Richard I of England

• 1. Introduction

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  While scraping together money for a crusade, Richard I of England reputedly declared, "I would have sold London if I could find a buyer." He ruled as king from 1189 until 1199. In all that time he probably spent no more than six months on English soil. His reign was taken up by crusading, by captivity, and by defending his family's lands in France. Yet Richard the Lionheart remains an iconic figure in both England and France. How did a king who was barely present come to define an entire kingdom's idea of a warrior? How did he reach the throne at all? And what did later historians make of a ruler whose reputation swung from model of chivalry to absentee spender?

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• 2. Aquitaine and Rebellion

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  Richard was born on the 8th of September 1157, probably at Beaumont Palace in Oxford. He was the third of five sons of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, so nobody expected him to wear the crown. His wet nurse, Hodierna of St Albans, later received a generous pension from him. Little is known about his schooling, but he composed poetry in Limousin and in French. The Itinerarium peregrinorum et gesta regis Ricardi, a Latin account of the Third Crusade, remembered him as tall and elegant, with hair "between red and gold" and "long arms suited to wielding a sword". Family tradition even claimed descent from the fairy Melusine, which it called "infernal blood".

  In June 1172, at the age of 14, Richard was formally recognised as Duke of Aquitaine at a ceremony in Poitiers. He received the lance and banner of his office, and the rite was repeated at Limoges, where he wore the ring of St Valerie. The next year, his elder brother Henry the Young King fled to the French court of Louis VII, wanting power of his own and freedom from his father's purse strings. Richard and Geoffrey followed. Louis knighted Richard, binding him by vassalage. The poet Jordan Fantosme called the conflict a "war without love".

  By July 1173 the rebels were besieging Aumale, Neuf-Marché, and Verneuil. Eleanor was captured, which left Richard to lead the fight in Aquitaine alone. He made Saintes his base, but Henry II arrived with more than 20,000 mercenaries and took the town by surprise. Richard escaped to the Château de Taillebourg. On the 23rd of September 1174, he went to his father's court at Poitiers and begged forgiveness, weeping at Henry's feet. Eleanor stayed a prisoner until Henry's death, partly as insurance for her son's good behaviour.

  In 1175, a two-month siege of Castillon-sur-Agen, a castle described as "notoriously strong", earned Richard the name of the Lion. Giraldus Cambrensis wrote of "this our lion" by 1187. The byname "lionheart" appears first in Ambroise's account of the Acre campaign of 1191. In the spring of 1179, Richard returned to the Charente Valley and took Taillebourg itself in two days, after laying waste to the farms around it. His rule grew so cruel that barons repeatedly revolted.

  The death of the Young King in June 1183 made Richard the heir to England, and his father demanded that he surrender Aquitaine to John. Richard refused. Geoffrey died in a tournament in 1186. In 1187 Richard allied himself with the 22-year-old Philip II of France. Roger of Howden wrote that Richard seized much of his father's treasure at Chinon and fortified his Poitou castles with it. John Gillingham reads the sight of the two kings sharing a bed as a political gesture, "a bit like a modern-day photo opportunity". On the 4th of July 1189, Richard and Philip defeated Henry's army at Ballans. Two days later Henry died at Chinon, and Howden claimed that the corpse bled from the nose as Richard approached.

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• 3. Crown and Crusade

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  Richard was crowned in Westminster Abbey on the 3rd of September 1189, and the day ended in bloodshed. Custom barred Jews and women from the ceremony, but some Jewish leaders came with gifts. According to Ralph of Diceto, Richard's courtiers stripped and flogged them, then threw them out. A rumour that the king wanted all Jews killed set off an assault on London's Jewish community. Houses burned, several people were forcibly converted, and the scholar Jacob of Orléans was killed. Baldwin of Forde, Archbishop of Canterbury, remarked, "If the King is not God's man, he had better be the devil's". Richard executed those guilty of the worst murders and issued a writ ordering the Jews to be left alone. It was barely enforced, and the next March a massacre followed at York.

