Chapter IX: The Fall of the Angevins (2)

[2076] Le Baud, _Hist. de Bretagne_, pp. 209, 210, with a
reference to Robert Blondel, a writer of the fifteenth century.
On the value of this account see Bishop Stubbs, pref. to W.
Coventry, vol. ii. p. xxxii, note 3.

[2077] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), pp. 143–145.

[2078] Proclamation of Louis of France, a. 1216, in Rymer,
_Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 140. Ann. Margam, a. 1204 (Luard, _Ann.
Monast._, vol. i. p. 27). Rog. Wend. (Coxe), vol. iii. p. 373.
Le Baud as above, p. 210. Stubbs, _W. Coventry_, vol. ii. pref.
p. xxxii.

[2079] Bishop Stubbs’s remark (_W. Coventry_, vol. ii. pref. p.
xxxiv, note 1), quoted above, p. 406, note 1{2058}, applies to
this case also. On the vexed question as to the composition of
the court I do not feel bound to enter here at all.

Philip took the field as soon as the forfeiture was proclaimed. Within a fortnight after Easter he had taken Saumur[2080] and entered Aquitaine; there he seems to have spent some weeks in taking sundry castles, with the help of the Bretons and the malcontent Poitevin nobles.[2081] One great Norman baron, the viscount of Beaumont, had already openly joined the league against John;[2082] and as Philip turned northward again, the count of Alençon formally placed himself and all his lands at the disposal of the French king.[2083] Thus secure of a strong foothold on the southern frontier of Normandy, and already by his last year’s conquests master of its north-eastern border from Eu to Gisors, Philip set himself to win the intervening territory--the remnant of the viscounty of Evreux. One by one its castles--Conches,[2084] Vaudreuil[2085] and many others--fell into his hands. Messenger after messenger came to John as he sat idle in his palace at Rouen,[2086] all charged with the same story: “The king of France is in your land as an enemy, he is taking your castles, he is binding your seneschals to their horses’ tails and leading them shamefully to prison, and he is dealing with your goods according to his own will and pleasure.” “Let him alone,” John answered them all alike; “I shall win back some day all that he is taking from me now.” The barons who still clave to him grew exasperated as they watched his unmoved face and heard his unvarying reply; some of them began to attribute his indifference to the effects of magic; all, finding it impossible to break the spell, turned away from him in despair. One by one they took their leave and withdrew to their homes, either passively to await the end, or actively to join Philip. Even Hugh of Gournay, who had held out so bravely and so faithfully a year ago, now voluntarily gave up his castle of Montfort.[2087] Not till near the middle of August did John make any warlike movement; then he suddenly laid siege to Alençon; but at Philip’s approach he fled in a panic;[2088] an attempt to regain Brezolles ended in like manner,[2089] and John relapsed into his former inactivity. That the conqueror did not march straight to the capture of Rouen, that he in fact made no further progress towards it for six whole months, was owing not to John but to his predecessor. Richard’s favourite capital was safe, so long as it was sheltered behind the group of fortifications crowned by his “saucy castle” on the Rock of Andely.

[2080] Chron. S. Albin. a. 1203 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 52).

[2081] Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.),
p. 46. Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (_ibid._), p. 82; both
under a wrong year, viz. 1202 instead of 1203.

[2082] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 139.

[2083] Rigord and Will. Armor. as above.

[2084] Rigord as above.

[2085] _Ibid._ R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 143.

[2086] John was not literally there all the while; but he only
quitted it for short excursions, never going further than
Moulineaux, Pont-de-l’Arche, Orival or Montfort, from the
middle of May till the beginning of August, when he suddenly
went as far west as Caen, and thence as suddenly south again to
Falaise and Alençon. Hardy, _Itin. K. John_, a. 5 (_Intr. Pat.
Rolls_).

[2087] Rog. Wend. (Coxe), vol. iii. pp. 171, 172.

[2088] Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 82. John was at Alençon August 11–15;
Hardy, _Itin. K. John_, a. 5 (_Intr. Pat. Rolls_).

[2089] Will. Armor. as above.

Upon the winning of Château-Gaillard, therefore, Philip now concentrated all his energies and all his skill. There was no hope of voluntary surrender here; John had given the fortress in charge to Roger de Lacy the constable of Chester, an English baron who had no stake in Normandy, whose private interests were therefore bound up with those of the English king, and who was moreover a man of dauntless courage and high military capacity.[2090] The place was only to be won by a regular siege. Crossing the Seine higher up, perhaps at Vernon, Philip led his troops along its left bank, and encamped in the peninsula formed by the bend of the river just opposite Les Andelys. The garrison of the fort in the Isle of Andely no sooner beheld his approach than they destroyed the bridge between the island and the left bank. Philip was thus deprived of the means not only of reaching them, but also of opening communications with the opposite shore; for this could only be done with safety at some point below Château-Gaillard, and the transport of the materials needful for the construction of a bridge or pontoon was barred by the stockade which crossed the river-bed directly under the foot of the castle-rock. The daring of a few young Frenchmen, however, soon cleared this obstacle away. While the king brought up his engines close to the water’s edge and kept the garrison of the island-fort occupied with the exchange of a constant fire of missiles, a youth named Gaubert of Mantes with a few bold comrades plunged into the water, each with an axe in his hand, and, regardless of the stones and arrows which kept falling upon them from both sides, hewed at the stockade till they had made a breach wide enough for boats to pass through in safety. A number of the broad flat-bottomed barges used for transport were then hastily collected from the neighbouring riverside towns, and moored side by side across the stream; these served as the foundation of a wooden bridge, which was further supported with stakes and strengthened with towers, and by means of which Philip himself, with the larger part of his host, crossed the river to form a new encampment under the walls of the Lesser Andely. The garrison of the Isle were thus placed between two fires;[2091] and the whole Vexin was laid open as a foraging-ground for the besieging army, while the occupants of the Lesser Andely and of Château-Gaillard itself found their communications and their supplies cut off on all sides.[2092]

[2090] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 144. Rog. Wend. as above,
p. 180.

