For six months there was peace, and in July the king ventured to return to England.[1006] He knighted his son Geoffrey at Woodstock on August 6,[1007] and when the lad hurried over sea, eager to flesh his maiden sword and emulate the prowess of his brothers, he could find no more serious field in which to exercise his warlike energies than a succession of tournaments on the borders of France and Normandy.[1008] Richard however was again busy with more earnest fighting. The rivalry between the houses of Aragon and Toulouse had stirred up the petty chieftains of southern Gascony, whom the king of Aragon was seeking to enlist in his service; and Richard was obliged to undertake a campaign against the count of Bigorre in particular, which seems to have occupied him till the end of the year. The defiant attitude of the nobles of Saintonge and the Angoumois, and especially of a powerful baron, Geoffrey of Rancogne, called him back at Christmas to Saintes; as soon as the feast was over he laid siege to Geoffrey’s castle of Pons; after spending more than three months before the place, he left his constables to continue the blockade while he himself went to attack the other rebel castles. Five of them were taken and razed between Easter and Rogation-tide,[1009] and then Richard gathered up all his forces to assault Geoffrey of Rancogne’s mightiest stronghold, Taillebourg. It stood a few miles north of Saintes, on the crest of a lofty rock, three of whose sides were so steep as to defy any attempt to scale them, while the fourth was guarded by a triple ditch and rampart. Three lines of wall, built of hewn stone and strengthened with towers and battlements, encircled the keep, which was stored with provisions and arms offensive and defensive, and crowded with picked men-at-arms who laughed to scorn the rashness of the young duke in attempting to besiege a fortress which all his predecessors had looked upon as well-nigh unapproachable. But he cleared its approaches with a ruthless energy such as they little expected, cutting down vineyards, burning houses, levelling every obstacle before him, till he pitched his tents close to the castle walls under the eyes of the astonished townsfolk. A sally of the latter only resulted in making a way for Richard’s entrance into the town; three days later the castle surrendered, and Geoffrey himself with it.[1010] Ten days’ more fighting brought all the rebels to submission and reduced Vulgrin of Angoulême himself to give up his capital city and his castle of Montignac in Périgord;[1011] and at Whitsuntide Richard went to report his success with his own lips to his delighted father in England.[1012]

He returned shortly before Michaelmas,[1013] to witness the opening of a new phase in the relations between the Angevin house and the French Crown. Philip of France, the only son of Louis VII., was now fourteen years old, and his father was desirous to have him crowned king. Before the appointed day arrived, however, he fell sick almost to death.[1014] Louis, half wild with anxiety, dreamed that the martyr of Canterbury required him to visit his shrine as a condition of the boy’s recovery.[1015] He hurried across the Channel; Henry met him at Dover and conducted him to Canterbury, where they both spent three days in fasting and prayer before the shrine; and on the fourth day after his landing Louis re-entered his own country, to find that his prayers were answered.[1016] His brief visit was long remembered in England, where no king of France had ever been seen before,[1017] or was ever seen again save when John the Good was brought there as a prisoner in the days of Edward III. Scarcely, however, had Philip recovered when Louis himself was stricken down by paralysis.[1018] This calamity made him all the more anxious for his son’s coronation, which took place at Reims on All Saints’ day. The archbishop of the province—a brother of Queen Adela—performed the rite, assisted by nearly all the bishops of Gaul; all the great vassals of the kingdom were present, among them the young King Henry, who in his capacity of duke of Normandy carried the crown before his youthful overlord in the procession to and from the cathedral church, as Count Philip of Flanders carried the sword of state.[1019] Like the crowning of young Henry himself, the crowning of Philip Augustus proved to be a beginning of troubles. His father’s helpless condition left the boy-king to fall under the influence of whatever counsellor could first get at his ear. That one happened to be his godfather, Philip of Flanders; and the policy of Flanders was to get the boy entirely under his own control by setting him against all his father’s old friends,[1020] and even against his mother, whom he tried to rob of her dower-lands and persecuted to such a degree that she was compelled to leave his domains and fly to her brothers for the protection which her husband was powerless to give her.[1021] The united forces of Flanders and of the Crown—for the latter were now wholly at Philip’s command[1022]—were, however, more than a match for those of Champagne and Blois; and the house of Blois was driven to seek help of the only power which seemed capable of giving it—the power of their old rivals of Anjou.[1023]

