The call to crusade prompted tens of thousands of Latin Christians to enlist. According to one crusader, ‘such was the enthusiasm for the new pilgrimage that already [in 1188] it was not a question of who had received the cross, but who had not yet done so’. This was something of an exaggeration, as many more stayed in the West than set out for the Holy Land, but the expedition nonetheless caused a staggering upheaval in European society. Particularly in France, whole tranches of the local aristocracy led armed contingents to war. The involvement of kings proved critical, just as it had done in the 1140s, prompting a chain reaction of recruitment across the Latin West through ties of vassalage and obligation. Around 1189 the crusader Gauclem Faidit commented on this phenomenon, arguing in a song that: ‘It behoves everyone to consider going there, and the princes all the more so since they are highly placed, for there is not one who can claim to be faithful and obedient to him if he does not aid [his lord] in this enterprise.’7
Yet even before the ominous news of Saladin’s victories spread, before the fever of enthusiasm took hold, one leader made an immediate commitment to the cause. In November 1187 Richard Coeur de Lion (the Lionheart) took the cross at Tours–the first noble to do so north of Alps.
COEUR DE LION
Today Richard the Lionheart is one of the most widely remembered figures of the Middle Ages, recalled as England’s great warrior-king. But who was Richard? This is a vexed question, because even in his own lifetime he became something of a legend. Richard certainly was aware of the extraordinary power of reputation and actively sought to promote a cult of personality, encouraging comparisons with the great figures of the mythic past such as Roland, scourge of the Iberian Moors, and King Arthur. Richard even set out on crusade with a sword named Excalibur, although admittedly he later sold it to pay for additional ships. By the mid-thirteenth century stories of his epic feats abounded. One author tried to account for Richard’s famous appellation by explaining that he had once been forced to fight a lion with his bare hands. Having reached down the beast’s throat and ripped out its still-beating heart, Richard supposedly ate the blood-dripping organ with gusto.
A contemporary eyewitness and ardent supporter offered this stirring portrait of his physical appearance:
He was tall, of elegant build; the colour of his hair was between red and gold; his limbs were supple and straight. He had quite long arms, which were particularly convenient for drawing a sword and wielding it most effectively. His long legs matched the arrangement of his whole body.
The same source claimed that Richard had been endowed by God ‘with virtues which seemed rather to belong to an earlier age. In this present age, when the world is growing old, these virtues hardly appear in anyone, as if everyone were like empty husks.’ In comparison:
Richard had the valour of Hector, the heroism of Achilles; he was not inferior to Alexander…Also, which is very unusual for one so renowned as a knight, Nestor’s tongue and Ulysses’ wisdom enabled him to excel others in every undertaking, both in speaking and acting.8
Perhaps not surprisingly, scholars have not always accepted this startling image of the Lionheart as an almost superhuman hero. As early as the eighteenth century, English historians were criticising Richard both as a monarch and as a man–accusing him of exploiting England for his own ends and of being possessed of a brutish and impulsive character. In recent decades the exceptional University of London scholar John Gillingham has reshaped the perception and understanding of the Lionheart’s career. Gillingham acknowledged that Richard barely spent one year out of ten in England during his reign, but contextualised this fact, stressing that he had been not just a king of England, but the ruler of an Angevin Empire at a moment of crisis in Christendom. Likewise, the Lionheart’s headstrong nature was recognised, but his image as a savage and tempestuous brute overturned. Richard is now generally regarded as having been a well-educated ruler, adept in politics and negotiation, and above all a man of action, beloved of warfare and imbued with a visionary flair for military command. Although much of this reassessment still holds true, in seeking to rejuvenate the Lionheart’s reputation Gillingham may have overstated some of Richard’s achievements on the Third Crusade, sparing him criticism when it was justified.9
Richard, count of Poitou, duke of Aquitaine
The Lionheart may have become king of England, but he was most assuredly not English by either birth or background. His native tongue was Old French, his heritage that of Anjou and Aquitaine. He was born in Oxford on 8 September 1157 to King Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine. With such parentage, the young prince was almost predestined to leave his mark on history, but Richard was not expected to inherit this vast Angevin realm; that glory fell to his elder brother, known to history as Henry the Younger. To begin with, at least, Richard was groomed to be a lieutenant, not a commander. In twelfth-century Europe, however, high rates of infant and adolescent mortality meant that a change in prospects was always possible.
As a boy, Richard was associated with Aquitaine. On the expectation that he would not inherit the throne of England, and perhaps through the influence of his mother, the young prince was designated as ruler of this vast region of south-western France. In 1169 Richard paid homage to the French King Louis VII for Aquitaine and then, in 1172 at the age of fifteen, he was installed formally as duke of Aquitaine (with the associated title of count of Poitou). Richard was further woven into the complex web of relations between the Angevin and Capetian dynasties through his betrothal, in 1169, to King Louis’ daughter Alice–although the French princess spent her time from this point onwards in King Henry II’s court rather than with Richard, and reputedly became Henry’s mistress.
Aquitaine was among the wealthiest and most cultured regions of France–a flourishing centre of music, poetry and art–and these factors seem to have left their marks on Richard. He was a generous patron of troubadours and himself a keen singer, and a writer of songs and poetry. He likewise possessed an excellent knowledge of Latin and a good-natured, if acerbic, wit. His duchy was also notable for its associations with the legendary holy wars against Islam waged in Spain during the time of Charlemagne. Churches within the region claimed to house the body of Roland, the mighty hero of the campaign, and the very horn with which he had sought to summon aid against the Moors.
For all its veneer of civility, Aquitaine was a quarrelsome hotbed of lawlessness and civil discord–really it was just a loosely agglomerated collection of fiercely independent territories, peopled by powerful, recalcitrant families like the Lusignans. Given this, Richard looked set to rule a polity that was all but ungovernable, but he proved to be remarkably competent. Through the 1170s and 1180s he not only maintained order, quelling numerous rebellions, but even managed to expand his ducal territory at the expense of the county of Toulouse. These trials provided the Lionheart with valuable military experience, particularly in the field of siegecraft, and he revealed a marked aptitude for warfare.
Richard also had to contend with the fractious reality of contemporary politics. Throughout his early career, he was enmeshed in a complex, constantly shifting power struggle within the Angevin dynasty–with Henry II skilfully defending his own position against the rising power of his sons and the ambitions of his wife, while the Lionheart and his brothers squabbled over the Angevin inheritance as often as they united against their father. As early as 1173, Richard was involved in a full-scale rebellion against Henry II alongside his brothers. The Lionheart’s status was transformed in 1183 when, in the midst of another rebellion, his brother Henry the Younger died, leaving Richard as Henry’s eldest son and heir designate. Far from resolving the internecine feuding, this simply made Richard a clearer target for attacks and intrigue, as Henry sought to recover possession of Aquitaine and to rearrange the distribution of Angevin territory in favour of his youngest son John. Richard certainly did not prevail in all of these convoluted machinations, but by and large he held his own against Henry II, perhaps the most devious and adroit Latin politician of the twelfth century.