Peace, however, never lasted long either in Aquitaine or in King Henry’s family. His eldest son now again grew importunate for a definite and immediate share in the family heritage. When this was refused, he fled to the court of France, and was only recalled by a promise of an increased pecuniary allowance for himself and his queen.[1048] Aquitaine, as soon as Henry had left it, drifted into a state of anarchy more frightful than any that had ever been known there before; the sudden conclusion of the war had let loose all over the country a crowd of mercenaries—commonly known as “Brabantines,” but really the off-scouring of every land from Flanders to Aragon—who wrought, as a local writer says, such havoc as had never been seen since the days of the heathen northmen.[1049] The evil in some measure brought its own remedy with it, for it drove the common people to take into their own hands the maintenance of peace and order. A poor Auvergnat carpenter, urged by a vision of the Blessed Virgin, set forth under the protection of the diocesan bishop to preach the cause of peace in his native district of Le Puy. Those who were like-minded with him, no matter what their rank or calling, enrolled themselves in a society bound together by solemn pledges for mutual support in adherence to right and resistance to wrong in every shape; and in a few years these “Caputii,” as they were called from the linen capes or hoods which they always wore in fight, proved more than a match for the Brabantines.[1050]

Meanwhile, however, the warlike barons of Aquitaine were exasperated at the failure of their league against Richard; and their anger reached its height when at the conclusion of the Christmas festivities held by King Henry and his sons at Caen, the young king of his own accord renewed his oath of allegiance to his father, confessed his secret alliance with Richard’s enemies, and offered to abandon it and make peace with his brother if his father would but insist upon the surrender of Clairvaux. Richard, after some hesitation, gave up to his father the fortress in dispute.[1051] The incident apparently opened Henry’s eyes to the necessity of clearly defining his sons’ political relations with each other; and while Bertrand de Born was giving a voice to the wrath of his fellow-barons at the young king’s desertion of their cause,[1052] Henry led his three sons back to Angers, made them all take an oath of obedience to him and peace with each other,[1053] and then called upon the two younger to do homage to the eldest for their fiefs.[1054] Geoffrey obeyed;[1055] Richard indignantly refused, declaring it was utterly unreasonable that there should be any distinction of rank between children of the same parents, and that if the father’s heritage belonged of right to the eldest son, the mother’s was equally due to the second.[1056] The young king, on the other hand, was on account of his entanglements with the Aquitanian barons almost as unwilling to receive the homage as Richard was to perform it.[1057] The end of the discussion was that Richard quitted the court, “leaving behind him nothing but threats and insults,” and hurried into Poitou to prepare for defence and defiance.[1058]

In the first burst of his anger Henry bade the other two brothers go and “subdue Richard’s pride” by force of arms.[1059] Immediately afterwards, however, he summoned all three, together with the aggrieved barons of Aquitaine, to meet him in conference at Mirebeau.[1060] But the young king had already marched into Poitou and received a warm welcome there;[1061] Geoffrey, to whom his father had intrusted his summons to the barons, led a motley force of Bretons, Brabantines and mercenaries of all kinds to Limoges;[1062] soon afterwards young Henry joined him; with the viscount’s help they threw themselves into the citadel,[1063] and set to work to raise the whole country against Richard. He, in his extremity, appealed to his father;[1064] and Henry at once hurried to the rescue. For six weeks he laid siege to the citadel of Limoges;[1065] twice he was personally shot at, and narrowly escaped with his life; twice the young king came to him with offers of submission, and each time he was welcomed with open arms, but each time the submission was a mere feint, designed to keep Henry quiet and give the barons time to wreak their vengeance upon Richard.[1066] By Easter matters were so far advanced that Bertrand de Born was openly calling for aid upon Flanders, France and Normandy;[1067] and the dread of a rising in this last-named quarter prompted Henry to send orders for the arrest of those barons, both in Normandy and England, who had been most conspicuous in the rebellion of 1173.[1068]

