The repairing of this disaster gave Philip sufficient occupation for the rest of the year, and Richard was free to march upon the Aquitanian rebels. Sancho of Navarre was already wasting the lands of the ringleaders, Geoffrey of Rancogne and Ademar of Angoulême;[1836] and by July 22 Richard was able to report to his justiciar in England that he was master of all the castles of the Angoumois and all the lands of Geoffrey.[1837] From Angoulême he marched northward again, took measures for the security of Anjou and Maine,[1838] and then returned to Normandy, where he found that his representatives, headed by the chancellor, had just concluded a truce with the French king to last till All Saints’ day[1839]—a proceeding which served him as the pretext for that withdrawal of the seal from William and repudiation of all engagements made under it, which has been mentioned already.[1840] No further movement was however made by either party until the spring. Then the wearisome story of fruitless negotiations alternating with indecisive warfare begins again, and goes on unceasingly for the next four years. Save for an occasional attempt to make a diversion in Berry, the actual fighting between the two kings was confined to the Norman border.[1841] Normandy was the chief object of Philip’s attack, partly no doubt because, owing to its geographical position, he could invade it with more ease and less risk than any other part of Richard’s dominions, but also because it was the key to all the rest. A French conquest of Normandy would sever Richard’s communications not only with Flanders and Germany, but also with England; and the strength of the Angevins in Gaul now rested chiefly upon the support of their island-realm. Neither assailant nor defender, however, was able to gain any decisive advantage in the field. The armed struggle between them was in fact of less importance than the diplomatic rivalry which they carried on side by side with it; and in this, strangely enough, Richard, who had hitherto shewn so little of the far-sighted statecraft and political tact of his race, proved more than a match for his wily antagonist.

That the foes in Richard’s own household should league themselves against him with Philip, as he had done in earlier days against his own father, was, so far as Richard himself is concerned, no more than retributive justice. Philip’s alliance with John had proved a failure; but it was not long before he saw a chance of securing a more useful tool in the person of little Arthur of Britanny. English historians tell us that when Richard and Philip made their treaty at Messina in March 1191 Richard obtained a formal acknowledgement of his rights, as duke of Normandy, to the overlordship of Britanny and the liege homage of its duke.[1842] The text of the treaty of Messina, however, contains not a word on this subject; the agreement, if made at all, must have been drawn up in a separate form; and it seems to have remained a dead letter, like another agreement made at the same place a few months earlier—the treaty with Tancred whereby Richard had engaged to recognize Arthur of Britanny as his successor in default of direct heirs. Although after five years of marriage Queen Berengaria was still childless, no such recognition had yet been made. Richard on his return to Europe probably perceived that Arthur’s succession would be impossible in England, and in Gaul would be fatal to the independence of the Angevin house. Accordingly, he was once more doing all in his power to win the attachment of John; and John, having at length discovered that his own interests could be better served by supporting his brother than by intriguing against him, proved an active and useful ally in the war against Philip.[1843] On the other hand, Richard seems never to have received Arthur’s homage for Britanny; and those who had the control of political affairs in that country were determined that he never should. The dispute between Henry and Philip for the wardship of the two children of Geoffrey and Constance had apparently ended in a compromise. Eleanor, the elder child, was now under the care of her uncle Richard;[1844] but Constance seems to have succeeded in keeping her infant boy out of the reach of both his would-be guardians, and, moreover, in governing her duchy without any reference to either of them, for nearly seven years after the death of her father-in-law King Henry. She had been given in marriage by him, when scarcely twelve months a widow, to Earl Ralf of Chester,[1845] son and successor of Earl Hugh who had been one of the leaders in the revolt of 1173. As the earls of Chester were hereditary viscounts of the Avranchin—the border-district of Normandy and Britanny—this marriage would have furnished an excellent means of securing the Norman hold upon the Breton duchy, if only Ralf himself could have secured a hold upon his wife. In this however he completely failed. Safe in her hereditary dominions, with her boy at her side, and strong in the support of her people rejoicing in their newly-regained independence, Constance apparently set Ralf, Richard and Philip all alike at defiance, till in 1196 Richard summoned her to a conference with himself in Normandy, and she set out to obey the summons. Scarcely had she touched the soil of the Avranchin at Pontorson when she was caught by her husband and imprisoned in his castle of S. James-de-Beuvron.[1846] It is hard not to suspect that Richard and Ralf had plotted the capture between them; for Richard, instead of insisting upon her release, at once renewed his claim to the wardship of Arthur, and prepared to enforce it at the sword’s point. The Bretons first hurried their young duke away to the innermost fastnesses of their wild and desolate country under the care of the bishop of Vannes,[1847] and then, after a vain attempt to liberate his mother, intrusted him to the protection of the king of France,[1848] who of course received him with open arms, and sent him to be educated with his own son.[1849]

Philip had now got the old Angevin patrimony between two fires; but the Bretons were so little accustomed to act in concert even among themselves, far less with any other power, that he found it impossible to make any real use of them as allies either for military or political purposes. The independent warfare which they carried on with Richard across the south-western border of Normandy[1850] had little effect upon that which Richard and Philip were carrying on along its eastern border; and upon the Angevin lands which lay directly between Britanny and France the Breton revolt had no effect at all. To the end of Richard’s life, we hear of no further troubles in Maine or Anjou. Nay more, we hear of no further troubles in Aquitaine. If Philip had in some sense turned Richard’s flank in the west, Richard had turned Philip’s flank far more effectually in the south. The unwonted tranquillity there may indeed have been partly due to the fact that one of the chief sources of disturbance was removed in 1196 by the withdrawal of Bertrand de Born into a monastery;[1851] but it was also in great measure owing to Richard’s quickness in seizing an opportunity which presented itself, in that same eventful year, of forming a lasting alliance with the house of Toulouse. His old enemy Count Raymond V. was dead;[1852] he now offered the hand of his own favourite sister, the still young and handsome Queen Jane of Sicily, to the new Count Raymond VI.;[1853] and thenceforth the eastern frontier of his Aquitanian duchy was as secure under the protection of his sister’s husband as its southern frontier under that of his wife’s brother, the king of Navarre.

