Lionheart (6 page)
Authors: Douglas Boyd
Dos cavalhs ai a me selha ben e gen.
Bon son e adreg per arms e valen,
mas no’ls puesc amdos tener
que l’us l’autre non cossen.
[I have two purebred horses for my saddle / fine-spirited and both well trained for battle /but I can’t stable them together / for neither tolerates the other.]
Many nobles were illiterate, using clerics as secretaries to read and write for them, but Eleanor, literate herself, insisted her favourite be taught to read, write and converse in Latin, northern French and Occitan – the language spoken in the south of France. Richard learned while young to pen a witty
sirventès
or rhyming tribute to a girl’s beauty as an academic exercise. Other essential aspects of Richard’s education for noble twelfth-century manhood were horsemanship astride a mettlesome, highly bred
destrier
or trained warhorse – the name comes from the custom of the knight’s squire riding a palfrey and holding the reins of his master’s warhorse in the right hand – and how to wield, on foot and on horseback, the weapons of war, including swords, daggers, lances, axes and the mace.
Fighting with lance in the tactic that would later be called a heavy cavalry charge required split-second timing as the two sides collided. With the kite-shaped shield – the top flattened off for better visibility when held high to protect the face – protecting the knight’s left side, the wooden lance, tipped with steel, was held level across the horse’s neck, pointing slightly left so that two approaching knights each threatened the other in the same way. The first to strike his opponent generally won by killing, wounding or unhorsing him. Often, the shock of contact head-on, with both opposing knights firmly seated between the high pommel and cantle of their saddles, was such that the wooden shafts of their lances shattered. Many knights were blinded by wooden splinters penetrating their eyes.
The knightly sword at this time was not the elegant, tapering blade of later years and nothing like the elegant rapier of Renaissance times. Although pointed at the tip for stabbing lunges, this was a weapon primarily designed to be brought down onto the adversary or laterally across the body with sufficient force to cleave unarmoured flesh deeply and shatter bones. Practising with it in adolescence and using it regularly in adult life gave the warrior caste a lop-sided appearance from massive over-development of the right shoulder and arm muscles – and almost guaranteed arthritic problems in the right shoulder and arm in later life, if a man lived long enough. The broad blade, strengthened as much as a third of the way from the cross by a longitudinal rib on each side, had a flattened diamond cross-section. Although the hilt was long enough to be held in both hands when the occasion warranted, the twelfth-century sword was usually wielded one-handed, the pommel at the end of the hilt preventing it being easily struck from the wielder’s hand.
The armour worn had evolved a little from that depicted on the Norman knights in the Bayeux Tapestry. The
cotte
of mail was shorter, the skirt ending about the knees to protect the thighs from an adversary’s sword slash when on horseback, but not so long as to hinder movement on foot, if unhorsed. Mail leggings and spurred boots protected the lower leg and feet, and mail gloves for the hands. The headpiece of the
cotte
came up over the mouth to the level of the nose so that, with a conical helmet made from several riveted segments, complete with nasal, only the eyes and part of the cheeks were exposed, which made them a prime target. So many men suffered disfiguring facial wounds there that the new pot-helmet was introduced. This covered the whole head, with a slit to see out of and holes pierced lower down for breathing through and speaking.
It is easy to see why armour was usually donned at the latest prudent moment before combat, and not worn while travelling. So, Richard’s training was not just in the use of weapons, but also in developing the stamina and brute force required to do so for hours, wearing full armour in midsummer heat.
The word ‘jester’ did not originally mean a fool with a quick wit, a bladder and a talent for prat-falls; it was derived from the Latin
gesta
, meaning the deeds of great men in warfare, and described the courtier with a better than good memory who could recount those deeds in detail as entertainment for a noble court. On both sides of his family, Richard was descended from the Norsemen who had settled Normandy by bloody conquest, forcing Charles the Simple, king of the Western Franks, to constitute it a duchy and cede legal title in 911 to its first duke, Rollo the Viking, in return for him paying homage as Charles’ vassal.
A Norse boy of earlier generations would have repeatedly heard the sagas of Viking heroes whose manhood was epitomised by their willingness to die on the field of battle. So Richard was entertained again and again with accounts of deeds of prowess in the First Crusade, when Godefroi de Bouillon had leaped from the platform of a Frankish siege tower onto the battlements of Jerusalem and led the way for a handful of knights who hacked their way through living flesh and blood to the Damascus Gate, which they opened to allow the mass of Christian soldiery to pour into the city and massacre every Muslim, Jew and eastern Christian living there. The crusaders’ chaplain recorded with sanctimonious delight how the whole Temple platform was awash with blood and bodies of the slain were piled so high that they reached to the knee of a mounted knight. Only the richest were saved for ransom, pending which they were used as slave labour to remove and dispose of the thousands of corpses. Five months later, celebrating the Feast of the Nativity in the mosque, renamed
templum domini
by the knights of Christ, all the incense in Israel could not mask the stink of decaying flesh that assailed the nostrils of the worshippers. This was not ancient history, for Richard’s own paternal great-grandfather Count Fulk V of Anjou had been crowned King of Jerusalem in 1131 and worn that crown until 1143. The lesson for Richard was that no less would be expected of him when he reached man’s estate.
