Easily subduing and more easily pardoning his traitor brother, Richard carried his arms into France, gained a victory at Vendome, and took the great seal of France; then entered Guienne, where the turbulent nobility had revolted, and reducing them, enjoyed a short space of tranquillity and minstrelsy, and kept on a poetical correspondence with Count Guy of Auvergne.
Arthur, who was now nine years old, was, in 1196, introduced by his mother to the assembly of the States of Brittany, and associated with her in the duchy. His uncle at the same time claimed the charge of him as his heir, and invited Constance to a conference at Pontorson. On her way—it is much to be feared with his connivance—she was seized by a body of troops under her husband, the Earl of Chester, and carried a prisoner to the castle of St. James de Beuvron.
Her nobles met at St. Malo, and deputed the seneschal of Rennes to inquire of her how they should act, and to assure her of their fidelity. She thanked them earnestly, but her whole entreaty was that they would guard her son, watch him like friends, servants, and parents, and save him from the English. “As for me,” wrote she, “that will be as God wills; but whatever may befall me, do your best for Arthur my son. I shall always be well, provided he is well, and in the care of good subjects.”
The vassals wept at this letter, full of maternal love; they swore to devote themselves to their young lord, even to the death, and obtained from him a promise never to treat with the English without their consent. They placed him under the charge of the Sieur de Vitré, who conducted him from castle to castle with so much secrecy, that Richard continually failed in his attempts to seize on him. Treaties were attempted, but failed, with mutual accusations of perfidy, and while Constance continued a prisoner, a most desolating war raged in the unfortunate duchy. The dislike and distrust that existed between Constance and her mother-in-law, Queen Eleanor, seem to have been the root of many of these troubles; Eleanor was all-powerful with her son, and contrived to inspire him with distrust of Constance—a suspicion naturally augmented by her refusal to allow him the care of her son, his own heir, whom she placed in the hands of the foe of the English.
Richard’s troops were chiefly Brabançon mercenaries, or free-companions—a lawless soldiery, deservedly execrated; and their captain, Mercadet, was a favorite of the King on account of his dauntless courage and enterprise. In a skirmish, Mercadot took prisoner the Bishop of Beauvais, one of the warlike prelates who forgot their proper office. The Pope demanded his liberation, and Richard returned the suit of armor in which the bishop had been taken, with the message, “See if this be thy son’s coat, or no.”
“No, indeed,” said Celestine; “this is the coat of a son of Mars; I will leave it to Mars to deliver him.”
Vitré succeeded in lodging young Arthur, his charge, in the hands of the King of France, who espoused his cause as an excuse for attacking Richard. Several battles took place, and at length another treaty of peace was made, by which Constance was liberated, after eighteen months’ captivity. Doubtless this would soon have proved as hollow as every other agreement between the French King and the Plantagenet; but it was Coeur de Lion’s last.
The Vicomte de Limoges, in Poitou, sent him two mule-burdens of silver, part of a treasure found in his hands. Richard rapaciously claimed the whole. “No,” said the Vicomte, “only treasure in gold belongs to the suzerain; treasure in silver is halved.”
Richard, in anger, marched to Poitou with his Brabançons, and besieged the Castle of Chaluz, where he believed the rest of the riches to be concealed. In the course of the assault his shoulder was pierced by an arrow shot from the walls by an archer named Bertrand de Gourdon, and though the wound at first appeared slight, the surgeons, in attempting to extract the head of the arrow, so mangled the shoulder, that fever came on, and his life was despaired of. Mercadet, in the meantime, pushed on the attack, took the castle, and brought Gourdon a prisoner to the King’s tent.
“Villain, wherefore hast thou slain me?” said Richard.