79. THE CAPTIVITY OF RICHARD.

THIERRY.

The occupation of the fortresses by earl John had caused much anxiety to the king of England, and he foresaw that his brother, following the example that he himself had set him, would sooner or later make common cause between his ambitious designs and the hostile projects of the king of France. These fears soon began to distress him to such an extent that, disregarding the oath that he had made not to quit the Holy Land whilst there remained a horse for him to feed on, he concluded a truce of three years, three months, and three days with the Saracens, and set out westward.

When he arrived off Sicily he suddenly bethought himself that it would be dangerous for him to land at any of the ports of southern Gaul, because the greater number of the lords of Provence were related to the Marquis of Montferrat, whose death he was accused of having caused, and also because the Count of Toulouse, Raymond de St. Gilles, who, under the king of Aragon, ruled over all the maritime towns situated west of the Rhone, was his personal enemy. Justly fearing some ambuscade on their part, instead of crossing the Mediterranean, he entered the Adriatic Gulf, after having dismissed the greater part of his suite, in order that he might not be recognised. His vessel was attacked by pirates, with whom, after a lively engagement, he contrived to make so close a friendship, that he left his own ship for one of theirs, which carried him to Yara, on the coast of Sclavonia. He went ashore with a Norman baron named Baldwin de Bethune, master Philip and master Anselm, his chaplains, some Templars, and some servants. It was necessary

p have a safe-conduct from the lord of the province, who unfortunately happened o be one of the numerous relations of the Marquis de Montferrat. The king sent one of his men to make this request, and commissioned him to offer to the ruler a ring set with a large ruby which he had bought in Palestine of some Pisan merchants. This ruby, at that time famous, was recognised by the ruler of Yara: "Who are they who have sent thee to ask a free passage of me?" he inquired of the messenger. "Some pilgrims returning from Jerusalem."-" And their names?” "One is called Baldwin de Bethune, and the other, who offers you this ring, Hugh the merchant." The ruler, examining the ring attentively, did not speak for some time, and then suddenly replied, "Thou dost not speak the truth: his name is not Hugh, it is King Richard. But, since he wished to honour me with his gifts without being acquainted with me, I will not arrest him; I return him his present, and leave him free to depart."

Surprised at this incident, which he was far from expecting, Richard immediately set out, and no one attempted to stop him. But the ruler of Yara sent to warn his brother, the lord of a neighbouring town, that the English king was in the country, and would probably pass through his territory. The brother had in his service a Norman named Roger, originally from Argenton, whom he immediately commissioned to visit every day all the inns at which pilgrims lodged, and endeavour to discover the king of England either by his language or some other token, promising, if he succeeded in capturing him, to reward him with the government of half the town. The Norman prosecuted the search for several days, going from house to house, and, at last, discovered the king. Richard endeavoured for some time to conceal who he was, but, driven to an extremity by the Norman's questions, he was, at last, forced to avow himself; thereupon Roger burst into tears, and implored him immediately to fly, at the same time offering him his best horse; then he returned to his master, and told him that the news of the arrival of the king was merely a false report, that he had not found him, but only one of his countrymen,

Baldwin de Bethune, who was returning from a pilgrimage. The lord, furious at having failed in his object, had Baldwin arrested and kept him in prison.

Meanwhile, king Richard pursued his flight through the German territory, having for his companions only William de l'Etang, his intimate friend, and a valet who could speak the Teutonic language, either being of English birth, or having, from his inferior condition, acquired a taste for learning the English language, which was then exactly similar to the Saxon dialect of Germany, and had nothing of the French tongue either in the words, phrases, or construction. They travelled three days and three nights without food, almost without knowing where they were, and entered the province called in the Tudesque tongue Ost-ric or Est-reich, that is to say, the East kingdom. This name was a last relic of the old empire of the Franks, of which this country formed the eastern extremity. Ost-ric, or l'Autriche, as the French and the Normans called it, was a dependency of the Germanic empire, and was governed by a lord who bore the title of here-zog or duke; and, unfortunately, this duke, named Leopold, was the same whom Richard had mortally offended in Palestine, by tearing down his banner. His residence was at Vienna, on the Danube, at which place the king and his two companions arrived, worn out with fatigue and hunger.

