CHAPTER II
RICHARD AND FRANCE
1194-1199

Richard’s journey through the Cotentin and the Bessin was a triumphal progress. Everywhere the people crowded round him with presents and acclamations, processions, dances, and songs: “God has come to our aid with His might; the king of France will go away now!” they said.[1146] Philip was just then besieging Verneuil, but as usual he withdrew at Richard’s approach.[1147] He had already lost his most valuable ally in the duchy; Richard and John had met, and Richard had accepted John’s submission and sent him to recover Evreux from the French, a charge which John fulfilled promptly and successfully.[1148] Richard himself, after dashing into Maine to besiege and capture Beaumont-le-Roger (whose lord had apparently gone over to Philip), proceeded to secure his lines of communication along the left bank of the Seine by fortifying Pont-de-l’Arche, Elbœuf, and La Roche d’Orival, and then turned upon Philip who was besieging Vaudreuil. A conference between the kings had just been arranged when the mines dug by the French under the keep suddenly resulted in its fall. Richard vowed vengeance, and Philip hastily withdrew.[1149] Before 1194 leaving Verneuil Richard had received intelligence that Montmirail was being besieged by some “Angevins and others”;[1150] an English chronicler says “Angevins and Cenomannians,”[1151] and another simply “Angevins.”[1152] Whether the lord of Montmirail, William of Perche-Gouet, June was a partizan of Philip and the besiegers were acting on their own initiative in Richard’s interest, does not appear; Richard now hastened to the place, but before he reached it the besiegers had levelled it to the ground.[1153] He pushed on into Touraine, where an excellent opportunity of recovering June
1-13 Loches was offered to him by his wife’s brother, Sancho of Navarre, who had collected a band of Navarrese and Brabantines and set out with them to act against Philip. Sancho himself was very soon called home by the death of his father; but his troops went on and laid siege to Loches.[1154] Richard stopped on his way thither to gather some money at Tours, or rather at Châteauneuf, by turning the canons of S. Martin’s out of their abode and seizing their goods,[1155] and also receiving a “voluntary” gift of two thousand marks from the burghers.[1156] Then he went on to Beaulieu[1157] and joined the Navarrese force in assaulting Loches; on June 13 it surrendered.[1158]

Meanwhile a meeting between some of the counsellors of the two kings had been arranged to take place at Pont-de-l’Arche; but the Frenchmen failed to keep tryst, and instead, Philip “with a considerable force” appeared before Fontaines, four miles from Rouen. After four days’ siege he took the castle and destroyed it.[1159] On his way back 1194 into France he captured a valuable English prisoner, the earl of Leicester.[1160] Three days later—on June 17—a conference of Norman and French prelates and magnates met, with the sanction of the two kings, near Vaudreuil, to arrange a truce. They failed because Philip insisted that all his own adherents and all those of Richard should be precluded from molesting one another during the truce between their sovereigns, and to this Richard would not consent, “because he would not violate the laws and customs of Poitou and of his other lands where it was customary from of old that the magnates should fight out their own disputes among themselves.” Philip next made a dash at Evreux and “nearly destroyed it.”[1161] Thence he moved southward through the county of Blois, and was encamped somewhere between Fréteval and Vendôme when Richard, hurrying up from Loches, pitched his tents outside the little unfortified town of Vendôme and there, “as confidently as if he were surrounded by a wall,” waited for further tidings of his enemy. They came in the form of a message, bidding him expect on that very day a hostile visit from the French king; to which he answered that he was ready, and that if the visit were not made as announced, Philip might look for one from him on the morrow. The day passed; July 4 early next morning Richard called up his men and set forth to seek the enemy, who hurriedly retired upon Fréteval. Richard dashed after him through the woods, fell unexpectedly upon his rear, and captured the whole of his baggage-train; many Frenchmen were slain, many made prisoners, and the spoil included not only a large quantity of arms and treasures, but also the whole bundle of the charters given to Philip by the Norman traitors who had transferred their allegiance to him.[1162] Richard himself sought a loftier prize; he pursued the French host in search of its king, resolved 1194 to have him alive or dead. A Flemish soldier told him that Philip was far ahead in the van; in reality, that cautious monarch had turned aside and taken shelter in a church. Richard, mounted as usual on a charger as fiery as himself, spurred on across the frontier of Normandy and France till the animal could go no further, and Mercadier, having somehow contrived to overtake his master, managed also to furnish him with another horse on which he rode back to Vendôme.[1163]

