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The History of England From the Norman Conquest to the Death of John
The Loss Of Normandy
by Adams, George Burton
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The death of Richard raised a question of succession new in the history
of England since the Norman Conquest. The right of primogeniture, the
strict succession of the eldest born, carrying with it the right of the
son of a deceased elder brother to stand in the place of his father, the
principle which was in the end to prevail, had only begun to establish
itself. The drift of feeling was undoubtedly towards it, but this
appeared strongly in the present crisis only in the northwestern corner
of the Angevin dominions in France, where it was supported by still
stronger influences. The feudal law had recognized, and still recognized,
many different principles of succession, and the prevailing feeling in
England and Normandy is no doubt correctly represented in an incident
recorded by the biographer of William Marshal. On receiving the news of
Richard's death at Rouen, William went at once to consult with the
archbishop and to agree on whom they would support as heir. The
archbishop inclined at first to Arthur, the son and representative of
John's elder brother, Geoffrey, but William declared that the brother
stood nearer to his father and to his brother than the grandson, or
nephew, and the archbishop yielded the point without discussion. Neither
in England nor in Normandy did there appear the slightest disposition to
support the claims of Arthur, or to question the right of John, though
possibly there would have been more inclination to do so if the age of
the two candidates had been reversed, for Arthur was only twelve, while
John was past thirty.
Neither of the interested parties, however, was in the least disposed to
waive any claims which he possessed. John had had trouble with Richard
during the previous winter on a suspicion of treasonable correspondence
with Philip and because he thought his income was too scanty, and he was
in Britanny, even at the court of Arthur, when the news of Richard's
death reached him. He at once took horse with a few attendants and rode
to Chinon, where the king's treasure was kept, and this was given up
without demur on his demand by Robert of Turnharn, the keeper. Certain
barons who were there and the officers of Richard's household also
recognized his right, on his taking the oath which they demanded, that he
would execute his brother's will, and that he would preserve inviolate
the rightful customs of former times and the just laws of lands and
people. From Chinon John set out for Normandy, but barely escaped capture
on the way, for Arthur's party had not been idle in the meantime. His
mother with a force from Britanny had brought him with all speed to
Angers, where he was joyfully received. William des Roches, the greatest
baron of the country and Richard's seneschal of Anjou, had declared for
him at the head of a powerful body of barons, who probably saw in a weak
minority a better chance of establishing that local freedom from control
for which they had always striven than under another Angevin king. At Le
Mans Arthur was also accepted with enthusiasm as count a few hours after
a cold reception of John and his hasty departure.
There Constance and her son were met by the king of France, who, as soon
as God had favoured him by the removal of Richard,--so the French
regarded the matter,--seized the county of Evreux and pushed his
conquests almost to Le Mans. Arthur did homage to Philip for the
counties of Anjou, Maine, and Touraine; Tours received the young count as
Angers and Le Mans had done; Philip's right of feudal wardship was
admitted, and Arthur was taken to Paris under his secure protection,
secure for his own designs and against those of John. Philip could hardly
do otherwise than recognize the rights of Arthur. It was perhaps the most
favourable opportunity that had ever occurred to accomplish the
traditional policy of the Capetians of splitting apart the dominions of
the rival Norman or Angevin house. That policy, so long and so
consistently followed by Philip almost from his accession to the death of
Arthur, in the support in turn of young Henry, Richard, John, and Arthur
against the reigning king, was destined indeed never to be realized in
the form in which it had been cherished in the past; but the devotion of
a part of the Angevin empire to the cause of Arthur was a factor of no
small value in the vastly greater success which Philip won, greater than
any earlier king had ever dreamed of, greater than Philip himself had
dared to hope for till the moment of its accomplishment.
