Blood Cries Afar (13 page)

The Angevins forged a significant alliance with the powerful German Welf dynasty when Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony, married Henry II’s second daughter, Matilda. The Welfs were second only to the imperial Hohenstaufen dynasty in Germany, with whom Henry also remained on good terms, even when hosting the Duke of Saxony during his political exile in England in the 1180s. This bound the Angevin-Welf families ever closer together: the King became guardian to the Duke’s children, and the Duke may even have been present at the King’s death. A new balance of power had developed during Henry’s reign. The purpose was to squeeze France in the middle. Now, ‘France was always the actual or potential enemy, Germany, as in the time of Henry I, the natural ally of England.’
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Under Henry II’s sons, the alliance continued to strengthen, with Richard being typically, even extravagantly, generous in funding the Welfs and Henry the Lion’s son, his nephew Otto of Brunswick, in particular. He also offered money fiefs to other princes from Germany and the Low Countries. One historian has accurately judged these alliances as being ‘of fundamental importance in that phase of English foreign policy which ended disastrously at the Battle of Bouvines in 1214’.
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Directed against the Capetians, these alliances also served the related ambition of securing the imperial throne for Otto, the election of whom as King of the Romans in 1198 (and hence future Emperor) was regarded by at least one contemporary as Richard’s greatest achievement.
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A more immediate success was the transfer of allegiances of the Counts of Flanders and Boulogne away from Philip and to Richard, another objective of the alliance; Renaud de Dammartin, Count of Boulogne, was to be a large and powerful thorn in Philip II’s ample flesh until 1214. Both these Counts had made treaties with Philip Augustus the previous year. For Flanders, Baldwin of Hainaut was motivated by the commercial interests of his country (as discussed above), while Renaud held genuine grievances against the King of France, but was also a ruthless opportunist. These Counts protected Normandy from a French attack in the north, while simultaneously making incursions against the French in Artois. The alliance was cemented with the sending to Flanders of 280 English troops.
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The Hohenstaufen reacted to the election of a Welf by electing in turn their own man, Philip of Swabia, brother to Emperor Henry VI who had died in 1197.
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This set the scene for two decades of civil war in Germany. Politics, diplomacy and warfare in western Europe were all subsumed by the resulting clash between the Angevins and Welfs on one hand, and the Capetians and Hohenstaufens on the other.

By the terms of the Treaty of Le Goulet in 1200, John was to end his financial support to Otto, but when war broke out between England and France in 1202, he quickly resumed a formal alliance with his nephew. For his part, Otto IV justified payments from England with plans to invade France at Rheims and Cambrai, forcing Philip to fight on two fronts – the established strategy of the allies. In 1207 he was enthusiastically received in London and ceremoniously feted by John. His fortunes received a great fillip in 1208 when his rival, Philip of Swabia, was assassinated. The next year, Pope Innocent III crowned Otto IV Holy Roman Emperor in Rome, only to excommunicate him just a month later over his territorial ambitions in Italy.
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This confrontation served to nudge the pope into the Capetian-Hohenstaufen orbit and Otto even more decisively into John’s, the other papal bad boy. John now had a nephew on the imperial throne. The Angevins and Welfs began in earnest to forge a broad anti-Capetian coalition with real teeth that was to dominate European politics for the next six years. To this end, John sent his half-brother, Earl William of Salisbury, to Germany with a letter addressed to four archbishops, two bishops, two abbots, four margraves and five dukes.
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In England, there were a number of Germans, mainly mercenaries, who held favour at John’s court; some were military commanders of strategic castles such as Berkhamsted, while others held lucrative offices.
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Although John had initially somewhat neglected the alliances formed by his brother, he soon took them up again with energy. Much of the recent negotiations were directed by the Count of Boulogne, who had been in regular contact with John since 1209 via the mercenary pirate, Eustace the Monk. The Count declared his public support for John when he and several other princes, including Count Ferrand of Flanders, signed the Treaty of Lambeth in May 1212, by which the signatories promised to make a separate peace with France. John declared that he wished ‘these things to be done publicly so that our friends may rejoice and our enemies may be openly confounded’.
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John continued to pour money to Otto – as much as 10,000 marks on one occasion alone – until an uprising in Wales forced a tightening of the purse strings and put a hold on his military plans to recover his lands in France.