Richard’s next task was to recover control of Aquitaine. He had in 1190 left that country to the joint care of its duchess and of a tried serjeant-at-arms, Peter Bertin, whom he had early in that year made seneschal of Poitou.[1164] In or about 1192, Eleanor being no longer in the duchy, Aimar of Angoulême attacked Poitou “with horse and foot,” but was defeated and taken prisoner by the Poitevins.[1165] About the same time nearly all the barons of Gascony took advantage of the illness of the seneschal of that county to rise in rebellion under the leadership of Count Elias of c. 1192 Périgord[1166] and the viscount of La Marche. The seneschal tried in vain to make terms with them; on recovering his health, however, he attacked Périgord, captured or destroyed nearly all the fortresses of its count, and then dealt in like manner with La Marche, “which he thus brought once for all under the control of the king.” Sancho of Navarre then joined him with eight hundred knights, and their united forces harried the county of Toulouse up to the very gates of its capital city, and spent a night almost under its walls before they went their several ways home.[1167] After 1194 March this Aquitaine seems to have been comparatively quiet till March 1194, when the old arch-troubler of the land, Geoffrey of Rancogne, threw off his allegiance and with June Bernard of Brosse did liege homage to Philip.[1168] In June 1194 Sancho, on his way to join Richard before Loches, led his men through the lands of Rancogne and Angoulême and ravaged them “from one end to the other.”[1169] All this timely help from Navarre resulted in making Richard’s march into Aquitaine after the affair of Fréteval a progress of unbroken triumph. On July 22 the king wrote to his justiciar in England that he had captured Taillebourg, Marcillac, “all the castles and all the land” of Geoffrey of Rancogne, the city and suburb of Angoulême—“which we took in one evening”—and all the castles and lands of its count, with some three hundred knights and forty thousand men-at-arms.[1170] From Verneuil to “Charles’s Cross” he was master once more.[1171]

Negotiations for a truce with France were now again in progress. On July 23 some officers of the two royal households met, by mutual consent of their sovereigns, between Verneuil and Tillières to treat of this matter, and “came to terms.” The only extant account of these terms—a proclamation addressed by the French king’s constable and chamberlain and the dean of S. Martin’s “to all whom it may concern”[1172]—shows them to have been extremely favourable to Philip; and from this fact, together with Richard’s subsequent action, we may probably infer that their acceptance by the English negotiators was merely a blind to restrain Philip from aggression in Normandy while Richard was still occupied in the south. When he returned to Normandy he, according to a contemporary English writer, repudiated them indignantly, and took away the Great Seal from his chancellor, on whom he cast the responsibility for them.[1173] The king’s wrath and the chancellor’s disgrace were, however, alike only momentary; William of Ely retained his office to the end of Richard’s reign; and a month after the conference at which the truce had been arranged Richard himself was sojourning peaceably 1194 within the Royal Domain of France, issuing an ordinance to his subjects in England from Bresle near Beauvais.[1174]