The young king at the same time quitted Limoges to make a diversion at Angoulême. On his return, however, he found it impossible to re-enter Limoges; its townsfolk had by this time so fully awakened to his real character and to their own best interests that they drove him from their walls with a volley of stones, shouting “We will not have this man to reign over us!”[1069] He had already robbed them of their wealth and stripped the shrine of their patron saint to provide wages for his Brabantines;[1070] and the insult goaded him to yet more unsparing plunder and yet more reckless sacrilege. From the castle of Aixe, which he took on the Monday in Rogation-week, he advanced to Grandmont, a religious house whose inmates enjoyed, amid the now general decay of monastic sanctity, an almost unique reputation for piety and virtue, and were known to be held by his father in especial reverence and esteem. He wrung from them all the treasure they possessed, and forcibly carried off a golden pyx, his father’s gift, from the high altar itself. He then proceeded to Uzerches, where the duke of Burgundy and the count of Toulouse met him with reinforcements on Ascension-day; from Uzerches he moved southward to Donzenac and Martel, and thence to Rocamadour.[1071] Rocamadour was the most famous of the holy places of Aquitaine; besides the tomb of the hermit from whom its name was derived, it boasted of a statue of the Virgin which attracted as many pilgrims as the shrine of S. James at Compostella; and among the treasures of its church, which was said to have been founded by Zacchæus the publican, was a sword traditionally believed to be the famous “Durandal”—the sword of the Paladin Roland, devoted by him to the Blessed Virgin on the eve of his last campaign, and carried to her shrine at Rocamadour after the disaster of Roncevaux. Heedless alike of paladins and of saints, the young king stripped the shrine of S. Amadour[1072] as he had stripped that of S. Martial; and local tradition declares that he also carried off the hallowed sword, leaving his own dishonoured brand in its place.

He had been ailing ever since he left Uzerches;[1073] now, on his return to Martel, his baffled rage threw him into a fever, to which other complications were soon added.[1074] Conscience awoke as death drew near. From the blacksmith’s cottage[1075] where he lay awaiting his end he sent a message to Limoges, imploring his father to come and speak with him once more.[1076] Henry would have gone, but his friends, in their natural dread of another trick, prevented him;[1077] he sent, however, a bishop charged with a message of love and pardon,[1078] and as a token of the genuineness of the commission, a precious ring, said to be an heirloom from Henry I.[1079] The messenger was only just in time. On the Tuesday in Whitsun-week the young king called together the bishops and religious men who had gathered round him at the tidings of his sickness, confessed his sins first privately, then publicly, before all his followers, was absolved and received the Holy Communion.[1080] For three more days he lingered, long enough to receive his father’s message of forgiveness and to dictate a letter to him, pleading that the same clemency might be extended to his mother the captive Queen Eleanor, to his own young Queen Margaret, and to all his servants, friends, adherents and allies;[1081] beseeching also that his father would make atonement in his stead for the sacrileges which he had committed against the holy places of Aquitaine, and would cause his body to be buried at Rouen in the cathedral church of our Lady.[1082] In the early twilight of S. Barnabas’s day he repeated his confession, after which he begged to be wrapped once more in his cloak, marked with the cross which he had taken at Limoges in petulance rather than in piety. Now, however, he was in earnest, and when the sacred symbol had rested for a moment on his shoulder he gave it to his best-beloved knight, William the Marshal, charging him to bear it to the Holy Sepulchre and thus fulfil his vow in his stead.[1083] He then caused his attendants to strip him of his soft raiment, clothe him in a hair-shirt and put a rope round his neck; with this he bade the assembled clergy drag him out of bed and lay him on a bed of ashes strewed for the purpose. There, lying as if already in his grave, with a stone at his head and another at his feet, he received the last sacraments;[1084] and there, an hour after nones,[1085] kissing his father’s ring he died.[1086]