From Le Mans John went direct to Rouen. The barons of Normandy had
decided to support him, and on April 25 he was invested with the insignia
of the duchy by the archbishop, Walter of Coutances, taking the usual
oath to respect the rights of Church and people. His careless and
irreverent conduct during the ceremony displeased the clergy, as his
refusal to receive the communion on Easter day, a week before, had
offended Bishop Hugh of Lincoln, who came a part of the way with him from
Chinon. As the lance, the special symbol of investiture, was placed in
his hand, he turned to make some jocular remark to his boon companions
who were laughing and chattering behind him, and carelessly let it fall,
an incident doubtless considered at the time of evil omen, and easily
interpreted after the event as a presage of the loss of the duchy. From
Normandy John sent over to England to assist the justiciar, Geoffrey Fitz
Peter, in taking measures to secure his succession, two of the most
influential men of the land, William Marshal and Hubert Walter,
Archbishop of Canterbury, who had been in Normandy since the death of
Richard, while he himself remained a month longer on the continent, to
check, if possible, the current in favour of Arthur. He took Le Mans and
destroyed its walls in punishment, and sent a force to aid his mother in
Aquitaine; but the threatening attitude of Philip made it impossible for
him to accomplish very much. No slight influence on the side of John was
the strong support and vigorous action in his favour of that remarkable
woman, Eleanor of Aquitaine, then about eighty years of age. She seems
never to have cared for her grandson Arthur, and for this his mother was
probably responsible. Constance appears to have been a somewhat difficult
person, and what was doubtless still more important, she had never
identified herself with the interests of her husband's house, but had
always remained in full sympathy with the separatist tendencies and
independent desires of her own Britanny.63 She had no right to count
on any help from Eleanor in carrying out her ambitions, and Aquitaine
was held as securely for John by his mother as Normandy was by the
decision of its leading barons.
In England, although no movement in favour of Arthur is perceptible,
there was some fear of civil strife, perhaps only of that disorder which
was apt to break out on the death of the king, as it did indeed in this
case, and many castles were put in order for defence. What disorder there
was soon put down by the representatives of the king, whom John had
appointed, and who took the fealty of the barons and towns to him. On the
part of a considerable number of the barons--the names that are recorded
are those of old historic families, Beaumont, Ferrers, Mowbray, De Lacy,
the Earls of Clare and Chester--there was found to be opposition to
taking the oath of fealty on the ground of injustice committed by the
administration. Whether these complaints were personal to each baron, as
the language has been taken to mean, or complaints of injustice in
individual cases wrought by the general policy of the government, as the
number of cases implies, it is hardly possible to say. The probability is
that both explanations are true. Certainly the old baronage could easily
find grounds enough of complaint in the constitutional policy steadily
followed by the government of the first two Angevin kings. The crisis was
wisely handled by the three able men whom John had appointed to represent
him. They called an assembly of the doubtful barons at Northampton and
gave to each one a promise that he should have his right (jus suum). In
return for these promises the oaths were taken, but the incident was as
ominous of another kind of trouble as the dropping of the lance at Rouen.
We can hardly understand the reign of John unless we remember that at its
very beginning men were learning to watch the legality of the king's
actions and to demand that he respect the limitations which the law
placed on his arbitrary will.