The duration of the truce had been defined as “a year from All Saints’ Day next.”[1175] During this breathing-space Richard’s chief concern was the collecting of money for a renewal of the war. England had been so drained for his ransom that he, or his justiciar who acted for him, did not venture on demanding a “scutage of Normandy” till the following year (1195).[1176] Nor did the king attempt to carry out at this time—if indeed he had momentarily entertained it—the project ascribed to him by Roger of Howden, of annulling all grants made under the existing Great Seal, of course for the purpose of compelling their holders to pay for a renewal of them.[1177] But on his way northward from Aquitaine he had called together at Le Mans “all the magnates under his jurisdiction,” and made them a speech in commendation of the “willing, unbroken, and well-proved fidelity shewn to him by the English in his time of adversity,”[1178] seemingly in contrast to the feeble support which he had received from his Angevin dominions; for we are told that he compelled all his bailiffs in Anjou and Maine to pay him a fine for retaining their offices.[1179] The device which he actually employed at this juncture for obtaining more money from England, though it sowed the seeds of later mischief there, was not likely to provoke discontent nor to inflict any hardship on the people; on August 22 he issued an ordinance authorizing the holding of tournaments in England—from which they had hitherto been rigidly excluded—at certain specified places, on condition that every man who took part in them should make a certain payment to the Crown for a licence, the sum payable being regulated by the rank of the payer.[1180] The Church’s prohibition of tournaments had been renewed in a specially 1194 severe form only a year before; but on the continent it still was, as it always had been, set at defiance. Richard, who had spent the greater part of his life in lands where the mimic warfare of the tourney was regarded almost as part of the necessary education of a gentleman, could not fairly be expected to realize its evil side, and might well count upon its finding among the nobles and knights of his island realm such favour as would make the sale of licences a profitable business for the Crown.

Early in the next year a certain hermit came to the king and said: “Be mindful of the ruin of Sodom, and put away thy unlawful doings; else the vengeance of God will come upon thee.” Five years before, Richard had publicly confessed and done penance for his private sins, seemingly without being urged by anyone. Now he was in a different mood; he resented the admonition as coming from a person of no importance, and could not make up his mind to obey it unless it were enforced by a sign from above. The sign April 4 came on Easter Tuesday when he was struck down by a violent illness. Then he called the clergy around him, confessed and did penance for his sins, and at once set about the amendment of his private life by recalling his wife, whom he had for a long time practically deserted. “Then,” says the chronicler, “God gave him health of body as well as of soul.” He began a practice of rising early to attend Mass “and not leaving the church till the Divine Office was completely ended.”[1181] A famine had for three years past been gradually spreading over western Europe[1182] April and had now reached Normandy; Richard caused a number of poor persons to be fed daily at his court and in the cities, towns, and villages, and multiplied these benefactions as the need increased. He also ordered the making of a large number of chalices for presentation to churches which had sacrificed their holy vessels for his ransom.[1183]

During the past five months the truce had been very ill kept. In less than two months from its commencement 1194 the homagers of both kings were ravaging each other’s lands,[1184] and Philip proposed to Richard a new expedient for ending their strife: a judicial combat between picked champions, five on either side, to take place in public, “so that the issue should make manifest to the people of both realms what was the mind of the Eternal King as to the rights of the two earthly sovereigns.” This scheme “pleased the king of England greatly, provided that each of the kings should be one of the five combatants on his own side and that they should fight each other on equal terms, armed and equipped alike”[1185]—whereupon the project fell to the ground. According to one English chronicler of the time, the next step taken by some of Richard’s enemies seems to have been an attempt to assassinate him. While he was staying at Chinon, early in 1195, there came to his court certain “Accini”—that is, “Assassins,” followers of “the Old Man of the Mountain”—or persons calling themselves such, to the number of fifteen. Some of them, seeking to approach the king’s person too closely, were arrested, and then stated that the king of France had sent them to kill his rival. Richard delayed passing sentence on them till their companions, who appear to have meanwhile made their escape, should be captured; of the part which they ascribed to Philip in the matter he took no notice.[1186] There the story abruptly ends. Whether these men were really “Assassins” in either sense of the word—whether, if so, they acted on orders from the “Old Man,” or from someone else, or on their own initiative, or what their motives or those of their instigator may have been—there is nothing to show. Their alleged charge against Philip, at any rate, can hardly deserve more consideration from history than it received from Richard.

