Early in November Richard was at, or near, Tours, when suddenly the tidings of an event which had occurred in Holy Land four months before changed the whole current of his aspirations and desires. On July 7 the Saracens under Saladin had won a great victory at Hattin over the Latin king of Jerusalem, Guy of Lusignan, and captured not only Guy himself, but also the most sacred relic in all Christendom, the relic of the Holy Cross. This news arrived in France about the end of October or beginning of November.[261] It came to Richard’s ears—so the story goes—one evening; his resolve was made at once and with his whole heart; early next morning he received the Cross from the hand of Archbishop Bartholomew.[262] When Henry, who seems to have been in Normandy, was informed of his son’s action, he appeared exceedingly perturbed, and for several days would scarcely see anyone.[263] Not a word of comment on 1187 the matter, however, passed his lips till Richard rejoined him. Then, after a few days, he said: “Thou shouldst by no means have undertaken so weighty a business without consulting me. Nevertheless, I will not oppose thy pious design, but will so further it that thou mayest fulfill it right well.”[264] Philip on the other hand was quick to seize the opportunity for bringing up again the matter of Gisors and Aloysia. That Aloysia’s plighted bridegroom should betake himself to far-off Holy Land while that question was still unsettled was a thing not to be tolerated; so Philip “gathered a great host” and threatened that he would harry all the English king’s lands on the French side of the sea unless either Gisors were surrendered or Richard married to Aloysia without more ado. Henry, on hearing this, hurried back from the Norman coast to the border for a meeting 1188 with Philip at Hilary-tide (1188).[265] Their conference was interrupted by the arrival of the Archbishop of Tyre, who had come to Europe to plead as only one who had personal knowledge of the state of affairs in Holy Land could plead, for a Crusade to check the advance of Saladin. Carried away by his appeal, both kings took the Cross[266] and separated to prepare for the enterprise on which they agreed to set out together at the next Easter twelvemonth; that is, Easter 1190.[267]
Whether Richard had been present at the conference does not appear; he was, however, at Le Mans with his father a few days afterwards, when Henry issued the ordinance for the “Saladin tithe” to raise money for the Crusade.[268] The 1188 kings might require a delay of fifteen months to make their preparations; but the count of Poitou had no mind to be so long detained from fulfilling his vow. He now came to his father with two requests. First, he begged that the king would either lend him money for his expedition on the security of the county of Poitou, or would give him leave to raise the needful sum by pledging that county to some safe and trustworthy man known to be loyal to both father and son, and would confirm the transaction by a royal charter. Secondly, he prayed that “forasmuch as the journey that lay before him was long and perilous, lest aught should be maliciously plotted to his disadvantage during such a lengthy absence” he might be permitted to receive the fealty of the nobles of England and of Henry’s continental lands, “saving in all things the fealty due to his father.” To the former of these requests Henry answered that his son should go to Palestine with him; they would have in common all things needful for their journey, and “nought should separate them but death.” No answer could Richard get but this, which in regard to his second request was tantamount to a refusal.[269] Yet he had asked nothing beyond what was natural and reasonable; nothing, indeed, beyond what he might have fairly expected to receive without needing to ask for it. A public confirmation of the rights of King Henry’s eldest surviving son as heir to the crown of England and to the headship of the house of Anjou, such as would safeguard those rights until the son’s return from Holy Land in case the father should die before the Crusade was over, was a measure of obvious prudence not merely for the personal interest of the heir but also for the security of the Angevin dominion as a whole. Henry’s obstinate silence when the measure was suggested to him was one more indication that his sense of right and his care for the future of his house were both alike obscured by his infatuation for John. Richard understood it only too well, and “finding that he could get no other answer, he departed from his father in heart as well as in body.”[270]
No considerations either of policy or of self-interest, 1188 however, had any influence on his resolve to fulfil his vow without delay. While his father returned to England,[271] he hurried back to Poitou, sent messengers to his brother-in-law, King William of Sicily, to expedite arrangements for the equipment of the ships needful for his voyage, and busied himself with preparations for setting out in the coming summer.[272] But his plans were checked by a new outbreak of revolt. Geoffrey of Lusignan, it is said, laid an ambush for one of Richard’s most intimate friends and treacherously put him to death. Richard of course marched against Geoffrey, and punished him by taking several of his castles and slaughtering a number of his men, only those being spared who purchased their lives by taking the Cross.[273] Geoffrey’s outrage proved to be part of a concerted rising which ran what had now become the ordinary course of an Aquitanian revolt. The rebels, headed as usual by Aimar of Angoulême and Geoffrey of Rancogne, harried the domains of the count of Poitou, and the count retaliated by overrunning their lands, capturing and destroying their castles, burning and wasting their farms and orchards, till he had once more subdued them to his will.[274] The leaders took refuge in Taillebourg, and there they were surrounded by Richard’s forces. The damage inflicted by him on that famous stronghold in 1179 had doubtless been long ago repaired; but this time the siege lasted only a few days, though the place was occupied by “more than seventy picked men of might.” They surrendered on the only condition which Richard would grant—that every one of them should join him in his Crusade.[275] This was an excellent practical expedient for increasing the force which he hoped to lead to Palestine, and at the same time withdrawing from Aquitaine the men who were most likely to cause a disturbance if left there during his absence.
