Henry was anxious to get Richard into his own keeping; but Leopold was not disposed to part unconditionally with such a valuable prize. On January 6 he brought his prisoner before the Emperor at Ratisbon.[1067] “The evil counsels of Duke Leopold’s rivals,” says an Austrian chronicler, “prevented an immediate conclusion of the matter”; Richard was taken back to his Austrian prison,[1068] and it was not till February 14 that the Emperor and the duke came to terms. They began by laying down conditions to be required of the king for his release. They decided that he should give the Emperor a hundred thousand marks of silver, whereof Leopold should have half as the dowry of Richard’s niece Eleanor of Britanny, who should marry Leopold’s son; the marriage to take place and half the ransom to be paid and divided at Michaelmas, the other half in the following Lent. Richard was to set free, without ransom, Leopold’s relations Isaac of Cyprus and his daughter. He was to give the Emperor fifty galleys manned and furnished at his own cost, and carrying a hundred knights and fifty crossbowmen; he was also to go in person, with another hundred knights and fifty crossbowmen, with Henry to Sicily and help him to conquer it. In other words, the king of England was to be brought down to the level of the dukes of Austria and Suabia and Bavaria as a vassal of the Empire, within which neither he nor any of his predecessors, English, 1193 Norman, Angevin, or Poitevin, had ever held a particle of land. For the fulfilment of these conditions he was to give Henry two hundred hostages, who were not to be released till he had, furthermore, obtained for Leopold absolution from Rome—for the Pope on hearing of the capture of the royal Crusader had at once excommunicated his captor.[1069] If Richard did not fulfil all these conditions within a year, fifty of his hostages or he himself, as Leopold might choose, should be restored to the latter. The Emperor had to give his Austrian vassal two hundred sureties for the fulfilment of two further stipulations exacted by Leopold Feb. before he would part with his prize. In case of Henry’s death while Richard was in his custody, Richard was to be given back to Leopold; and in case of Leopold’s death his son was to step into his place for all the purposes of the treaty.[1070]
Henry of Hohenstaufen was a political visionary, obsessed, more strongly perhaps than any other German ruler before our own day, by the German dream of world-dominion; yet even he can scarcely have had any real hope of extorting Richard’s consent to the terms laid down in this curious document. Leopold of Austria was a practical-minded person, and moreover knew Richard too well to have any illusions on the subject; hence the strong safeguards by which he secured his claims as the original captor of the prize—safeguards which Henry dared not refuse to grant him. The Emperor could not afford to forfeit either the friendship of the duke of Austria or the advantages which the possession of Richard’s person would involve. In the autumn of 1191 Henry had made an attempt to take possession of Naples, and it had failed. The Guelfs had profited by his absence from Germany to stir up discontent and prepare a rising there. In November 1192 the bishop of Liége was murdered; the malcontents ascribed the sacrilegious crime to the instigation of the Emperor. The dukes of Brabant and Limburg (one of whom was brother 1193 and the other uncle to the murdered prelate) and the archbishop of Cologne were soon up in arms; the archbishop of Mentz, the duke of Bohemia, and other feudataries quickly followed their example; and at the back of the whole disturbance was King Richard’s brother-in-law, the old Saxon “Lion.” Nearly half Germany was in revolt.[1071] It was thus a matter of the utmost importance for the Emperor to secure the support of the duke of Austria, whose power and influence already extended considerably beyond the limits of the little territory from which he took his chief title. Outside his own realm Henry of Germany had now one ally, though the alliance was a secret one. Philip of France had travelled home from Palestine very leisurely[1072] by way of Italy; early in December 1191 he had met the Emperor at Milan,[1073] and their meeting had resulted in an agreement, private and informal, but well understood between them, to make common cause for the ruin of Richard. The capture of the English king gave them an opening for joint action sooner than they could have expected; and it also gave Henry an opportunity of posing before his malcontent vassals as supreme ruler, judge, and arbiter of all Europe. The actual transfer of Richard from Leopold’s custody to Henry’s did not take place till more than a month after the Würzburg compact was made; it was evidently thus arranged that it might coincide with the gathering of the imperial court for the Easter festival. On the Tuesday in Holy Week, probably at Spire, Richard was brought before the Emperor. Henry seems to have begun by demanding the full terms drawn up at Würzburg; we are told that he “required many things to which the king felt he could not consent, were it to save his very life.” Next, the Emperor brought against his captive a string of accusations, charging him with betrayal 1193 of the Holy Land,[1074] complicity in the death of Conrad, and violation of some agreement or compact said to have been made with Henry himself. Finally, some envoys from France, whose appearance at this opportune moment must surely have been pre-arranged, came forward and publicly “defied” the English king in their sovereign’s name. Richard, however, was ready with an answer to everything; he offered to stand to right in Philip’s court concerning the matters in dispute between Philip and himself, and met the Emperor’s charges with a fearless readiness which enhanced the general admiration already won for him by his frank yet dignified bearing. Henry saw that the feeling of the assembly was with the prisoner; so he suddenly changed his tone, assumed the character of Richard’s protector and friend, undertook to make agreement between him and Philip, and while “the people who stood around wept for joy,” showered upon him tokens of honour and promises of aid and publicly gave him the kiss of peace. Hereupon Richard, “through the mediation of the duke of Austria,” promised the Emperor a hundred thousand marks by way of ransom and reward. Henry answered that if his arbitration should not be successful he would be satisfied without any payment at all; but according to some envoys from England who were present, he on Maunday Thursday formally accepted Richard’s offer with the addition of a promise on Richard’s part to furnish him with fifty fully equipped galleys and two hundred knights for a year’s service.