At the end of June or early in July Richard received from the Emperor a present of “a great golden crown, very precious, as a token of their mutual friendship.” The gift was accompanied by a letter or message, bidding him “by 1194 the fealty which he owed to Henry, and as he cared for his hostages, to invade the French king’s land with an armed force,” and promising that Henry “would send him help sufficient to avenge the injuries done by Philip to both of them.” Richard knew the Emperor too well to be tempted into acting hastily on this mandate. He was aware that Henry “desired above all things to bring the kingdom of France under subjection to the Roman Empire,” and he had no mind to become the cat’s paw in a plot which might result in uniting the forces of Germany and France for his own ruin. He therefore sent his trusty chancellor, Bishop William of Ely, to inquire of the Emperor “in what manner, how much, and where and when” Henry would help him against the French king. Philip, hearing that the bishop was to pass through France, tried to intercept him, but failed, and thereupon sent word July to Richard that the truce was at an end.[1187]

At this moment Christendom suddenly found itself threatened by an urgent peril. The emperor of Morocco, “taking occasion by the dissension between the French and English kings,” invaded Spain, marched into Castille, July 18 defeated its king Alfonso in a great battle, and besieged him in Toledo. The danger to southern Gaul was near enough to alarm both Richard and Philip; and before the end of July they had another conference, at which Richard restored Aloysia to her brother, and a treaty of peace was drawn up.[1188] The draft was, however, fated to be nothing more than a draft. The meeting was held near Vaudreuil, which for the period of the truce had been left in Philip’s hands. The two kings, each with a body of armed followers, seem to have encamped on opposite banks of the river which flows through the valley whence the place took its name. While discussion was in progress Philip, fearing an attack on the fortress, caused its walls to be secretly undermined. Suddenly a part of them fell down. Richard instantly denounced the truce as ended on his side, and with his men dashed across the stream into the 1194 French camp. Philip, anticipating this movement, had already arrayed his followers and was leading them towards the nearest bridge over the Seine, when (according to one account) it broke down, and he and they narrowly escaped drowning. Richard was this time wise enough not to End
July attempt pursuit, and contented himself with capturing some of Philip’s servants who had been left behind in the hasty retreat, and setting to work immediately on the restoration of the recovered fortress[1189] and on preparations for a renewal of hostilities. He was, however, not inclined to begin these last till he had received more definite information from Germany; so another treaty was drafted on September 23, between Issoudun and Charroux,[1190] to be ratified by the two kings on November 8 at Verneuil. Before that date William of Ely returned from Germany, bringing word that the Emperor disapproved of the proposed terms, and was willing to quit-claim to Richard seventeen thousand marks of his ransom, to enable him to recover the territory which he had lost through his imprisonment.[1191] Nevertheless, Nov. 8 Richard went to Verneuil at the appointed date. On his way he was met by the archbishop of Reims with a message purporting to come from Philip, bidding him not to hurry, as the king of France was still engaged in consultation with his ministers. Richard withdrew to his Nov. 9 own quarters and stayed there till the following afternoon; then, resolved to wait no longer, he went to Philip’s quarters and demanded an interview. He was admitted into Philip’s presence, but the bishop of Beauvais spoke for his sovereign: “Our lord the King of France accuses thee of broken faith and perjury, in as much as thou didst plight thy word and swear to come to a conference with him this morning at the third hour, and didst not come; and therefore he defies thee.” Both kings hastened back into their own territories.[1192] Within two days Richard was laying 1194 siege to Arques,[1193] and Philip burning Dieppe.[1194] Richard seems to have quitted his siege for the purpose of trying to intercept the French king on the way back to Paris; but he only succeeded in overtaking a few men of the French rearguard.[1195] He appears to have spent the next few weeks in restoring Vaudreuil.[1196]

While these things were happening in northern Gaul, Mercadier, at the head of his Brabantines, made a dash for Issoudun, destroyed its suburbs, captured the castle, and garrisoned it for Richard.[1197] Thence the mercenaries spread themselves over Berry, and crowned their successes by capturing the count of Auvergne and thus gaining possession of his castles.[1198] Philip, however, proceeded against them in person, recaptured the town of Issoudun, and fired the castle. He thought Richard was too intent on restoring the defences of Normandy to pursue him; but no sooner did the tidings reach Vaudreuil than Richard, “casting all other business aside,” achieved in one day what was reckoned a three days’ ride, and appeared before Issoudun so unexpectedly that he had no difficulty in entering the town.[1199] Reinforcements came up rapidly, and the French, seeing themselves outnumbered, urged their sovereign to make overtures for peace. Richard had arrayed his men for battle and placed himself, as usual, Dec. 5 at their head. Philip rode forward to meet him, and the two kings, on horseback and in armour, parleyed alone together while their followers stood around awaiting the result. At last they were seen to dismount, bare their heads, and exchange the kiss of peace.[1200] According to Philip’s biographer, Richard there and then renewed his homage to Philip.[1201] At any rate, the colloquy ended in an 1194 appointment for another meeting, to take place at Louviers (or as Rigord expresses it, “between Vaudreuil and Gaillon”) on the octave of Epiphany, to make a “final” peace.[1202]

