Blood Cries Afar, page 5
In the tense military stand-off at the turn of the century, England needed Richard, not John, to counter Philip of France. As the Archbishop of Rouen presciently lamented on hearing of Richard’s death: ‘What hope remains to us now? There is none, for, after him, I can see nobody able to defend the kingdom. The French will overrun us, and there will be no one to resist them.’100
2
THE CONQUEST OF NORMANDY,
1200–1204
The treaty of Le Goulet should have ushered in a period of relative stability between the kingdoms of England and France. For Philip it granted space to sort out his problems with the Papacy over his bigamous marriage to Agnès of Méran; for John it meant time to consolidate his inheritance of the English crown. Both countries were in a position to benefit from the increase in trade that peace would surely bring to them; this was particularly important to John who would have wished to recoup much of the huge sum of 20,000 marks that he had agreed to pay his overlord, Philip, by terms of the treaty, in return for formal recognition of his continental fiefs. John visited these fiefs on a comprehensive tour between June and August of 1200. From Dieppe in Normandy to St Sever in Gascony, he was accompanied by his army in a formidable display of power, designed to impress upon the many rebellious factions within his empire that he possessed the means and determination to force his will upon his widespread dominions. As a further incentive to cooperation, John took hostages as guarantees of good behaviour.
Whatever success this ‘triumphal progress’101 might have achieved in its tacit aims of intimidation, it was utterly nullified by one of John’s greatest political blunders: his crass insensitivity to Hugh le Brun and the Lusignans. This episode reveals how John’s acute political awareness was, as was so often the case, squandered by his hopeless inability to manage people or inspire them to place their confidence in him as their lord. Discarding his first wife, Isabella of Gloucester, with an ease that must have been the envy of Philip of France, John determined to marry another Isabella, the twelve-year-old daughter and heiress of Count Ademar of Angoulême, claimant to the country of La Marche. He wed her in late August and whisked her back to England. This swiftness of events was in a large part prompted by the uncomfortable fact that Isabella had been betrothed to John’s vassal, Hugh le Brun, Count of La Marche and head of the most influential baronial family in lower Poitou. John’s action was one of a series of offences he committed against the Lusignans (he would argue these were in response to slights against him), but the elopement with Isabella proved the most instrumental in the decisive struggle that was to follow. His motives for marrying Isabella had little to do with lust – although this cannot be entirely discountenanced, as nudging contemporaries pruriently suggested – and even less to do with romance, as some chroniclers and historians have also suggested; instead they were generated by a keen grasp of geo-politics. John wished to prevent Hugh’s marriage to Isabella as the concomitant territorial control would not only have created a physical barrier to his communications between Poitiers and Bordeaux along the network of Roman roads, it would have also dangerously empowered the already refractory Angoulême lords. There was also the major consideration that the existing power structures in Aquitaine might be overthrown: John was fearful that if Hugh combined possession of the counties of Angoulême and La Marche with the lordship of Lusignan, then any shift in his allegiance away from the English crown to Philip of France would cut Aquitaine in half and make it virtually impossible to hold.102 The affair might have ended favourably for John had he suitably recompensed Hugh for his loss of face; instead he fixed on a vindictive course which added insult to injury: in place of making amends he offered trial by single combat (by champions of course); worse, in the spring of 1201, he invaded the county of La Marche, seized it in his new wife’s name and attacked the Norman county of Eu, which belonged to Hugh’s brother, Ralph. Daniel Power has written of the importance of this affair: ‘John’s military inadequacies alone do not explain’ his unfolding position; ‘equally significant were his deteriorating relations with the Lusignan family since 1200.’103
John had feared a strengthened Lusignan family agitating under the aegis of the Capetians; now, by his own actions, he had forced a weakened but embittered family decisively into the French camp. Hugh and Ralph appealed to King Philip against John’s shabby treatment of them. Philip, as overlord to the Duke of Aquitaine, heard this appeal with some discomfort. His relations with the Papacy over his matrimonial problems were still at a sensitive stage, despite the lifting of a papal interdict on France, and John’s display of power on inheriting his continental lands in 1200 may well have served its purpose in earning Philip’s cautious respect. Furthermore, John had added to his war chest in 1201 when he summoned his troops to Portsmouth. There the expeditionary force was equipped for a campaign that John had arguably never intended to embark upon. Instead, his purpose in gathering this army was to appropriate the soldier’s campaign funds, being the money that they had brought with them to cover their expenses while serving the host: as one chronicler succinctly puts it, ‘He took from some of them the money they would have spent in his service and let them return home.’104 The money thereby collected was used to employ 200 mercenaries in Normandy: one half under the command of William Marshal, the other under Roger de Lacy – two generals who were to play such a large part in the coming wars. But Philip’s own position was improved by a settlement of differences with Rome and by the death of Count Theobald of Champagne. This latter event meant a sudden windfall for the French crown: the Count’s heir was a minor, which allowed Philip, as overlord, temporarily to add the substantial resources of this great fief to those of the royal demesne.105
The two kings entered into a period of seemingly successful negotiations, culminating in John’s stay in Paris at the end of June, where he was lavishly entertained by Philip. The treaty of Le Goulet was confirmed and John promised Philip to have the Lusignan matter settled in his court as Duke of Aquitaine. John’s troops, however, continued to harass Lusignan forts and to lay waste French territory in the Touraine. The Lusignans pressed Philip to act on their behalf, and by 1202 he was prepared to do so. John’s foot-dragging over fulfilling his promise of the previous June had incited Philip to demand, somewhat ambitiously, the surrender of the most important castles in Normandy – Falaise, Arques and Château Gaillard – as security for his word. John continued to ‘make his excuses’, as Gervase of Canterbury correctly identified them,106 and by April, Philip, as feudal overlord, could not be seen to be waiting any longer. Nor did he wish to do so. When, despite having pledged as security the two small satellite castles of Château Gaillard (Tillières and Boutavant), John failed to heed a summons to the French royal court to respond to the charges of injustice raised against him, he was judged, in absentia, as a contumacious vassal and condemned to forfeit his lands held of Philip: his fiefs of Aquitaine, Poitou and Anjou were to revert to the French crown.
