How this great influence over the young King was acquired the old manuscripts do not tell us. The first time we hear of Bertran in history is in connection with the quarrels between Richard, at that time Count of Poitou, and his unruly barons in the south of France. Amongst these Bertran de Born took a prominent position. His worldly possessions were of comparatively small importance, but his fame as a poet, his personal valour, his indomitable fierceness and love of war made up for this want, and qualified him for the part of ringleader and prime intellectual mover of the rebellious party. A cause of quarrel between such an overlord as Richard and such a vassal as Bertran may easily be imagined; but beyond these public grounds of mutual animosity there seems to have been some personal grudge between them. The manuscripts speak of a lady in whose heart the troubadour supplanted his princely rival, and in addition to this fact—perhaps in consequence of it—we hear of Richard’s hostile interference in his adversary’s private concerns.

Bertran de Born had a brother, Constantine by name, with whom he shared the possession of Castle Autafort. He is described by the manuscripts as ‘a good knight, but not a man to trouble himself much about valour or honour.’ A man of this kind stood little chance of holding his own against our troubadour, and internal evidence strongly points towards the latter as the aggressor in the endless quarrels between the two brothers. This, however, Bertran’s biographer does not acknowledge. He goes on to say that Constantine ‘hated Bertran at all seasons, and wished well to those who wished ill to Bertran, and he took from him the Castle of Autafort, which belonged to them both in common. But Sir Bertran soon recovered it, and drove his brother from all his possessions.’ At this juncture Richard interfered in favour of Constantine. Together with Aimar, Viscount of Limoges, and other powerful barons, he invaded Bertran’s domains, which soon became the scene of atrocities such as are the usual concomitants of civil feud. Castle Autafort itself was threatened, but its master remained undaunted. In a powerful sirventes he hurls defiance at his enemies. A war-song more recklessly bold, more graphically real, has seldom been heard.

Let the reader judge. ‘All day long,’ Bertran says, ‘I fight, and am at work, to make a thrust at them and defend myself, for they are laying waste my land and burning my crops; they pull up my trees by the root and mix my corn with the straw. Cowards and brave men are my enemies. I constantly disunite and sow hatred amongst the barons, and then remould and join them together again, and try to give them brave hearts and strong; but I am a fool for my trouble, for they are made of base metal.’

In these last sentences the poet discloses the secret of his power. It was the irresistible sway of his eloquence over men’s minds, his ‘don terrible de la familiarité,’ as the elder Mirabeau puts it, which enabled Bertran to play on men’s minds as on the strings of a lute, and to make them form and vary their purpose according to his impulse. In this very sirventes we gain an idea of the manner in which he lashes the hesitating barons into resistance against the common oppressor. Talairand is accused of indolence—‘he does not trot nor gallop, motionless he lies in his cot, neither lance nor arrow does he move. He lives like a Lombard pedlar, and when others depart for the war he stretches himself and yawns.’ Another baron, whose name, William of Gordon, strikes the English ear with familiar note, is warned against Richard’s persuasive statecraft. ‘I love you well,’ Bertran says, ‘but my enemies want to make a fool and a dupe of you, and the time seems long to them before they see you in their ranks.’ The sirventes winds up with a climax of fierce invective against Richard himself. ‘To Perigeux close to the wall, so that I can throw my battle-axe over it, I will come well armed, and riding on my horse Bayard; and if I find the glutton of Poitou he shall know the cut of my sword. A mixture of brain and splinters of iron he shall wear on his brow.’

Bertran’s assertions of his dangerous influence over men’s minds were not the idle boastings of poetic vanity. A terrible conspiracy was formed against Richard, and the greatest nobles of the country, the Viscounts of Ventadorn, of Camborn, of Segur, and of Limoges, the Count of Perigord, William of Gordon, the Lord of Montfort, besides many important cities, are mentioned amongst the rebels. A meeting took place, and we may imagine the picturesque scene when ‘in the old monastery of San Marsal they swore on a missal’ to stand by each other and never to enter into separate treaties with Richard. The special causes of this rebellion are not known to us. We may surmise, and indeed know in a general way, that the hand of their lion-hearted lord weighed heavily on the provinces of Southern France. But the veil which covers this portion of Henry II.’s reign has never yet been fully lifted, and till that is done we must be satisfied with such hints as may be gleaned from scattered bits of information in ancient writers. Our Provençal manuscript offers a clue not without interest to the historical student. It speaks of certain rendas de caretas, rates of carts or wagons, most likely a toll which Richard had unlawfully appropriated, and which in reality belonged to the ‘Young King,’ that is to Prince Henry, to whom it had been given by his father.

This latter circumstance connects our story with less obscure portions of history. It is well known that in 1182 King Henry demanded of his sons Richard and Geoffrey to do homage to their elder brother for the possessions respectively held by them, a demand indignantly refused by Richard. Hence the invasion of Aquitain by young Henry, and hence perhaps also the latter’s intimacy with our poet, who, as the intellectual mover of the rebellion against Richard, was an ally by no means to be despised. Thus the war between the brothers went on raging for a time, Bertran fighting in the foremost ranks, and at the same time fanning the flame with his songs. We still possess sirventeses in which he addresses the chief barons by name, reminding them of their grievances, praising the brave and castigating the waverers with his satire. Such were the means of diplomatic pressure in those days. But primitive though such measures of admonition may appear, they were none the less efficacious with those concerned. Papiol, Bertran’s faithful minstrel, went about the country boldly reciting his master’s taunts in the lordly hall of the baron or at the gate of the castle, where the throng of the vassals would listen to his song. Taking into account the excitability of the southern nature further inflamed by the struggles of the time, together with the general interest of the subject and the consummate art of treatment and delivery, one can form some idea of the dangerous influence of the troubadours, too dangerous and too generally acknowledged to be despised by the mightiest princes of the time.

