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Authors: Simon Sebag Montefiore

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The sultan agreed to share Jerusalem with the emperor. Like a modern peace deal in the Middle East, the Muslims kept the Temple Mount (Haram al-Sharif), the Christians got the rest of Jerusalem. Frederick arrived in Jerusalem to reclaim the Holy City, where he showed his unusual respect for Islam. In the church of the Holy Sepulcher, he held a crown-wearing ceremony to promote his vision of himself as Christian emperor. But he then had to flee—pursued by the papal ban. He ruled Jerusalem from afar for ten years—but the majority of his life was devoted to his war against the papacy.

Papal policy had dictated his upbringing. His father, Emperor Henry VI, had challenged the popes for leadership of Christendom.
After Henry's sudden death, the curia ensured the division of his lands: two other candidates were installed in the German kingdom, while the infant Frederick was left with Sicily. His mother died shortly afterward, and the four-year-old king of Sicily became a ward of the papacy. After his German replacements had proved too territorially ambitious, Frederick was reinstalled as a teenager in his northern titles, but not before his erstwhile guardian, Pope Innocent III, had extracted from him promises of extensive papal privileges and numerous vows never to reunite Germany and Sicily under one ruler.

Frederick, however, refused to be a puppet. He saw the Holy Roman Empire as sacred and universal. His conception of imperial sovereignty drove him to extend his authority into the Italian states that lay between his northern and southern lands.

Frederick's conflict with his former guardians overshadowed European politics for half a century. On one level the gigantic struggle was simply a personality clash between the piously intellectual Pope Gregory IX, elected in 1227, and the witty and worldly Frederick. When Gregory IX excommunicated Frederick in 1227 for apparently malingering rather than going on crusade, Frederick's decision to go anyway, and in the process crown himself king of Jerusalem, did little to improve relations.

At the heart of this bitter conflict lay the question of who would dominate Christendom: pope or emperor. With each side buoyed up by a messianic belief in his cause, Italy became the battleground of papal troops and imperial forces. Missives, manifestos, papal bulls and insults flew across Europe. Frederick was again excommunicated. If he was the Wonder of the World to his admirers, he was henceforth Beast of the Apocalypse to his enemies. Two different popes, Gregory IX and Innocent IV, fled Rome, the former dying in exile. In 1245 Innocent IV fired the papacy's ultimate salvo: he announced the emperor was deposed. For the
next five years it was all-out war. In the end it was death, not the papacy, that defeated Frederick. Fighting on against the almost insurmountable twin obstacles of excommunication and deposition, Frederick was regaining ground in both Italy and Germany when he died suddenly in 1250.

ISABELLA & ROGER MORTIMER

1295–1358 & 1287–1330

The tongue devises mischiefs, like a sharp razor, working deceitfully. You love evil more than good, and lies more than honesty
.

Psalm 52, read to Roger Mortimer by his executioner

They were the couple—an adulterous French queen and her English baronial lover—who invaded England, overthrew her husband the king, and ruled the country for three tumultuous years. Mortimer was the first son of Edmund Mortimer, 2nd Baron Wigmore, and his wife, Margaret de Fiennes, second cousin to Eleanor of Castile, the wife of Edward I. His grandfather had been a close ally and friend of King Edward I, and in return for their service to the crown the family had enjoyed royal patronage ever since. Roger married Joan de Geneville, the daughter of a neighboring lord, in 1301, when he was just fourteen, her eventual inheritance, coupled with his own, helping to swell the already vast family estates in the so-called marcher lands on the border of England and Wales.

In 1307, King Edward I died and his son became Edward II. Cowed by his terrifying father as a boy, young Edward, though
outwardly imposing, was timid and easily led—a weakness that others eagerly exploited. First to do so was Piers Gaveston, a onetime companion to the prince who may have been his lover and was certainly his best friend. The king showered him with privileges. In 1308, Edward traveled to France to marry Isabella, sister of the king of France. Isabella was a stunning creature, described by one contemporary as “the beauty of beauties.” But her life was fraught with humiliations and triumphs, and in the end Edward's neglect led her to betray him.

