The History of England - Vols. 1 to 6 (67 page)

Captivity in Germany

his renown, found himself, during the most critical state of his affairs, confined in a dungeon, and loaded with irons, in the heart of Germany,
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and entirely at the mercy of his enemies, the basest and most sordid of mankind.

The English council was astonished on receiving this fatal intelligence; and foresaw all the dangerous consequences, which might naturally arise from that event. The queen-dowager wrote reiterated letters to pope Celestine; exclaiming against the injury which her son had sustained, representing the impiety of detaining in prison the most illustrious prince that had yet carried the banners of Christ into the Holy Land; claiming the protection of the apostolic see, which was due even to the meanest of those adventurers; and upbraiding the pope, that, in a cause where justice, religion, and the dignity of the church, were so much concerned; a cause which it might well befit his holiness himself to support by taking in person a journey to Germany, the

spiritual thunders should so long be suspended over those sacrilegious offenders.d

The zeal of Celestine corresponded not to the impatience of the queen-mother; and the regency of England were, for a long time, left to struggle alone with all their domestic and foreign enemies.

The king of France, quickly informed of Richard’s confinement

War with France.

by a message from the emperor,
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prepared himself to take advantage of the incident: and he employed every means of force and intrigue, of war and negotiation, against the dominions and the person of his unfortunate rival. He revived the calumny of Richard’s assassinating the marquis of Montserrat; and by that absurd pretence, he induced his barons to violate their oaths, by which they had engaged, that, during the crusade, they never would, on any account, attack the dominions of the king of England. He made the emperor the largest offers, if he would deliver into his hands the royal prisoner, or at least detain him in perpetual captivity: He even formed an alliance by marriage with the king of Denmark, desired that the ancient Danish claim to the crown of England should be transferred to him, and solicited a supply of shipping to maintain it. But the most successful of Philip’s negotiations was with prince John, who, forgetting every tye to his brother, his sovereign, and his benefactor, thought of nothing but how to make his own advantage of the public calamities. That traitor, on the first invitation from the court of France, suddenly went abroad, had a conference with Philip, and made a treaty, of which the object was the perpetual ruin of his unhappy brother. He stipulated to deliver into Philip’s hands a great part of Normandy;
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he received, in return, the investiture of all Richard’s transmarine dominions; and it is reported by several historians, that he even did homage to the French king for the crown of England.

In consequence of this treaty, Philip invaded Normandy; and by the treachery of John’s emissaries, made himself master, without opposition, of many fortresses, Neufchatel, Neaufle, Gisors, Pacey, Ivreé: He subdued the counties of Eu and Aumale; and advancing to form the siege of Roüen, he threatened to put all the inhabitants to the sword, if they dared to make resistance. Happily, Robert earl of Leicester appeared in that critical moment; a gallant nobleman, who had acquired great honour during the PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)

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crusade, and who, being more fortunate than his master in finding his passage homewards, took on him the command in Roüen, and exerted himself, by his exhortations and example, to infuse courage into the dismayed Normans. Philip was repulsed in every attack; the time of service from his vassals expired; and he consented to a truce with the English regency, received in return the promise of 20,000 marks, and had four castles put into his hands, as security for the payment.
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Prince John, who, with a view of encreasing the general confusion, went over to England, was still less successful in his enterprizes. He was only able to make himself master of the castles of Windsor and Wallingford; but when he arrived in London, and claimed the kingdom as heir to his brother, of whose death he pretended to have received certain intelligence, he was rejected by all the barons, and measures were taken to oppose and subdue him.
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The justiciaries, supported by the general affection of the people, provided so well for the defence of the kingdom, that John was obliged, after some fruitless efforts, to conclude a truce with them; and before its expiration, he thought it prudent to return into France, where he openly avowed his alliance with Philip.
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Mean while, the high spirit of Richard suffered in Germany every kind of insult and indignity. The French ambassadors, in their master’s name, renounced him as a vassal to the crown of France, and declared all his fiefs to be forfeited to his liege-lord. The emperor, that he might render him more impatient for the recovery of his liberty, and make him submit to the payment of a larger ransom, treated him with the greatest severity, and reduced him to a condition worse than that of the meanest malefactor.

He was even produced before the diet of the empire at Worms, and accused by Henry of many crimes and misdemeanors; of making an alliance with Tancred, the usurper of Sicily; of turning the arms of the Crusade against a Christian prince, and subduing Cyprus; of affronting the duke of Austria before Acre; of obstructing the progress of the Christian arms by his quarrels with the king of France; of assassinating Conrade, marquis of Montserrat; and of concluding a truce with Saladin, and leaving Jerusalem

in the hands of the Saracen emperor.k
Richard, whose spirit was not broken by his misfortunes, and whose genius was rather rouzed by these frivolous or scandalous imputations; after premising, that his dignity exempted him from answering before any jurisdiction, except that of heaven; yet condescended, for the sake of his reputation, to justify his conduct before that great assembly. He observed, that he had no hand in Tancred’s elevation, and only concluded a treaty with a prince, whom he found in possession of the throne: That the king, or rather tyrant of Cyprus, had provoked his indignation by the most ungenerous and unjust proceedings; and though he chastised this aggressor, he had not retarded a moment the progress of his chief enterprize: That if he had at any time been wanting in civility to the duke of Austria, he had already been sufficiently punished for that sally of passion; and it better became men, embarked together in so holy a cause, to forgive each other’s infirmities, than to pursue a slight offence with such unrelenting vengeance: That it had sufficiently appeared by the event, whether the king of France or he were most zealous for the conquest of the Holy Land, and were most likely to sacrifice private passions and animosities to that great object: That if the whole tenor of his life had not shown him incapable of a base assassination, and justified him from that imputation in the eyes of his very enemies, it was in vain for him, at present, to make his apology, PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)