[1075] The show of friendliness was maintained, it seems, till the Easter festivities were over; then, when the court broke up, Henry despatched his prisoner to Triffels, a strong fortress on 1193 the highest point of the mountains between Suabia and Lorraine. The castle was said to have been built specially to serve as a prison for traitors to the Empire,[1076] and the imperial insignia were also kept in it.[1077] Here the king was placed under a strong guard of soldiers “picked out from among all the Germans for strength and bravery.” Girt with swords, they kept watch on him, as Leopold’s soldiers had done, day and night, and formed round his bed a ring which none of his own servants who shared his captivity were ever allowed to penetrate.[1078]
As soon as the justiciars in England heard of their sovereign’s captivity they took what steps they could in his behalf. They sent Bishop Savaric of Bath, who claimed some kinship with the house of Hohenstaufen, to negotiate with the Emperor for his release,[1079] and they endeavoured to ascertain where he was confined. All the world knows the story, put into its earliest and most charming literary shape by a French minstrel some seventy years later, which has for all after-time linked the name of its hero Blondel with that of the royal trouveur.[1080] Blondel de Nesle, a trouveur of some distinction, was a contemporary of Richard, and the story in itself is not impossible. The minstrel of Reims represents Blondel as having found Richard in the custody of the duke of Austria; if so, he must have set out at the very first 1193 tidings of the capture. The searchers officially sent from England, the abbots of Boxley and Robertsbridge, evidently went after the object of their search was known to have been transferred into the hands of the Emperor. They “wandered over all Alemannia” (western Germany or Suabia) “without finding him,” till they met him on Palm Sunday (March 21) at Ochsenfurt on his way to Spire. His guards evidently allowed them to confer with him freely; he was naturally delighted at the meeting, and questioned them eagerly about the state of his realm and the attitude of his vassals.[1081] The tidings they had to give him were not altogether satisfactory. England was tranquil and loyal, in spite of John’s efforts to make it otherwise. In Aquitaine a rising of the count of Périgord, the viscount of La Marche, and “nearly all the Gascon barons,” had been crushed by the seneschal of Gascony with the help of Richard’s brother-in-law, the son of the king of Navarre, and the victors had swept the country almost to the gates of Toulouse.[1082] But the Norman and Angevin lands sorely 1191 Dec. needed the presence of their lord. At the close of 1191 King Philip had reached Paris, and invited or summoned the seneschal and magnates of Normandy to a meeting which 1192 took place at Gisors on January 20, 1192.[1083] He demanded the restitution of Aloysia (who was in the tower at Rouen) Jan. and of Gisors, and the cession of the counties of Eu and Aumale, in virtue, seemingly, of a document which he exhibited as “the agreement made between himself and the king of England at Messina.” They answered that they had no orders from Richard on the subject and would not act without them.[1084] Philip then invited John to come over 1192 from England and receive investiture of all Richard’s continental territories, and the hand of Aloysia. John was nothing loth, but was detained in England by a threat from his mother and the justiciars to seize all his castles there if he crossed the sea. Next, Philip summoned his host for an invasion of Normandy; but his barons refused to attack 1193 the lands of an absent Crusader.[1085] Early in the following year—as soon as Richard was known to be safely out of the way in a German prison—John made another attempt to seduce the Norman barons from their allegiance. Failing in this, he proceeded into France and did homage to Philip on the conditions which had been proposed a year before.[1086]
Thus matters stood when the two English abbots set out on their quest. They were present at the Maunday Thursday assembly at Spire, and on their return home reported that “peace” had been there made between the Emperor and the king.[1087] If Richard was under the same delusion, he must have been speedily undeceived when he found himself shut up within the gloomy walls of Triffels and denied all further access to Henry’s presence.[1088] On the other hand, Henry was in all likelihood quite as much disappointed by the failure of all attempts to break the spirit of his prisoner. If we may trust an English chronicler whose information was probably derived from an eye-witness, Richard never gave his jailers the satisfaction of seeing a cloud on his brow; he was “always cheery and full of jest in talk, fierce and bold in action, according to circumstances. He would tease his warders with rough jokes, and enjoy the sport of making them drunk, and of trying his own strength against that of their big bodies.”[1089] His deeper feelings were expressed in a song,[1090] addressed to his half-sister Countess Mary of 1193 Champagne, which he seems to have composed in two languages, French and Provençal, in the autumn or early in the winter of 1193, and which may be roughly translated thus:
“Feeble the words, and faltering the tongue
Wherewith a prisoner moans his doleful plight;
Yet for his comfort he may make a song.
Friends have I many, but their gifts are slight;
Shame to them if unransomed I, poor wight,
Two winters languish here!