  Funding the Third Crusade took up the rest of Richard's attention. He drained his father's treasury, which the Saladin tithe had filled, and raised taxes. He freed William I of Scotland from his homage in return for a payment. He also sold offices, lands and privileges. Chancellor William Longchamp made a show of bidding to keep his post. Richard named regents, and in summer 1190 he finally set out. The troubadour Bertran de Born was among those who criticised his delay.

  In September 1190, Richard reached Sicily, where Tancred had seized the throne and imprisoned Richard's sister Joan, widow of William II. Richard demanded her release. When Messina rose against the foreign troops, he captured the city on the 4th of October 1190, then looted and burned it. A treaty signed on the 4th of March 1191 gave Joan 20000 oz of gold. It also named his nephew Arthur of Brittany as Richard's heir. Philip plotted with Tancred during the stay, and the two kings agreed to end Richard's betrothal to Philip's sister Alys. Before departing, Richard met Joachim of Fiore, who spoke to him of a prophecy in the Book of Revelation.

  In April 1191 Richard left Messina for Acre with an army of 17,000 men, but a storm scattered his fleet. The ship carrying Joan and his new fiancée Berengaria of Navarre was found off the south coast of Cyprus. Isaac Komnenos, the island's ruler, held survivors of the wrecks prisoner. On the 1st of May Richard landed at Lemesos and refused to leave until they were released. Isaac fled, and by the 1st of June the whole island had fallen. Isaac was bound with silver chains, since Richard had promised not to use iron ones. Richard later sold the island to the Templars, and in 1192 Guy of Lusignan acquired it. Cyprus stayed in Christian hands until the Ottoman invasion of 1570.

  In the Chapel of St George at Lemesos on the 12th of May 1191, Richard married Berengaria, eldest daughter of King Sancho VI of Navarre. The match brought him ties to a kingdom bordering Aquitaine, and Eleanor had championed it. Berengaria did not see England until after her husband's death, and the marriage produced no children.

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• 4. Facing Saladin

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  Richard landed at Acre on the 8th of June 1191, already sick with arnaldia, a disease resembling scurvy. During the siege he reportedly shot guards on the walls with a crossbow while lying on a stretcher under a silken quilt. Conrad of Montferrat negotiated the surrender and raised the kings' banners over the city. When Leopold V of Austria's banner was raised alongside them, Richard's men tore it down and threw it in the moat. Leopold left the crusade at once, and Philip soon followed in poor health.

  Richard held roughly 2,700 Muslim prisoners as a guarantee that Saladin would honour the surrender terms. He feared being pinned inside Acre, and he ordered every one of them executed. Marching south, he defeated Saladin's forces at Arsuf on the 7th of September 1191. Richard held his formation until the Hospitallers charged out of line, and then he ordered a general counterattack. The Muslim army was routed, which its own side saw as shameful, and crusader morale rose.

  In November 1191 the army reached Beit Nuba, only 12 miles from Jerusalem. Cold rain and hail, and fear of being trapped by a relief force, persuaded the leaders to retreat to the coast. The following spring brought politics instead of battles. Conrad of Montferrat was accepted as King of Jerusalem, but on the 28th of April 1192 he was stabbed to death by the Assassins. Eight days later, Richard's nephew Henry II of Champagne married Conrad's widow Isabella. His contemporaries widely suspected that Richard was involved, and the murder was never conclusively solved.

  In June 1192 the crusaders came within sight of Jerusalem and turned back again. Richard and most of the council wanted to strike Egypt, the base of Saladin's power. Hugh III, Duke of Burgundy, led the French in demanding a direct assault. Richard said that he would join an attack on the city only as a simple soldier, and the army, divided, withdrew. At the Battle of Jaffa, the Muslim chronicler Baha' al-Din recorded that Richard rode the length of the opposing army with lance in hand, and that no soldier left the ranks to attack him.

