Richard & John: Kings at War (44 page)

Sober historians say that Richard got a good political deal at Worms in that he effectively stymied Philip of France, but only at the cost of further financial burdens for his long-suffering subjects. Henry VI was determined to hang on to Richard until the last possible moment and play out the hand Providence had dealt him for all it was worth, but he took a perverse delight in playing on Philip Augustus’s fears. The famous message he sent to Philip after the agreement at Worms was sealed - ‘Look to yourself; the devil is loose’
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- anticipated reality by a good six months, for it was not until February 1194 that the devil finally gained his freedom. Henry further tantalised Philip by letting him know of the ‘intimacy’ he how enjoyed with the king of England and of the easy terms of Richard’s confinement: he was allowed to transact the business of his kingdom; his friends and advisers could come and go without let or hindrance (and did so in large numbers); he even had his favourite hawks sent from England so that he could enjoy hunting. Sufficiently alarmed by this diplomatic upset, Philip hastened to make peace with Richard so that he could retain his recent conquests on the Norman border; the treaty of Mantes signed on 9 July secured Philip Gisors, Loches and Châtillon.
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Undoubtedly Philip scored a paper success with this treaty, for additionally it stipulated that Richard would pay Philip 20,000 marks in four instalments, that Prince John’s estates on both sides of the Channel would be secure, and that Count Ademar of Angoulême would be given amnesty for his recent rebellion. Richard could only grit his teeth and bide his time, knowing, as Philip did not, that his release was by no means imminent.

Yet neither Philip nor his unsavoury ally John stopped intriguing. John crossed to France soon after the treaty of Mantes, having spent much of the year so far skulking in Dorset (at Wareham and Dorchester).
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He went first to Normandy to claim his castles there in accordance with the treaty, but the castellans so despised and distrusted him that they refused to hand them over, even when presented with writs in Richard’s own hand. Angrily he went to visit Philip, and was temporarily consoled by being given the castles of Drincourt and Arques - which according to the treaty should have been granted to the archbishop of Reims.
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In pique at the unravelling of all his schemes, he barefacedly signed a treaty with Philip in January 1194, ceding further portions of the Angevin empire to the French king. All of Normandy east of Rouen was handed over; as were the lands of Vaudreuil, Verneuil and Evreux, plus the castles of Moulins, Bonmoulins, Vendôme, Tours, Azay-le-Rideau, Ambroise, Montbazon, Montrichard, Loches and Châtillon-sur-Indres.
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It was the giveaway bonanza of the century; John all but said in so many words that he hated his brother so much that he was prepared to destroy the Angevin empire if need be. Even Philip, the beneficiary of John’s treacherous largesse, despised him for so signally selling out his own country. In his mind he must have been prepared for John to betray him in time, just as he had already betrayed his father and brother.
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For the moment, though, Philip was prepared to employ this treacherous turncoat for his own purposes. The Angevin empire was slow in assembling the huge quantities of silver needed to pay the ransom, so that it was November before Henry VI’s emissaries arrived in England to check the weight and fineness of the monies, and arrange for the onward transport to Germany. Assured of his loot, Henry announced that Richard would be released on 17 January 1194.
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Philip and John had to act quickly. Together, in January 1194 immediately after their disgraceful treaty, they approached Emperor Henry VI with a new proposal: they would pay 80,000 marks if Henry was prepared to detain Richard until the autumn, or a proportionate sum for every month he kept him captive beyond the January date.
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Henry dithered, uncertain whether to take the bait. His effusiveness towards Richard, most in evidence in December when he announced a quixotic project to make him king of Provence as his vassal (even though he did not control Provence) seems to have dissipated by the New Year, possibly because he blamed Richard for the secret marriage of his cousin Agnes to Henry the Lion’s son (contracted some time between November 1193 and January 1194) - which he construed as an act hostile to him. Even though the true reason for the marriage was Agnes’s desire to be taken off the marriage market before Philip of France could get at her - she knew about the farce with Ingeborg of Denmark and wanted no repeat performance - instead of blaming Philip for the contretemps, Henry chose to blame Richard.