But behind the revolt lay graver complications. It was rumoured that King Henry, in the hope of compelling his son 1188 to abandon his project, had not only stirred up Geoffrey of Lusignan and the other rebels and secretly furnished them with help and money, but had also instigated Raymond of Toulouse to join them against Richard.[276] However this may be, Raymond did, while Richard was busy quelling the revolt in Saintonge, capture “certain merchants from Richard’s land” who were travelling through the land of Toulouse; some of them he imprisoned, some he blinded and mutilated, some he put to death.[277] On hearing of this Richard, after again destroying the defences of Taillebourg,[278] marched into Gascony and there collected a great force of Brabantines with which he invaded the county of Toulouse.[279] In a short time he took Moissac and several other castles of Raymond’s, harried all the northern part of the county with fire and sword,[280] and captured, among many other prisoners, a certain intimate friend of Raymond’s, Peter Seilun, who had long been Richard’s enemy and is said to have instigated the imprisonment of the Poitevin merchants. Richard placed this man in close and harsh confinement and refused all Raymond’s offers of ransom for him. Raymond now began a system of treacherous warfare against Richard, laying ambushes for him and his soldiers, and setting men on the watch, in towns and castles, to seize anybody who belonged to the following of either Richard or Henry. By this means two knights of Henry’s household, who had been on pilgrimage to Compostella and for some reason or 1188 other went round by Toulouse on their way home, were captured and imprisoned. After a while Raymond let one of them go—seemingly on parole—to Richard with a message that both should be set free, if Richard would liberate Peter Seilun in exchange. Richard, however, on learning that they had been captured when pilgrims, declared that “no prayers and no price” should make him a party to such a transaction; “it would be an intolerable offence against God and His holy Apostle S. James, were he to give a ransom for men whose character of pilgrims was in itself sufficient to entitle them to their freedom.”[281] Meanwhile Raymond had complained to Philip Augustus of Richard’s invasion of Toulouse, as being a breach of the agreement made between the two kings when they took the Cross, that no interference with each other’s lands should take place till after the Crusade.[282] Philip appears to have gone “into those parts” in person, hoping to pacify the belligerents; and to him the captive knights, finding they could get no help from Richard, told their story. Philip seemingly regarded the matter in the same light as Richard; he bade Raymond release them “not for love of the king of England or of Count Richard, but out of love and reverence for S. James.” Raymond, however, still insisted on the condition which he had originally demanded. “Then the French king, seeing he could make no peace or agreement between the two counts, inflamed with wrath and mortal hatred against each other, returned to France.” He, however, so far took Raymond’s part as to send messengers over sea to Henry, complaining of Richard’s doings in Toulouse, and asking the English king to make amends for them; to which Henry merely answered “that it was not by his counsel or desire that his son had done any of these things, and that he could not justify him.”[283]
Whatever may have been Henry’s real share—if indeed he had any real share at all—in the origin of the quarrel, matters had by this time reached a pass at which his personal sympathies could hardly fail to be on the side of his son. Richard had taken no less than seventeen castles in the 1188 territory of Toulouse,[284] and was almost at the gates of its capital city—that famous city which both he and his father had always longed to call their own, and of which he still considered himself the rightful owner as being through his mother the legal representative of Count William IV—and was actually preparing to lay siege to it.[285] Both Raymond and Philip were so much alarmed that Philip, at Raymond’s entreaty, sent envoys to the invader to tell him that if he would desist, “he should receive his rights and be justly compensated for his wrongs in the Court of France.” The French king’s distrust of Henry’s attitude in the affair was shown by his despatch at the same time of another mission, to the seneschals of Normandy and Anjou, warning them that they must either “recall count Richard” at once, or consider themselves no longer protected by the truce between the two kings. Henry, no doubt urged by the terrified seneschals, sent to admonish his son; but his admonitions and Philip’s threats were alike unheeded.[286] To Henry, indeed, Richard’s answer was that “he had done no ill in the lands of the count of S. Gilles except by leave of the king of France, forasmuch as the count refused to be in the truce and peace which the two kings had made.”[287]
The king of France, however, was now gathering his host for an invasion of the Angevin lands. Directing his attack against the unprotected north-eastern frontier of Aquitaine, after seizing some of the border castles of Touraine,[288] he advanced into Berry, and by the middle of June was master of its northern part as far as Châteauroux, which he captured on June 16.[289] On that day Henry, perplexed and terrified alike by what he heard of Philip’s doings and of Richard’s, despatched four envoys to the former “to entreat for peace 1188 in some form or other.”[290] If they ever reached the French king, their mission was fruitless; he continued his conquests till he was master of everything that Henry possessed or claimed in Berry and Auvergne as far as Montluçon.[291]
