer with Richard; but Richard had now come to regard with distrust every messenger and every message from his father, and curtly refused to give Baldwin an audience. His confidence in Philip was--justly enough--not much greater; when Henry sought to renew negotiations with France, his envoys found Richard's chancellor, William of Longchamp, at the French king's side, placed there on purpose to prevent any betrayal by Philip of the interests of the count of Poitou; and William's diplomacy proved more than a match for theirs. After Easter the long delayed meeting of the kings took place at La Fert?-Bernard; this was followed during the next five or six weeks by several conferences between Henry and Richard, "but it was all lost labour." Another legate, John of Anagni, was now endeavouring to reconcile the kings, and had succeeded in obtaining from both of them an undertaking to stand to his judgement and that of four archbishops, two from Philip's realm and two from Henry's. Accordingly, in Whitsun week Henry, Philip, Richard, the legate, and the four assistant arbitrators all met together near La Fert?-Bernard. Philip set forth his demands for himself and for Richard: that Aloysia should be given to Richard to wife, that some security should be granted to Richard for his succession to the kingdom of England after his father's death, and that John should take the Cross and join the Crusade; if these conditions were granted, Philip offered to restore all that he had taken from Henry during the current year and the preceding one. Richard made the same demands in his own behalf, "saying that he himself would in no wise go to Jerusalem unless John went with him." The suspicion which had evidently prompted these demands was amply justified by Henry's reply. He "said that he would never do this; but he offered, if the French king would consent, to give Aloysia with all the things aforesaid, more fully and completely than Philip asked"--not to Richard, but to John. The writer who reports this offer of Henry's does not explicitly mention security for Richard's succession to the English Crown as one of the conditions demanded by Philip and Richard; he says they asked Henry to "cause the men of his lands to swear fealty to Richard." Even if the lands here meant were only the English king's continental territories, Henry in refusing to do any of the things asked of him for Richard and proposing to do all and more than all of them for John was clearly proposing nothing less than a complete disinheritance, so far at least as those territories were concerned, of the elder brother in favour of the younger one. What Richard had suspected and feared, what Philip had, to some extent at least, known to be in Henry's mind ever since the truce of Ch?teauroux, if not earlier still, was thus confirmed by Henry's own lips. Philip had doubtless indirectly encouraged Henry in this insane project, so long as it suited his own interest to play off the father and the elder son one against the other; but he was far too practical to have ever intended giving it his serious support; and he now at once refused to sanction it. He seems to have expected, reasonably enough, that the legate would uphold him in his refusal; but instead of this, John of Anagni threatened to lay all France under Interdict if its king did not come to a full agreement with the king of England. Philip retorted that he did not fear, and would not heed, a sentence without basis in either equity or law, and that the legate had been bribed with English gold. The meeting broke up in hopeless discord.

If ever a father set at nought the precept "Provoke not your children to wrath," Henry had done so by his conduct towards Richard, not merely on one or two isolated occasions, but persistently through a course of years. And if any circumstances are conceivable in which a son might be, not indeed justified, but in some degree excused for taking forcible measures against his father, in such a case Richard stood now. Neither he nor Philip could possibly acquiesce in the scheme which Henry had just proposed; and it was clear that Henry would not be induced to renounce that scheme by any persuasion, nor even by intimidation unless it were something more than verbal. Both parties had come to the conference "with horses and arms," and the main body of Henry's available forces was quartered in and around Le Mans. While he rode slowly back towards that city, Philip attacked the castle of La Fert?; its constable made a brave defence, but was obliged to surrender. Philip then advanced to Ballon, which he reached just after Henry had quitted it, and at once "took it, no man gainsaying him." In a few days most of the castles around Le Mans on the north and east--Bonn?table, Beaumont, Montfort--were likewise occupied by his troops. But it was not to him that they had surrendered. Richard was with him; and the castellans "all round about" showed their disapproval of Henry's scheme for altering the Angevin succession by voluntarily delivering up their castles to the count of Poitou.

Three weeks later father and son met once more, and for the last time. From Le Mans the allies moved eastward along the borders of Maine and the Vend?mois, and thence into Touraine as far as Amboise; castle after castle surrendering to them without resistance. Henry had at first gone northward, but changed his course, and while they were thus occupied he made his way back, with a very small escort, to Chinon. Negotiations were resumed; but the French king now saw his opportunity for an unparalleled display of his sovereign authority as lord paramount, and he resolved to be satisfied with nothing less than a surrender of the whole continental possessions of the Angevin house into his hands, to be restored or re-distributed at his own pleasure. On July 1 he laid siege to Tours; on July 3 he took it by assault. Next day , at Colombi?res, Henry made the required surrender. This done, Philip formally made him a new grant of the surrendered lands and received his homage for them on new conditions. One of these conditions was for the sole benefit of Philip; it was a fine of twenty thousand marks to be paid to him by Henry. The others concerned Richard. One related to Aloysia; another bound Henry to make all his barons, insular and continental, swear fealty to his rightful heir. No baron or knight who in this war had withdrawn from Henry's service and joined Richard was to return to the former within a month of Mid-Lent next, at which date the two kings and Richard were to set out all together on the Crusade. All Henry's barons were to swear that if he broke his plighted word with regard to anything in the agreement they would support Philip and Richard against him; and it seems that Philip and Richard, while restoring all their other conquests, were to retain either Tours, Le Mans, and the castles of Ch?teau-du-Loir and Trou, or Gisors, Pacy, and Nonancourt, "until all the things above determined by the king of France should be fulfilled."

