1196
Jan. 3-13
The meeting did take place, and a treaty was made, consisting of a quit-claim from Philip to Richard and his heirs of all the rights of the French crown in Berry, Auvergne, and Gascony, and an undertaking to make restitution of certain portions of Norman territory then in Philip’s hands, Jan.
13-15 in exchange for a similar quit-claim from Richard to Philip and his heirs of Gisors and the whole Norman Vexin except the fief of Andely,[1203] which belonged to the metropolitan see of Rouen. The little town of Andely was insignificant and unfortified, but its command of the traffic up and down the Seine, from which its holder was entitled to take toll, made it a valuable possession from a financial point of view, and its geographical position and surroundings offered strategical advantages which had already caught the attention of one, if not both, of the rival kings. Philip tried to get Andely included in the territory ceded to him; “but this could on no account be done.” Nor did he succeed in obtaining Archbishop Walter’s fealty for the other lands in the Vexin belonging to the see of Rouen.[1204] Walter’s own narrative of the scenes which took place between himself and both the kings with reference to his suretyship for Richard’s fulfilment of the treaty[1205] seems to indicate that Richard was really desirous for peace with France at the moment, but that neither he nor Philip intended the peace to last any longer than it suited their own convenience. It was in fact merely an expedient for giving both parties a breathing-space in which to gather fresh forces and make fresh plans for war. Within three months Richard was April 15 sending to England for reinforcements “because”—so he 1196 wrote to Hubert Walter—“we think we are nearer to war than to peace with the king of France.”[1206]
Richard was at that moment striving to subdue Britanny. Ever since the death of Henry II the wardship of little Arthur and of his duchy had been in dispute between Richard and Philip; but the boy’s mother, Constance, supported by the Breton people, had hitherto managed to keep both her child and her country under her own control. In the spring of 1196 Richard summoned, or invited, her to a conference with him in Normandy; at the frontier she was met, captured, and imprisoned by her husband, Earl Ranulf of Chester.[1207] The Bretons at once rallied round their child-duke, in his name threw off all allegiance to Richard, and began to make raids on the Norman border.[1208] Richard set out to punish them[1209] in the ruthless fashion habitual to him when dealing with rebels, “sparing neither grown man Good Friday
April 19 nor child, not even on the day of our Lord’s Passion.”[1210] They fled before him, carrying Arthur with them, to the remoter fastnesses of their country, and thence conveyed the boy to the court of France.[1211] Thereupon the treaty of Louviers was flung to the winds. Richard infringed it in the Vexin by building a castle on an island in the Seine at Porte-Joie, between Louviers and Pont-de-l’Arche, and in Berry by calling the lord of Vierzon to account to him on a matter which (according to Philip’s historiographer) belonged to the jurisdiction of the French Crown, and when the man refused to obey him, making a raid on Vierzon and levelling it to the ground.[1212] Philip again laid siege to Aumale. Richard ordered all property held within his dominions by four abbots who had been Philip’s sureties 1196 for the treaty to be seised into his own hands,[1213] bribed the French garrison of Nonancourt to give up that fortress to him, and then went to relieve Aumale. He was, however, repulsed in an attack on Philip’s camp, and went off to lay siege to Gaillon, which was held for Philip by a famous mercenary captain, Cadoc. A bolt from Cadoc’s crossbow struck the king’s knee as he was reconnoitring the place. The wound disabled him for a month; before he had recovered, Aumale had surrendered after a seven weeks’ siege, and Philip had razed its walls and regained Nonancourt.[1214]
Richard arose from his sick-bed in a towering rage,[1215] and with a grim determination which gave a new character to the war. The successes achieved by the French while he lay helpless had borne in upon him the fact that if he was to retain what was still left to him of Normandy—nay, if the House of Anjou was to retain its continental power at all—some better plan of campaign and of diplomacy must be devised than the alternation of border-fighting and treaties or truces, made only to be broken, in which his personal energies as well as his material and military resources had been frittered away during the last two years. He must by some means bar the way to Rouen, laid open to Philip by the cession of the Vexin. He must shield and supplement his military resources, consisting as they did only of mercenary troops stiffened by a small band of loyal Normans, by securing at least the neutrality, if not the direct active assistance, of France’s other feudataries and neighbours. From England there was no help to be got. No action seems to have been taken by Archbishop Hubert on the king’s demand addressed to him in the spring for troops from that country. In November