France’s relations with Germany, as with so many nations of the time, can be understood on the basis of ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend.’ All sides manoeuvred to thwart their opponents, real and potential. With a number of powers in the mix – Angevins and Welfs, Capetians and Hohenstaufens, the Papacy, Flemish princes and even Iberian kings – the possibilities for a changing rota of friends and foes remained high. The pope fell in and out with everyone, but John and Philip remained pretty much constant with their alliances (with some occasional bumps on the road). Philip Augustus had a particular antipathy towards Otto, not least for the latter’s active assistance to Richard I in his campaigns against France.

French animosity towards the empire stretched back over the years (just as it was to go forward, too). The victory of Philip’s grandfather, Louis VI, over a German invasion in 1124 was a celebrated highpoint in Capetian tradition, helped by Abbot Suger’s account in
Life of Louis the Fat
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Philip’s gravitation towards the Hohenstaufens was a natural response to the Angevin-Welf alliance. Early in the 1190s Philip and Emperor Henry VI made a secret alliance against Richard I; some contemporaries believed that Henry’s incarceration of Richard, shipwrecked on his way back from the Crusades, was at Philip’s behest (and probably John’s, too). Certainly, the Capetian did his best to keep Richard in prison by offering all manner of financial incentives to Henry. Capitalising on his opponent’s imprisonment, Philip conspired with John to put the latter on the English throne. John did homage to Philip for Normandy and, with the opportunistic Count Renaud of Boulogne temporarily amenable to Philip, ‘a Capetian King of France was for the first time in history in a position to threaten England from the sea.’
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Philip lost no time in arranging an invasion fleet at Wissant in Boulogne.
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An invasion of England was in Philip’s mind in summer 1193, long before his son undertook the 1216 enterprise. That he could think about such an undertaking was due to the synchronicity of vital developments: the temporary rapprochement with Renaud Dammartin and the extraordinary luck of Richard’s captivity. In 1193, Philip married Ingeborg of Denmark, primarily for the help this would afford him in his struggle with England: marriage meant (dubious) Danish claims to the English throne and also a strong fleet and army, offering the prospect of a two-pronged attack on England.
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This combination did for Harold in 1066.

Richard was not greatly perturbed by his brother’s revolt, later dismissively, but perceptively, saying that ‘my brother John is not the man to conquer a country if there is anyone to offer the feeblest resistance.’
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England remained loyal to the captive King (there was deep suspicion and mistrust of John already); Roger of Howden reports that Richard’s officials repaid the trust he had placed in them: ‘The justiciaries of England and the faithful subjects of our lord the King manfully resisted [John] and inflicted upon him great loss.’ The seaports were strongly garrisoned and the Channel and potential landing places watched over vigilantly, so that the French could be prevented from disembarking their troops and those of their Flemish allies. Members of an advanced scouting party did get ashore but were taking prisoner and thrown in chains. The bulk of the force ‘did not dare land’.
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A bizarre, personal twist added to Philip’s problems. The day following his wedding night, he inexplicably repudiated his bride, bringing down on himself the wrath of the papacy and burdening him with years of conflict with the Church.

To compound matters, Philip now also faced the imminent prospect of Richard’s release: negotiations for his ransom were in progress between the English government and the Emperor. Philip’s bids to purchase Richard from Henry were exploited by the Emperor who saw in them an opportunity to exact an even higher bid from England and to apply pressure for a prompt payment. Henry had no intention of auctioning Richard to Philip: his grandiose plans for universal supremacy, of the type that so exercised John of Salisbury, led him at this early stage to work towards a weak and vulnerable France. Richard’s release in 1194 created panic among his enemies. Howden reports that Philip warned John of the news: ‘Look to yourself; the devil is loose.’
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And look to himself John promptly did: he fled to the French court. The threat from John and Philip was over.