Isabella was the only surviving daughter of Philip IV of France. When she was no more than an infant, Philip proposed her as the future wife of the heir to the English throne, with the aim of easing tensions between the two countries. The marriage duly took place in Boulogne in 1308. Isabella was only twelve years old; the lackluster Edward II was twice her age.

Edward II was tall, fair-haired, handsome—and almost certainly homosexual, favoring as he did a succession of young, good-looking male courtiers. Before he even returned to England after his marriage he had passed on Philip's wedding gifts to Piers Gaveston. Although Isabella bore him four children, Edward rarely showed her any affection, leading her to describe herself as “the most wretched of wives.” Furious and resentful, the country's barons eventually rebelled in 1312, and Gaveston was executed by order of the earl of Lancaster. To their dismay, a voraciously greedy, ambitious and ruthless new favorite took his place—his name Hugh Despenser. In 1306, Hugh had married Eleanor de Clare, a granddaughter of Edward I, and through the king's patronage he secured ever more wealth, land and influence, becoming royal chamberlain in 1318 and one of the richest nobles in the kingdom. Isabella feared and loathed the thuggish Despenser.

The Despensers' lands bordered the Mortimers', and the families hated each other. When Hugh tried to expand his territories into
south Wales, threatening Mortimer's own interests in the region, loathing for the Despensers finally outweighed his loyalty to the king and he joined the earls of Hereford, Lancaster and Pembroke—equally disenchanted with the king's behavior—in open rebellion. In August 1321, the Contrariants, as they were known, marched to London, where they forced Edward to banish their hated rivals. The king, however, swiftly mobilized support and a royal army, Hugh Despenser and his father among them, marched west to confront the rebels. In January 1322, abandoned by his allies, Roger surrendered in Shrewsbury.

Mortimer was imprisoned for the next two years in the Tower of London, but after drugging his jailers, he escaped from his cell, climbed out of the Tower through a chimney, crossed the Thames in a waiting boat, and rode to Dover, from where he crossed to France. He was warmly welcomed in Paris by Edward's enemy and Queen Isabella's brother the French king, Charles IV. The following year, in a dispute over Edward's French territories, Edward sent Queen Isabella, accompanied by their son, the heir to the kingdom, Prince Edward, to negotiate a settlement. Isabella despised Hugh Despenser as much as Roger did: Mortimer and Isabella soon became lovers.

In 1326, having moved to Flanders, Isabella and Mortimer gathered an army of 700 men and invaded England, intent on revenge. The Despensers, caught by surprise, were routed, and, within the month, King Edward, deserted by his nobles, was captured by Mortimer's forces in south Wales. Brutal reprisals followed. Hugh's father was hanged and beheaded in Bristol in October 1326. The following month, at Hereford, Hugh himself was dragged behind four horses, hanged to the point of suffocation, cut down just before he died, then tied to a ladder where his penis and testicles were sliced off and burned before his eyes. While he was still conscious, his abdomen was cut open and his entrails and heart
removed. Afterward, his head was hacked off and mounted on the gates of London, while the four quarters of his body were sent to Bristol, Dover, York and Newcastle.

King Edward, meanwhile, had been forced to abdicate in favor of his son, Edward III, who was “crowned” at a ceremony in January 1327. Though monarch in name, the new king was treated as a puppet by Mortimer, who, though taking no official position, controlled the country with Isabella for the next three years, handing out titles and lands to his family and granting himself the ostentatious title “the earl of March.” Edward II was taken in April to Berkeley Castle, home of Mortimer's son-in-law Thomas Berkeley, and never seen again. According to a later history by Sir Thomas More, he was killed at Mortimer's instigation by means of a red-hot poker inserted into his anus (thus leaving no marks).

Mortimer's despotism and greed provoked fury among the country's barons, prompting him to keep a body of armed men at court at all times, but he finally overreached himself when, in 1330, he ordered the execution of Edward's popular uncle, Edmund, earl of Kent. Fearing that Mortimer planned to usurp the throne, prominent barons, led by his former ally the earl of Lancaster, urged Edward III to strike against Roger before it was too late, and the young king, almost come of age and determined to throw off Mortimer's hated yoke, eagerly took his chance. While the royal household was at Nottingham Castle in October, he and his supporters, guided by two members of the royal household—Richard Bury and William Montagu—bypassed Mortimer's guards via a subterranean passage (still known as Mortimer's Hole) and took Mortimer and Isabella by surprise in the queen's bedroom. Despite Isabella's plea, “Fair son, have pity on the gentle Mortimer,” Roger was arrested and taken to the Tower of London, where, without trial, he was condemned for treason and sentenced to
death. On November 29, 1330, he was taken to Tyburn, stripped naked, and hanged—the fate usually reserved for a commoner—his body being left on the scaffold for two days before being cut down. Notorious as a femme fatale and mariticide, Isabella lived long as an honored queen mother at the court of her son, one of England's greatest kings.

