Richard’s adventures in the East lie outside the sphere of English history. The crusade of which he was the chief hero and leader had indirectly an important effect upon English social life; but it was in no sense a national undertaking; every man in the host was, like the king himself, simply a volunteer, not sent out by his country or representing it in any way. Richard’s glory is all his own; to us, the practical interest of the crusade in which he won it consists in the light which it throws upon his character, and on his political relations with the other princes who took part in the enterprise. The story, as it comes out bit by bit, oddly intermingled with the dry details of home affairs, in the English historians of the time, and as it is told at full length in the “Itinerary” composed by one of his fellow-crusaders, reads more like an old wiking-saga than a piece of sober history, and its hero looks more like a comrade of S. Olaf or Harald Hardrada than a contemporary of Philip Augustus. Nothing indeed except Richard’s northman-blood can account for the intense love of the sea, and the consummate seamanship, as sound and practical as it was brilliant and daring, which he displayed on his outward voyage. No sea-king of old ever guided his little squadron of “long keels” more boldly, more skilfully and more successfully through a more overwhelming succession of difficulties and perils than those through which Richard guided his large and splendid fleet on its way from Messina to Acre.[1616] Not one had ever made a conquest at once as rapid, as valuable and as complete as the conquest of Cyprus, which Richard made in a few days, as a mere episode in his voyage, in vengeance for the ill-treatment which some of his ship-wrecked sailors had met with at the hands of the Cypriots and their king.[1617] But it was a mere wiking-conquest; Richard never dreamed of permanently adding this remote island to the list of his dominions; within a few months he sold it to the Templars,[1618] and afterwards, as they failed to take possession, he made it over to the dethroned king of Jerusalem who had helped him to conquer it, Guy of Lusignan.[1619] The same love of adventure for its own sake colours many of his exploits in the Holy Land itself. But there we learn, too, that his character had yet another and a higher aspect. We find in him, side by side with the reckless northern valour, the northern endurance, patience and self-restraint, coupled with a real disinterestedness and a self-sacrificing generosity for which it would be somewhat hard to find a parallel among his forefathers on either side.[1620] Alike in a military, a political and a moral point of view, Richard is the only one among the leaders of the crusading host, except Guy, who comes out of the ordeal with a character not merely unstained, but shining with redoubled lustre. And this alone would almost account for the fact that, before they separated, nearly every one of them, save Guy, had become Richard’s open or secret foe.

Envy of a better man than themselves was however not the sole cause of their hostility. The office of commander-in-chief of the host fell to Richard’s share in consequence of a catastrophe which altered the whole balance of political parties in Europe. That office had been destined for the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa, who for more than thirty years had stood as high above all other Christian princes in political capacity, military prowess, and personal nobility of character, as in titular dignity and territorial power. Frederic set out for Palestine as early as May 1189;[1621] he fought his way through the treacheries of the Greek Emperor and the ambushes of the Turkish sultan of Iconium, only to be drowned in crossing a little river in Asia Minor on June 10, 1190.[1622] These tidings probably met Richard on his arrival at Messina in September. There he had to deal with the consequences of another death which had occurred in the previous November, that of his brother-in-law King William of Sicily.[1623] William was childless; after a vain attempt to induce his father-in-law Henry II. to accept the reversion of his crown,[1624] he had bequeathed it to his own young aunt Constance, who was married to Henry of Germany, the Emperor’s eldest son.[1625] It was, however, seized by Tancred, a cousin of the late king.[1626] Richard’s alliance with Tancred, though on the one hand absolutely necessary to secure the co-operation of Sicily for the crusade, was thus on the other a mortal offence to the new king of Germany, who moreover had already a grudge against England upon another ground:—Henry the Lion had in this very summer extorted from him almost at the sword’s point his restoration to his forfeited estates.[1627] Thus when Richard at last reached Acre in June 1191,[1628] he was already in ill odour with the leaders of the German contingent, the Emperor’s brother Duke Frederic of Suabia and his cousin Duke Leopold of Austria.

This, however, was not all. Isaac, the tyrant of Cyprus, whom Richard had brought with him as a captive, was also connected with the Suabian and Austrian houses;[1629] his capture was another ground of offence. Next, when the siege of Acre, which the united forces of eastern and western Christendom had been pressing in vain for nearly two years, came to an end a month after Richard joined it,[1630] Richard and Leopold quarrelled over their shares in the honour of the victory; Leopold—so the story goes—set up his banner on the wall of the conquered town side by side with that of the English king, and Richard tore it down again.[1631] Besides all this, as Richard’s superior military capacity made him an object of perpetual jealousy to the other princes, so his policy in Holy Land was in direct opposition to theirs. Since the death of Queen Sibyl in October 1189,[1632] they had one and all aimed at transferring the crown from her childless widower Guy of Lusignan to the lord of Tyre, Conrad, marquis of Montferrat. Montferrat was an important fief of the kingdom of Italy; Conrad’s mother was aunt both to Leopold of Austria and to Frederic Barbarossa;[1633] he thus had the whole Austrian and imperial influence at his back; and that of Philip of France was thrown into the same scale, simply because Richard had espoused the opposite cause. Guy of Lusignan, with a fearlessness which speaks volumes in his favour as well as in Richard’s, had thrown himself unreservedly on the generosity and justice of the prince against whom all his race had for so many years been struggling in Aquitaine; his confidence was met as it deserved, and from the hour of their meeting in Cyprus to the break-up of the crusade, Richard and Guy stood firmly side by side. But they stood alone amid the ring of selfish politicians who supported Conrad, and whose intrigues brought ruin upon the expedition. Philip, indeed, went home as soon as Acre was won, to sow the seeds of mischief in a field where they were likely to bring forth a more profitable harvest for his interests than on the barren soil of Palestine. But the whole body of French crusaders whom he left behind him, except Count Henry of Champagne, made common cause with the Germans and the partizans of Conrad in thwarting every scheme that Richard proposed, either for the settlement of the Frank kingdom in Palestine or for the reconquest of its capital. Twice he led the host within eight miles of Jerusalem, and twice, when thus close to the goal, he was compelled to turn away.[1634] Conrad fell by the hand of an assassin in April 1192;[1635] but Guy’s cause, like that of Jerusalem itself, was lost beyond recovery; all that Richard could do for either was to compensate Guy with the gift of Cyprus,[1636] and sanction the transfer of the shadowy crown of Jerusalem to his own nephew, Henry of Champagne.[1637] Harassed by evil tidings from England and forebodings of mischief in Gaul, disappointed in his most cherished hopes and worn out with fruitless labour, sick in body and more sick at heart, he saw that his only chance of ever again striking a successful blow either for east or west was to go home at once. After one last brilliant exploit, the rescue of Joppa from the Turks who had seized it in his absence,[1638] on September 2 he made a truce with Saladin for three years;[1639] on October 9 he sailed from Acre.[1640]