the demand was renewed in another form; Richard bade Hubert send him either three hundred knights to serve 1196 beyond sea at their own expense for a year, or money wherewith to pay three hundred mercenaries three English shillings a day for the same period. A great council was convened at Oxford on December 7; Hubert, instead of laying before it the alternatives offered by the king, simply proposed that all the barons and bishops should furnish three hundred knights for a year’s service over sea. This Bishop Hugh of Lincoln at once refused on behalf of his own see; its tenants being bound to military service only in their own country. The bishop of Salisbury followed Hugh’s example. The justiciar lost his temper and broke up the assembly; and all that Richard gained was a heavy fine paid by Herbert of Salisbury in redemption of the property of his see, confiscated by the king’s order on Hubert’s report. The property of the see of Lincoln was confiscated likewise, but in this case the order remained a dead letter owing to the profound reverence universally felt for the bishop.[1216]
The king himself was meanwhile already carrying into effect, with his eyes fully open to the consequences, a project which brought him into collision with the highest ecclesiastical authority in Normandy. Of all the approaches to the Norman capital the most important was the broad valley through which the Seine winds its course from Paris across the old battle-ground of the Vexin to the heart of the duchy, while on either side of this water-way roads from north and east and south converge to meet beneath the walls of Rouen. Philip was now master of this valley and its surroundings up to a distance of about twelve miles from the city. The key of the position, however, was neither in his hands nor in Richard’s, but in those of the archbishop of Rouen; it was Andely. The town of Andely stood at the meeting-point of several roads, on the north side of a stream called the Gambon, in a valley opening from the eastward upon the Seine through the chalk cliffs on its right bank, near the middle of a great curve to the northward in its course between Gaillon and Louviers. To the west of Andely the Gambon and another rivulet 1196 became merged in a lake or mere whence they issued again to fall into the great river by two distinct openings separated by a tract of marshland, at the south-east corner of which stood the toll-house. Nearly opposite the mouth of each streamlet was an island in the Seine; the more northerly and larger one was known as the Isle of Andely. The valley was sheltered on its southern side by a thickly wooded plateau extending several miles to a point nearly opposite Gaillon, and called the Forest of Andely. Opposite the toll-house, at the angle formed by the junction of the Gambon with the Seine, this plateau terminated abruptly in a mass of limestone rock three hundred feet high, with its western face, nearly perpendicular, looking down upon the Seine, its northern front, almost as steep, towering above the Gambon, and only a narrow neck of rocky ground at its south-eastern corner connecting it with the plateau, from which its other sides were separated by deep ravines. The military possibilities of such a position were obvious, and would doubtless have been utilized long before they attracted the rival kings if Andely had been a lay fief. For Philip it would have made an ideal base for attack upon Rouen; Richard saw in it a matchless site for the construction of an almost impassable barrier between Rouen and Paris. Philip had tried in vain to win it by diplomacy. Richard took advantage of a temporary absence of the archbishop from Normandy to seize the Isle of Andely and begin to build a fort upon it. Walter protested strongly, but in vain; Richard’s sole answer was to take possession of the low ground enclosed between the three rivers and the lake and begin to cover it with the foundations of a walled town with trenches and barbicans on every side. The primate then told the king in person that unless he made restitution and paid compensation within three days, he must expect the ecclesiastical penalties due to sacrilege. The warning was ignored; so Walter fulfilled his threat by laying Normandy under Interdict and setting out for Rome.[1217] Thither he was followed by envoys from Richard 1196 who were charged to appeal to the Pope and endeavour to compose the dispute. Meanwhile the king pushed on his work without intermission. In a few months there arose on the Isle of Andely a tall octagonal tower encircled by a ditch and rampart, on the western side of the island a bridge giving access to the left bank of the Seine, and on the eastern side another bridge linking the tower with the “New” or “Lesser” Andely whose walls, standing four-square within the natural moat formed by the surrounding waters, were likewise accessible from the mainland only by two bridges, one at their northern corner and one on their south-eastern side. The southern corner of the new town directly faced the great “Rock of Andely”; and for that rock Richard was designing a crown such as no other western architect had ever yet dreamed of. His first act on the site, however, was