The meeting did take place, and a treaty was made, consisting of a quit-claim from Philip to Richard and his heirs of all the rights of the French crown in Berry, Auvergne, and Gascony, and an undertaking to make restitution of certain portions of Norman territory then in Philip’s hands, Jan.
13-15 in exchange for a similar quit-claim from Richard to Philip and his heirs of Gisors and the whole Norman Vexin except the fief of Andely,[1203] which belonged to the metropolitan see of Rouen. The little town of Andely was insignificant and unfortified, but its command of the traffic up and down the Seine, from which its holder was entitled to take toll, made it a valuable possession from a financial point of view, and its geographical position and surroundings offered strategical advantages which had already caught the attention of one, if not both, of the rival kings. Philip tried to get Andely included in the territory ceded to him; “but this could on no account be done.” Nor did he succeed in obtaining Archbishop Walter’s fealty for the other lands in the Vexin belonging to the see of Rouen.[1204] Walter’s own narrative of the scenes which took place between himself and both the kings with reference to his suretyship for Richard’s fulfilment of the treaty[1205] seems to indicate that Richard was really desirous for peace with France at the moment, but that neither he nor Philip intended the peace to last any longer than it suited their own convenience. It was in fact merely an expedient for giving both parties a breathing-space in which to gather fresh forces and make fresh plans for war. Within three months Richard was April 15 sending to England for reinforcements “because”—so he 1196 wrote to Hubert Walter—“we think we are nearer to war than to peace with the king of France.”[1206]

Richard was at that moment striving to subdue Britanny. Ever since the death of Henry II the wardship of little Arthur and of his duchy had been in dispute between Richard and Philip; but the boy’s mother, Constance, supported by the Breton people, had hitherto managed to keep both her child and her country under her own control. In the spring of 1196 Richard summoned, or invited, her to a conference with him in Normandy; at the frontier she was met, captured, and imprisoned by her husband, Earl Ranulf of Chester.[1207] The Bretons at once rallied round their child-duke, in his name threw off all allegiance to Richard, and began to make raids on the Norman border.[1208] Richard set out to punish them[1209] in the ruthless fashion habitual to him when dealing with rebels, “sparing neither grown man Good Friday
April 19 nor child, not even on the day of our Lord’s Passion.”[1210] They fled before him, carrying Arthur with them, to the remoter fastnesses of their country, and thence conveyed the boy to the court of France.[1211] Thereupon the treaty of Louviers was flung to the winds. Richard infringed it in the Vexin by building a castle on an island in the Seine at Porte-Joie, between Louviers and Pont-de-l’Arche, and in Berry by calling the lord of Vierzon to account to him on a matter which (according to Philip’s historiographer) belonged to the jurisdiction of the French Crown, and when the man refused to obey him, making a raid on Vierzon and levelling it to the ground.[1212] Philip again laid siege to Aumale. Richard ordered all property held within his dominions by four abbots who had been Philip’s sureties 1196 for the treaty to be seised into his own hands,[1213] bribed the French garrison of Nonancourt to give up that fortress to him, and then went to relieve Aumale. He was, however, repulsed in an attack on Philip’s camp, and went off to lay siege to Gaillon, which was held for Philip by a famous mercenary captain, Cadoc. A bolt from Cadoc’s crossbow struck the king’s knee as he was reconnoitring the place. The wound disabled him for a month; before he had recovered, Aumale had surrendered after a seven weeks’ siege, and Philip had razed its walls and regained Nonancourt.[1214]