The meeting between the two kings at which this extraordinary arrangement took place was held in the open air. So far as we can gather, Richard was either a silent spectator or was not actually present, though he was certainly close at hand. After its conclusion he went to his father's lodging in the house of the Knights Templars at Ballan, hard by Colombi?res, to receive, according to agreement, the kiss of peace. He did receive it, but as he turned to depart he heard his father mutter: "The Lord grant that I may not die till I have had my revenge of thee!" The words were the half delirious utterance of a sick man whose brain was on fire with fever and, still more, with shame at the public degradation he had just gone through, and with disappointment at the failure of his most cherished scheme; although the worst detail connected with that failure did not become known to him till some hours later, when he received the list of the followers who had deserted him. Then he learned that John had anticipated the issue of the struggle and secured for himself the protection of the party whose success he saw to be a foregone conclusion, by pledging his allegiance to Richard.

The triumph of Philip Augustus was for the moment complete. He had successfully asserted and exercised his sovereign authority over the greatest of his vassals, the vassal who was, no less than himself, a crowned and anointed king, and whose lands comprised, besides the island realm, more than two-thirds of the realm of France. The succession to all those lands, including England, had been, or seemed to have been, determined at Philip's bidding. He was, or seemed to be, master of both Henry and Richard. But his triumph was only momentary. Within three days the convention of Colombi?res was a mere piece of waste parchment, for Henry of England was dead.

BOOK II

RICHARD'S CRUSADE

Ma fu di pensier nostri ultimo segno Espugnar de Sion le nobil mura.

THE YEAR OF PREPARATION

Surgite, et ascendamus in Sion.

The headquarters of Philip and Richard had been at Tours since their capture of that city on July 3; it was probably there that Richard received, from a messenger despatched by William the Marshal, the tidings of his father's death at Chinon on the 6th and the intended burial at Fontevraud. The night-watch round the open coffin was beginning in the great abbey church when he reached it next evening. All endeavours to guess at his feelings were baffled by the rigid stillness of his aspect and demeanour, broken only by a momentary shudder when he saw the uncovered face. For a long while he stood gazing at it in silence; for a briefer space he knelt in silent prayer. When at last he spoke, it was to call for two of his father's most loyal adherents, William the Marshal and Maurice of Craon. They came forward, and at his command, followed him, with some others, out of the church. "So, fair Sir Marshal," he began, "you were minded to slay me the other day! and slain I should have been of a surety had I not turned your lance aside by the strength of my arm. That would have been a bad day's work!" The Marshal answered that his own strength of arm was great enough to drive a lance-thrust home to its aim in spite of interference, and the issue of the encounter was sufficient proof that he had sought only the life of the horse, not the rider. "Marshal, I will bear you no malice; you are forgiven," was Richard's reply. The burial took place next morning. As soon as it was over Richard despatched the Marshal and another envoy to England with orders for the release of his mother, and with a commission to her authorizing her to act as his representative until he could himself go over sea. His choice of the Marshal for this errand was an indication of the spirit in which he took up the rights and duties of his new position. He showed himself gracious to all persons who had been faithful to Henry, and expressed his intention of confirming them in their several offices and rewarding their fidelity to the late king. He was asked to ratify a number of grants which Geoffrey the chancellor assured him Henry had recently made or promised to make, and he consented in every case save one, a grant of Ch?teauroux and its heiress to Baldwin of B?thune, which he said must be cancelled because he had himself, as duke of Aquitaine, granted the damsel and her fief to Andrew of Chauvigny; but he promised to compensate Baldwin. One man only who had held high office under Henry fell under Richard's displeasure: Stephen the seneschal of Anjou, who was not only deprived of the castles and the royal treasury which he had in custody for the late king, but was also chained hand and foot and put in prison. The cause of Stephen's disgrace is unknown; his previous history is obscure; but the disgrace was only temporary; within a few months he was once more free, and reinstated in the king's confidence and favour. On the other hand, when three of the men who had deserted Henry and transferred their allegiance to Richard asked for restitution of their lands of which Henry had disseised them, Richard gave it, but disseised them again immediately, "saying that such was the due reward of traitors who in time of need forsake their lords and help others against them"; and he treated with coldness and aversion all, save one, who had thus acted. The exception was John, who when he presented himself before his brother was "received with honour" and "kindly comforted."