On May 25, John landed in England, and on the 27th, Ascension day, he was
crowned in Westminster by the Archbishop of Canterbury before a large
assembly of barons and bishops. The coronation followed the regular order,
and no dissenting voice made itself heard, though a rather unusual display
of force seems to have been thought necessary. Two authorities, both years
later and both untrustworthy, refer to a speech delivered during the
ceremony by the archbishop, in which he emphasized the fact that the
English crown was elective and not hereditary. Did not these authorities
seem to be clearly independent of one another we should forthwith reject
their testimony, but as it is we must admit some slight chance that such a
speech was made. One of these accounts, in giving what purports to be the
actual speech of Hubert Walter, though it must have been composed by the
writer himself, states a reason for it which could not possibly have been
entertained at the time.64 The other gives as its reason the disputed
succession, but makes the archbishop refer not to the right of Arthur,
but to that of the queen of Castile, a reference which must also be
untrue.65 If such a speech was made, it had reference unquestionably to
the case of Arthur, and it must be taken as a sign of the influence which
this case certainly had on the development, in the minds of some at least,
of something more like the modern understanding of the meaning of
election, and as a prelude to the great movement which characterizes the
thirteenth century, the rapid growth of ideas which may now without too
great violence be called constitutional. If such a speech was made we may
be sure also that it was not made without the consent of John, and that it
contained nothing displeasing to him. One of his first acts as king was to
make Hubert Walter his chancellor, and apparently the first document
issued by the new king and chancellor puts prominently forward John's
hereditary right, and states the share of clergy and people in his
accession in peculiar and vague language.66
John had no mind to remain long in England, nor was there any reason why
he should. The king of Scotland was making some trouble, demanding the
cession of Cumberland and Northumberland, but it was possible to postpone
for the present the decision of his claims. William Marshal was at last
formally invested with the earldom of Pembroke and Geoffrey Fitz Peter
with that of Essex. More important was a scutage, probably ordered at
this time, of the unusual rate of two marks on the knight's fee, twenty
shillings having been the previous limit as men remembered it. By June 20
John's business in England was done, and by July 1 he was again at Rouen
to watch the course of events in the conflict still undecided. On that
day a truce was made with Philip to last until the middle of August, and
John began negotiations with the Counts of Flanders and Boulogne and with
his nephew, Otto IV of Germany, in a search for allies, from whom he
gained only promises. On the expiration of the truce Philip demanded the
cession of the entire Vexin and the transfer to Arthur of Poitou, Anjou,
Maine, and Touraine,--a demand which indicates his determination to go
on with the war. For Poitou Philip had already received Eleanor's homage,
and she in turn invested John with it as her vassal. In the beginning of
the war which was now renewed Philip committed a serious error of policy,
to which he was perhaps tempted by the steady drift of events in his
favour since the death of Richard. Capturing the castle of Ballon in
Maine he razed it to the ground. William des Roches, the leader of
Arthur's cause, at once objected since the castle should belong to his
lord, and protested to the king that this was contrary to their
agreement, but Philip haughtily replied that he should do as he pleased
with his conquests in spite of Arthur. This was too early a declaration
of intentions, and William immediately made terms with John, carrying
over to him Arthur and his mother and the city of Le Mans. A slight study
of John's character ought to have shown to William that no dependence
whatever could be placed on his promise in regard to a point which would
seem to them both of the greatest importance. William took the risk,
however, binding John by solemn oath that Arthur should be dealt with
according to his counsel, a promise which was drawn up in formal charter.
On the very day of his arrival, it is said, Arthur was told of John's
intention to imprison him, and he fled away with his mother to Angers;
but William des Roches remained for a time in John's service.
The year 1199 closed with a truce preliminary to a treaty of peace which
was finally concluded on May 18. Philip II was at the moment in no
condition to push the war. He was engaged in a desperate struggle with
Innocent III and needed to postpone for the time being every other
conflict. Earlier in his reign on a political question he had defied a
pope, and with success; but Innocent III was a different pope, and on the
present question Philip was wrong. In 1193 he had repudiated his second
wife, Ingeborg of Denmark, the day after the marriage, and later married
Agnes of Meran whom he had hitherto refused to give up at the demand of
the Church. At the close of 1199 France was placed under an interdict
until the king should yield, and it was in this situation that the treaty
with John was agreed to. Philip for the moment abandoned his attempt
against the Angevin empire. John was recognized as rightful heir of the
French fiefs, and his homage was accepted for them all, including
Britanny, for which Arthur then did homage to John. These concessions
were not secured, however, without some sacrifices on the English side.