The unexpected death of Henry VI in 1197 from a typhus-like fever changed everything.
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Henry’s son, the future Frederick II,
stupor mundi
(the wonder of the world), was only three years old when his father died, leaving it easier for the Welf Otto of Saxony to be elected King of the Romans the following year. This piled on the bad news for Philip. Richard’s nephew, whom the King had already favoured with the title of Count of Poitou, brought great prestige and potential backing to the Angevins. The tide turned more in France’s favour when in 1199 another sudden death shifted the balance more to his liking: Richard the Lionheart was killed at the siege of Châlus Chabrol. With John now King of England the French monarch faced a far less dangerous opponent.

Henry’s death should have been a relief to Philip as the Emperor had disregarded the Capetian-Hohenstaufen alliance and had even made Richard, as one of the terms of ransom, an imperial vassal, urging him to wage war on France. Henry wanted Richard to undermine France’s power for him. But Otto being catapulted towards the imperial throne was far worse for Philip; he feared him far more than he feared John. Fortunately for him, the internal strife in Germany that followed Philip of Swabia’s election ensured that Otto was preoccupied with securing his own position domestically before venturing into foreign affairs. In 1198, the French King had sent Bishop Nivelon of Soissons to Worms to sign an alliance treaty with Philip of Swabia, undeterred by the Duke’s excommunicant status. The French king’s concerns for security on his eastern and north-eastern borders took precedence over religious formalities. As King John started to fall out of favour with the pope in 1206 and was himself excommunicated, and as Otto suffered a string of defections, Philip of Swabia’s position strengthened and Capetian policy towards the empire fleetingly appeared to be vindicated by triumphant results – until Philip’s murder in 1208.
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The Duke of Swabia’s death was considered by many to be God’s judgment, and support for Otto of Brunswick became widespread. Philip attempted vainly to promote his preferred candidate, Henry of Brabant, with 3000 marks and implored the pope not to crown Otto. Otto easily won the day and in 1209 the diplomatic mission from the Earl of Salisbury resulted in the formal Angevin-Imperial coalition against France.

Dire as this was for Philip, he at least had the satisfaction of seeing Otto excommunicated almost immediately after. This was scant consolation and did little to effect the political situation for the time being. The ever-vacillating Count of Boulogne judged Philip now weak enough to declare publicly against him with the Lambeth Treaty, by which he paid homage to John, and thereby posed a real threat from north-eastern France. Philip, who never trusted Renaud, had seized some of his fiefs and occupied part of Boulogne. France was on alert for enemy advances from the north, east and west; in the south it was heavily engaged with the Albigensian Crusade against the Count of Toulouse and the Cathar heretics.
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Neither Philip nor John neglected the Iberian peninsula: the French monarch allied with Castile in 1202, bolstering that kingdom’s claim for English Gascony; to counter this, John allied with Castile’s enemy, Navarre. But the ever-turning wheel of fortune presented new opportunities, and even now Philip was preparing another expedition to invade England. That this was the case had much to do with the state of papal politics.

Inextricably intertwined in the international politics of kings and emperors was, as ever, the Papacy. Its overarching concern was to prevent imperial designs on Italy and its lands there; it is easy to forget that it was a state in its own right. It was never a biddable task to dissuade the King of the Romans and the Holy Roman Emperor to desist from such plans, and both Otto IV and Frederick II suffered excommunication over this issue. The Papacy was just as eager as other protagonists to play ‘my enemy’s enemy’, at various times supporting and then opposing the English and French kings depending on the situation with the empire. Thus Innocent III ignored Philip’s pleas not to crown Otto of Brunswick as Emperor but, following his bull of excommunication, channelled his support to the youthful Frederick Hohenstaufen. Innocent was pope between 1198 and 1216. Considered as one of the greatest popes of any era, he was brilliant, wildly ambitious, calculating, cynical, skilful, ruthless and obstinate, displaying all the characteristics of a successful temporal prince; his term in office, not coincidentally, saw a period of tremendous changes within the Church.
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