There was a story that young Henry of Anjou, standing close behind his brother-in-law Philip on his first coronation-day in Reims cathedral, had bent forward to hold the crown upon the boy’s head, and thus relieve him of its weight and keep it safely in its place.[1028] The little act of brotherly kindness and protecting care may be taken as typical of the political attitude which Henry’s father actually assumed towards the boy-king of the French, and which he faithfully maintained until Philip himself rendered its maintenance impossible. It was in truth no new thing for a count of Anjou to act as the protector of a king of France. But we may fairly question whether this traditional function of the Angevin house had ever been fulfilled so honestly and unselfishly as it was by Henry during the first two years of Philip’s reign. It was Henry alone who, by his personal influence and tact, brought Philip himself to reason and the count of Flanders to submission.[1029] Next year, when Philip had been left sole king of France by the death of Louis VII.,[1030] it was Henry whose mediation checked an attempt of the Flemish count to avenge by force of arms the loss of his influence at court;[1031] and when a few months later the house of Blois, with characteristic inconstancy, made common cause with Flanders against France, it was the prompt and vigorous action of Henry’s sons which alone saved the royal domain from invasion on all sides at once, and enabled their young sovereign to hold out against his assailants till Henry himself came over to patch up another settlement in the spring of 1182.[1032]

Other needs, however, than those of the French Crown were once more calling for Henry’s presence in Gaul. The condition of Aquitaine only grew more unsatisfactory, in spite or in consequence of Richard’s efforts to improve it. Henry’s bargain with Adalbert of La Marche had failed to secure him the possession of that county; the brother-lords of Lusignan claimed it as next-of-kin to Adalbert as soon as the king’s back was turned, and made good their claim by forcible occupation.[1033] The Limousin was again threatening revolt; the town-walls of Limoges were razed by Richard’s order at midsummer 1181.[1034] Almost at the same moment the death of Count Vulgrin of Angoulême opened a fresh source of strife; his two brothers laid claim to his inheritance against his only daughter, whom Richard of course took into wardship as a feudal heiress, and on Richard’s refusal to admit their claims they made common cause with Ademar of Limoges.[1035] The mischief however did not end here. Richard’s unbending resolve to bridle Aquitaine had gradually stirred up against him the bitter hatred of the whole people—a hatred for which his stern rule is quite sufficient to account, without admitting the blacker charges brought against him by the reckless tongues of the south.[1036] The voice of Bertrand de Born had once more given the signal for a general rising. A sirvente which went forth from Hautefort in 1181 rang like a trumpet-call in the ears of the lords of Ventadour and Comborn and Périgord and Dax, of Angoulême and Pons and Taillebourg.[1037] But even this was not all. Years before, it seems, there had flashed through the troubadour’s quick brain a possibility of stirring up strife in higher quarters than among the petty princes of his native land. Now he distinctly saw the possibility of finding for the Aquitanian resistance to Richard a rallying-point and a leader in Richard’s own brother.

One of the most puzzling figures in the history of the time is that of the younger Henry of Anjou—the “young king,” as he is usually called. From the day of his crowning to that of his death not one deed is recorded of him save deeds of the meanest ingratitude, selfishness, cowardliness and treachery. Yet this undutiful, rebellious son, this corrupter and betrayer of his younger brothers, this weak and faithless ally, was loved and admired by all men while he lived, and lamented by all men after he was gone.[1038] The attraction exercised by him over a man so far his superior as William the Marshal[1039] is indeed well-nigh incomprehensible. But the panegyrics of the historians, unaccountable as they look at first glance, do throw some light on the secret of young Henry’s gift of general fascination. It was a gift which indeed, in varying degrees, formed part of the hereditary endowments of the Angevin house. But the character which it took in Fulk Nerra or Henry Fitz-Empress was very different from that which it assumed in Henry’s eldest son. The essence of the young king’s nature was not Angevin. He had little either of the higher talents or of the stronger and sterner qualities of the Angevin race; he had still less of the characteristics of the Norman. It is by studying his portrait as drawn in contrast to that of Richard by a hand equally favourable to both that we can best see what he really was. “The first was admired for his mildness and liberality; the second was esteemed for his seriousness and firmness. One was commendable for graciousness, the other for stateliness. One gained praise for his courtesy, the other for his constancy. One was conspicuous for mercy, the other for justice. One was the refuge and the shield of vagabonds and evil-doers, the other was their scourge. One was devoted to the sports of war, the other to war itself; one was gracious to strangers, the other to his own friends—one to all men, the other only to good men.”[1040] Henry in fact was at bottom what Richard never was but on the surface—a careless, pleasure-loving, capricious, but withal most gracious and winning child of the south. The most philosophic English historian of the day was reduced to account for the young king’s popularity by the simple and comprehensive explanation that “the number of fools is infinite.”[1041] But it was not folly, it was a shrewd perception of their own interest, which led the Aquitanians writhing under Richard’s iron rule to see in his elder brother a prince after their own hearts.[1042]