of evil omen. It seems that to protect his workmen at the New Andely against attack from the French troops he had brought over a host of wild 1196-7 Welshmen who harried the French border in a fashion scarcely equalled by the worst ravages of the Brabantines; at last a large body of them were intercepted by the French at the opening of the Vale of Andely, surrounded, and slaughtered, to the number, it is said, of three thousand four hundred. Richard was then at Andely, and had there eighteen French prisoners in a dungeon. In his fury he had three of them dragged to the top of the rock[1218] and flung down to be dashed to pieces at its foot; the fifteen others he caused to be blinded, and sent under the guidance of a one-eyed man to Philip, who, “lest he should be thought inferior to the English king in power or spirit, or to be afraid of him,” retaliated by causing three English prisoners to be thrown down from a rock in like manner, and blinding and sending back to Richard fifteen others, the wife of one of them acting as guide.[1219]
Meanwhile Richard was, through his agents at Rome, bargaining with Archbishop Walter for an exchange of May lands. At last he made an offer which was distinctly advantageous to the metropolitan see of Rouen; it was accepted, and the Interdict was raised.[1220] A year later the 1198
May king’s work at Andely was complete. Round the foot of the great rock the ravines which parted it from the surrounding lesser heights were dug out to such a depth that access to it was impossible except by one narrow neck of ground at its south-eastern end. A “fair castle”—as Richard himself justly called it[1221]—whose general outline was determined by that of its site occupied the top of the rock. The outer ward was a walled-in triangle with sides of unequal length, and with its apex facing south-eastward towards the natural junction left between the rock and the plateau; at this point and at each of the other two angles stood a round tower with walls ten feet thick; each of the two longer sides of the curtain wall was strengthened with a smaller tower; and the whole enclosure was surrounded by a ditch more than forty feet deep, hewn out of the rock, with a perpendicular counterscarp. Beyond this ditch on its north-western side lay the inner ward. On three sides of this second enclosure were walls eight feet thick; one wall, flanked by towers like those of the outer ward, faced the north-western wall of the latter across the ditch; on the other and longer sides the steep incline of the rock itself formed a natural rampart and ditch below the walls which ran along its edge. The line of the curtain on the side nearest to the river was broken by a tower, round externally, octagonal within, and terminated at its northern end by two rectangular bastions behind one of which stood another round tower forming the base of the third ward or citadel. A rampart, roughly elliptical in outline, was made by 1196-7 excavating a ditch some fifteen to twenty feet wide, with a perpendicular counterscarp. In one part of this ditch casemates were cut in the rock. Two-thirds of the rampart were surmounted by a series of seventeen semicircular bastions with about two feet of curtain wall between every two; on the eastern side the line was broken by a bridge leading from the rampart of the outer ward into the inner enclosure, to which there was no other means of ingress above ground; and directly opposite this bridge the bastions abutted on a mighty keep-tower with walls twenty feet thick at the angles and nowhere less than twelve feet, and with a wide outlook from the windows in its upper stages over the river valley and the woodlands of the Vexin. Between the keep and the round tower at the end of the curtain wall were buildings for dwelling and storage; from these an underground stair and passage beneath the rock gave access to some outworks near its foot, where from a small tower a wall was carried down to the river-bank; and from a point close to the termination of this wall the river itself was barred by a double stockade across its bed. “Behold, how fair is this year-old daughter of mine!” Thus Richard is said to have exclaimed as he saw the last touches put to the “Castle on the Rock.”[1222] Contemporary writers distinctly imply that the whole scheme of the fortifications at Les Andelys was devised and planned by the king himself; it was certainly carried out under his constant personal supervision and direction. Some of the peculiar features of the citadel or keep may probably have been suggested to him by the fortresses which he had seen in Holy Land, where the nature of the country and the circumstances of the Frank settlers had led to the development of the science of military architecture in forms hitherto unknown to western builders. However this may be, the opportunity presented by the natural advantages of the site was utilized to the uttermost in the construction of the group of buildings crowned by the “Saucy Castle,” Château-Gaillard, as Richard appropriately called it, which from the summit of the rock seemed to look down in defiance and 1196-7 derision upon the French king and his schemes for the conquest of Normandy.