Nor were Richard’s alliances confined within the boundaries of Gaul. His year of captivity in Germany had not been all wasted time. When he parted from his imperial jailor in the spring of 1194, they were, at any rate in outward semblance, close political allies; and at the same time Richard had succeeded in gaining over his bitterest foe, Leopold of Austria, by an offer of his niece Eleanor of Britanny as wife to Leopold’s son.[1854] The marriage-contract was however not yet executed when the Austrian duke met with a fatal accident and died in agony, owning with his last breath that his miserable end was a just retribution for his conduct towards the English king.[1855] The impression made by this event deepened the feeling of respect and awe which the captive lion had already contrived to inspire in the princes of the Empire. Meanwhile Henry VI. had made himself master of Sicily;[1856] and now the old dream by which the German Emperors never quite ceased to be haunted, the dream of re-asserting their imperial supremacy over Gaul, was beginning to shape itself anew in his brain. In the summer of 1195 he sent to Richard a golden crown and a message charging him, on his plighted faith to the Emperor and on the very lives of his hostages, to invade the French kingdom at once, and promising him the support and co-operation of the imperial forces. Richard, suspecting a trap, despatched William of Longchamp to inquire into the exact nature, extent and security of Henry’s promised assistance; Philip vainly tried to intercept the envoy as he passed through the royal domains;[1857] and the negotiations proved so far effectual that Henry remitted seventeen thousand marks out of the ransom, as a contribution to Richard’s expenses in his struggle with Philip.[1858] When, on Michaelmas Eve 1197, Henry VI. died,[1859] the use of that homage on Richard’s part which his English subjects had resented so bitterly was made apparent to them at last. While the English king was holding his Christmas court at Rouen there came to him an embassy from the princes of Germany, summoning him, as chief among the lay members of the Empire[1860] by virtue of his investiture with the kingdom of Arles, to take part with them in the election of a new Emperor at Cöln on February 22.[1861] Richard himself could not venture to leave Gaul; but the issue proved that his presence at Cöln was not needed to secure his interests there. He wished that the imperial crown should be given to his nephew Duke Henry of Saxony, eldest son and successor of Henry the Lion. This scheme, however, when laid before the other electors by the envoys whom he sent to represent him at Cöln, was rejected on account of the duke’s absence in Holy Land.[1862] The representatives of the English king then proposed Henry’s brother Otto, for whom Richard had long been vainly endeavouring to find satisfactory provision on either side of the sea,[1863] and who seems really to have been his favourite nephew. The result was that, on the appointed day, Otto was elected Emperor of the Romans,[1864] and on July 12 he was crowned king of the Germans at Aachen by the archbishop of Cöln.[1865]

For a moment, at the mere prospect of beholding a grandson of Henry Fitz-Empress seated upon the imperial throne of the west, there had flashed across the mind of at least one friend of the Angevin house a fancy that the world-wide dominion which seemed to be passing away from the heirs of Fulk the Good was to be renewed for yet one more generation.[1866] There was indeed an opposition party in Germany, who set up a rival Emperor in the person of Philip of Suabia, a brother of Henry VI.;[1867] and he at once made common cause with his French namesake.[1868] This Suabian alliance, however, and the support of the count of Ponthieu—purchased two years before with the hand of the unhappy Adela, whom Richard had at last restored to her brother[1869]—could not much avail Philip Augustus against such a league as was now gathering around the English king. The vast sums which Hubert Walter had been sending, year after year, to his royal master over sea were bringing a goodly interest at last. Flanders, Britanny, Champagne, had all been secretly detached from the French alliance and bought over to the service of Richard;[1870] the Flemish count had already drawn Philip into a war in which he narrowly escaped being made prisoner;[1871] and in the summer of 1198, when the imperial election was over, not only Baldwin of Flanders, Reginald of Boulogne, Baldwin of Guines, Henry of Louvain, Everard of Brienne, Geoffrey of Perche and Raymond of Toulouse, but even the young count Louis of Blois and the boy-duke Arthur of Britanny himself, one and all leagued themselves in an offensive and defensive alliance with Richard against the French king.[1872] The immediate consequence was that Philip begged Hubert Walter, who being just released from his justiciarship had rejoined his sovereign in Normandy, to make peace for him with Richard; and he even went so far as to offer the surrender of all the Norman castles which he had won, except Gisors. Richard however would listen to no terms in which his allies were not included.[1873] At last, in November, a truce was made, to last till the usual term, S. Hilary’s day.[1874] When it expired the two kings held a colloquy on the Seine between Vernon and Les Andelys, Richard in a boat on the river, Philip on horseback on the shore;[1875] this meeting was followed by another, where, by the mediation of a cardinal-legate, Peter of Capua, who had lately arrived in Gaul, they were persuaded to prolong their truce for five years.[1876]

Plan VII.