Richard & John: Kings at War (47 page)

Philip next laid siege to the castle of Fontaines, just five miles from Rouen, to cock a snook at Richard and dent his credibility - by investing a stronghold so close to the capital of the duchy of Normandy. Outnumbered and outmatched, John and the earl of Leicester lurked in Rouen and did not try conclusions with the French. But it was a case of trebuchets to squash a mosquito, for it took Philip four days to reduce and demolish an insignificant fortress.
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Yet the French king had a stroke of luck as he turned away from the siege, for the earl of Leicester, out on a foray, fell into his hands. Philip thought this an opportune moment to propose another truce, but Richard was adamant that those lords of Normandy who had committed treason against him should not enjoy the luxury and privileges of a ceasefire.
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Treason and treachery were evidently still on his mind when he reached Tours, and the city must have harboured many a turncoat and trimmer, for the city fathers made the extravagant gesture of contributing 2,000 marks to the English war chest provided there were no reprisals for earlier ‘mistakes’.
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The Lionheart hit back at Philip’s pyrrhic victory at Fontaines by besieging and taking three truly important castles - at Loches, Montmirail and Beaumont le Roger. These strongholds were a huge distance apart, and Richard demonstrated once again his mastery of logistics and strategy by dividing his army temporarily and sending a detachment to each of the three corners of his empire.
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The capture of Loches was materially aided by the armies of Sancho of Navarre, who proved a hammer of those southern rebels Ademar of Angoulême and Geoffrey de Rancon. But it took Richard to achieve the fall of Loches. Sancho returned to Spain on news that his father was dying, yet his forces remained outside Loches, though without making much impression on the castle. On 13 June, in one colossal assault, the Lionheart took it by storm in a single day.
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Concentrating now on Aquitaine and the crushing of all the southern rebels, he moved on to besiege Vendôme. Although Philip’s army was within striking distance, the French king himself did not relish a pitched battle with a man so manifestly superior in arms. He turned his army round and began retreating, but Richard fell on his rearguard at Fréteval on 4 July and added another easy victory to his tally. The Anglo-Norman army pursued, with Richard on horseback desperate to catch up with Philip and make him a prisoner. Mercadier and William Marshal particularly distinguished themselves that day. Disappointed in his objective, Richard turned back to survey the fruits of his success. Philip had been forced to abandon his entire wagon train, containing vast amounts of treasure, horses, tents, siege engines and, most interestingly, the French royal archives, wherein Richard was able to find documentary evidence of all the Norman lords who had betrayed him.
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Together with the 2,000 marks donated by Tours, on this campaign alone Richard was well on the way to recouping the vast sum spent on his ransom.

Striking out from his temporary base at Vendôme, in the first three weeks of July Richard fought another blitzkrieg campaign, smashing the rebels Geoffrey of Rancon and the count of Angoulême, capturing Taillebourg and many other castles, culminating in a glorious victory at Angoulême, where he captured the city and citadel in a single evening and scooped up 300 knights and a large number of infantrymen (Richard claimed the impossible number of 40,000). Verneuil, Loches, Fréteval, Taillebourg, Angoulême: the list of important Lionheart victories seemed endless.
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In the south Richard carried all before him but in the prolonged struggle for dominance in the crucial marches of Normandy, between Rouen and Paris, the English king found the going much harder. Philip’s strategy was to retire before Richard in the south but then to dig in and not yield an inch in the Seine valley, where his true interest lay.
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He elected to make his stand at Vaudreuil, controlling the Seine bridges ten miles south of Rouen. Formerly one of John’s castles in his capacity as count of Mortain and ceded as a token of fealty by John to Philip, Vaudreuil soon found itself besieged by forces commanded by John and the earl of Arundel, while Richard attended to matters in Aquitaine. Confident now that he faced only the militarily unimpressive brother and not the Lionheart himself, Philip made a forced march and arrived outside Vaudreuil with the cream of his forces. His attack on John was completely successful: while the Norman cavalry fled, Philip captured the Angevins’ siege artillery and made most of their infantry prisoners.