  Richard knew that Philip and his own brother John were both plotting against him. On the 2nd of September 1192, he and Saladin agreed to a three-year truce. Ascalon's fortifications were to be destroyed, and Christian pilgrims and merchants gained access to Jerusalem. Richard left for England on the 9th of October 1192. His route home would pass through the lands of the duke whose banner he had flung into the moat at Acre.

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• 5. The Captive King

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  Bad weather forced Richard's ship into Corfu, territory of Byzantine Emperor Isaac II Angelos, who objected to the seizure of Cyprus. Richard sailed on disguised as a Knight Templar with four attendants, but his ship was wrecked near Aquileia. Forced onto a dangerous land route through central Europe, he was captured shortly before Christmas 1192, near Vienna, by Leopold of Austria. Leopold blamed him for the murder of his cousin Conrad and remembered the insult at Acre. He held Richard at Dürnstein Castle under Hadmar of Kuenring, while the regents in England spent weeks unsure where their king was.

  In prison, Richard wrote the song Ja nus hons pris, meaning "No man who is imprisoned", addressed to his half-sister Marie. It exists in French and Occitan versions and expresses his sense of being abandoned by his people. Seizing a crusader was contrary to public law, and Pope Celestine III excommunicated Leopold. On the 28th of March 1193, Richard was brought to Speyer and handed to Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI, who held him at Trifels Castle. The Emperor resented Plantagenet support for the family of Henry the Lion and Richard's recognition of Tancred in Sicily.

  Richard reportedly told the Emperor, "I am born of a rank which recognises no superior but God". At first he was treated with some respect. Then, at the prompting of Philip of Dreux, Bishop of Beauvais, his captivity worsened, and he said his chains were "so heavy" that "a horse or ass would have struggled to move under them". Henry VI demanded 100,000 pounds of silver. That sum matched what the Saladin tithe had raised a few years earlier, and it was two to three times the English crown's annual income under Richard.

  Eleanor worked tirelessly to raise the money. Clergy and laymen were taxed a quarter of the value of their property, and churches surrendered gold and silver treasures. John and Philip meanwhile offered the Emperor money to keep Richard prisoner until Michaelmas 1194. Henry turned them down. Richard was released on the 4th of February 1194. Philip sent word to John: "Look to yourself; the devil is loose". Richard forgave John and named him heir in place of Arthur. On the 11th of March 1194 at Winchester, he was crowned a second time, to wipe away the shame of captivity.

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• 6. Castle and Crossbow

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  At Fréteval in 1194, Philip fled so quickly that he abandoned his entire archive of financial audits and documents, which Richard captured. Richard now set about winning back Normandy. Philip had taken the Norman Vexin, and the Château de Gisors had fallen to the French in 1193. High above the River Seine, in the manor of Andeli, Richard found a naturally strong site for a new fortress. The Treaty of Louviers of December 1195 forbade either king to fortify it. Richard meant to build Château Gaillard regardless. Walter de Coutances, Archbishop of Rouen, was unwilling to sell, so Richard seized the manor while Philip besieged Aumale.

  The archbishop placed Normandy under an interdict, and Roger of Howden described unburied bodies lying in the streets of its cities. Pope Celestine III lifted the ban in April 1197, after Richard gave the archbishop and the diocese of Rouen lands that included the prosperous port of Dieppe. Between 1196 and 1198 the castle cost an estimated £15,000 to £20,000, against about £7,000 spent on castles in England. It was mostly complete in two years, when such a project usually took the better part of a decade. William of Newburgh reported that in May 1198 Richard and his labourers were drenched in a "rain of blood", yet Richard was undeterred.

  No master mason appears in the castle's detailed records. Military historian Richard Allen Brown therefore suggested that Richard himself was the architect. Documents issued from there bore the words "apud Bellum Castrum de Rupe", at the Fair Castle of the Rock. Sir Charles Oman called the castle "the masterpiece of its time". Richard also built an alliance against Philip, including Baldwin IX of Flanders and King Sancho VI of Navarre, and he secured the Welf inheritance in Saxony for his nephew Otto IV. At the Battle of Gisors in 1198, Richard adopted "Dieu et mon Droit", meaning "God and my Right", as his motto.