John yielded to Philip all the conquests which had been made from
Richard, and agreed to pay a relief of 20,000 marks for admission to his
fiefs. The peace was to be sealed by the marriage of John's niece, the
future great queen and regent of France, Blanche of Castile, to Philip's
son Louis, and the county of Evreux was to be ceded as her dower. The
aged but tireless Eleanor went to Spain to bring her granddaughter, and
the marriage was celebrated four days after the signing of the treaty,
Louis at the time being thirteen years old and Blanche twelve.
While his mother went to Spain for the young bride, John crossed to
England to raise money for his relief. This was done by ordering a
carucage at the rate of three shillings on the ploughland. The Cistercian
order objected to paying the tax because of the general immunity which
they enjoyed, and John in great anger commanded all the sheriffs to
refuse them the protection of the courts and to let go free of punishment
any who injured them, in effect to put them outside the law. This decree
he afterwards modified at the request of Hubert Walter, but he refused an
offer of a thousand marks for a confirmation of their charters and
liberties, and returned to Normandy in the words quoted by the
chronicler, "breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the
servants of Christ."
John was now in a position where he should have used every effort to
strengthen himself against the next move of Philip, which he should have
known was inevitable, and where, if ever, he might hope to do so. Instead
of that, by a blunder in morals, in which John's greatest weakness lay,
by an act of passion and perfidy, he gave his antagonist a better excuse
than he could have hoped for when he was at last ready to renew the war.
John had now been for more than ten years married to Isabel of
Gloucester, and no children had been born of the marriage. In the
situation of the Angevin house he may well have wished for a direct heir
and have been ready to adopt the expedient common to sovereigns in such
cases. At any rate about this time he procured from the Bishops of
Normandy and Aquitaine a divorce, a formal annulling of the marriage on
the ground of consanguinity, the question raised at the time of their
marriage never, it would seem, having been settled by dispensation. Then
he sent off an embassy to ask for a daughter of the king of Portugal. In
the meantime he went on a progress through the French lands which had
been secured to him by treaty with Philip, and met the beautiful Isabel,
daughter of the Count of Angoulème, then twelve years of age, and
determined to marry her out of hand. The fact that she was already
betrothed to Hugh "the Brown," son and heir of his own vassal the Count
of La Marche, and that she was then living in the household of her
intended father-in-law, made no more difference to him than his own
embassy to Portugal. It seems possible indeed that it was in the very
castle of the Count of La Marche that the plan was formed. Isabel's
father also did not hesitate in the choice of sons-in-law, and his
daughter having been brought home, she was at once married to John. An
act of this kind was a most flagrant violation of the feudal contract,
nor was the moral blunder saved from being a political one by the fact
that the injured house was that of the Lusignans, great barons and long
turbulent and unruly vassals of Aquitaine. John had given them now a
legal right of appeal to his suzerain and a moral justification of
rebellion.
After his marriage John went back to England for the coronation of his
queen, which took place on October 8. At Lincoln he received the homage
of William of Scotland and made peace with the Cistercians, and then went
on a progress through the north as far as Carlisle. In the meantime, as
was to be expected, hostilities had begun with the family of the Count of
La Marche, and the king sent out a summons to the barons of England to
meet him at Portsmouth at Whitsuntide prepared for service abroad. On
receipt of this notice the earls held a meeting at Leicester and by
agreement replied to the king that they would not go over sea with him
unless he restored to them their rights. There is no evidence in the
single account we have of this incident that the earls intended to deny
their liability to service abroad. It is probable they intended to take
their position on the more secure principle that services due to the
suzerain who violated the rights of his vassal were for the time being,
at least, suspended. If this is so, the declaration of the earls is the
first clear evidence we have that the barons of England were beginning to
realize their legal right of resistance and to get sight of the great
principle which was so soon to give birth to the constitution. The result
of the opposition to John's summons we do not know, unless the statement
which follows in the chronicle that the king was demanding the castles of
the barons, and taking hostages if they retained them, was his answer to
their demand. At any rate they appeared as required at Portsmouth ready
for the campaign abroad, but John, instead of sending them over to
France, took away the money which they had brought to spend in his
service, and let them go home.