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This setback in the north, plus simple war-weariness and financial exhaustion, led Richard to agree to a ceasefire. The truce of Tillières, signed on 23 July 1194, was supposed to run until 1 November 1195 and froze both sides on an ‘as is’ basis with regard to territory. Philip retained Vaudreuil, Gisors and Vexin and a host of other castles (effectively most of north-eastern Normandy), while Richard was only allowed to rebuild four of the many fortresses the French had devastated.
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Since Richard’s representatives negotiated the truce in ignorance of his victories in the south, and consequently extended amnesty to the major Aquitaine rebels, it was not surprising that Richard was reported very angry at the fait accompli his ambassadors had forced on him, and particularly the fact that ‘treasonable rebels’ were to enjoy all the benefits of the truce. The temporary peace was far too favourable to Philip, considering that Richard had won a string of victories. He also objected to the prominent role of the Church in brokering the agreement, sharing his father’s distaste for ecclesiastical meddling in politics.
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It seems that he made many representations to the German empire to petition the anti-Philip military aid vaguely promised in the release agreement at Mainz, but in vain. Richard’s anger must have increased as he heard repeated reports of Henry VI’s great successes in Italy, first in Apulia and Salerno and finally in Sicily where he overthrew the dynasty of Tancred.
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Richard realised he was in for a long hard slog in the Seine valley if he was ever to restore the Angevin empire to its position when at the apogee under his father Henry II.

There followed a year of ‘phoney peace’, with both sides skirmishing, jockeying for position, building castles and generally waging a war of attrition in all areas from unofficial border ‘incidents’ to simple propaganda. Everyone knew the peace could not hold, for too many essential issues, especially concerning the Franco-Norman marches, had been swept under the carpet. The Lionheart, having inherited his father’s restlessness, was almost constantly on the move. Based at Rouen, where he spent Christmas 1194, he spent time in Alençon, Tours, Poitiers, Chinon, Le Mans and elsewhere .
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Richard used the interlude to patch up the many feuds and rows in his own family. In May 1195 he moderated his cold contempt towards John to the extent of restoring him to the counties of Mortain and Gloucester (his forgiveness the year before had obviously been partly a piece of theatre) and the living of Eye, and granting him a handsome income in Angevin livres in lieu of his other lands; significantly, though, he drew the line at restoring him his castles. John had to be content with witnessing charters and signing himself count of Mortain.
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In some ways an even more serious quarrel, with Richard’s half-brother Geoffrey, archbishop of York, was also patched up. Here Richard’s ire had been aroused by Geoffrey’s high-handed use of the royal seal, on Henry II’s death and without permission from Richard. He had dealt with this in the first instance by simply annulling the benefices made by Archbishop Geoffrey, but now he summoned him to France to effect a reconciliation, which seems to have been finalised very soon after the rapprochement with John.
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The month before, Richard achieved his third family ‘breakthrough’ by a reconciliation with his wife Berengaria, capped by joint purchase of a country house near Sarthe.
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We do not know the details of the estrangement, but it is clear that an uxorious man would not have sent his wife on by separate ship from the Holy Land. Scholarly ignorance about the rift between husband and wife has, naturally, encouraged speculators to assert that it ‘must have been’ because of the king’s alleged homosexuality.
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Richard was by no means idle in this limbo period. Desultory peace talks, as also talks about talks, continued through the first half of 1195. One bizarre suggestion mooted was that all outstanding disputes be settled by a duel of champions, with five knights from each side deciding the issue. Philip seemed interested until it turned out that he and Richard were supposed to be two of the ten knights.
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The scheme was hastily shelved. It was probably a pure propaganda exercise, like today’s perennial proposals in Britain, likewise summarily turned down, that heads of political parties should debate face-to-face on television. During the year when he was free from major hostilities, Richard also followed international affairs closely, noting the safe return of all the hostages from Austria following Leopold’s dramatic and untimely death, the return of Henry VI from Sicily to Frankfurt via Como, the death of Henry, duke of Saxony (his brother-in-law) at Brunswick, and of Baldwin V, count of Hainault at Mons, and also the demise of Isaac the deposed ‘emperor’ of Cyprus.
