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captured well upon one hundred knights; we send you the names of the more important, and you shall have the names of others when we know them, for Mercadier took about thirty whom we have not seen.'1 A contemporary adds the information that the clouds of dust and the caprice of Dame Fortune contrived to save from capture many more.2

Such was the fit ending of Richard's war with Philip Augustus. Mercadier went off to plunder in the direction of Flanders, and spoiled the French merchants at the fair of Abbeville;3 in October, William le Queu (Cocus), castellan of Lions-la-Fôret, captured a French force on the way to garrison Neuf-marché. But King Richard occupied himself with the fortification of the Seine; above the isle of Andeli another island was strengthened by the fortress of Boutavant; on his part Philip built a new French castle, Le Goulet.5 In November the usual truce was made, to last till the fast of St. Hilary on January 13th, when, with the assistance of the papal legate, a durable peace might once more be attempted.

6

The biographer of the Marshal preserves memories of the negotiations in January 1199, which, unjust and prejudiced though they are, reveal the mind of Richard and the point of view shared by his secular companions. The king felt in 1199 about the papal legate as he had felt in 1194, when a truce had been made in his absence;7 but on the later occasion annoyance was intensified by a sense of degradation. On both sides men sympathised with Richard in having to meet an ecclesiastic whom they

1. Richard to the bishop of Durham, in Howden, iv, 58.

2. Guillaume le Maréchal, loc. cit.

3. Howden, iv, 60.

4. Ibid, 78. For William le Queu, see below p. 296.

5. Ibid, 78. For Boutavant, see the note in Cartellieri, iii, 140. There is some dispute about its position.

6. Ibid, iv, 68.

7. Above p. 155.

regarded as a secret ally of the king of France: the French were touched by the ridicule in which Philip was involved; the Normans felt contempt and chose to represent the cardinal as a sly creature, mean in person and despicable in character, who had been bought from Rome by French gold. That the legate was a learned and able man, whose main object was the restoration of Philip's lawful wife, that the majestic influence of Rome was threatening France with the horrors of an interdict, did not occur to the courtiers of King Richard, and would hardly have interested them if it had.

Richard evidently shared this attitude, and went to meet the cardinal in January between Vernon and Le Goulet in no gracious mood. According to the Marshal's biographer, Richard, after hotly repudiating all responsibility for the war, was prevailed upon to agree to a five years' truce in the interests of the future Crusade, on the condition that, while keeping in pledge the Norman castles in his possession, the French king should surrender all claims to the possession of the surrounding lands.2 Nothing remained to be done but to shake hands in ratification, when the legate turned to an ecclesiastical subject, and demanded the release of the bishop of Beauvais.3

'The court of Rome requires of you the release of her man whom you hold in prison against all law and with great wrong.'

'I hold him?' replied the king, 'not I.'

'Sire, make no denial. I refer to the bishop of

1. See Guillaume le Maréchal, 11. 11355-72, and iii, 151 note, for this view of Philip's relations with Rome.

Quer toz diz convient que l'om oingue

A la cort de Rome les paumes;

N'i estuet chanter autres psaumes (11362-4).

In 1197 the bishop of Durham, as Richard's envoy at Rome, had a draft on the merchants of Piacenza of 1210 marks (Rot. Scacc., ii, 300–1).

2. Guillaume le Maréchal, iii, 155.

3. Ibid. It is clear from other authorities that the hishop was kept in strict confinement.

Beauvais; he is under the protection of Rome. It is unlawful to detain in this way a man who has been anointed and consecrated.'

'By my head! he is rather the reverse, and a false Christian,' said the king. He was not taken as bishop, but as knight, fully armed, with laced helmet. Is this your man? Sir hypocrite, you play the game ill; if you were not here on a mission, the court of Rome would not save you from a thrashing to show the Pope as a souvenir from me. So the Pope thinks I am a fool? I know how he mocked at me, when I begged him to come to my aid in prison, servant of God as I was. He paid no heed; and now he demands of me a bullying brigand and incendiary who spoiled my lands day and night! Out of this, sir traitor, sir liar, trickster, simoniac, and see that you never cross my path again.'

The legate fled in terror, we are told, and the five years' truce was finally arranged by the archbishop of Reims, on the terms settled between Richard and the cardinal.1 The kings met on the Seine between Andeli and Vernon, Richard in a boat, Philip on horseback on the bank.2 It is curious to reflect that within the five years proposed, Normandy was lost.