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For the second half of 1193 Richard was mainly at Worms, though he spent Christmas at Speyer.
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There were now some grounds for anxiety, since Henry had put back the date of his release until 4 February at the earliest and convened a summit conference at Mainz two days before to discuss the final terms of Richard’s release. A massive crowd of notables crowded into the imperial halls, including, on Richard’s side chancellor Longchamp, Walter de Coutances, archbishop of Rouen, Eleanor of Aquitaine and Savaric de Bohun, bishop of Bath. In the enemy corner were Leopold of Austria, Conrad, duke of Swabia and the tame bishops of Worms and Speyer; official neutrals were represented by the duke of Louvain, Conrad Hohenstaufen, Count Palatine of the Rhine and the archbishops of Cologne and Mainz. ‘Anxious and difficult’ (Walter of Rouen’s words)
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negotiations then ensued, but one clearly hopeful sign was that, just before the meeting, Henry signalled his willingness to bind up imperial wounds and compose the Welf and Hohenstaufen factions by accepting the marriage of Henry of Brunswick (Henry the Lion’s son). The other auspicious sign for Richard was that among the so-called neutrals were his old friends the archbishops of Mainz and Cologne, who had headed the anti-emperor faction in 1192-93. This meant that a powerful coalition of German princes was exerting maximum leverage on Henry VI; to listen to the siren voices of Philip and John might mean finally plunging the empire into civil war.
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By 4 February the final terms were agreed and ratified: Richard would pay 100,000 marks to Henry VI and 50,000 to Leopold and do homage to the emperor. Hostages, including the son of Sancho of Navarre, the two sons of the duke of Saxony, Longchamp, Savaric of Bath and the archbishop of Rouen were taken for Richard’s performance of the terms, though a minor sensation was caused when Robert de Nunat, brother of the bishop of Coventry, was named as a hostage and refused to serve on the ground that he was Prince John’s man; instant imprisonment was his punishment.
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On the advice of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Richard formally divested himself of the kingdom of England and granted it to the emperor as the ‘lord of all men’; following a pre-arranged rigmarole, Henry then gave back the kingdom to Richard in front of witnesses, subject to a yearly tribute of £5,000 sterling. This was a humiliation for the Lionheart but a necessary face-saving formula for Henry, who was being taunted by Leopold of Austria for conceding too much. On paper it meant that Richard was now Philip’s vassal for that part of the Angevin empire that lay on the continent and Henry’s for England.
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To save Richard’s face this part of the Mainz settlement was hushed up. It remained a dead letter, and on Henry’s death (28 September 1197) the payment of the £5,000 was remitted.
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The emperor and all his magnates then sent a letter under their seals, requiring Philip and John to restore to Richard all castles and towns seized by them during the king’s captivity, and pledged the full resources of the empire to Richard if the king of France refused; this clause, too, remained a dead letter.
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Richard was finally a free man again, having been in captivity for one year, six weeks and three days, but his freedom had cost the subjects of the Angevin empire dear. 100,000 marks was twice Richard’s annual income from England, though naturally as master of the Angevin empire he did not receive income only from England. All the duchies and provinces of the empire, particularly the monasteries, felt the effects of raising such an enormous sum, and Exchequer Rolls bear eloquent testimony to the gigantic hole made in the respective accounts of England, Normandy, Britanny and Aquitaine.
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Quite how much of the ransom was actually paid to Henry VI remains controversial to this day. Some say that when the German emperor waived the payment of 17,000 marks in November 1195 (in order to prevent Richard from making peace with Philip of France), that was the only part of the debt to the emperor left outstanding, and this seems plausible.