From the time of John's landing in Normandy, about June 1, 1201, until
the same time the next year, he was occupied with negotiating rather than
with fighting. Philip was not yet ready to take part himself in the war,
but he kept a careful watch of events and made John constantly aware that
he was not overlooking his conduct toward his vassals. Several interviews
were held between the kings of a not unfriendly character; the treaty of
the previous year was confirmed, and John was invited to Paris by Philip
and entertained in the royal palace. It was at first proposed that the
case between John and the Lusignans should be tried in his own court as
Count of Poitou, but he insisted upon such conditions that the trial was
refused. Meanwhile Philip's affairs were rapidly becoming settled and he
was able to take up again his plans of conquest. The death of Agnes of
Meran made possible a reconciliation with the Church, and the death of
the Count of Champagne added the revenues of that great barony to his own
through his wardship of the heir. In the spring of 1202 he was ready for
action. The barons of Poitou had already lodged an appeal with him as
overlord against the illegal acts of John. This gave him a legal
opportunity without violating any existing treaty. After an interview
with John on March 25, which left things as they were, a formal summons
was issued citing John to appear before Philip's court and answer to any
charges against him. He neither came nor properly excused himself, though
he tried to avoid the difficulty. He alleged that as Duke of Normandy he
could not be summoned to Paris for trial, and was answered that he had
not been summoned as Duke of Normandy but as Count of Poitou. He demanded
a safe conduct and was told that he could have one for his coming, but
that his return would depend on the sentence of the court. He said that
the king of England could not submit to such a trial, and was answered
that the king of France could not lose his rights over a vassal because
he happened to have acquired another dignity. Finally, John's legal
rights of delay and excuse being exhausted, the court decreed that he
should be deprived of all the fiefs which he held of France on the ground
of failure of service. All the steps of this action from its beginning to
its ending seem to have been perfectly regular, John being tried, of
course, not on the appeal of the barons of Poitou which had led to the
king's action, but for his refusal to obey the summons, and the severe
sentence with which it closed was that which the law provided, though it
was not often enforced in its extreme form, and probably would not have
been in this case if John had been willing to submit.67
The sentence of his court Philip gladly accepted, and invaded Normandy
about June 1, capturing place after place with almost no opposition from
John. Arthur, now sixteen years old, he knighted, gave him the
investiture of all the Angevin fiefs except Normandy, and betrothed him
to his own daughter Mary. On August 1 occurred an event which promised at
first a great success for John, but proved in its consequences a main
cause of his failure, and led to the act of infamy by which he has ever
since been most familiarly known. Arthur, hearing that his grandmother
Eleanor was at the castle of Mirebeau in Poitou with a small force, laid
siege to the castle to capture her as John's chief helper, and quickly
carried the outer works. Eleanor had managed, however, to send off a
messenger to her son at Le Mans, and John, calling on the fierce energy
he at times displayed, covered the hundred miles between them in a day
and a night, surprised the besiegers by his sudden attack, and captured
their whole force. To England he wrote saying that the favour of God had
worked with him wonderfully, and a man more likely to receive the favour
of God might well think so. Besides Arthur, he captured Hugh of Lusignan
the younger and his uncle Geoffrey, king Richard's faithful supporter in
the Holy Land, with many of the revolted barons and, as he reported with
probable exaggeration, two hundred knights and more. Philip, who was
besieging Arques, on hearing the news, retired hastily to his own land
and in revenge made a raid on Tours, which in his assault and John's
recapture was almost totally destroyed by fire. The prisoners and booty
were safely conveyed to Normandy, and Arthur was imprisoned at Falaise.