  In March 1199, Richard was in Limousin putting down a revolt by Viscount Aimar V of Limoges. He besieged the tiny castle of Châlus-Chabrol, perhaps, some chroniclers said, because a peasant had found Roman gold. On the 26th of March 1199, a crossbow bolt struck his shoulder, and the wound turned gangrenous. The archer was brought before him, and some sources say he was a boy. He explained that Richard had killed his father and two brothers. Richard forgave him, saying "Live on, and by my bounty behold the light of day", and ordered him freed with 100 shillings.

  Richard died on the 6th of April 1199, in his mother's arms. It was later said that "the Lion by the Ant was slain". One chronicler reported that the mercenary captain Mercadier had the boy flayed alive and hanged once Richard was dead. Richard's heart was buried at Rouen, his entrails at Châlus, and the rest of his body at his father's feet in Fontevraud Abbey. When scientists examined the heart in 2012, they found it embalmed with frankincense, among other substances. Richard left no legitimate heirs and acknowledged one illegitimate son, Philip of Cognac. His French lands, apart from Rouen, at first rejected John in favour of Arthur, the first step in the dissolution of the Angevin Empire.

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• 7. The Lion in Memory

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  Ralph of Coggeshall, summing up Richard's career, placed the king among "the immense cohort of sinners". Contemporaries saw in Richard a combination of king and knight famed for personal martial prowess, apparently the first such figure. They praised his courage and generosity, but they also accused him of lust, pride, greed, and above all excessive cruelty. Clergy chroniclers resented his taxing of the church for the Crusade and for his ransom. He was also a patron of troubadours and trouvères, and a poet himself. Two poems are attributed to him, the lament written at Dürnstein and a sirventes in Old French, Dalfin je us voill desrenier.

  On the second Great Seal of 1198, Richard bore a shield with three lions passant-guardant, the first appearance of the design that became the Royal Arms of England. His earlier seal of 1189 had shown one lion rampant, or perhaps two. Those three lions still appear on several English coins, and they inspired the emblems of England's national sports teams, including the football team and its "Three Lions" anthem.

  Around the middle of the 13th century, legend invented a minstrel named Blondel. He supposedly travelled from castle to castle singing a song known only to him and his king, until Richard answered from his cell. The tale inspired Grétry's opera Richard Cœur-de-Lion and apparently the opening of Richard Thorpe's film of Ivanhoe. It does not fit the facts, since Richard's jailers publicised his captivity rather than hiding it. By the 16th century, tales of Robin Hood placed the outlaw in Richard's reign, driven into the greenwood by the misrule of Richard's brother John while the king was away on crusade.

  John Gillingham says that Richard's reputation has "fluctuated wildly". Saladin's court figures Baha ad-Din and Ibn al-Athir called him the most remarkable ruler of his time. Chroniclers such as Holinshed and John Speed treated him as a model king for four centuries. Then in 1621 Samuel Daniel faulted him for wasting English resources on crusades and wars in France. Steven Runciman's verdict became typical: "he was a bad son, a bad husband, and a bad king, but a gallant and splendid soldier". Victorians were divided, raising a heroic statue outside the Houses of Parliament, while William Stubbs judged him "a selfish ruler, and a vicious man". Historians have also long debated his sexuality, with Gillingham arguing he was probably heterosexual and Flori suggesting he had relations with both men and women.

  Since 1978, historians have questioned the older view as insular, noting that Richard led a dynasty with far wider responsibilities than England alone. When British troops under General Edmund Allenby captured Jerusalem in World War I, newspapers printed cartoons of Richard looking down from heaven, captioned "At last my dream has come true". Allenby protested that his campaign was not a latter-day crusade, insisting there was "no religious impulse in this campaign".

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