Bertran de Born is evidently quite conscious of the force of his songs, and the use he makes of his power betrays great sagacity of political purpose. But with him the love of war for war’s sake is so great that sometimes every deeper design seems to vanish before this ruling passion. His character is a psychological problem in this respect. A man who, after a life of wildest storm and stress, passed in continual strife with domestic and political foes, dies in peace and in the quiet possession of his usurped dominion, must have been endowed in a more than usual degree with calmness and deliberation. But there is no trace of this in his songs. They breathe one and all the recklessness and animal buoyancy of a savage chieftain who regards fighting as the only enjoyment and true vocation of a man. One of his warlike sirventeses ends with the naïve exclamation by way of tornada or envoi, ‘Would that the great barons could always be inflamed against each other!’ In another he gives vent to his insatiate pugnacity with most unqualified openness. ‘There is peace everywhere,’ he says, ‘but I still retain a rag (pans) of warfare; a sore in his eye (pustella en son huelh) to him who tries to part me from it, although I may have begun the quarrel! Peace gives me no pleasure, war is my delight. This is my law, other I have none. I don’t regard Monday or Tuesday, or week, or month, or year: April or March would not hinder me in doing damage to those who wrong me. Three of them would not get the value of an old leather strap from me.’⁠[24]

Things in Aquitain began in the meantime to take a more peaceful turn than our warlike singer could wish or expect. King Henry appeared on the scene as peacemaker between his sons, and by his command young Henry had to declare himself satisfied with a money compensation for his claims of overlordship. This compliance drew on him the momentary indignation of the troubadour, who calls him ‘a king of cowards;’ and adds that ‘not by lying asleep will he become master of Cumberland, or King of England, or conqueror of Ireland.’ The defection of their leader proved fatal to the league of the barons, who separately tried to make their peace with Richard and quietly submitted to his punishing wrath. Not so Bertran de Born. His first impulse was to give utterance to his contempt for the nobles who by their want of courage and union destroyed their last chance of safety. ‘I will sing a sirventes,’ Bertran exclaims, ‘of the cowardly barons, and after that not waste another word upon them. More than a thousand spurs have I broken in them, and never could I make them trot or gallop. Now they allow themselves to be robbed without saying a word. God’s curse upon them!’ His next thought must have been to find a new head and centre for such remnants of the rebellious forces as still remained unsubdued. In this endeavour he was more successful than might have been expected under the circumstances. Geoffrey, Henry’s younger brother, who had been commissioned by the King to facilitate the reconciliation between Richard and his barons, suddenly declared himself in favour of the latter, and began to invade Poitou with all the forces at his disposal. We have no direct evidence of Bertran’s active participation in this affair. But we know of his intimacy with Geoffrey, whom, after the desertion of the cause by young Henry, he hails as a worthy pretender to the crowns of England and Normandy. We are therefore justified in conjecturing that the bold troubadour’s advice may have had much weight with a prince of Geoffrey’s ambition.

But here the matter was not to end. In this emergency young Henry offered his services to his father, promising to advise or if necessary to enforce a reconciliation between his brothers. But no sooner had he arrived at the seat of war than he also joined the league of the barons. Richard in his extreme need implored the aid of his father, who immediately entered into alliance with Alfonso of Aragon for the purpose of subduing his rebellious sons. The princes sought the support of the Count of Toulouse and other powerful nobles of the south of France. War on a large scale became inevitable, and this prospect was greeted by Bertran with an exuberance of joy. He revels beforehand in the brilliant and terrible scenes of a field of battle. ‘As soon as we arrive,’ he exclaims, ‘the tournament shall begin. The Catalans and the Aragonese will fall to the ground fast and thick. The pommels of their saddles will be of no use to them, for our friends strike long blows. And the splinters will fly up to heaven, and silk and samite will be torn to shreds, and tents and huts destroyed.’

But once more Bertran’s high hopes of victory were to be cut short by the hand of fate. King Henry was laying siege to Limoges, and his two rebellious sons were preparing a large expedition for the rescue of the threatened city, when suddenly young Henry was taken ill with a violent fever and died shortly afterwards. On his death-bed he implored his father’s pardon and asked for a last interview, but the King, although deeply moved, was persuaded by his counsellors to refuse this favour. It is said that he feared a snare, and after his former experiences this suspicion was but too easily accounted for. He, however, sent a ring in token of forgiveness, which his son pressed to his dying lips. This death was a blow to both contending parties. In spite of their dissensions, King Henry had deeply loved his son, who, according to the unanimous testimony of his contemporaries, was a high-spirited youth of undaunted courage and noblest aspirations. Bertran’s grief also was true, and, for the moment at least, unselfish. His unwavering friendship for young Henry is the one redeeming feature in the reckless warrior’s character, and this feeling, which death itself had not destroyed, now inspired him with a song of noblest pathos. It is a dirge as sad and as true as ever friend has sung for friend. I have attempted the following literal translation of three stanzas, in which the metrical peculiarities of the original are strictly adhered to. These peculiarities, which frequently serve the troubadours for the display of their consummate skill, are here made the vehicle of genuine emotion, and give truth and colour to the poem. Note particularly the repetition of the same words at the end of the first, fifth, and eighth lines of each stanza, which strikes the note of unrelieved sadness with the monotony of a death-knell:—

With the death of young Henry the rebellion was practically at an end. Again the barons tried to make peace with Richard and the King; again they submitted to the most humiliating terms of submission; but again also Bertran de Born’s courage remained undaunted, although against him, as the evil counsellor of young Henry, the wrath of the King was hottest. Soon the army of the allies arrived before Castle Autafort, and little hope of rescue remained. Still Bertran held out, and ultimately succumbed only to the treachery of a friend.