Philip Augustus; or, The Brothers in Arms

by G. P. R. James

By tardy conveyances, and over antediluvian roads, news travelled slowly in the days we speak of; and the interdict which we have seen pronounced at Dijon, and unknown at De Coucy Magny, was even some hours older before the report thereof reached Compiègne.

We must beg the gentle reader to remember a sunny-faced youth, for whom the fair queen of France, Agnes de Meranie, was, when last we left him, working a gay coat of arms. This garment, which it was then customary to bear over the armour, was destined to be worn by one whose sad place in history has caused many a tear--Arthur the son of that Geoffrey Plantagenet, who was elder brother of John Lackland, the meanest and most pitiful villain that ever wore a crown.

How it happened that, on the death of Richard Cœur de Lion, the barons of England adhered to an usurper they despised rather than to their legitimate prince, forms no part of this history. Suffice it, that John ruled in England, and also retained possession of all the feofs of his family in France, Normandy, Poitou, Anjou, and Acquitaine, leaving to Arthur nought but the duchy of Brittany, which descended to him from Constance his mother.

It is not, however, to be thought that Arthur endured with patience his uncle's usurpation of his rights. Far from it. Brought up at the court of France, he clung to Philip Augustus, the friend in whose arms his father had died, and ceased not to importune him for aid to recover his dominions. Philip's limited means, fatigued already by many vast enterprises, for long prevented him from lending that succour to the young prince, which every principle of policy and generosity stimulated him to grant. But while no national cause of warfare existed to make the war against king John popular with the barons of France, and while the vassals of the English king, though an usurper, remained united in their attachment to him, Phillip felt that to attempt the forcible assertion of Arthur's rights would be altogether hopeless. He waited, therefore, watching his opportunity, very certain that the weak frivolity or the treacherous depravity of John's character would soon either alienate some portion of his own vassals, or furnish matter of quarrel for the barons of France.

Several years thus passed after Richard's death, drawn out in idle treaties and fruitless negotiations:--treaties which in all ages have been but written parchments; and negotiations, which in most instances are but concatenations of frauds. At length, as Philip had foreseen, the combination of folly and wickedness, which formed the principal point of John's mind, laid him open to the long-meditated blow.

In one of his spurts of levity, beholding in the midst of her attendants the beautiful Isabella of Angoulême, affianced to Hugues le Brun de Lusignan, Comte de la Marche, the English monarch--without the least hesitation on the score of honour, which he never knew, or decency, which he never practised,--ordered her to be carried off from the midst of her attendants, and borne to the castle of the Gueret, where he soon induced her to forget her former engagements with his vassal.

The barons of Poitou, indignant at the insult offered to their order, in the person of one of their noblest companions; and to their family, in the near relation of all the most distinguished nobles of the province, appealed to the court of Philip Augustus, as John's sovereign for his feofs in France. Philip, glad to establish the rights of his court, summoned the king of England before his peers, as count of Anjou; and on his refusing to appear, eagerly took advantage of the fresh kindled indignation of the barons of Poitou and Anjou to urge the rights of Arthur to the heritage of the Plantagenets.

Already in revolt against John, a great part of each of those provinces instantly acknowledged Arthur for their sovereign; and the indignant nobles flocked to Paris to greet him, and induce him to place himself at their head. Arthur beheld himself now at the top of that tide which knows no ebb, but leads on to ruin or to glory; and accepting at once the offers of the revolted barons, he pressed Philip Augustus to give him the belt and spurs of a knight, though still scarcely more than a boy; and to let him try his fortune against his usurping uncle in the field.

Philip saw difficulties and dangers in the undertaking; but, knowing the power of opportunity, he yielded: not, however, without taking every precaution to ensure success to the young prince's enterprise. For the festivities that were to precede the ceremony of Arthur's knighthood, he called together all those barons who were most likely, from ancient enmity to John, or ancient friendship for the dead Geoffrey, or from personal regard for himself, or general love of excitement and danger,--or, in short, from any of those causes that might move the minds of men towards his purpose,--to aid in establishing Arthur in the continental feofs, at least, of the House of Plantagenet.

He took care, too, to dazzle them with splendour and display, and to render the ceremonies which accompanied the prince's reception as a knight as gay and glittering as possible.