Instantly anxiety began to be felt by the friends of Arthur as to his
fate. William des Roches, who was still in the service of John, went to
the king with barons from Britanny and asked that his prisoner be given up
to them. Notwithstanding the written promise and oath which John had given
to follow the counsel of William in his treatment of Arthur, he refused
this request. William left the king's presence to go into rebellion, and
was joined by many of the barons of Britanny; at the end of October they
got possession of Angers. It was a much more serious matter that during
the autumn and winter extensive disaffection and even open treason began
to show themselves among the barons of Normandy. What disposition should
be made of Arthur was, no doubt, a subject of much debate in the king's
mind, and very likely with his counsellors, during the months that
followed the capture. John's lack of insight was on the moral side, not
at all on the intellectual, and he no doubt saw clearly that so long as
Arthur lived he never could be safe from the designs of Philip. On the
other hand he probably did not believe that Philip would seriously attempt
the unusual step of enforcing in full the sentence of the court against
him, and underestimated both the danger of treason and the moral effect of
the death of Arthur. What the fate of the young Count of Britanny really
was no one has ever known. The most accurate statement of what we do know
is that of an English chronicler68 who says that he was removed from
Falaise to Rouen by John's order and that not long after he suddenly
disappeared, and we may add that this disappearance must have been about
the Easter of 1203. Many different stories were in circulation at the time
or soon after, accounting for his death as natural, or accidental, or a
murder, some of them in abundant detail, but in none of these can we have
any confidence. The only detail of the history which seems historically
probable is one we find in an especially trustworthy chronicler, which
represents John as first intending to render Arthur incapable of ruling by
mutilation and sending men to Falaise to carry out this plan.69 It was
not done, though Arthur's custodian, Hubert de Burgh, thought it best to
give out the report that it had been, and that the young man had died in
consequence. The report roused such a storm of anger among the Bretons
that Hubert speedily judged it necessary to try to quiet it by evidence
that Arthur was still alive, and John is said not to have been angry that
his orders had been disobeyed. It is certain, however, that he learned no
wisdom from the result of this experiment, and that Arthur finally died
either by his order or by his hand.
It is of some interest that in all the contemporary discussion of this
case no one ever suggested that John was personally incapable of such a
violation of his oath or of such a murder with his own hand. He is of all
kings the one for whose character no man, of his own age or later, has
ever had a good word. Historians have been found to speak highly of his
intellectual or military abilities, but words have been exhausted to
describe the meanness of his moral nature and his utter depravity. Fully
as wicked as William Rufus, the worst of his predecessors, he makes on
the reader of contemporary narratives the impression of a man far less
apt to be swept off his feet by passion, of a cooler and more deliberate,
of a meaner and smaller, a less respectable or pardonable lover of vice
and worker of crimes. The case of Arthur exhibits one of his deepest
traits, his utter falsity, the impossibility of binding him, his
readiness to betray any interest or any man or woman, whenever tempted to
it. The judgment of history on John has been one of terrible severity,
but the unanimous opinion of contemporaries and posterity is not likely
to be wrong, and the failure of personal knowledge and of later study to
find redeeming features assures us of their absence. As to the murder of
Arthur, it was a useless crime even if judged from the point of view of a
Borgian policy merely, one from which John had in any case little to gain
and of which his chief enemy was sure to reap the greatest advantage.
Soon after Easter Philip again took the field, still ignorant of the fate
of Arthur, as official acts show him to have been some months later.
