The Magnificent Century (4 page)

Chester, usually sparing of words, broke into a eulogy of the marshal. “You are so prudent, so feared, so loved, and so wise,” he said. “You are one of the greatest knights in the world. I am ready to serve under you and do your behests.”

The prospect of a few years of peace still beckoned the old man and he repeated his plea to be allowed the relinquishment of all
responsibility. Gualo, who was a shrewd diplomat, then took him into a smaller room with Chester and Peter des Roches. It had grown chilly, and William the Marshal was glad to draw his chair close to the small fire which burned on the hearth. The light thus provided made his eyes seem sunken and tired, and it was clear to all that he had not been using his age as an excuse, that time was running out for him.

Gualo proceeded to use his final argument. The saving of the kingdom was a sacred duty. If the marshal would take the leadership, his reward would be the remission of his sins. This was not a consideration to be lightly dismissed. William the Marshal had not been dishonest, cruel, or covetous, but he had lived a life of violence and bloodshed. There was much in the past, without a doubt, which weighed on his conscience; and, as all men knew, the end of the world was close at hand, when the banked fires would blaze up for evildoers, so that it behooved them to look to the state of their souls. The old man fell into a long and careful study, and finally sighed and said he would act. One stipulation went with his acceptance, however: the care of the young King’s person, which had been assigned to the marshal in John’s will, must be assumed by someone else until things were settled and the fighting and tumult ceased. It was decided that this responsibility would be laid on Peter des Roches, a step which undoubtedly changed the course of history. The wily Poitevin gained an ascendancy over the youthful monarch which would be used later for selfish ends.

After nightfall the marshal, now the head of the state, summoned three of his closest adherents to his own room. It was, as might have been expected, a small apartment: a hearth large enough only for a small charcoal blaze, a narrow bed, a chair, a crucifix on the wall. It would have been a bare and ascetic lodging to almost anyone else, but it was not lacking in comfort for a man who had spent most of the nights of his life in tents or under the stars. To this room came, therefore, the devoted trio: John, his nephew; John Earley, his squire; and Ralph Mustard, the castellan of Gloucester.

The marshal began at once on a discourse. “Advise me,” he said, “for by the faith I owe you I see myself entering into an ocean which has neither bottom nor shore.” His eyes filled with tears. “May God help me! They have turned over to me a helpless government, a king without a piece of gold. And as for me, I am very old.”

John Earley, who is generally believed to have written later the metrical biography
L’Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal
, which is the sole source for the story of the marshal’s selection, took it on himself to answer. He pointed out that what his master had undertaken could result only in great honor. Even if all the fickle nobility deserted him and surrendered their castles to Louis, he could still take the young King to Ireland and continue the struggle from there. If, on the other hand, things went well, no man would ever have attained such honor on earth.

The marshal recovered his good spirits at this, and there was a suggestion of mounting enthusiasm in his eyes. He sprang up and began to pace about the room.

“By God’s glove!” he exclaimed. “The advice is good and true. If all should abandon us, I would carry the King on my shoulders, one leg here and one in Ireland. I would carry him from island to island and land to land, and I would not fail him ever!”

The new head of the state gathered the others about him and it was decided that, inasmuch as the war was a holy one, the royalist forces would wear the white cross of the Crusades. The legate, drawing on the wide powers allowed him by the Pope, supplemented this by putting Wales under an interdict and confirming the ban he had placed on Louis and all his adherents. The meeting was characterized by a growing sense of confidence because the small group of zealous men at Gloucester knew that soon all England would be stirring and that public opinion would be with them. If they could hold out long enough with the weakened resources they had inherited from the dead tyrant, they were certain to win. Time was on their side.

It was decided to hold a national council at Bristol on November 11 and to leave all questions of policy until then. All loyal men were summoned to appear and they came in great numbers, churchman and noble alike, to take the oath of fealty to the boy King. An unexpected arrival was Hubert de Burgh. The French wanted to transfer their activities to the midlands and had concluded a truce with him, thus making it possible for him to leave Dover. Nothing could have been more fortunate. Hubert de Burgh was still chief justiciar and
one of the powers of the state. His advice and counsel were needed.

Two important steps were taken at Bristol. The first was the confirmation of Magna Charta, with some changes, the most noteworthy being omission of the clause which bound the King to lay no tax on the backs of his subjects without their consent. This had been one of the great victories of Runnymede and it might seem that the Charter lost validity without it. In all probability the omission was due to the attitude of the Vatican. Innocent III had declared the Charter null and void, but his successor, Honorius III, gave his unqualified approval to the new version, from which the conclusion might be drawn that the removal of the constitutional check had brought about a change of heart at Rome. It must be remembered also that the men at Bristol had been adherents of John, not blindly accepting everything he did but not belonging to the party of the barons. Their willingness to accept the Charter at all was evidence of the change which one year of time had wrought. The confirmation might be considered a shrewd move to make it easier for the barons ranged behind Louis to renounce his cause, but the reason went much deeper than that. In the few months of bitterness and civil war which had elapsed since Runnymede the Charter had come to be accepted by all men as necessary and, in most respects, just. They might dispute over certain clauses, but in point of principle they were agreed. Runnymede was already a victory for the ages.

Other omissions were dictated by the fact that the country was at war. The King’s party was sadly in need of funds and supplies to carry on the struggle, and so arbitrary measures, to which men submit when the fate of the nation is at stake, would have to be taken.