Richard set off for Aquitaine; but peace was still insecure, for Philip at once began to build a new fortress near the Seine.3 Richard returned and declared through his chancellor that he would denounce the truce if reparation were not made. By the legate's advice Philip promised to destroy the castle, but Richard demanded a definite settlement. The legate accordingly produced a grandiose scheme, by which Richard might be satisfied, and the peace of the whole west established at the same time. Whether Gisors had or had not been granted to Philip at Messina, why should not Richard definitely cede it now?

1. Guillaume le Maréchal, iii, 156.

2. Howden, iv, 79–80.

3. Ibid, 80.

It might form the dowry in the marriage settlement of Philip's son Louis; let Louis marry Richard's niece, Blanche of Castile, and receive Gisors and a handsome sum of money, say 20,000 marks of silver. In return Philip might quitclaim to Richard all the other Norman lands which he had seized, and in addition settle an old quarrel by surrendering his lordship over the archbishopric of Tours. Finally, if Philip would give up his foolish opposition to Otto of Brunswick and join his party, the peace of Normandy would lead to the peace of Europe: England, France, Spain and Germany would be united and free to attack the enemies of Christendom.1

Full consideration of the plan was postponed until Richard's return from Aquitaine. It is not in the least likely that Philip Augustus would have agreed to it.2 He still held firmly some of the chief border castles of Normandy;3 through the archbishop of Tours he was still hoping to bind together ecclesiastical interests in the west of France, and to subordinate the Breton to the French Church; his friendship with Philip of Suabia was his

1. I have amplified this from Howden, iv, 81.

2. Cartellieri (iii, 202) remarks that only "das naive Selbstbewusstsein eines päpstlichere Politikers" could have expected success. Compare the remarks of M. Delaborde in the Journal des Savants for 1910, p. 559.

3. The southern castles of the Norman Vexin, including Gisors and Baudemont; also Vernon, Gaillon, Paci, Ivry, Nonancourt. The earl of Leicester made two futile attempts in 1198 to recover Paci (Howden, iv, 60).

4. It was in this year, 1199, that Innocent III abolished the metropolitan dignity of the bishop of Dol, and submitted the dioceses of Brittany to Tours, after a long controversy. Howden, iv, 100-2; Innocents's letters in Migne, ccxiv, 635-36; Potthast, nos. 721-724; and see Borderie, Histoire de Bretagne, iii, 205. Philip had taken the side of Tours in 1184; Actes, nos. 119, 120. In 1200 Arthur of Brittany showed his fidelity to Philip by trying to enforce the judgment of the Pope; Innocent, on May 12th, 1200, placed Brittany under an interdict (Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des Chartes, 1872, xxxiii,

main weapon against the Pope on the one side, and against the house of Anjou on the other; if he acquiesced in the cause of Otto, the family interest of the Angevins would bind together the north of Europe from the Elbe to the Pyrenees, and he could not hope to arrange his domestic contest with the Pope. Yet it may be doubted whether the work of Henry II ever showed a result so magnificent as when a papal legate ventured to suggest such terms to a king of France.

King Richard set off to the scenes of his earliest warfare fresh from these military and diplomatic triumphs. He had few followers; the great men of Normandy were engaged upon a lawsuit at Vaudreuil when, on the 7th April, a messenger arrived with the news of his wound at Chalus.2 Death alone could release him from his own fitful passions and from the persistence of his enemy. A few significant charters show that, even during the period of truce, Philip was receiving the allegiance of the discontented lords of Angoulême and the Limousin.3 It was not, however, in chastising them, but in a subsidiary quarrel, that Richard met his death. Someone came upon a relic of Gallo-Roman paganism in the territory of the lord of Chalus; and rumour magnified the discovery into a find of great wealth. The king claimed the treasure and marched to enforce his claim.

4

1. William of Briouze, Thomas Basset, Peter Stokes, Gerard of Fornival, Geoffrey de Cella, and two chaplains attest Richard's last charter of April 5th, the day before his death-a confirmation of charter of April 25th, 1194, to Noel, the king's servant (Calendar of Charter Rolls, ii, 101).

2. Guillaume le Maréchal, iii, 158 and notes.

3. Actes, nos. 552-5. The death of Richard hastened negotiations, but Ademar of Angoulême and Ademar of Limoges must have commenced them earlier. See Richard, Comtes de Poitou, ii, 322-3.

4. See the ingenious theory of Richard, Comtes de Poitou, ii, 322 note, in explanation of Rigord's description of the treasure (i, 145). For Richard's death, see Arbellot, La vérité sur la mort de Richard Coeur de Lion (1878), and Norgate, ii, 382-7.

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