From La Frênaye another day’s ride would have brought the king to the Norman border. His first intention on leaving Le Mans had evidently been to fall back upon Normandy and there rally his forces—doubtless also to summon help from England—to renew the struggle with Philip; and this was the course to which his followers still urged him on the Tuesday morning. He, however, had changed his plans in the night. He seems to have made up his mind that his end was near; and in consequence, he had also made up his mind to go back to the Angevin lands. Since he had been compelled to leave his own birthplace in the enemy’s power, he would at any rate stand to the last by the old home of his father’s house, and die at his hereditary post as count of Anjou. He made William Fitz-Ralf and William de Mandeville swear that they would surrender the castles of Normandy to no one save John; he bade Geoffrey take the command of the troops, escort the barons with them as far as Alençon, and then come back to rejoin him in Anjou. Geoffrey, whose dominant feeling clearly was anxiety for his father’s personal safety, only stayed in Alençon long enough to secure the place and collect a fresh force of a hundred picked knights, and with these set off southward again to overtake his father. Henry meanwhile had started for Anjou almost alone. His son rejoined him at Savigny[1273]—whether it was the village of that name near Chinon, or one of several others further north, there is no means of deciding; but it is certain that by the end of the month Henry and his son were both safe at Chinon.[1274] Whether the king had made his way alone, or whether he had been at once the leader and the guide of the little Norman force, through the Angevin woodlands which as a hunter he had learned to know so well, and where he was now in danger of being hunted down in his turn—in either case this sick and weary man had achieved an adventure equal in skill and daring to those of Fulk Nerra’s most romantic days, or of his own youth. Once safe out of the enemy’s reach, he made no further movement until Philip, having possessed himself of the citadel of Le Mans[1275] and the remnant of the Cenomannian strongholds, and made his way southward by Chaumont and Amboise as far as Roche-Corbon,[1276] sent him a proposal for a meeting to be held at Azay on the last day of June.[1277] Henry apparently advanced from Chinon to Azay; but on that very day an attack of fever was added to the malady from which he was already suffering, and he was unable to attend the conference.[1278] It seems probable that he sent representatives to whom Philip and Richard made their propositions, and who may possibly have accepted them in his name.[1279] Certainly, however, no truce was made; for that same day Philip marched up to the southern bank of the Loire and drew up his host opposite the gates of Tours.[1280] Next day he forded the river—an easy exploit when it was half dried up by the summer’s heat[1281]—established his headquarters in the “borough of S. Martin” or Châteauneuf,[1282] and began to invest the city.[1283] Henry, it seems, had now gone to Saumur;[1284] there on the Sunday—July 2—he was visited, according to one account at his own request, by the archbishop of Reims, the count of Flanders and the duke of Burgundy, endeavouring to arrange terms of peace.[1285] The visit was a failure; it could not be otherwise, for the peacemakers were acting without Philip’s sanction, and in spite of a distinct warning from him that, whatever tidings they might bring back, he would assault Tours next morning.[1286] The morning came; the assault was made; the walls which had kept out Fulk Nerra and Geoffrey Martel could not avail to keep out Philip Augustus, enabled as he was by his possession of Châteauneuf and by the lack of water in the Loire to bring up his machines against their weakest side; and in a few hours he was master of Tours.[1287]

The tidings were carried at once to Henry, with a final summons to meet the conqueror at Colombières, half-way between Tours and Azay.[1288] Henry, at his wits’ end, consulted William the Marshal as to whether or not he should respond to the summons; William recommended him to follow the counsel of his barons; they advised that he should go, and he went. Most of his followers went with him; Geoffrey, however, feeling that he could not endure to see his father’s humiliation, besought and obtained permission to remain where he was.[1289] Henry found a lodging in a small commandery of Knights Templars at Ballan,[1290] close to Colombières; but he had no sooner reached it than he was seized with racking pains in every limb and every nerve. He again called for William the Marshal, who did his best to soothe him, and persuaded him to go to bed. Philip and Richard had always refused to believe that his sickness was anything but a feint, and despite the pleadings of his friends they still insisted that the conference should take place[1291] on the following day.[1292] When they saw him, however, they were compelled to admit the truth of his excuse; his sternly-set and colourless face shewed but too plainly how acutely he was suffering. So evident was his weakness that they offered him a seat—on a cloak spread upon the ground—but he refused it; he had not come there, he said, to sit down with them; he had come simply to hear and see what the French king demanded of him, and why he had taken away his lands.[1293] Philip formulated his demands with brutal bluntness; he required that Henry should put himself, as a conquered enemy, entirely at his mercy before he would discuss any terms at all.[1294] Henry could not at once bring himself to submit. Suddenly, amid the breathless stillness of the sultry July morning, a clap of thunder was heard, and the excited bystanders thought they actually saw a stroke of lightning fall out of the cloudless blue sky, directly between the two kings. Both started back in terror; after a while they rode forward again, and immediately there was a second peal of thunder. Henry’s shattered nerves gave way completely; he nearly fell from his horse, and at once placed himself wholly at Philip’s mercy.[1295] Then the terms were dictated to him. He was made to do homage to Philip, and to promise that Adela should be placed under guardians chosen by Richard, who was to marry her on his return from Palestine;—that Richard should receive the fealty of all the barons of the Angevin dominions, on both sides of the sea, and that all who had attached themselves to Richard’s party in the late war should be suffered to remain in his service and released from their obligations to his father, at any rate until the latter should be ready to set forth on the crusade;—that he would be thus ready, and would meet Philip and Richard at Vézelay, thence to start with them at Mid-Lent;[1296]—that he would renounce all claims upon Auvergne,[1297] and pay Philip an indemnity of twenty thousand marks.[1298] As security for the fulfilment of the treaty, Philip and Richard were to hold in pledge either three castles on the Norman border or two in Anjou, with the cities of Tours and Le Mans; and all Henry’s barons were to swear that they would hold their allegiance to him contingent only upon his fulfilment of these conditions.[1299] Finally, he was compelled to acknowledge himself reconciled with Richard, and to give him the kiss of peace. The kiss was indeed given; but it was accompanied by a whisper which Richard did not scruple to repeat for the amusement of the French court when the conference was over—“May I only be suffered to live long enough to take vengeance upon thee as thou deservest!”[1300]