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It was this massive influx of cash that enabled Henry to ride high in 1194. Aided by the sudden death of Tancred of Sicily in February 1194 (historians have often remarked on the almost supernatural run of good luck Henry enjoyed in 1193-94), he swept across the Alps, down into Sicily and had himself crowned king of the island at Palermo on 22 November 1194. All this was made possible at root because of his hoard of Angevin silver. Yet there are many aspects of the actual money handed over which remain puzzling. The official ransom contracted for was 100,000 marks to the emperor and 50,000 to Leopold of Austria, yet it seems that in the end Austria never received a penny. Somehow, in all the final financial negotiations, Henry must have beaten Leopold down to a final payment of 25,000 marks, for unimpeachable evidence established that by the end of 1194 only 4,000 marks had been paid to Austria and 21,000 were still owing.
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The undaunted and secretly defiant Richard made his true feelings clear by writing to Henry of Champagne in Outremer to promise that he would soon be back with the crusaders in the Holy Land, once he settled with Philip of France, and provided God allowed him vengeance against his enemies.
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God certainly seemed to be on the Lionheart’s side when Leopold of Austria was humbled. First, the Pope excommunicated him for having imprisoned a crusader and ordered him to repay the ransom money. Leopold waved aside the anathema and refused to return any money; it appears that the 21,000 marks outstanding were due to arrive with Eleanor of Britanny when she came to Germany for the forced marriage with his son.
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Richard attempted to stall on this part of the release agreement, and seven months after his departure from Germany there was still no sign of Eleanor. At this point Leopold threatened to execute the hostages if the bride was not produced. One of these unfortunates, Baldwin of Bethune, Richard’s old comrade on the mad attempted dash across Germany, took the news to Richard and informed him that the dreadful Leopold was not bluffing. Reluctantly Richard bade farewell to Eleanor, who began the journey back to Germany with Baldwin. Yet even as they were on their way, miraculous tidings overtook them. On 26 December 1194 Leopold was injured when his horse threw him and fell on top of him. Next day his foot was a hideous black, and his surgeons advised rapid amputation, while declaring themselves incompetent to perform the operation. When no one could be induced, forced, cajoled or bribed to cut the gangrenous foot off, Leopold ordered his servants to chop it off with an axe. After three agonising strikes they succeeded, but it was too late. On 31 December Leopold died. On his deathbed he recanted his actions, made peace with the Church and promised to repay every penny mulcted from Richard. The hostages returned home.
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The devout drew the moral that this was what happened to evil men who tried to interfere with God’s holy work by imprisoning a crusader.

Just before Richard departed for his own lands, Henry VI reiterated that it was his firm policy to make Philip of France a vassal of the empire and to curb his overweening ambitions.
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This policy was the genesis of the alliances, at first sight gratuitous, that Richard made with a whole host of German princes, making them pensionaries of the Angevin empire into the bargain. The lucky beneficiaries of yet more money from Angevin empire taxpayers were, among others, the dukes of Austria, Swabia, Brabant and Limburg, the marquis of Montferrat, the Count Palatine of the Rhine, the count of Holland, Baldwin the son of the count of Hainault, the archbishops of Mainz and Cologne and the bishop-elect of Liège.
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Although there is doubt about how many of these pensions were in fact paid - except to those who had actually been instrumental in securing his release - Richard’s German alliance endured and was a fixed feature of English foreign policy until 1214. As with so many of Richard’s dealings with German princes, there is much in the detail here that is obscure. The magnates had to pay homage to Richard in return for the nominal pensions, but is it really credible that his mortal enemy the duke of Austria should have gone through such a charade, to say nothing of the implausibility of Richard’s promising to pay him even more money? Similarly, there is confusion about Richard’s policy in the Low Countries. On the one hand, he was supposed to be detaching Philip from his most valuable ally, Baldwin VIII, count of Flanders, yet on the other he was pledged to help the duke of Brabant (Louvain) in his feud against Baldwin.
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