Titans of History

RICHARD THE LIONHEART & JOHN SOFTSWORD

1157–1199 & 1167–1216

Richard was a bad son, a bad husband and a bad king, but a gallant and splendid soldier.

Steven Runciman

Richard I was one of the most capable and glamorous of English kings; his youngest brother John was one of the most inept and unattractive. They were the sons of King Henry II and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, who together ruled England and half of France—the Angevin empire. Henry was to spend much of his reign repelling attacks by the ambitious Philip II of France, who was determined to extend his own borders.

Henry had four legitimate sons. The first—also Henry—was known as Young King after Henry II had him crowned while he himself was still alive, and who died in his twenties. The second was Richard, who ultimately succeeded to the throne as Richard I; Geoffrey became duke of Brittany and earl of Richmond; John was the fourth. The rivalry between the old king and his greedy, jealous and violent sons was so vicious that they were known as the Devil’s Brood. However, the overbearing and dominating Henry II, a swashbuckling royal titan, often favored John, perhaps because he was the weakest and least able—and therefore the lesser threat to his own power.

More legends have accrued around Richard I than any other English king. His chivalrous rivalry with Saladin during the Third Crusade was the subject of famous ballads and tales across Europe, as was his long, Odysseus-like journey home. Richard was the archetypal Angevin king. Like the rest of his family, he had a furious temper and could be irresponsible and impulsive. And, being an Angevin with huge European interests, he simply regarded England as another fiefdom to defend and a resource to fund his conquests.

Brash, tall, with red-golden hair, he adopted scarlet as his color, and wielded a sword he called Excalibur. Highly intelligent, energetic and flexible, he was capable of gruesome cruelty and ruthlessness. He massacred thousands of Muslim prisoners in cold blood outside Acre and, on another occasion, arranged the heads of executed Muslims around his tent—yet he also once stripped naked and whipped himself in church for his sins. He was not interested in women except as political pawns, though he did father at least one bastard (it is unlikely he was gay as claimed by some scholars). War was his ruling passion and outstanding talent.

Richard was invested with land and power from the age of eleven, when he was raised to duke of Aquitaine. He became duke of Poitou four years later and immediately allied with his brothers and his mother in a failed rebellion against their father Henry II in 1173–4. A harsh lord, Richard himself provoked rebellion among his subjects in Gascony in 1183, and a few years later was rebelling again against his father, this time in alliance with Louis, the king of France and his mother’s former husband.

In 1188, Henry finally lost patience and declared he no longer saw Richard as his heir, which propelled the future Lionheart once more to come out in open rebellion. Initially, John fought alongside Henry, but, in what was to become a familiar pattern, he switched sides when it was clear Richard was set to triumph. King Henry died shortly afterward, heartbroken at the betrayal by his sons: in 1189 Richard succeeded as king of England and ruler of the Angevin empire. But his focus was on Jerusalem, which Saladin had conquered in 1187. After mortgaging as much of his kingdom as he could and taxing England with the so-called Saladin tithe, Richard sailed for the Holy Land via Sicily in 1190. “I’d have sold London if there had been a buyer,” he said.

He ravaged Sicily then conquered Cyprus on the way. On arrival he fought hard and bloody battles against Saladin’s forces, besieging and capturing Acre, butchering 3,000 Muslim prisoners to counter Saladin’s delaying negotiations and winning the Battle of Arsuf with a cavalry charge, but he failed to take the main prize of Jerusalem. Despite their violent struggle, Richard and Saladin held for each other a chivalrous respect. Each thought and spoke with the highest regard of the other. When Richard was sick and thirsty, Saladin sent him fresh fruit and water, and when he was in need of a horse, Saladin sent him one of his finest.