It must be allowed, therefore, that common sense and discretion dictated the Bristol attitude to Magna Charta. It was a time for conciliation and not for sharp measures. In the light of subsequent events it is easy to see behind the decisions the wise moderation of William the Marshal and the shrewdness of Gualo.

The second step taken was a decision on the strategy to be followed. It was generally agreed that it would not be wise to risk everything on a pitched battle with the invaders, who still had a great preponderance of strength. It was decided instead to use Fabian tactics while recruiting more adherents and accumulating strength.

Hubert de Burgh, confirmed in his post of justiciar, went back to
Dover to continue his defense of that most important fort. William the Marshal, given the power of a regent with the title
Rector noster et Regni nostri
, set about consolidating the royalist position in the West and summoning back the recalcitrant barons. This he attempted to do by writing letters to all of them, pointing out that the death of John had changed the situation and that, with a new king committed to observe the Charter, their duty was to swear fealty and to fight under the three leopards.

While Louis spent the winter months in attacks on castles here and there, dissipating his strength in sieges, the old marshal was skillfully undermining his support and detaching man after man from the French cause.

P
RINCE
LOUIS
was a small man, pale of face and austere of expression. He had little in him seemingly of his brilliant and turbulent father, Philip Augustus. A certain saintliness was claimed for him which undoubtedly he inherited from his grandfather, the ineffectual Louis VII, and which would assert itself so magnificently in his son, that great king who is called St. Louis. An anecdote persists that a good friend, one Archambaud de Bourbon, believing that the prince’s health suffered from his rigid continence, hired a beautiful young woman to climb into his bed while he was asleep. On waking and finding himself with a bedfellow, the prince ordered her, courteously but firmly, to leave. He was reported to have added, “I cannot commit a mortal sin.”

The chaste and reserved prince might be pious, but he was a lion when stirred to fighting pitch. Philip Augustus was easy to rouse to anger and easy to calm down; Louis, hard to rouse, hard to appease. Despite his frail stature he was a champion of mettle, and an old chronicle says, “He put on his cuirass like Judas Maccabaeus.” He does not seem to have had much skill in generalship, however, accepting too completely the conceptions of warfare which chivalry had imposed on the Christian world and which would be shattered in a very few years, first by Sabutai leading the armies of Genghis Khan into the heart of the Holy Roman Empire and cutting armies of steel-clad knights to pieces, and later by a plebeian weapon called the longbow in the hands of English churls. His plan for conquering
England was to take one castle after another and to enlarge gradually the arc of his control. The weakness of this method was that each castle taken necessitated leaving a garrison behind, thus leading to a stage when all his troops would be roosting in captured keeps and strutting on alien battlements. This method kept wars going interminably; it led to continuous truces and in the end to a paucity of results. Louis, it seems, moreover, was a poor judge of men. The lieutenants to whom he entrusted the command of his little armies in preference to more experienced English barons were young French knights who were ready to lay their lives down bravely but who had no capacity for leadership.

In February, Philip Augustus summoned his son home to discuss the situation. It was believed that the French King was anxious to avoid papal confirmation of the ban of excommunication laid by Gualo on all Frenchmen under arms on English soil, but this was not the real reason, Philip Augustus had a hide impervious to such darts, having been banned himself on more than one occasion. He had been blowing hot and cold, however, on the English adventure and was beginning to doubt the issue. It was as clear to the French monarch as it was to William the Marshal that time was not fighting on the side of the French.

It was easy to summon Louis home, but it was not easy for the prince to obey. The adherence of the Cinque Ports to his cause had become so doubtful that it was not possible to sail from any of them while between London and the harbors westward lay the Weald in which lurked the ever-watchful Willikin. Louis ventured out from London with a considerable escort but with some trepidation, a state of mind which was justified by subsequent events. They took a circuitous course through Kent and then swung in between the Weald and the coast, hoping to reach Winchelsea, where Eustace the Monk could take them off in his ships. As they passed Lewes arrows began to fall on the rear guard and fast-riding horsemen shouting, “The Rood! The Rood!” closed in on them. Willikin had detected the maneuver and he struck at them so ferociously that the French party was thrown into confusion and started a hasty flight for Winchelsea. The guerrilla band followed on their heels and took many prisoners, including two nephews of the Count of Nevers. They cut off all stragglers and kept up such an incessant attack that the Frenchmen reached Winchelsea in a breathless state.

They found the town empty and gutted of supplies. The inhabitants had left and the men had joined forces with those of the nearby town of Rye. They returned in full force to hem Louis in on the east while Willikin poised a continual threat of assault on the west. Louis was in a serious plight. Finally, however, a rescue party, riding by way of Canterbury to avoid suspicion, came down through Romney and arrived at Winchelsea just in time to save the prince and his men from dying of starvation. Eustace arrived with some ships off the coast at the same time and took the harried prince and his men aboard.

There was a stormy interview between the French King and Louis when the latter arrived at his father’s court. Philip Augustus was not pleased with the way things were going. He declared himself to have been against the venture in the first place (this, of course, was not true) and he found fault, on much sounder ground, with his son’s handling of the invasion. It was now a lost cause and he had no intention of spending further money on armies and supplies. Louis protested without making any impression on the imperious monarch. He went then to his wife and begged her assistance.