At the Christmas court of 1164, held at Marlbrough, 6-year-old Richard and the other princes and princesses may have been eyewitnesses to one of Henry’s famous rages, directed against Thomas Becket. Since being made archbishop by Henry, the former model chancellor had become an increasingly difficult vassal. In particular, he had refused to recognise the Constitutions of Clarendon – a set of laws introduced by Henry to reduce the power of the Church and abolish certain ecclesiastical privileges. Leaving England clandestinely, Becket had, with assistance from Louis VII, reached Rome before Henry’s emissaries could get there and enlisted the support of Pope Alexander III in his dispute with the king.
Learning this on Christmas Eve, Henry went literally berserk, after which, whether eyewitnesses or not, the whole court walked softly, fearing to attract the attention of the king until he was in a calmer mood. This was certainly not the case the following day, when Henry invoked the Germanic principle of
Sippenhaft
to banish from the island realm everyone related to Becket, however vaguely. A total of 400 men, women and children, innocent of everything but some connection with the renegade archbishop, were forcibly shipped to Flanders and there abandoned in midwinter, homeless and without money or food, possessing only the clothes they were wearing. Prince Henry, who had been brought up in Becket’s household during the years when he was Henry’s chancellor, regarded the dispute as one more reason to hate his manipulative father.
N
OTES
1.
Richard, A.,
Histoire
, Vol 2, p. 132.
2.
Map,
De Nugis
, pp. 13–15.
3.
Map,
De Nugis
, p. 248.
4.
R. Bartlett,
England under the Norman and Angevin Kings
(Oxford: OUP, 2000), p.140.
5.
The dukes of Aquitaine were known also by their numbers in the succession to the county of Poitou. For simplicity, their ducal numbers only are used in this book.
4
I
t has to be said that Richard and his male siblings were an unlovable lot, judged by any modern standards. Henry II was reputed to have had a mural painted in Windsor Castle representing himself as a dying eagle being attacked by four eaglets. If that is true, it was a remarkable prophecy of the end of his life. A truer visual simile of his attitude as a father would have shown him as a huntsman holding four hounds on intertwined leashes, he curbing them at every turn and them continually snapping and snarling at each other, waiting only for a chance to bite the hand that held them.
Richard’s eldest brother Prince Henry grew up to be a vain but popular playboy, surrounded by a coterie of flattering admirers attracted by his open-handed generosity when he was in funds, which was never for long. When able to break away from the – to him – boring round of governance with his father’s court, his main leisure interest lay in the tournaments
.
At that time, they were not the ordered ritual they later became, with noble ladies watching two knights charging at each other along separated tracks, each endeavouring to unseat the other with his lance. That was dangerous, but the
mêlée
of the middle twelfth century was far more so, with two teams of heavily armed mounted knights setting upon each other with whatever weapons they liked in a lethal forerunner of tag wrestling. The
mêlée
began on an agreed signal, usually in an open space in or near a town, but continued with pursuers chasing their opponents for miles across the countryside, damaging crops and property and riding down anyone unwise enough to get in their way. An unhorsed knight could expect to be deliberately ridden down, or hacked at with sword, mace or axe until literally clubbed and/or stabbed to death. Limbs and sometimes heads were lost to blows from opponents’ swords; limbs and skulls were crushed by maces and shattered by axes. If overwhelmed by one or more opponents, a knight could surrender to save his life, but was then a prisoner with his horse, arms and armour forfeit, and would be released only after payment of a ransom calculated in accordance with his rank and wealth.
The noble troubadour Bertran de Born, joint castellan of the castle of Autafòrt in Périgord, gained most of his wealth from plunder and ransom. He loved the whole tournament scene:
Bela m’es pressa be blezos
coberts de teintz vermelhs e blausd’entresens e de gonfanos
de diversas colors tretaustendas e traps e rics pavilhos tendre
lanzas frassar, escutz trancar e fendre
elmes brunitz, e colps donar e prendre …
[The
mêlée
, with its thousand charms: / shields vermillion and azure / standards, banners, coats of arms / painted in every bright colour, / the pavilions, the stands, the tents, / shattered lances, shields split and bent, / blows given, taken, helmets dented …]
For Young Henry, the
mêlée
was a source of steady income, thanks to having the mightiest warrior in Europe on his team, William the Marshal, who reputedly took 103 knights prisoner in a single year.
At Montmirail on 6 January 1169 Henry II went through the motions of sharing out his empire among his sons. Under this, Eleanor gained permission to cede title to the county of Poitou and duchy of Aquitaine to her favourite son, whereupon 12-year-old Richard performed homage by swearing fidelity to Louis VII. Young Henry, who was married to Louis’ daughter Marguerite, did the same for Maine and Anjou, after which Louis gave his consent, as feudal overlord of the continental possessions, to the betrothal of Prince Geoffrey to Countess Constance of Brittany. Geoffrey was smaller in stature than the two eldest princes and of a swarthy complexion. He had the best brain of the four and, since he was unlikely to accede to the throne, would have made a successful cardinal, had his father been prepared to allow him to escape his paternal domination. Having a lawyer’s gift for words, Geoffrey was able to make black seem white and could always talk round even those who already had good reason to mistrust him. The son whom Eleanor regarded as the runt of her second litter was John. A full 12 inches shorter than Richard when fully grown, he lacked Geoffrey’s intellect, Richard’s undoubted courage and Young Henry’s popularity. Their father made most use of him to annoy and worry his older brothers by conferring on John gifts and possessions that had been promised to the others – and were later taken away again.