On July 11 Henry returned to Normandy with an armed force of English and Welshmen, and at once summoned the Norman host to a muster at Alençon.[292] Richard meanwhile had abandoned his attack on the lesser foe to march against the greater one, and was advancing northward with fresh forces towards Berry. Philip, probably fearing to be caught between two fires, hereupon retired into France, leaving Châteauroux in the custody of William des Barres.[293] Richard, “by way of doing something,”[294] began to devise schemes for regaining the place. One day some of its garrison who had been out on a foraging expedition found on their return the gate blocked by him and his troops. They, however, cut their way through and stirred up their comrades within the castle to make a sally in force. The Poitevins, taken by surprise, were repulsed with heavy loss; the count himself was in such danger that he fled for his life. Thrown from his horse, he was rescued by a sturdy butcher,[295] and with the remnant of his troops rejoined his father, seemingly somewhere in Touraine. The defence of Henry’s frontiers was clearly the matter most in need of attention now; father and son accordingly led their combined forces back to the Norman border. At Trou, in the south-eastern corner of Maine, they were all but overtaken by Philip “with a great host”; they escaped, however, and the loss of forty knights and the burning of Trou (which Philip fired because he could not take it[296]) were compensated by Richard’s capture of a neighbouring fortress, Les Roches, with its garrison of twenty-five knights and forty men-at-arms. This place was in the dominions of Count Burchard of Vendôme, who was an adherent of the king of France.[297] Philip dropped the pursuit, and on August 16 met Henry in 1188 conference at Gisors, but they came to no agreement.[298] Among other proposals there seems to have been one for a settlement of the disputes between the two kings by a combat of four champions on either side. Four names on the English (or Angevin) side were suggested to Henry by William the Marshal; Richard was offended because his own name was not among them. “You have done me grievous wrong; of all the men of my father’s lands I was deemed one of the best to defend him; but you give him to understand otherwise.” The Marshal protested that Richard misinterpreted his motive: “You are our lord the king’s most direct heir; it would be an outrage and crime to risk your life in such a business.” “It is true, Richard,” interposed Henry, “what he has said is but right”; and therewith it seems the whole project fell to the ground.[299] At the end of the month Richard, hearing that Philip was at Mantes, proposed to attack that place. The expedition, however, resulted merely in a skirmish between Richard himself, Earl William de Mandeville, and some of Henry’s followers on the one side and a few French knights on the other, in which William des Barres, who had been commandant of Châteauroux for Philip at the time of Richard’s recent adventure there, was made prisoner by Richard, but broke his parole and escaped.[300] Next day Richard took leave of his father, “promising that he would serve him well and faithfully,” and set out again for Berry.[301] What he did there we are not told; but he seems to have recovered at least one—Palluau—of the castles which Philip had captured in the spring.[302]
The war languished partly because the counts of Flanders and Blois and some other chief nobles of France refused to fight against princes who, like themselves, wore the Cross; and in October Philip asked Henry for another conference. It took place on October 7 at Châtillon, on the border of Touraine and Berry. A proposition that all conquests made by Philip from Henry and by Richard from Raymond of Toulouse since the beginning of the truce should be restored came to nothing through Philip’s demand for a security which Henry would not grant. Then, it seems, Richard offered to do what Philip had in vain required of him a few months before—to go to the French king’s court and stand to its judgement on all that had taken place between himself and the count of S. Gilles, “in order that peace might be made between his father and the king of France.”[303] The action of the French magnates may have opened Richard’s eyes to the unseemliness of all this strife between fellow-soldiers of the Cross and led him to see that peace, at almost any price, was absolutely necessary for the purpose which he had most at heart, the fulfilment of his vow of Crusade. His proposal, however, “greatly displeased” his father,[304] and Philip seems to have deemed the moment a favourable one for seeking to impose upon Richard some other requirements whose nature we are not told, but which led to “high and bad words” and finally resulted in the count of Poitou giving his lord paramount the lie direct and calling him a “vile recreant,” whereupon the conference broke up with a mutual defiance.[305] Philip went into Berry, re-took Palluau, and proceeded to Châteauroux, but only to withdraw the mercenaries whom he had left there and lead them back to Bourges, where he dismissed them.[306]