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or plead the many irrefragable arguments, which he could produce in his own favour: And that, however he might regret the necessity, he was so far from being ashamed of his truce with Saladin, that he rather gloried in that event; and thought it extremely honourable, that, though abandoned by all the world, supported only by his own courage and by the small remains of his national troops, he could yet obtain such conditions from the most powerful and most warlike emperor that the East had ever yet produced. Richard, after thus deigning to apologize for his conduct, burst out into indignation at the cruel treatment which he had met with; that he, the champion of the cross, still wearing that honourable badge, should, after expending the blood and treasure of his subjects in the common cause of Christendom, be intercepted by Christian princes in his return to his own country, be thrown into a dungeon, be loaded with irons, be obliged to plead his cause, as if he were a subject and a malefactor; and what he still more regretted, be thereby prevented from making preparations for a new crusade, which he had projected, after the expiration of the truce, and from redeeming the sepulchre of Christ, which had so long been profaned by the dominion of infidels. The spirit and eloquence of Richard made such impression on the German princes, that they exclaimed loudly against the conduct of the emperor; the pope threatened him with excommunication; and Henry, who had hearkened to the proposals of the king of France and prince John, found that it would be impracticable for him to execute his and their base purposes, or to detain the king of England any longer in captivity.

He therefore concluded with him a treaty for his ransom, and

The king’s delivery.

agreed to restore him to his freedom for the sum of 150,000

marks, about 300,000 pounds of our present money: of which 100,000 marks were to be paid before he received his liberty, and sixty-seven hostages delivered for the

remainder.l
The emperor, as if to gloss over the infamy of this transaction, made at the same time a present to Richard of the kingdom of Arles, comprehending Provence, Dauphiny, Narbonne, and other states, over which the empire had some antiquated claims; a present which the king very wisely neglected.

The captivity of the superior lord was one of the cases provided for by the feudal tenures; and all the vassals were in that event obliged to give an aid for his ransom.

Twenty shillings were therefore levied on each knight’s fee in England; but as this money came in slowly, and was not sufficient for the intended purpose, the voluntary zeal of the people readily supplied the deficiency. The churches and monasteries melted down their plate, to the amount of 30,000 marks; the bishops, abbots, and nobles, paid a fourth of their yearly rent; the parochial clergy contributed a tenth of their tythes: And the requisite sum being thus collected, queen Eleanor, and Walter archbishop of Roüen, set out with it for Germany;

paid the money to the emperor and the duke of Austria at Mentz; 1194. 4th Feb.

delivered them hostages for the remainder; and freed Richard

from captivity. His escape was very critical. Henry had been detected in the assassination of the bishop of Liege, and in an attempt of a like nature on the duke of Louvaine; and finding himself extremely obnoxious to the German princes on account of these odious practices, he had determined to seek support from an alliance with the king of France; to detain Richard, the enemy of that prince, in perpetual captivity; to keep in his hands the money which he had already received for his ransom; and to extort fresh sums from Philip and prince John, who were very liberal in their offers to PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)

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him. He therefore gave orders that Richard should be pursued and arrested; but the king, making all imaginable haste, had already embarked at the mouth of the Schelde, and was out of sight off land, when the messengers of the emperor reached Antwerp.

The joy of the English was extreme on the appearance of their

King’s return to

monarch, who had suffered so many calamities, who had

England. 20th March.

acquired so much glory, and who had spread the reputation of

their name into the farthest East, whither their fame had never before been able to extend. He gave them, soon after his arrival, an opportunity of publickly displaying their exultation, by ordering himself to be crowned anew at Winchester; as if he intended, by that ceremony, to reinstate himself in his throne, and to wipe off the ignominy of his captivity. Their satisfaction was not damped, even when he declared his purpose of resuming all those exorbitant grants, which he had been necessitated to make before his departure for the Holy Land. The barons also, in a great council, confiscated, on account of his treason, all prince John’s possessions in England; and they assisted the king in reducing the fortresses which still remained in the hands of

his brother’s adherents.m
Richard, having settled every thing in England, passed over with an army into Normandy; being impatient to make war on Philip, and to revenge himself for the many injuries which he had received from that monarch.
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As soon as Philip heard of the king’s deliverance from captivity, he wrote to his confederate, John, in these terms:
Take care of yourself: The devil is broken loose.
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When we consider such powerful and martial monarchs,

War with France

inflamed with personal animosity against each other, enraged by mutual injuries, excited by rivalship, impelled by opposite interests, and instigated by the pride and violence of their own temper; our curiosity is naturally raised, and we expect an obstinate and furious war, distinguished by the greatest events, and concluded by some remarkable catastrophe. Yet are the incidents, which attended those hostilities, so frivolous, that scarce any historian can entertain such a passion for military descriptions as to venture on a detail of them: A certain proof of the extreme weakness of princes in those ages, and of the little authority they possessed over their refractory vassals! The whole amount of the exploits on both sides is, the taking of a castle, the surprise of a straggling party, a rencounter of horse, which resembles more a rout than a battle. Richard obliged Philip to raise the siege of Verneüil; he took Loches, a small town in Anjou; he made himself master of Beaumont, and some other places of little consequence; and after these trivial exploits, the two kings began already to hold conferences for an accommodation. Philip insisted, that, if a general peace were concluded, the barons on each side should for the future be prohibited from carrying on private wars against each other: But Richard replied, that this was a right claimed by his vassals, and he could not debar them from it. After this fruitless negociation, there ensued an action between the French and English cavalry at Fretteval, in which the former were routed, and the king of France’s cartulary and records, which commonly at that time attended his person, were taken. But this victory leading to no important advantages, a truce for a year was at last, from mutual weakness, concluded between the two monarchs.