Stormy winds had again parted the king’s ship from the rest of his fleet when, within three days’ sail of Marseille, he learned that Count Raymond of Toulouse was preparing to seize him on his landing,[1641] no doubt in vengeance for the attack made upon Toulouse a few months before by the seneschal of Gascony. Capture by Raymond meant betrayal to Philip of France, and Richard knew Philip far too well to run any needless risk of falling into his hands. Under more favourable conditions, he might have escaped by sailing on through the strait of Gibraltar direct to his island realm; but contrary winds made this impossible, and drove him back upon Corfu, where he landed about Martinmas.[1642] Thence, in his impatience, he set off in disguise with only twenty followers[1643] on board a little pirate-vessel[1644] in which, at imminent risk of discovery, he coasted up the Adriatic till another storm wrecked him at the head of the Gulf of Aquileia.[1645] By this time his German enemies were all on the look-out for him, and whatever his plans on leaving Corfu may have been, he had now no resource but to hurry through the imperial dominions as rapidly and secretly as possible. His geographical knowledge, however, seems to have been at fault, for he presently found himself at Vienna, whither Leopold of Austria had long since returned. In spite of his efforts to disguise himself, Richard was recognized, captured and brought before the duke;[1646] and three days after Christmas the Emperor sent to Philip of France the welcome tidings that their common enemy was a prisoner in Leopold’s hands.[1647]

Philip at once forwarded the news to John, with a renewal of the proposal which he had made to him a year before. John hurried over sea and formally did homage to the French king for all his brother’s continental dominions; but the seneschal and barons of Normandy refused to acknowledge the transaction, and he hastened back again to try his luck in England.[1648] There he met with no better success. He called the justiciars to a council in London, assured them that the king was dead, and demanded their homage; they refused it; he withdrew in a rage to fortify his castles, and the justiciars prepared to attack them.[1649] Before Easter a French fleet sailed to his assistance, but was repulsed by the English militia assembled at the summons of Archbishop Walter.[1650] While the justiciars laid siege to Windsor, Geoffrey of York fortified Doncaster for the king, and thence went to help his gallant old suffragan and rival, Hugh of Durham, who was busy with the siege of Tickhill.[1651] The castles had all but fallen, and John was on the eve of submission, when the victorious justiciars suddenly grew alarmed at their own success. Richard’s fate was still so uncertain that they dared not humiliate his heir; and at Eleanor’s instigation they made a truce with John, to last until All-Saints’ day.[1652]

The six months of tranquillity thus gained were spent in negotiations for the king’s release. As soon as the justiciars heard of his capture they had despatched Bishop Savaric of Bath to treat with the Emperor, and the abbots of Boxley and Robertsbridge to open communications, if possible, with Richard himself;[1653] this however was a difficult matter, for of the place of his confinement nothing was known except that it was somewhere in the Austrian dominions, and these were to most Englishmen of that day a wholly undiscovered country. How the captive was first found history does not say. Tradition filled the blank with the beautiful story of the minstrel Blondel, wandering through Europe till he reached a castle where there was said to be a prisoner whose name no one could tell—winning the favour of its lord and thus gaining admittance within its walls—peering about it on every side in a vain effort to catch a glimpse of the mysterious captive, till at last a well-known voice, singing “a song which they two had made between them, and which no one knew save they alone,” fell upon his delighted ear through the narrow prison-window whence Richard had seen and recognized the face of his friend.[1654] It may after all have been Blondel who guided the two abbots to the spot; we only know that they met Richard at Ochsenfurt on his way to be delivered up on Palm Sunday to the Emperor Henry at Speyer.[1655] Thenceforth the negotiations proceeded without intermission; but it took nearly a year to complete them. Personal jealousy, family interest, and pride at finding himself actually arbiter of the fate of the most illustrious living hero in Christendom, all tempted Henry VI. to throw as many obstacles as possible in the way of his captive’s release. Taking advantage of his own position as titular head of western Christendom, he demanded satisfaction for all the wrongs which the various princes of the Empire had received, or considered themselves to have received, at Richard’s hands, and for all his alleged misdoings on the Crusade, from his alliance with Tancred to the death of Conrad of Montferrat, in which it was suggested that he had had a share.[1656] Not one of the charges would bear examination; but they served Henry as an excuse for playing fast and loose with Richard on the one side and Philip of France on the other, and for making endless changes in the conditions required for Richard’s liberation. These were ultimately fixed at a ransom of a hundred and fifty thousand marks, the liberation of Isaac of Cyprus, and the betrothal of Eleanor of Britanny to a son of the Austrian duke.[1657]