Richard next proceeded into Normandy. At S?ez the archbishops of Rouen and Canterbury met him, and absolved him from excommunication. On July 20 he received the ducal sword and banner of Normandy at the high altar of Rouen cathedral, and immediately afterwards the fealty of the Norman clergy and people. He then went to Gisors for a conference with the king of France. The French historiographer-royal notes that as "the count of Poitou" set foot in the great border-fortress about which he and his father had wrangled so long with Philip, fire broke out within it, and that next day as he rode forth the wooden bridge broke down under him and he and his horse fell into the ditch. The conference took place on the 22nd, between Chaumont and Trie. Philip began by renewing his original claim to Gisors, but waived it on receiving an intimation that Richard still purposed to marry Aloysia. The French king seems to have further claimed a large share of the castles and towns which he had taken from Henry, including Ch?teauroux, Le Mans, and Tours. Submission to such a demand would unquestionably have brought upon Richard, as an English chronicler says, "shame and everlasting contempt"; indeed, he would have been within his feudal right in refusing it entirely, on the ground that no forfeiture on his father's part could invalidate the grant of all these fiefs which had been made to himself by Philip in November 1188. He consented, however, to resign once for all his rights in Auvergne, and two little fiefs in Aquitanian Berry that lay close to the French Royal Domain--Gra?ay and Issoudun; and he bought off Philip's other demands by a promise of four thousand marks in addition to the twenty thousand due from Henry under the convention of Colombi?res. These terms Philip accepted. Richard renewed his homage to his overlord, and they agreed to set out on the Crusade together in Lent of the next year.

For three weeks longer Richard stayed in Normandy, winning all hearts by his gracious and affable demeanour. On August 12 he went to England. Landing at Southampton or Portsmouth, he was received two or three days later with a solemn procession at Winchester by his mother and the chief nobles and prelates of the land. As the archbishop of Canterbury had previously returned from Normandy, the coronation might have taken place immediately, had the new king desired it. But, unlike every other king of England since the Norman conquest, Richard was in no haste to be crowned. There was no need for haste; he had no rival; he had, in England, no enemies; and he had made for himself a host of friends by a proclamation which during the last five weeks "honourable men" sent out by Eleanor according to instructions from him had been publishing and carrying into effect in every county. All persons under arrest for offences against Forest Law were to be discharged; those who were outlawed for a like cause were permitted to return in peace. Other persons imprisoned "by the will of the king or his justiciar," not "by the common law of their county or hundred, or on appeal," were also to be discharged. Persons outlawed "by common law without appeal by the justices" were to be re-admitted to peace provided they could find sureties that they would come up for trial if required; prisoners detained on appeal for any shameful cause were to be released on the same terms. All persons detained "on appeal by those who acknowledged themselves to be malefactors" were to be set free unconditionally. Malefactors to whom "life and limbs" had been granted as approvers were to abjure and depart from the king's land; those who without the concession of life and limbs had of their own free will accused others were to be kept in custody till further counsel should be taken. The ordinance concluded by requiring every free man of the realm to swear fealty and liege homage to the new lord of England, "and that they will submit to his jurisdiction and lend him their aid for the maintenance of his peace and justice in all things." We cannot ascertain how far Richard was justified in the insinuation conveyed in this ordinance, that the administration of criminal law in Henry's latter days had been marked not only by undue severity, but also by arbitrary interference on the part of the Crown or its officers with the rights and liberties of Englishmen. The most philosophic historian of the time, William of Newburgh, evidently thought that however Henry might have erred on the side of rigour, Richard at the outset of his reign erred no less in the opposite direction. "At that time," says William, "the gaols were crowded with criminals awaiting trial or punishment, but through Richard's clemency these pests came forth from prison, perhaps to become bolder thieves in the future." But the people in general were delighted to welcome a ruler who seemed to them bent upon outdoing all that was good and undoing all that they considered evil in the government of his predecessor.

From Winchester Richard was moving on by leisurely stages towards London when a report of a Welsh raid made him suddenly turn towards the border, with the intention of punishing the raiders; but Eleanor, who perhaps better understood the danger of plunging unnecessarily and unwarily into a Welsh war, called him back, and as usual he obeyed her. On September 1 or 2 he was welcomed with a great procession in London; on the 3rd he was crowned at Westminster. Three contemporary writers, one of whom actually assisted in the most sacred detail of the ceremony, tell us how at its outset Duke Richard was "solemnly and duly" elected by clergy and people; how he took the threefold oath, to maintain the peace of the Church, to suppress injustice, and to promote equity and mercy. After receiving the threefold anointing and being clothed with the symbolical vestments of the kingly office, he was adjured by the Primate not to assume it unless he were fully minded to keep his vow; he answered that by God's help he did intend so to do. He then took the crown from the altar and handed it to the archbishop, and the archbishop set it on his head. Richard's coronation is in one way the most memorable in all English history, for it is the occasion on which the form and manner of crowning a king of England were, in every essential point and in most of the lesser particulars, fixed for all after-time.

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