It was not the first time that Bertrand de Born had sought to kindle in the young king’s mind the sparks of jealousy and discontent which were always latent there.[1043] Now, he fed the flames with an unsparing hand. In words of bitter satire he ridicules the position of the young king, who bears the titles of a great sovereign, but has no authority in his own land, and cannot even claim the tolls upon the traffic along its roads: “Barons of Aquitaine, are we not all of us better than a carter who leaves his cart to go as it may, and counts his dues, if he counts any at all, with trembling fingers?” “I prize a tiny tract of land with honour above a great empire with disgrace!”[1044] Richard, meanwhile, was playing into his enemies’s hands by an encroachment upon territory which in name at least belonged to his brother. He had built a castle at Clairvaux, between Loudun and Poitiers, but on the Angevin side of the frontier. If the thought of resentment did not occur to Henry, Bertrand took care to suggest it: “Between Poitiers and Ile-Bouchard and Mirebeau and Loudun and Chinon some one has dared to rear, at Clairvaux, a fair castle in the midst of the plain. I would not have the young king see it or know of it, for it would not be to his taste; but its walls are so white, I doubt he will catch sight of their gleam from Mateflon!”[1045] The troubadour’s shafts were well aimed, and they rankled. When King Henry returned to Normandy in the spring of 1182 the Aquitanian rising was in full career; as soon as he had composed matters in France he hurried to the help of Richard, who was fighting the rebels in the Limousin; at Whitsuntide the counts of Angoulême and Périgord and the viscount of Limoges came to confer with him at Grandmont, but nothing came of the negotiations; Henry then went to attack Pierre-Buffière, while Richard returned to the siege of Excideuil. At midsummer the king was back at Grandmont, and Geoffrey of Britanny with him; thence they went to rejoin Richard, who was now busy with the siege of Périgueux.[1046] Matters were in this stage when the young king at last made up his mind to advance into Aquitaine. He was joyfully welcomed at Limoges on the festival of its patron S. Martial—the last day of June. On the morrow, however, he joined his father and brothers before Périgueux, and within a week peace was made; Périgueux surrendered, its count and the viscount of Limoges submitted to Richard, and only the brother-counts of Angoulême still remained in arms against him.[1047]

Peace, however, never lasted long either in Aquitaine or in King Henry’s family. His eldest son now again grew importunate for a definite and immediate share in the family heritage. When this was refused, he fled to the court of France, and was only recalled by a promise of an increased pecuniary allowance for himself and his queen.[1048] Aquitaine, as soon as Henry had left it, drifted into a state of anarchy more frightful than any that had ever been known there before; the sudden conclusion of the war had let loose all over the country a crowd of mercenaries—commonly known as “Brabantines,” but really the off-scouring of every land from Flanders to Aragon—who wrought, as a local writer says, such havoc as had never been seen since the days of the heathen northmen.[1049] The evil in some measure brought its own remedy with it, for it drove the common people to take into their own hands the maintenance of peace and order. A poor Auvergnat carpenter, urged by a vision of the Blessed Virgin, set forth under the protection of the diocesan bishop to preach the cause of peace in his native district of Le Puy. Those who were like-minded with him, no matter what their rank or calling, enrolled themselves in a society bound together by solemn pledges for mutual support in adherence to right and resistance to wrong in every shape; and in a few years these “Caputii,” as they were called from the linen capes or hoods which they always wore in fight, proved more than a match for the Brabantines.[1050]

Meanwhile, however, the warlike barons of Aquitaine were exasperated at the failure of their league against Richard; and their anger reached its height when at the conclusion of the Christmas festivities held by King Henry and his sons at Caen, the young king of his own accord renewed his oath of allegiance to his father, confessed his secret alliance with Richard’s enemies, and offered to abandon it and make peace with his brother if his father would but insist upon the surrender of Clairvaux. Richard, after some hesitation, gave up to his father the fortress in dispute.[1051] The incident apparently opened Henry’s eyes to the necessity of clearly defining his sons’ political relations with each other; and while Bertrand de Born was giving a voice to the wrath of his fellow-barons at the young king’s desertion of their cause,[1052] Henry led his three sons back to Angers, made them all take an oath of obedience to him and peace with each other,[1053] and then called upon the two younger to do homage to the eldest for their fiefs.[1054] Geoffrey obeyed;[1055] Richard indignantly refused, declaring it was utterly unreasonable that there should be any distinction of rank between children of the same parents, and that if the father’s heritage belonged of right to the eldest son, the mother’s was equally due to the second.[1056] The young king, on the other hand, was on account of his entanglements with the Aquitanian barons almost as unwilling to receive the homage as Richard was to perform it.[1057] The end of the discussion was that Richard quitted the court, “leaving behind him nothing but threats and insults,” and hurried into Poitou to prepare for defence and defiance.[1058]