Richard arose from his sick-bed in a towering rage,[1215] and with a grim determination which gave a new character to the war. The successes achieved by the French while he lay helpless had borne in upon him the fact that if he was to retain what was still left to him of Normandy—nay, if the House of Anjou was to retain its continental power at all—some better plan of campaign and of diplomacy must be devised than the alternation of border-fighting and treaties or truces, made only to be broken, in which his personal energies as well as his material and military resources had been frittered away during the last two years. He must by some means bar the way to Rouen, laid open to Philip by the cession of the Vexin. He must shield and supplement his military resources, consisting as they did only of mercenary troops stiffened by a small band of loyal Normans, by securing at least the neutrality, if not the direct active assistance, of France’s other feudataries and neighbours. From England there was no help to be got. No action seems to have been taken by Archbishop Hubert on the king’s demand addressed to him in the spring for troops from that country. In November the demand was renewed in another form; Richard bade Hubert send him either three hundred knights to serve 1196 beyond sea at their own expense for a year, or money wherewith to pay three hundred mercenaries three English shillings a day for the same period. A great council was convened at Oxford on December 7; Hubert, instead of laying before it the alternatives offered by the king, simply proposed that all the barons and bishops should furnish three hundred knights for a year’s service over sea. This Bishop Hugh of Lincoln at once refused on behalf of his own see; its tenants being bound to military service only in their own country. The bishop of Salisbury followed Hugh’s example. The justiciar lost his temper and broke up the assembly; and all that Richard gained was a heavy fine paid by Herbert of Salisbury in redemption of the property of his see, confiscated by the king’s order on Hubert’s report. The property of the see of Lincoln was confiscated likewise, but in this case the order remained a dead letter owing to the profound reverence universally felt for the bishop.[1216]

The king himself was meanwhile already carrying into effect, with his eyes fully open to the consequences, a project which brought him into collision with the highest ecclesiastical authority in Normandy. Of all the approaches to the Norman capital the most important was the broad valley through which the Seine winds its course from Paris across the old battle-ground of the Vexin to the heart of the duchy, while on either side of this water-way roads from north and east and south converge to meet beneath the walls of Rouen. Philip was now master of this valley and its surroundings up to a distance of about twelve miles from the city. The key of the position, however, was neither in his hands nor in Richard’s, but in those of the archbishop of Rouen; it was Andely. The town of Andely stood at the meeting-point of several roads, on the north side of a stream called the Gambon, in a valley opening from the eastward upon the Seine through the chalk cliffs on its right bank, near the middle of a great curve to the northward in its course between Gaillon and Louviers. To the west of Andely the Gambon and another rivulet 1196 became merged in a lake or mere whence they issued again to fall into the great river by two distinct openings separated by a tract of marshland, at the south-east corner of which stood the toll-house. Nearly opposite the mouth of each streamlet was an island in the Seine; the more northerly and larger one was known as the Isle of Andely. The valley was sheltered on its southern side by a thickly wooded plateau extending several miles to a point nearly opposite Gaillon, and called the Forest of Andely. Opposite the toll-house, at the angle formed by the junction of the Gambon with the Seine, this plateau terminated abruptly in a mass of limestone rock three hundred feet high, with its western face, nearly perpendicular, looking down upon the Seine, its northern front, almost as steep, towering above the Gambon, and only a narrow neck of rocky ground at its south-eastern corner connecting it with the plateau, from which its other sides were separated by deep ravines. The military possibilities of such a position were obvious, and would doubtless have been utilized long before they attracted the rival kings if Andely had been a lay fief. For Philip it would have made an ideal base for attack upon Rouen; Richard saw in it a matchless site for the construction of an almost impassable barrier between Rouen and Paris. Philip had tried in vain to win it by diplomacy. Richard took advantage of a temporary absence of the archbishop from Normandy to seize the Isle of Andely and begin to build a fort upon it. Walter protested strongly, but in vain; Richard’s sole answer was to take possession of the low ground enclosed between the three rivers and the lake and begin to cover it with the foundations of a walled town with trenches and barbicans on every side. The primate then told the king in person that unless he made restitution and paid compensation within three days, he must expect the ecclesiastical penalties due to sacrilege. The warning was ignored; so Walter fulfilled his threat by laying Normandy under Interdict and setting out for Rome.[1217] Thither he was followed by envoys from Richard 1196 who were charged to appeal to the Pope and endeavour to compose the dispute. Meanwhile the king pushed on his work without intermission. In a few months there arose on the Isle of Andely a tall octagonal tower encircled by a ditch and rampart, on the western side of the island a bridge giving access to the left bank of the Seine, and on the eastern side another bridge linking the tower with the “New” or “Lesser” Andely whose walls, standing four-square within the natural moat formed by the surrounding waters, were likewise accessible from the mainland only by two bridges, one at their northern corner and one on their south-eastern side. The southern corner of the new town directly faced the great “Rock of Andely”; and for that rock Richard was designing a crown such as no other western architect had ever yet dreamed of. His first act on the site, however, was of evil omen. It seems that to protect his workmen at the New Andely against attack from the French troops he had brought over a host of wild 1196-7 Welshmen who harried the French border in a fashion scarcely equalled by the worst ravages of the Brabantines; at last a large body of them were intercepted by the French at the opening of the Vale of Andely, surrounded, and slaughtered, to the number, it is said, of three thousand four hundred. Richard was then at Andely, and had there eighteen French prisoners in a dungeon. In his fury he had three of them dragged to the top of the rock[1218] and flung down to be dashed to pieces at its foot; the fifteen others he caused to be blinded, and sent under the guidance of a one-eyed man to Philip, who, “lest he should be thought inferior to the English king in power or spirit, or to be afraid of him,” retaliated by causing three English prisoners to be thrown down from a rock in like manner, and blinding and sending back to Richard fifteen others, the wife of one of them acting as guide.[1219]