During their peace negotiations, Saladin was dazzled by Richard’s scarlet-clad exploits—especially his last-minute rescue of Jaffa, wading into the sea right under Saladin’s nose. The sultan is said to have called Richard “so pleasant, upright, magnanimous and excellent that, if the land [Jerusalem] were to be lost in my time, he would rather have it taken into Richard’s mighty power than to have it go into the hands of any other prince whom he had ever seen.” When both sides had fought themselves to exhaustion, Richard offered Saladin a unique and imaginative deal: his brother Safadin would marry Richard’s sister and rule Palestine together from Jerusalem. It did not work of course but it shows Richard’s dynamic flexibility.

In his absence, John, now raised to count of Mortain and granted huge estates to assuage his greed—in return for agreeing not to visit England at all—was plotting to seize power and meddling in English politics, breaking his ban. Richard had to settle things in the Holy Land and rush home. But on his way back his enemies Emperor Henry VI and Duke Leopold of Austria captured him and held him to ransom, giving John the opportunity, in January 1193, to control England. John, however, failed in an attempt to invade England with the assistance of King Philip II of France, and then unsuccessfully attempted to bribe Richard’s captors to hand him over to his custody. As Richard once put it, “my brother John is not the man to win lands by force if there is anyone at all to oppose him.”

On his return (after the astonishing sum of 150,000 marks had been raised for his release), Richard showed incredible leniency to his wayward brother and officially declared him his successor before leaving the country to make war against Philip of France. So, when Richard was killed in 1199 by crossbow bolt at a siege in France, John became king of England and duke of Normandy and Aquitaine.

King John lost most of his empire, broke every promise he ever made, dropped his royal seal in the sea, impoverished England, murdered his nephew, seduced the wives of his friends, betrayed his father, brothers and country, foamed at the mouth when angry, starved and tortured his enemies to death, lost virtually every battle he fought, fled any responsibility whenever possible and died of eating too many peaches. Treacherous, lecherous, malicious, avaricious, cruel and murderous, he earned his nicknames Softsword for military cowardice and incompetence, and Lackland for losing most of his inheritance.

On his succession, his nephew, Arthur, duke of Brittany, the son of Geoffrey II and Constance, was a serious rival to the throne, considered by many as the rightful king, so John quickly arrested the boy, at age fifteen, and—in a crime not unlike that of Richard III and the Princes in the Tower—had him murdered the following year. Arthur’s murder provoked a rebellion in Brittany and a humiliating retreat for John’s armies, who were forced to withdraw from the region in 1204. By 1206, Softsword had lost nearly all of England’s territorial possessions in France, putting up only limp resistance. In fact, when Normandy—England’s last possession on the continent—was seized by the French, John reportedly stayed in bed with his wife, as his soldiers fell in the rout.

Richard, for all his faults, had been admired for his chivalry, unlike the priapic John, who had countless mistresses and illegitimate children, often trying to force himself on the wives and daughters of important noblemen. His treatment of prisoners was particularly odious; he starved to death the wife and son of one of his enemies.

Stranded on English soil and short of funds, John imposed large increases in taxation and mercilessly exploited his feudal prerogatives, giving rise to the popular legend of Robin Hood holding out in Sherwood Forest against royal extortion. Between 1209 and 1213, when John was excommunicated by Pope Innocent III, he shamelessly plundered the revenues of the Church.

From 1212, John faced increasing opposition from the nobility, who began to plot against him. After another thoroughly disastrous military campaign in France in 1214, rebellion finally broke out in England. At a famous meeting in a meadow by the Thames at Runnymede on June 15, 1215, the barons forced John to seal Magna Carta, the foundation of modern English liberties, guaranteeing them rights against the arbitrary rule of the king. John had no intention of keeping his word, and quickly betrayed his promise to abide by the charter, prompting a return to civil war. As he tried his rally his forces, his entourage—with his treasure and bags—was almost lost as he crossed the Wash. The tides rose unexpectedly, and in his frantic efforts to save his possessions he lost the Great Seal of England. As the king betrayed his promises of Magna Carta, he faced a French invasion and a general baronial revolt: his power was slipping away when he fell ill. His death too became him: the king succumbing to dysentery after an excessively voracious meal of peaches and ale.