The days were long gone by when it had been a chief part of the Angevin interest and policy to set the French king and the house of Blois at variance with each other. If Henry had needed any proof that the rivalry of Blois was no longer to be feared, he would have found it in the appeal for succour thus sent to him by Queen Adela and her brothers, and supported by his own eldest son, who at Mid-Lent 1180 went over to England purposely to consult with him on the state of affairs in France. Before Easter father and son both returned to Normandy, and there held a personal meeting with the French queen, her brothers Theobald of Blois and Stephen of Sancerre, and several other victims of young Philip’s tyranny. Pledges of good faith were exchanged, and summons were issued for a general levy of all Henry’s forces, on both sides of the sea, ready to attack Philip after Easter.[1024] Before the attack could be made, however, Philip had got himself into such difficulties as to render it needless. As soon as Lent was over he went into Flanders and there married a niece of its count, Elizabeth, daughter of the count of Hainaut.[1025] He then summoned all the princes of his realm to meet him at Sens on Whit-Sunday for the coronation of himself and his queen. The marriage had, however, given such offence that Philip of Flanders, in dread of opposition to his niece’s crowning, persuaded the young king to anticipate the ceremony and have her crowned together with himself at S. Denis, early in the morning of Ascension-day, by the archbishop of Sens.[1026] The wrath of the great vassals knew no bounds; and the wrath of the archbishop of Reims was almost more formidable still, for the exclusive right to crown the king of France was a special prerogative of his see, and he at once forwarded to Rome an indignant protest against the outrage done to him by his royal nephew.[1027] Philip of France and Guy of Sens had in fact put themselves into a position which might easily have become almost as full of peril as that into which Henry of England and Roger of York had put themselves by a somewhat similar proceeding ten years before. As, however, William of Reims was not a Thomas of Canterbury, the consequences were less tragic; and Henry himself must have been tempted to smile at the turning of the tables which suddenly placed in his hands the task of shielding Philip from the consequences of his rashness, and reconciling him to the outraged Church and the offended people.

There was a story that young Henry of Anjou, standing close behind his brother-in-law Philip on his first coronation-day in Reims cathedral, had bent forward to hold the crown upon the boy’s head, and thus relieve him of its weight and keep it safely in its place.[1028] The little act of brotherly kindness and protecting care may be taken as typical of the political attitude which Henry’s father actually assumed towards the boy-king of the French, and which he faithfully maintained until Philip himself rendered its maintenance impossible. It was in truth no new thing for a count of Anjou to act as the protector of a king of France. But we may fairly question whether this traditional function of the Angevin house had ever been fulfilled so honestly and unselfishly as it was by Henry during the first two years of Philip’s reign. It was Henry alone who, by his personal influence and tact, brought Philip himself to reason and the count of Flanders to submission.[1029] Next year, when Philip had been left sole king of France by the death of Louis VII.,[1030] it was Henry whose mediation checked an attempt of the Flemish count to avenge by force of arms the loss of his influence at court;[1031] and when a few months later the house of Blois, with characteristic inconstancy, made common cause with Flanders against France, it was the prompt and vigorous action of Henry’s sons which alone saved the royal domain from invasion on all sides at once, and enabled their young sovereign to hold out against his assailants till Henry himself came over to patch up another settlement in the spring of 1182.[1032]

Other needs, however, than those of the French Crown were once more calling for Henry’s presence in Gaul. The condition of Aquitaine only grew more unsatisfactory, in spite or in consequence of Richard’s efforts to improve it. Henry’s bargain with Adalbert of La Marche had failed to secure him the possession of that county; the brother-lords of Lusignan claimed it as next-of-kin to Adalbert as soon as the king’s back was turned, and made good their claim by forcible occupation.[1033] The Limousin was again threatening revolt; the town-walls of Limoges were razed by Richard’s order at midsummer 1181.[1034] Almost at the same moment the death of Count Vulgrin of Angoulême opened a fresh source of strife; his two brothers laid claim to his inheritance against his only daughter, whom Richard of course took into wardship as a feudal heiress, and on Richard’s refusal to admit their claims they made common cause with Ademar of Limoges.[1035] The mischief however did not end here. Richard’s unbending resolve to bridle Aquitaine had gradually stirred up against him the bitter hatred of the whole people—a hatred for which his stern rule is quite sufficient to account, without admitting the blacker charges brought against him by the reckless tongues of the south.[1036] The voice of Bertrand de Born had once more given the signal for a general rising. A sirvente which went forth from Hautefort in 1181 rang like a trumpet-call in the ears of the lords of Ventadour and Comborn and Périgord and Dax, of Angoulême and Pons and Taillebourg.[1037] But even this was not all. Years before, it seems, there had flashed through the troubadour’s quick brain a possibility of stirring up strife in higher quarters than among the petty princes of his native land. Now he distinctly saw the possibility of finding for the Aquitanian resistance to Richard a rallying-point and a leader in Richard’s own brother.