Place after place fell into his hands with no serious check and no active
opposition on the part of John, some opening their gates on his approach,
and none offering an obstinate resistance. The listless conduct of John
during the loss of Normandy is not easy to explain. The only suggestion
of explanation in the contemporary historians is that of the general
prevalence of treason in the duchy, which made it impossible for the king
to know whom to trust and difficult to organize a sufficient defence to
the advance of Philip, and undoubtedly this factor in the case should
receive more emphasis than it has usually been given. Other kings had had
to contend with extensive treason on the part of the Norman barons, but
never in quite the same circumstances and probably never of quite the
same spirit. Treason now was a different thing from that of mere feudal
barons in their alliance with Louis VII in the reign of Henry I. It might
be still feudal in form, but its immediate and permanent results were
likely to be very different. It was no temporary defection to be overcome
by some stroke of policy or by the next turn of the wheel. It was joining
the cause of Philip Augustus and the France which he had done so much
already to create; it was being absorbed in the expansion of a great
nation to which the duchy naturally belonged, and coming under the
influence of rapidly forming ideals of nationality, possibly even induced
by them more or less consciously felt. This may have been treason in
form, but in real truth it was a natural and inevitable current, and
from it there was no return. John may have felt something of this.
Its spirit may have been in the atmosphere, and its effect would be
paralyzing. Still we find it impossible to believe that Henry I in the
same circumstances would have done no more than John did to stem the tide.
He seemed careless and inert. He showed none of the energy of action
or clearness of mind which he sometimes exhibits. Men came to him with
the news of Philip's repeated successes, and he said, "Let him go on, I
shall recover one day everything he is taking now"; though what he was
depending on for this result never appears. Perhaps he recognized
the truth of what, according to one account, William Marshal told him to
his face, that he had made too many enemies by his personal conduct,70
and so he did not dare to trust any one; but we are tempted after all
explanation to believe there was in the case something of that moral
breakdown in dangerous crises which at times comes to men of John's
character.
By the end of August Philip was ready for the siege of the
Château-Gaillard, Richard's great fortress, the key to Rouen and so to
the duchy. John seems to have made one attempt soon after to raise the
siege, but with no very large forces, and the effort failed; it may even
have led to the capture of the fort on the island in the river and the
town of Les Andelys by the French. Philip then drew his lines round the
main fortress and settled down to a long blockade. The castle was
commanded by Roger de Lacy, a baron faithful to John, and one who could
be trusted not to give up his charge so long as any further defence was
possible. He was well furnished with supplies, but as the siege went on
he found himself obliged, following a practice not infrequent in the
middle ages, to turn out of the castle, to starve between the lines, some
hundreds of useless mouths of the inhabitants of Les Andelys, who had
sought refuge there on the capture of the town by the French. Philip
finally allowed them to pass his lines. Chateau-Gaillard was at last
taken not by the blockade, but by a series of assaults extending through
about two weeks and closing with the capture of the third or inner ward
and keep on March 6, 1204, an instance of the fact of which the history
of medieval times contains abundant proof, that the siege appliances of
the age were sufficient for the taking of the strongest fortress unless
it were in a situation inaccessible to them. In the meantime John, seeing
the hopelessness of defending Normandy with the resources left him there,
and even, it is said, fearing treasonable designs against his person, had
quitted the duchy in what proved to be a final abandonment and crossed to
England on December 5. He landed with no good feeling towards the English
barons whom he accused of leaving him at the mercy of his enemies, and he
ordered at once a tax of one-seventh of the personal property of clergy
and laymen alike. This was followed by a scutage at the rate of two marks
on the knight's fee, determined on at a great council held at Oxford
early in January. But, notwithstanding these taxes and other ways of
raising money, John seems to have been embarrassed in his measures of
defence by a lack of funds, while Philip was furnished with plenty to
reinforce the victories of his arms with purchased support where
necessary, and to attract John's mercenaries into his service.