In the first burst of his anger Henry bade the other two brothers go and “subdue Richard’s pride” by force of arms.[1059] Immediately afterwards, however, he summoned all three, together with the aggrieved barons of Aquitaine, to meet him in conference at Mirebeau.[1060] But the young king had already marched into Poitou and received a warm welcome there;[1061] Geoffrey, to whom his father had intrusted his summons to the barons, led a motley force of Bretons, Brabantines and mercenaries of all kinds to Limoges;[1062] soon afterwards young Henry joined him; with the viscount’s help they threw themselves into the citadel,[1063] and set to work to raise the whole country against Richard. He, in his extremity, appealed to his father;[1064] and Henry at once hurried to the rescue. For six weeks he laid siege to the citadel of Limoges;[1065] twice he was personally shot at, and narrowly escaped with his life; twice the young king came to him with offers of submission, and each time he was welcomed with open arms, but each time the submission was a mere feint, designed to keep Henry quiet and give the barons time to wreak their vengeance upon Richard.[1066] By Easter matters were so far advanced that Bertrand de Born was openly calling for aid upon Flanders, France and Normandy;[1067] and the dread of a rising in this last-named quarter prompted Henry to send orders for the arrest of those barons, both in Normandy and England, who had been most conspicuous in the rebellion of 1173.[1068]

The young king at the same time quitted Limoges to make a diversion at Angoulême. On his return, however, he found it impossible to re-enter Limoges; its townsfolk had by this time so fully awakened to his real character and to their own best interests that they drove him from their walls with a volley of stones, shouting “We will not have this man to reign over us!”[1069] He had already robbed them of their wealth and stripped the shrine of their patron saint to provide wages for his Brabantines;[1070] and the insult goaded him to yet more unsparing plunder and yet more reckless sacrilege. From the castle of Aixe, which he took on the Monday in Rogation-week, he advanced to Grandmont, a religious house whose inmates enjoyed, amid the now general decay of monastic sanctity, an almost unique reputation for piety and virtue, and were known to be held by his father in especial reverence and esteem. He wrung from them all the treasure they possessed, and forcibly carried off a golden pyx, his father’s gift, from the high altar itself. He then proceeded to Uzerches, where the duke of Burgundy and the count of Toulouse met him with reinforcements on Ascension-day; from Uzerches he moved southward to Donzenac and Martel, and thence to Rocamadour.[1071] Rocamadour was the most famous of the holy places of Aquitaine; besides the tomb of the hermit from whom its name was derived, it boasted of a statue of the Virgin which attracted as many pilgrims as the shrine of S. James at Compostella; and among the treasures of its church, which was said to have been founded by Zacchæus the publican, was a sword traditionally believed to be the famous “Durandal”—the sword of the Paladin Roland, devoted by him to the Blessed Virgin on the eve of his last campaign, and carried to her shrine at Rocamadour after the disaster of Roncevaux. Heedless alike of paladins and of saints, the young king stripped the shrine of S. Amadour[1072] as he had stripped that of S. Martial; and local tradition declares that he also carried off the hallowed sword, leaving his own dishonoured brand in its place.

He had been ailing ever since he left Uzerches;[1073] now, on his return to Martel, his baffled rage threw him into a fever, to which other complications were soon added.[1074] Conscience awoke as death drew near. From the blacksmith’s cottage[1075] where he lay awaiting his end he sent a message to Limoges, imploring his father to come and speak with him once more.[1076] Henry would have gone, but his friends, in their natural dread of another trick, prevented him;[1077] he sent, however, a bishop charged with a message of love and pardon,[1078] and as a token of the genuineness of the commission, a precious ring, said to be an heirloom from Henry I.[1079] The messenger was only just in time. On the Tuesday in Whitsun-week the young king called together the bishops and religious men who had gathered round him at the tidings of his sickness, confessed his sins first privately, then publicly, before all his followers, was absolved and received the Holy Communion.[1080] For three more days he lingered, long enough to receive his father’s message of forgiveness and to dictate a letter to him, pleading that the same clemency might be extended to his mother the captive Queen Eleanor, to his own young Queen Margaret, and to all his servants, friends, adherents and allies;[1081] beseeching also that his father would make atonement in his stead for the sacrileges which he had committed against the holy places of Aquitaine, and would cause his body to be buried at Rouen in the cathedral church of our Lady.[1082] In the early twilight of S. Barnabas’s day he repeated his confession, after which he begged to be wrapped once more in his cloak, marked with the cross which he had taken at Limoges in petulance rather than in piety. Now, however, he was in earnest, and when the sacred symbol had rested for a moment on his shoulder he gave it to his best-beloved knight, William the Marshal, charging him to bear it to the Holy Sepulchre and thus fulfil his vow in his stead.[1083] He then caused his attendants to strip him of his soft raiment, clothe him in a hair-shirt and put a rope round his neck; with this he bade the assembled clergy drag him out of bed and lay him on a bed of ashes strewed for the purpose. There, lying as if already in his grave, with a stone at his head and another at his feet, he received the last sacraments;[1084] and there, an hour after nones,[1085] kissing his father’s ring he died.[1086]