1196-7

Meanwhile Richard was, through his agents at Rome, bargaining with Archbishop Walter for an exchange of May lands. At last he made an offer which was distinctly advantageous to the metropolitan see of Rouen; it was accepted, and the Interdict was raised.[1220] A year later the 1198
May king’s work at Andely was complete. Round the foot of the great rock the ravines which parted it from the surrounding lesser heights were dug out to such a depth that access to it was impossible except by one narrow neck of ground at its south-eastern end. A “fair castle”—as Richard himself justly called it[1221]—whose general outline was determined by that of its site occupied the top of the rock. The outer ward was a walled-in triangle with sides of unequal length, and with its apex facing south-eastward towards the natural junction left between the rock and the plateau; at this point and at each of the other two angles stood a round tower with walls ten feet thick; each of the two longer sides of the curtain wall was strengthened with a smaller tower; and the whole enclosure was surrounded by a ditch more than forty feet deep, hewn out of the rock, with a perpendicular counterscarp. Beyond this ditch on its north-western side lay the inner ward. On three sides of this second enclosure were walls eight feet thick; one wall, flanked by towers like those of the outer ward, faced the north-western wall of the latter across the ditch; on the other and longer sides the steep incline of the rock itself formed a natural rampart and ditch below the walls which ran along its edge. The line of the curtain on the side nearest to the river was broken by a tower, round externally, octagonal within, and terminated at its northern end by two rectangular bastions behind one of which stood another round tower forming the base of the third ward or citadel. A rampart, roughly elliptical in outline, was made by 1196-7 excavating a ditch some fifteen to twenty feet wide, with a perpendicular counterscarp. In one part of this ditch casemates were cut in the rock. Two-thirds of the rampart were surmounted by a series of seventeen semicircular bastions with about two feet of curtain wall between every two; on the eastern side the line was broken by a bridge leading from the rampart of the outer ward into the inner enclosure, to which there was no other means of ingress above ground; and directly opposite this bridge the bastions abutted on a mighty keep-tower with walls twenty feet thick at the angles and nowhere less than twelve feet, and with a wide outlook from the windows in its upper stages over the river valley and the woodlands of the Vexin. Between the keep and the round tower at the end of the curtain wall were buildings for dwelling and storage; from these an underground stair and passage beneath the rock gave access to some outworks near its foot, where from a small tower a wall was carried down to the river-bank; and from a point close to the termination of this wall the river itself was barred by a double stockade across its bed. “Behold, how fair is this year-old daughter of mine!” Thus Richard is said to have exclaimed as he saw the last touches put to the “Castle on the Rock.”[1222] Contemporary writers distinctly imply that the whole scheme of the fortifications at Les Andelys was devised and planned by the king himself; it was certainly carried out under his constant personal supervision and direction. Some of the peculiar features of the citadel or keep may probably have been suggested to him by the fortresses which he had seen in Holy Land, where the nature of the country and the circumstances of the Frank settlers had led to the development of the science of military architecture in forms hitherto unknown to western builders. However this may be, the opportunity presented by the natural advantages of the site was utilized to the uttermost in the construction of the group of buildings crowned by the “Saucy Castle,” Château-Gaillard, as Richard appropriately called it, which from the summit of the rock seemed to look down in defiance and 1196-7 derision upon the French king and his schemes for the conquest of Normandy.