One thing alone Henry asked and obtained in return for all this humiliation; a written list of those among his subjects whose services were transferred to Richard.[1301] The list was promised,[1302] and Henry was carried back, worn out with fatigue, suffering and shame, to the favourite home of his brighter days at Chinon.[1303] By the time he reached it he was too ill to do anything but lie down never to rise again. He sent back his vice-chancellor, Roger Malchat,[1304] to fetch the promised list of traitors; and on Roger’s return he bade him sit down beside his bed and read him out the names. With a sigh Roger answered: “Our Lord Jesus Christ help me, sire! the first written down here is Count John, your son.”[1305] The words gave Henry his death-blow. “Say no more,”[1306] he faltered, turning away his face.[1307] Yet the tale seemed too horrible to be true, and he started up again: “Can it be? John, my darling child, my very heart, for love of whom I have incurred all this misery—has he indeed forsaken me?” It could not be denied; he sank back again and turned his face to the wall, moaning: “Let things go now as they will; I care no more for myself or for the world.”[1308]

All through that day and the next he lay there, trembling from head to foot, sometimes appearing to see and hear nothing, and to be conscious of nothing but pain, murmuring broken words which no one could understand.[1309] At other times his delirium shewed itself in frenzied curses upon himself and his sons, which the attendant bishops vainly besought him to revoke.[1310] It was Geoffrey who at length managed to bring him to a somewhat calmer frame both of body and of mind. With his head on his son’s shoulder and his feet on the knees of a faithful knight, Henry at last seemed to have fallen asleep. When he opened his eyes again and saw Geoffrey patiently watching over him and fanning away the flies which buzzed around his head, he spoke in accents very different from any that he had used for some days past. “My dearest son! thou, indeed, hast always been a true son to me. So help me God, if I recover of this sickness, I will be to thee the best of fathers, and will set thee among the chiefest men of my realm. But if I may not live to reward thee, may God give thee thy reward for thy unchanging dutifulness to me!” “O father, I desire no reward but thy restoration to health and prosperity” was all that Geoffrey could utter, as the violence of his emotion so overcame his self-control that he was obliged to rush out of the room.[1311] The interval of calmness passed away, and the ravings of delirium were heard again; “Shame, shame upon a conquered king!” Henry kept muttering over and over again, till the third morning broke—the seventh day of the fever[1312]—and brought with it the lightning before death. Once more Geoffrey, stifling his own distress, came to his father’s side; once more he was rewarded by seeing Henry’s eyes open and gaze at him with evident recognition; once more the dying king recurred wistfully to his plans, not this time of vengeance upon his rebellious sons, but of advancement for the loyal one, faintly murmuring in Geoffrey’s ear how he had hoped to see him bishop of Winchester, or better still, archbishop of York;[1313] but he knew that for himself all was over. He took off a gold finger-ring, engraved with a leopard[1314]—the armorial device of the Angevin house—and handed it to Geoffrey, bidding him send it to the king of Castille, the husband of his daughter Eleanor; he also gave directions that another precious ring which lay among his treasures should be delivered to Geoffrey himself, and gave him his blessing.[1315] After this he was, by his own desire, carried into the chapel of the castle and laid before the altar; here he confessed his sins to the attendant bishops and priests, was absolved, and devoutly made his last Communion. Immediately afterwards he passed away.[1316]

Then followed one of those strange scenes which so often occurred after the death of a medieval king. The servants who should have laid out the body for burial stripped it and left it naked on the ground; and as during the three days that he lay dying they had plundered him of everything on which they could lay their hands, the few friends who were shocked at the sight could not find a rag wherewith to cover the dead king, till one of his knights, William de Trihan, took off his own cloak for the purpose.[1317] All this, however, was speedily set right by William the Marshal. He at once took the command of the little party—a duty for which Geoffrey was evidently unfitted by the violence of his grief—sent to call as many barons as were within reach to attend the funeral, and gave directions for the proper robing of the corpse.[1318] It was no easy matter to arrange within four-and-twenty hours, and utterly without resources, anything like a regal burial for this fallen king.[1319] William, however, managed to do it; and next day Henry Fitz-Empress, robed as if for his coronation, with a crown of gold upon his head, a gold ring on his finger, sandals on his feet, and a sceptre in his gloved right hand,[1320] was borne upon the shoulders of his barons down from his castle on the rock of Chinon, across the viaduct which he himself had built over the swampy meadows beneath, and thence northward along the left bank of the silvery, winding Vienne to his burial-place at Fontevraud.[1321] He had wished to be buried at Grandmont;[1322] but this of course was impossible now. “He shall be shrouded among the shrouded women”—so ran the closing words of a prophecy which during the last few months had been whispered throughout Henry’s dominions as a token of his approaching end. It was fulfilled now to the letter, as he lay in state in the abbey-church of Fontevraud, while the veiled sisters knelt by night and day murmuring their prayers and psalms around the bier.[1323]