EDWARD III & THE BLACK PRINCE

1312–1377 & 1330–1376

The greatest soldier of his age
.

Jean Froissart,
Chronicles
(late 14th century) on the Black Prince

Edward III and the Black Prince were the father and son who personified the glory, energy and triumph of English chivalry at its medieval apogee. Edward III was the most successful and heroic of English kings; the Black Prince—formally Edward, Prince of Wales—was the most chivalrous and celebrated knight in Europe. Along with King Henry V, they are the greatest princes in British history.

Edward III displayed, throughout his extraordinary long reign, remarkable energy, daring and ambition, often distinguishing himself in the thick of the fighting. He grew up under the shadow of his disastrously weak father Edward II, who was deposed and murdered in 1327 by his mother, Queen Isabella, and her lover Roger Mortimer. The two then ruled despotically until the sidelined king, at just seventeen years old, arranged a successful
coup d'état
,
personally leading the posse of his close friends to seize Mortimer, an act of characteristic derring-do.

Dynamic, talented and athletic, Edward first waged war against the Scots, leading the conquest of much of the Lowlands and achieving a glorious victory at Halidon Hill in 1333. Like his grandfather Edward I, he tried to impose his own candidate, in this instance Edward Balliol, on the Scottish throne. In 1346, the king's army won an even greater victory at Neville's Cross, capturing King David II of Scotland, who was destined to spend many years as a hostage at the court in London.

In 1338, Edward launched his new policy aimed at reasserting the English claim to the crown of France and the Angevin territories lost by King John. By 1340, he was acclaimed king of France and then won a naval battle at Sluys against the French, though he had to return to London to face a political and financial crisis which ended with his dismissal of his minister, John Stratford, Archbishop of Canterbury. He returned to France in 1346, conquering territory including Calais and winning the ultimate of his many victories at the Battle of Crécy, the achievement of his skill in command and his English archers. After Crécy, Halidon Hill and Sluys, and the conquest of Calais, Edward's prestige as king and warrior were enormous. In 1350, hearing that Calais was about to be betrayed, Edward, at great risk to himself, secretly rushed there with an armed group, saved the town in a brief skirmish and destroyed the traitors—a virtuoso performance.

When his eldest son and heir, Edward of Woodstock, was thirteen, the king allowed him to start campaigning abroad. As the English faced the French at Crécy in 1346, the king placed Edward's company in the thick of the fighting. The French fell upon the prince and his men, and it took every ounce of strength to batter them back. Although later stories tell of the king refusing to help until the prince had “won his spurs,” in fact Edward III
realized that his son was in grave danger and sent reinforcements of twenty senior knights. But when they arrived, they found the prince and his companions catching their breath, having already repulsed the French.

The legend of the Black Prince—named for his black armor—was born at Crécy, and it was one that the prince was keen to maintain. One of the allies of the French, King John of Bohemia, had demanded to be brought into battle despite being totally blind. Not surprisingly, he did not survive long. But the prince was impressed with his chivalry and adopted the Bohemian ostrich feathers as his own heraldic device in the dead king's honor. The ostrich feathers still form the crest of the Prince of Wales today.

Edward appointed his son as prince of Aquitaine. Ten years later, in 1356, with a decade's experience of command behind him, the Black Prince commanded another division of English troops to an even greater victory. Without his father to back him up, the prince was not particularly enthused by the idea of engaging the French king, John II; yet on September 19 he led his men into battle about five miles from Poitiers. The prince used his tactical nous to outflank his enemies, charging downhill at them and engaging them in hand-to-hand combat. The French king was captured, and a victory even greater than Crécy was won.

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