Mirebeau and Anjou
The fragile agreement of Le Goulet had already been violated by both Kings: John had renewed his support for his nephew Otto of Brunswick’s claim to the imperial throne; Philip had engaged his daughter Marie to Arthur of Brittany, thereby re-establishing ties with John’s enemy. But Philip’s dramatic judgement meant all-out war. Hostilities were immediately opened by French attacks on Boutavant and Tillières, both of which were taken and razed to the ground.107 John set up his campaign headquarters at Pont l’Arche in the Seine Valley where he must have rued his change of fortune. He had lost valuable allies to the Fourth Crusade, upon which the Counts of Flanders, Blois and Perche had embarked; and the Counts of Toulouse and Boulogne were transferring their allegiances to Philip.
The French King swept through the north-eastern frontier, meeting with little resistance until he reached Gournay.108 Philip’s strategy had been to isolate Gournay by first taking the castles in the Forest of Lions. With this achieved Gournay had only its formidable defences to rely upon. The castle was situated in marshland and was protected by three curtain walls, wide and deep moats and the river Epte. It lay under the control of a loyal Angevin officer by the name of Brandin and both he and the garrison were offered considerable rewards by John if they maintained a successful defence. Philip, however, whose military achievements lay primarily in his skill as a castle-breaker, rose to the challenge with great ingenuity. Seeing that the castle was all but impregnable to anything but a lengthy siege, he turned, as he so often did, to his engineers. He instructed them to break the dam wall of a large weir that lay farther up the river. The result was an inundation the sheer power and volume of which so compromised Gournay’s defences the garrison was compelled to surrender. William the Breton claimed the whole area looked like a sea. Philip rebuilt the defences and by mid-July had moved to Arques, which lies on the Varenne river and which protected the vital port of Dieppe (that Richard I had given to Walter, Archbishop of Rouen, in exchange for Andely and the construction there of Château Gaillard). John hoped to raise the siege here by cutting off French supplies: he intended to do this himself by land while his ships from the Cinque Ports did likewise at sea.109
In the southern theatre of war Arthur led his Bretons and Poitevin allies up the Loire valley into the strategic nerve centre of the Angevin Empire. As a rival claimant to the throne of England, the teenaged Arthur (he was born in 1187), who had been brought up in the French court with Philip’s son, Prince Louis, was an obvious weapon in Philip’s armoury. The French King had knighted him and accepted his homage for Brittany, Anjou, Poitou, Maine and Touraine – on the provision that Arthur could seize them. Philip intended to keep Normandy for himself. Philip had furnished him with money and 200 elite knights and sent him to Poitou where his forces were augmented by the Lusignans, Savary de Mauléon and other barons, including feudal contingents from Berry and Bourges. In all, Arthur may have been at the head of 1000 men when he marched on the Castle of Mirebeau at the end of July. This castle, lying between Angers and Poitiers, was at that moment offering hospitality to his grandmother, and John’s mother, the redoubtable Eleanor of Aquitaine, now approaching her eighties but still a major player on the political scene. Despite Philip’s characteristic advice to proceed cautiously, the proud and headstrong Arthur was not inclined to miss this opportunity of bagging such a great prize. Eleanor managed to despatch an urgent letter to her son, begging him for his immediate assistance. John, already moving south, met her courier near Le Mans on 30 July. Prompted by William des Roches, the castellan of Chinon whom John had made Seneschal of Anjou following his alienation from Philip, he marched with truly remarkable speed to Mirebeau, which his troops reached within 48 hours, having covered a distance of some 80 miles.