The servant who spoke English went to the town exchange to get the money of the country for their gold byzantines. He made a great display before the merchants of his gold and his person, adopting a dignified air, and the manners of a courtier. The citizens, being suspicious of him, took him before their magistrate to discover who he was. He gave himself out for the valet of a rich merchant who was to arrive in three days, and on this reply he was liberated. When he returned to the king's lodging, he recounted his adventure to him, and advised him to leave the town as soon as possible; but Richard, wishing for some repose, staid some days longer. During this interval the report of his landing at Yara was spread through Austria, and duke Leopold, who wished at once to wreak his vengeance on the king, and enrich himself by the ransom of such a prisoner, sent spies and menat-arms in search of him in all directions. They traversed the country without finding any traces of him; but one day the same servant, who had been before arrested, being in the market of the town purchasing provisions, some richly embroidered gloves, such as the great lords of that time wore with their court dresses, were observed in his girdle. He was again arrested, and, to force confessions from him, he was put to the torture. He revealed all, and pointed out the inn where Richard was. It was surrounded by the duke of Austria's soldiers, who, taking Richard by surprise, forced him to surrender; and the duke with great marks of respect, had him confined in a prison, where picked soldiers with drawn swords guarded him day and night.

No sooner was the report of the king of England's arrest spread, than the emperor, or Cæsar of all Germany, summoned his vassal the duke of Austria, to surrender his prisoner to him, under the pretext, that none but an emperor had a right to imprison a king. Duke Leopold assented to this strange reasoning with apparent willingness, but not without stipulating that he should receive at least a part of the ransom. The king of England was then transferred from Vienna to Worms, into one of the imperial fortresses, and the emperor, in great glee, sent a message to the king of France, which was more agreeable to him, says an historian of the time, than a present of gold or topaz. Philip immediately wrote to the emperor to congratulate him cordially on his prize, and to intreat him to guard it carefully, because, he said, the world would never be at peace if such a disturber succeeded in escaping. Therefore, he proposed to pay a sum equal or even superior to the king of England's ransom, if the emperor would give him into his custody.

The emperor, according to custom, submitted this proposition to an asserably of

the lords and bishops of the country, called in the Tudesque language, a diet, a word which meant, in its original signification, the people in general, but which had by degrees got to be used in a more restricted sense. He made known to the diet the motives of the king of France's request, and justified Richard's imprisonment on the plea of the pretended crime of murder committed by him upon the Marquis of Montferrat, the insult offered to the banner of the Duke of Austria, and the three years' truce concluded with the enemies of the faith. For these misdeeds the king of England ought, he said, to be declared a capital enemy of the empire. The assembly decided that Richard should be judged by it for the crimes imputed to him, but refused to surrender him to the king of France. The latter did not wait for judgment to be given against the prisoner, but sent an express message to inform him that he renounced him as his vassal, defied him, and declared war to the utmost against him. At the same time he made the same offers to the Earl of Mortain which he had formerly made to Richard to incite him against his father. He promised to ensure to John the possession of Normandy, of Anjou, and of Aquitaine, and to aid him in obtaining the kingdom of England; in return he demanded that he should be his faithful ally, and that he should marry that same Alice, of whom mention has been before made. Without at that time concluding a positive alliance with king Philip, John commenced intrigues in all the countries which were in subjection to his brother; and, under the pretext that Richard was dead, or at least must be considered so, he exacted the oath of fidelity from the public officers, and the governors of the fortresses and towns.