After the fall of Chateau-Gaillard events drew rapidly to a close. John
tried the experiment of an embassy headed by Hubert Walter and William
Marshal to see if a peace could be arranged, but Philip naturally set his
terms so high that nothing was to be lost by going on with the war,
however disastrous it might prove. He demanded the release of Arthur, or,
if he were not living, of his sister Eleanor, with the cession to either
of them of the whole continental possessions of the Angevins. In the
interview Philip made known the policy that he proposed to follow in
regard to the English barons who had possessions in Normandy, for he
offered to guarantee to William Marshal and his colleague, the Earl of
Leicester, their Norman lands if they would do him homage. Philip's
wisdom in dealing with his conquests, leaving untouched the possessions
and rights of those who submitted, rewarding with gifts and office those
who proved faithful, made easy the incorporation of these new territories
in the royal domain. By the end of May nearly all the duchy was in the
hands of the French, the chief towns making hardly a show of resistance,
but opening their gates readily on the offer of favourable terms. For
Rouen, which was reserved to the last, the question was a more serious
one, bound as it was to England by commercial interests and likely to
suffer injury if the connexion were broken. Philip granted the city a
truce of thirty days on the understanding that it should be surrendered
if the English did not raise the siege within that time. The messengers
sent to the king in England returned with no promise of help, and on June
24 Philip entered the capital of Normandy.
With the loss of Normandy nothing remained to John but his mother's
inheritance, and against this Philip next turned. Queen Eleanor,
eighty-two years of age, had closed her marvellous career on April 1, and
no question of her rights stood in the way of the absorption of all
Aquitaine in France. The conquest of Touraine and Poitou was almost as
easy as that of Normandy, except the castles of Chinon and Loches which
held out for a year, and the cities of Niort, Thouars, and La Rochelle.
But beyond the bounds of the county of Poitou Philip made no progress. In
Gascony proper where feudal independence of the old type still survived
the barons had no difficulty in perceiving that Philip Augustus was much
less the sort of king they wished than the distant sovereign of England.
No local movement in his favour or national sympathy prepared the way for
an easy conquest, nor was any serious attempt at invasion made. Most of
the inheritance of Eleanor remained to her son, though not through any
effort of his, and the French advance stopped at the capture of the
castles of Loches and Chinon in the summer of 1205. John had not remained
in inactivity in England all this time, however, without some impatience?
but efforts to raise sufficient money for any considerable undertaking or
to carry abroad the feudal levies of the country had all failed. At the
end of May, 1205, he did collect at Portchester what is described as a
very great fleet and a splendid army to cross to the continent, but
Hubert Walter and William Marshal, supported by others of the barons,
opposed the expedition so vigorously and with so many arguments that the
king finally yielded to their opposition though with great reluctance.
The great duchy founded three hundred years before on the colonization of
the Northmen, always one of the mightiest of the feudal states of France,
all the dominions which the counts of Anjou had struggled to bring
together through so many generations, the disputed claims on Maine and
Britanny recognized now for a long time as going with Normandy, a part
even of the splendid possessions of the dukes of Aquitaine;--all these in
little more than two years Philip had transferred from the possession of
the king of England to his own, and all except Britanny to the royal
domain. If we consider the resources with which he began to reign, we
must pronounce it an achievement equalled by few kings. For the king of
England it was a corresponding loss in prestige and brilliancy of
position. John has been made to bear the responsibility of this disaster,
and morally with justice; but it must not be forgotten that, as the
modern nations were beginning to take shape and to become conscious of
themselves, the connexion with England would be felt to be unnatural, and
that it was certain to be broken. For England the loss of these
possessions was no disaster; it was indeed as great a blessing as to
France. The chief gain was that it cut off many diverting interests from
the barons of England, just at a time when they were learning to be
jealous of their rights at home and were about to enter upon a struggle
with the king to compel him to regard the law in his government of the
country, a struggle which determined the whole future history of the
nation.
Footnotes
[63] See Walter of Coventry, ii. 196.
[64] Matth. Paris, ii. 455.
[65] Rymer, Foedera, i. 140.
[66] Rymer, Foedera, i. 75.
[67] But see Guilhiermoz, Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des Chartes, lx.
(1899), 45-85, whose argument is, however, not convincing.
[68] Roger of Wendover, iii. 170.
[69] Ralph of Coggeshall, 139-141.
[70] L'Histoire de Guillaume la Maréchal, ll. 12737-12741.
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