The sources do not agree on the events at Mirebeau, but a detailed composite picture can be drawn up. The anonymous narrator of Béthune, the most complete and reliable of the sources, relates that the town of Mirebeau surrendered but the castle, to which the garrison had withdrawn, remained defiant. Arthur requested Eleanor to leave the castle; she expressed her indignant surprise at the affrontery of his actions. Arthur’s force billeted in the town and settled down for a siege, unaware of John’s rapid approach. Early in the morning of 1 August, the English king’s army under the lead of William des Roches, burst upon the besiegers. The startled look-outs sent up the cry of ‘To arms! To arms!’ Ralph of Coggleshall claims that all the town’s gates except one had been secured; the Anonymous confirms that the Poitevins had been unable to close this gate. It was presumably through this poorly defended entrance that William and his troops stormed into the town. Once in, they fought to open the other gates. The element of surprise was total and had been used to the fullest advantage by the royalist forces. Geoffrey de Lusignan, we are told, did not stir himself from his breakfast dish of pigeons; if this were true, he must have mistakenly considered his defences secure enough to deter a precipitous assault. Others were not so confident. Hugh le Brun and his brother Ralph mounted their horses and rushed to the gates where they were met by the sight of William des Roches’ men breaking through. Royalist troops cascaded along the streets of Mirebeau, converging on the town centre. In the ensuing combat, des Roches is recorded as having three horses killed beneath him. We are led to believe, somewhat improbably, that even John entered the thick of the mêlée that erupted throughout the town. The Poitevins were completely routed. No one of any consequence escaped. William the Breton, forever making excuses for the defeats suffered by the French and their allies, claims that John’s soldiers had made a cowardly and, by implication, unchivalrous night attack that offered Arthur’s forces no chance of a spirited resistance. Relying on the effects of the day’s labours and drink to put the besiegers into a deep sleep, William depicts the royalist troops creeping furtively into the town and overcoming their opponents who were still in their beds (as if this somehow places the French troops in a better light). Roger of Wendover’s account differs slightly again and should not be entirely dismissed: his Flores Historiarum becomes contemporaneous around this time. In his version, the besiegers left the town ‘in pompous array’ to meet the oncoming Angevin troops. Both sides drew up in battle order and engaged with each other. The royalists gained the upper hand and Arthur’s force withdrew hastily to the town; but they were pursued so closely by the royalist cavalry they were unable to close the gates behind them (other references remark on an unsecured gate) and both sets of belligerents entered the town together. Although none of these sources mention it, it is possible that at the crucial stage of the battle some of Eleanor’s garrison in the castle sallied forth to aid the relief army, thereby catching the besiegers in the middle of two hostile onslaughts. Whatever the exact details, John’s decisive response to the situation at Mirebeau had earned him a great victory.110
John’s swift reaction to the threat faced by his mother reveals his ability to act rapidly in a crisis. His forced march to raise the siege offers a good example of the need for a military commander to act quickly and decisively. However, this in itself was not enough: the efficacy and use of such rapid movement was equally important. John might easily have rushed headlong into an ambush; we might suppose that William des Roches provided him with good intelligence of the enemy’s disposition. Philip Augustus had once been caught by acting over-zealously in a military situation and inadvertently hurled himself into a dangerous ambush – although William the Breton unconvincingly claims that this was both understandable and excusable given Philip’s unrestrained martial vigour and eagerness for the fray.111 John would also have recalled how Richard failed to lift the siege of Aumâle in 1196: his attempt to surprise the French camp after a forced march floundered because of the well-entrenched and thoroughly prepared defences of the besiegers.
Although the Omanian school of thought on medieval warfare has been discounted, we can see how its thinking may have developed when we encounter such instances of spontaneous reactions by medieval generals. The idea that soldiers, and knights in particular, had only to get a whiff of the enemy to charge headlong into battle is exaggerated; indeed, medieval commanders placed great emphasis on battle avoidance. Chroniclers, especially those favourable to the subject of their attentions, liked to stress the resoluteness of the commander who responded immediately and boldly to any danger. The real skill lay in knowing when to act quickly and when not to act at all: some military actions were undertaken with the express purpose of provoking the enemy into taking steps that were to their ultimate disadvantage (a major strategy of the 1215–17 war in England). John’s response to Mirebeau was appropriate and vindicated by the hugely successful outcome. He was well aware of the benefits that speed could bestow upon a commander. His father, Henry II, said while campaigning in France: ‘Many castles, farms and cities lie exposed to us which we can easily overrun by a forced march.’ His brother Richard, the epitome of energetic generalship, characteristically commented: ‘To those who are well prepared, delay has always been and always will be dangerous.’ John would have also remembered the great effectiveness of Philip’s speed in raising the siege of the important Castle of Vaudreuil in 1194. William the Breton was astonished by this remarkable forced march:
I am amazed
That he [Philip] could, like a giant, complete an eight day march in three;