The king of England was informed of these manœuvres, by some Norman abbots, who obtained permission to visit him in his prison, and especially by his old chancellor, William Longchamp, the personal enemy of the Earl of Mortain. Richard received him as a friend persecuted for his cause, and employed him in several negociations. The day fixed on for the trial of the king arrived; he appeared as an accused man before the Germanic diet assembled at Worms; all he had to do to obtain an acquittal on all points was to promise as his ransom, one hundred thousand pounds of silver, and to avow himself a vassal of the emperor. This avowal of vassalage, which was a mere formality, was of great importance in the eyes of the emperor, on account of his pretensions to the same universal dominion as the Cæsars of Rome, of whom he called himself the heir, had held. The feudal subjection of the kingdom of England to the Germanic Empire was not of a nature to be of long duration; but, nevertheless, the acknowledgement and declaration were made with all the pomp and ceremony exacted by the custom of that age. "King Richard," says a contemporary, "divested himself of the kingdom, and surrendered it to the emperor, as lord of all the earth, investing him with it by means of his hat; and the emperor returned it to him to hold as a fief of him, on condition of an annual tribute of five thousand pounds sterling, and invested him with it by means of a double crown of gold." After this ceremony the German emperor, bishops, and lords, promised by oath, on their soul, that the king of England should be free on the payment of the hundred thousand pounds and from that day the captivity of Richard was less strict.

In the meantime the Earl of Mortain, carrying on his intrigues and manœuvres, solicited the justiciaries of England, the archbishop of Rouen, and the barons of Normandy, to swear fidelity to him, and to acknowledge him as king; the greater number refused, and the earl, feeling that he was not sufficiently powerful to oblige them to accede to his wishes, crossed over to France, and concluded a formal treaty with king Philip. He acknowledged himself that king's vassal and liegeman for England, and all the other states of his brother, swore to marry Philip's sister, and to give up to him a considerable portion of Normandy, Tours, Loches, Am

boise, and Montrichard, as soon as, by his aid, he should have become king of England. He further promised to the Count de Blois, a vassal of the king of France, the towns of La Châtre, and Vendôme. And, finally, he subscribed to the same clause against Richard, which Richard had more than once subscribed to against his father, Henry II. "And, if my brother Richard should offer me peace, I will not accept it without the consent of my ally of France, even if my ally should have made peace on his own account with my said brother Richard."

After the conclusion of this treaty, king Philip crossed the frontiers of Normandy, with a numerous army; and earl John had money distributed among such of the Gallic tribes as were still free, to engage them to second by an invasion the manœuvres of his partisans in England. This people, oppressed by the Normans, gladly enlisted their national hatred in the service of one of the two factions into which their enemies were divided; but, incapable of great efforts out of the little country where they obstinately defended their independence, they were of little service to king Richard's adversaries. These latter, had, also, but little success in England, and this determined John to remain near the king of France, and to direct all his projects against the coast of Normandy. Although thus exempted from the scourge of war, England was not much better off; for she had to submit to enormous tributes, levied for the king's ransom. The royal collectors traversed the country in every direction, and drew contributions from all classes of men, clergy and laity, Saxons and Normans. All the sums levied in various assessments were collected together in London; and it has been calculated that the total would have covered the amount of the ransom, had there not been an enormous deficiency caused by the frauds of the men employed. This first levy being insufficient, the royal officers commenced a fresh one, making use, say the historians, of the plausible term of the king's ransom, to cover their shameful robberies.

The king had been now two years in prison; he was weary of captivity, and sent message after message to his officers, and his friends in England, and on the continent, urging them to free him by paying his ransom. He complained bitterly that he was neglected by his people, and that they would not do for him, what he himself would have done for any other. He uttered his complaints in a song composed in the Roman dialect of the south, which he preferred to the less polished tongue of Normandy, Anjou, and France.

"I have many friends, but they give poorly; it is a shame to them, that, for want of ransom, I have been for two winters a prisoner here.