The royal architect was further strengthening alike his military and his political position by alliances with his most important neighbours both to north and south. Count Baldwin of Flanders had for six years been chafing under the loss of the southern half of his county, annexed by the French king on the plea that the late Count Philip had given it to Elisabeth of Hainaut, Baldwin’s sister and the king’s first wife. In June 1196 Baldwin and Count Reginald of Boulogne promised to support Philip Augustus “against all 1197
May-Sept. men”;[1223] but in the following summer Baldwin threw off his allegiance and became Richard’s sworn ally.[1224] About the same time the guardians of Arthur of Britanny exchanged pledges with Richard that neither they nor he would make peace with France without each other’s consent; and a like agreement was made between Richard and Count Theobald of Champagne,[1225] brother and successor to the Crusader Count Henry, nephew by the half blood to both the kings, and brother-in-law to Richard’s queen. The western and northern sides and a considerable part of the eastern side of the French Royal Domain were thus completely ringed in by the territories of Richard and his allies, except in two places. These exceptions were the united counties of Blois and Chartres and the little county of Ponthieu. Louis of Blois still adhered to Philip; but as he stood in the same degree of relationship to the two kings as did his cousin Theobald of Champagne, there was always a possibility that he might some day follow Theobald’s example. As for Ponthieu, Philip had given Aloysia in marriage to its count, probably thinking he was driving a wedge between Normandy and Flanders; but the wedge was too small and too insignificant to be of any real use in keeping them apart. On the other hand, the count of Flanders was on his northern and eastern frontiers in direct touch with Richard’s German allies; and one at least of these, the count of Hainaut, was also in 1197 direct touch with Champagne. Richard was in fact gradually drawing round the Royal Domain of France a circle which was already more than half completed; and he was now politically in a position to bring almost the whole of his own military resources to bear upon some of its uncompleted sections in the west and south without fear of danger in his rear. The voluntary adhesion of Britanny promised at least a temporary respite from trouble in that quarter. In Aquitaine his determined efforts to enforce order and tranquillity were at last beginning to bear fruit. In 1195 he had granted the county of Poitou to his sister Matilda’s son, Otto of Saxony;[1226] but Otto does not seem to have ever actually taken possession of the county, and the government of Poitou and its dependencies, and also of Gascony, continued to be carried on as before, by seneschals appointed by the king. If these officers needed assistance to quell internal revolt, they could safely depend for it on Navarre; and the one remaining vassal of the duchy with whom they might still have been unable to cope was won over to the interests of his suzerain by the offer of a brilliant and wealthy matrimonial alliance and a substantial increase of territory. The count of Toulouse with whom Richard had fought of 1196 old died in 1196, and the widowed Queen Joan of Sicily was given in marriage by her brother to the new Count Raymond VI;[1227] Richard renounced the old claim of the Poitevin counts to the possession of Toulouse, restored the Quercy to its former owner, and granted him the county of Agen as Joan’s dowry, with the stipulation that it should always be held as a distinct fief of the duchy of Aquitaine and should furnish the duke with five hundred men-at-arms for a month when required for war in Gascony.[1228]