The royal architect was further strengthening alike his military and his political position by alliances with his most important neighbours both to north and south. Count Baldwin of Flanders had for six years been chafing under the loss of the southern half of his county, annexed by the French king on the plea that the late Count Philip had given it to Elisabeth of Hainaut, Baldwin’s sister and the king’s first wife. In June 1196 Baldwin and Count Reginald of Boulogne promised to support Philip Augustus “against all 1197
May-Sept. men”;[1223] but in the following summer Baldwin threw off his allegiance and became Richard’s sworn ally.[1224] About the same time the guardians of Arthur of Britanny exchanged pledges with Richard that neither they nor he would make peace with France without each other’s consent; and a like agreement was made between Richard and Count Theobald of Champagne,[1225] brother and successor to the Crusader Count Henry, nephew by the half blood to both the kings, and brother-in-law to Richard’s queen. The western and northern sides and a considerable part of the eastern side of the French Royal Domain were thus completely ringed in by the territories of Richard and his allies, except in two places. These exceptions were the united counties of Blois and Chartres and the little county of Ponthieu. Louis of Blois still adhered to Philip; but as he stood in the same degree of relationship to the two kings as did his cousin Theobald of Champagne, there was always a possibility that he might some day follow Theobald’s example. As for Ponthieu, Philip had given Aloysia in marriage to its count, probably thinking he was driving a wedge between Normandy and Flanders; but the wedge was too small and too insignificant to be of any real use in keeping them apart. On the other hand, the count of Flanders was on his northern and eastern frontiers in direct touch with Richard’s German allies; and one at least of these, the count of Hainaut, was also in 1197 direct touch with Champagne. Richard was in fact gradually drawing round the Royal Domain of France a circle which was already more than half completed; and he was now politically in a position to bring almost the whole of his own military resources to bear upon some of its uncompleted sections in the west and south without fear of danger in his rear. The voluntary adhesion of Britanny promised at least a temporary respite from trouble in that quarter. In Aquitaine his determined efforts to enforce order and tranquillity were at last beginning to bear fruit. In 1195 he had granted the county of Poitou to his sister Matilda’s son, Otto of Saxony;[1226] but Otto does not seem to have ever actually taken possession of the county, and the government of Poitou and its dependencies, and also of Gascony, continued to be carried on as before, by seneschals appointed by the king. If these officers needed assistance to quell internal revolt, they could safely depend for it on Navarre; and the one remaining vassal of the duchy with whom they might still have been unable to cope was won over to the interests of his suzerain by the offer of a brilliant and wealthy matrimonial alliance and a substantial increase of territory. The count of Toulouse with whom Richard had fought of 1196 old died in 1196, and the widowed Queen Joan of Sicily was given in marriage by her brother to the new Count Raymond VI;[1227] Richard renounced the old claim of the Poitevin counts to the possession of Toulouse, restored the Quercy to its former owner, and granted him the county of Agen as Joan’s dowry, with the stipulation that it should always be held as a distinct fief of the duchy of Aquitaine and should furnish the duke with five hundred men-at-arms for a month when required for war in Gascony.[1228]
1197
In the spring of 1197 hostilities re-commenced with a raid made by Richard on the coast of Ponthieu; he set fire to the castle of S. Valery, harried the surrounding country, seized five ships which were bringing food into the harbour, hanged their skippers, and appropriated their cargoes to 1197 April 15 feed his own men.[1229] A month later Mercadier made a raid on Beauvais and captured its Bishop.[1230] Early in the summer there came an indication that the Vexin was not altogether May 19 contented under its new ruler; Dangu, an important castle on the Epte, was voluntarily surrendered to Richard by its lord, William Crispin. Philip at once led an army to retake it and succeeded in so doing, but only after a siege which occupied him so long that meanwhile Richard had time to dash into Auvergne and capture ten of the French king’s castles there,[1231] and Baldwin of Flanders to make himself master of Douay and some neighbouring towns and lay siege to Arras. Philip hurriedly razed Dangu and went to relieve Arras; at his approach Baldwin withdrew into northern Flanders; Philip pursued him hotly, but presently found himself entangled in a network of streams which cut off him and his troops from either advance or retreat, provisions or reinforcements, for the bridges over all the rivers in front and rear and round about him were broken down by Baldwin’s orders. He was reduced to sue for mercy and entreat Baldwin “not to sully the honour of the French Crown,” declaring himself ready to make an amicable settlement with Flanders and restore all its lost territory, “if the king of England were excluded from the peace.” This condition Baldwin rejected, and Philip was obliged to purchase release from his awkward position by a compromise: Baldwin undertook to act as intermediary between the two kings and invite Richard to a conference between them “for the settlement of an honourable peace” which should include his own confirmation by both in the restitution of his ancestral possessions.[1232] The conference Sept. 8
or 17 took place early in September. As usual, the proposed peace dwindled to a truce. Even this was won only by the 1197 influence of Archbishop Hubert of Canterbury, who was then in attendance on his sovereign. Its duration was fixed for a year from the ensuing Christmas or Hilary-tide;[1233] Sept. and its sole condition seems to have been that each party should for that period continue holding what he held at the moment[1234]—a condition which enabled Philip to postpone indefinitely the promised restitution of southern Flanders.