"Let my men and my barons, English, Norman, Poitevin, and Gascon be assured, that there is no man, however base, whom for want of money, I would suffer to remain in prison; I do not say it as a reproach; but I am still a prisoner."

Whilst the second collection for the king's ransom was being made throughout England, envoys from the emperor arrived in London, to receive, as on account for the sum total, the money that had been already collected; they ascertained the quantity by weight and measure, says an historian of the time, and put their seal on the sacks, which were conveyed as far as the territories of the empire by English sailors, at the risk and peril of the king of England. The money came safe to the hands of the Cæsar of Germany, who sent a third of it to the duke of Austria, as his share of the prize; then another diet was assembled to decide on the fate of the prisoner, whose liberation was fixed for the third week after Christmas, on condition that he should leave a certain number of hostages as a guarantee for the payment which still remained to be made. Richard agreed to everything, and the emperor, delighted with his easy compliance, was pleased to reward him by a gift. He granted to him, by authentic charter, to hold of him as a fief, some provinces which he called his, in the style of his chancery, such as

the Viennois, and a portion of the country which in the Roman tongue was called Bourgogne, and the towns and territories of Lyon, Arles, Marseille, and Narbonne. "Now it must be understood," says a contemporary, that these lands, given to the king by the emperor, contained five archbishoprics, and thirty-three bishoprics; and it must also be understood that he had never been able to exercise any sort of authority over them, and that the inhabitants had never consented to recognise any lord nominated or appointed by him."

When the king of France, and his ally, earl John, learnt what had been resolved by the imperial diet, they feared they might not have time to execute their designs before the king's liberation; they therefore sent messengers in great haste to the emperor, offering him seventy thousand marks of silver if he would prolong the imprisonment of Richard for one year, or, if he preferred it, a thousand pounds of silver for each succeeding month of captivity; or a hundred and fifty thousand marks if he would give the prisoner into the custody of the king of France and the earl. The emperor, tempted by these dazzling offers, was inclined to break his word; but the members of the diet, who had sworn to keep the engagement, opposed any want of faith, and, using all their power, had the captive released towards the end of January, 1194. Richard could not direct his steps either towards France or Normandy, which was then invaded by the French; the safest way for him was to embark in one of the German ports, and sail straight to England; but it was then the most stormy season; he was obliged to wait more than a month at Anvers, and during that time the emperor's avarice was again tempted; the hope of doubling his profits overcame the fear of displeasing chiefs less powerful than himself, and whom, in his character of paramount lord, he had a thousand means of silencing. He therefore resolved to seize a second time the prisoner whom he had allowed to depart; but the secret of this treachery was not sufficiently well kept, and one of the hostages left in the emperor's hands, found means to warn the king. Richard immediately embarked in the galliot of a Norman trader, named Alain Tranchemer, and, having thus escaped the men-at-arms sent to take him, landed safely at the port of Sandwich.

80.-DEATH AND CHARACTER OF RICHARD.

BURKE.

Richard, on his coming to England, found all things in the utmost confusion; but before he attempted to apply a remedy to so obstinate a disease, in order to wipe off any degrading ideas which might have arisen from his imprisonment, he caused himself to be new-crowned. Then, holding his Court of Great Council at Southampton, he made some useful regulations in the distribution of justice. He called some great offenders to a strict account. Count John deserved no favour, and he lay entirely at the king's mercy, who, by an unparalleled generosity, pardoned him his multiplied offences, only depriving him of the power of which he had made so bad a use. Generosity did not oblige him to forget the hostilities of the king of France. But to prosecute the war money was wanting, which new taxes and new devices supplied with difficulty and with dishonour. All the mean expedients of a necessitous government were exercised on this occasion. All the grants which were made on the king's departure for the Holy Land, were revoked on the weak pretence that the purchasers had sufficient recompense whilst they held them. Necessity seemed to justify this as well as many other measures that were equally violent. The whole revenue of the Crown had been dissipated; means to support its dignity must be found, and these means were the least unpopular,