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Yet it was only when Henry VI was back in Germany that the international dimension impinged to the point where France once again became a battleground. In June Henry sent Richard a golden crown and charged him ‘by the fealty which he owed him’ to invade the domain of the king of France, this time promising that he really would send military aid.
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Alerted to this by his spies and alarmed by what it portended, Philip denounced the truce and ordered most of the castles he held in Normandy demolished - a kind of Ascalon in reverse, informed by the conviction that he could not beat Richard on the battlefield. The story is told that Richard and Philip met to parley at Vaudreuil but were overwhelmed by dust and debris as Philip’s engineers managed to bring the castle walls tumbling down even as Richard was supposed to be negotiating its eventual fate. ‘By God’s legs I will see that saddles are emptied this day!’ cried an enraged Richard. Philip barely escaped from the conference with his life and evaded pursuit by Richard by having the bridge over the Seine at Portjoie pulled down behind him.
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General war was at once resumed, and Richard’s great captain Mercadier, now promoted to general, captured Issoudoun in the important county of Berry.
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A major conflict was just about to be waged on all fronts, when more dramatic international news halted the war in its tracks. Terrible tidings were received from Spain that the king of Morocco had invaded and inflicted a signal defeat on a Christian army at Alarcos.
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This conjured ancient memories of Islam and Charlemagne, of Charles Martel at Tours, of El Cid and the Almohads a century before. Most of all, it inevitably suggested a crusade in reverse. It was clearly necessary for the two powerful monarchs of Western Europe to lay down their arms and compose a permanent peace at such a critical juncture. Accordingly, another truce was called, and there were further parleys. Initial terms proposed included the return of Alice to Philip (at long last) and a marriage between Philip’s son Louis and Eleanor of Britanny, Arthur’s sister - the woman Leopold of Austria had earmarked for his son before his sudden death changed everything. Philip would renounce his claims in the counties of Angoulême, Aumale, Eu and Arques and return to Richard the castles he had seized during the Lionheart’s captivity; more significantly, in exchange for 20,000 marks he would give back the Vexin.
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The shorthand version of this proposal was that the Vexin would be given to Richard as a dowry for Eleanor, provided she married Louis. As a further sweetener, Philip publicly declared that Richard had had nothing to do with the assassination of Conrad of Montferrat.
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All seemed set fair for a long-running truce, but Richard insisted that he first had to consult his ‘liege lord’ Henry VI. Philip meanwhile married his sister Alice to William, count of Ponthieu. Since he provided as her dowry the county of Eu and the town of Arques already pledged to Richard in the draft treaty, there are grounds for suspecting Philip of arch -machiavellianism.
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Richard certainly made a meal of his consultation with the emperor, sending his chancellor to the German court (as his opposite number went the archbishop of Rheims, representing France). Predictably, Henry VI refused to ratify the peace proposals, and it was on this occasion that he waived the final 17,000 marks of Richard’s ransom, as a douceur.
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All signs had anyway pointed to a renewal of hostilities before that, from the intriguing of William of Ponthieu to the arrival at the end of August (at Barfleur) of a fresh army from England. A further circumstantial pointer is that Longchamp’s brother, abbot Henry of Croyland, found Richard uninterested in administrative and church matters, but preoccupied with military planning.
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The sober conclusion is that both sides were preparing for war once the day set for a firm conclusion of the truce (8 November) arrived. It was Philip who jumped the gun, leading a dashing raid on Dieppe (which he had given back to Richard in July) that ended with the sack of the town and the gutting of the harbour with Greek fire.
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The mind behind the raid, however, was the turbulent William of Ponthieu, who had more than one reason to hate Richard; Alice apart, Richard was even then besieging Arques, supposedly part of Alice’s dowry but also promised to the Lionheart in the truce and which had never been handed over. It was never wise to try to outpoint Richard in wars of rapid movement, as Philip and his six hundred triumphant knights learned on their way back through the northern forests; with another lightning movement, Richard formed his Welsh veterans up in ambuscade and mauled the victors of Dieppe severely.
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By the end of the year Richard had both Dieppe and the fallen Arques in his possession.