[2091] Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
Scriptt._, vol. v.), pp. 82, 83; _Philipp._, l. vii. vv. 86–131
(_ib._ p. 170; Deville, _Château-Gaillard_, pp. 127–129).

[2092] Will. Armor. _Philipp._, l. vii. vv. 132–139 (Duchesne,
p. 170; Deville, p. 129).

John was now again hovering about at a safe distance in the neighbourhood.[2093] To the peril of Château-Gaillard his fatuous indifference was at last beginning to yield. A year ago he had shewn some appreciation of his brother’s work, by making an addition to the buildings in the second ward;[2094] and he had shewn his sense of the military importance of the place yet more significantly, by appointing Roger de Lacy as its commander. He now gathered up all his remaining forces--still, it seems, a formidable array[2095]--with the apparent intention of dislodging the French from Les Andelys. As Philip’s biographer remarks, however, John feared and hated the light; he resolved, according to his wont, upon a night attack; and even that attack he did not lead in person.[2096] He intrusted its command indeed to a far braver man than himself, but a man who was better fitted for action in the light of day than for such deeds of darkness as John delighted in. William the Marshal, the favourite comrade-in-arms of the younger King Henry, the faithful friend and servant of the elder one even unto death, the honoured minister of Richard, still clave to the last survivor of the house which he had loved so long and so well. To him John confided his plan for the relief of Les Andelys. The marshal was to lead a force of three hundred knights, three thousand mounted serving-men and four thousand foot, with a band of mercenaries under a chief called Lupicar,[2097] along the left bank of the Seine, and to fall under cover of darkness upon the French camp in the peninsula. Meanwhile seventy transport-vessels, constructed by Richard to serve either for sea or river-traffic, and as many more as could be collected, were to be laden with provisions for the besieged garrison of the Isle, and convoyed up the river by a flotilla of small war-ships, manned by pirates[2098] under a chief named Alan, and carrying, besides their own daring and reckless crews, a force of three thousand Flemings. Two hundred strokes of the oar, John reckoned, would bring these ships to the French pontoon; they must break it if they could; if not, they could at least co-operate with the land-forces under the Marshal in cutting off the northern division of the French army from its comrades and supplies on the left bank, and throw into the island-fort provisions enough to save it from the necessity of surrender till John himself should come to its relief.

[2093] “Non multum distabat a loco illo” says Will. Armor.
_Gesta Phil. Aug._ (Duchesne, as above), p. 83. The date must
fall between August 16, when John was at Alençon, and September
5, when he was at Bonneville. His whereabouts during the
interval vary between Chambrai, Trianon, Montfort and Rouen.
Hardy, _Itin. K. John_, a. 5 (_Intr. Pat. Rolls_).

[2094] Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 84; _Philipp._, l. vii. vv. 737–746
(_ib._ p. 181; Deville, _Château-Gaillard_, p. 145).

[2095] “Maximum congregaverat exercitum.” Will. Armor. _Gesta
Phil. Aug._, as above, p. 83.

[2096] _Ibid._; _Philipp._, l. vii. vv. 140–143, 188–194 (_ib._
pp. 170, 171; Deville as above, pp. 129, 130).

[2097] On this man see Géraud, _Les Routiers_ (_Bibl. de
l’Ecole des Chartes_, ser. i. vol. iii. p. 132). In his
native tongue he was called “Lobar”; in Latin he appears
as “Lupicarius,” “Lupescarus,” “Lupatius.” M. Géraud calls
him in French “Louvart”; the name was doubtless an assumed
one, meaning “wolf.” He was a fellow-countryman and old
comrade-in-arms of Mercadier; Mat. Paris introduces them both
at once, in 1196, as “natione Provinciales”--“qui duces fuerunt
catervæ quam ruttam vocamus, militantes sub comite Johanne
regis fratre.” _Chron. Maj._ (Luard), vol. ii. p. 421. Lupicar
however had made his first historical appearance some years
earlier than Mercadier, as a leader of the Brabantines in the
Limousin, about 1177. See Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. c. 70 (Labbe,
_Nova Biblioth._, vol. ii. p. 324).

[2098] It seems a strange return to long-past times to hear
of “_pirates_” sailing up the Seine to attack a king of the
French. Of what nationality are these men likely to have been?

The flower of the French host, as John knew, had crossed the river with its king. Those who remained in the peninsula were hampered by the presence of a crowd of unwarlike serving-men, sutlers and camp-followers, many of whom, after spending the day in drunken revelry, were lying asleep in the fields outside the camp. The night was drawing to its close--for the cock had crowed thrice--when the Marshal’s troops fell upon these sleepers and slew more than two hundred of them as they lay. The soldiers within the camp quickly caught the alarm; in their terror they rushed to the pontoon in such numbers that it broke under their weight, and they sought safety in swimming across the river to join their comrades on the opposite shore. These however had now been aroused by the tumult; the bravest of the French knights, headed by William des Barres, confronted the fugitives with indignant reproaches for their cowardice, and drove them back across the stream. By the light of torches and fires, hastily kindled, the whole host was soon got under arms, the bridge repaired, and the Marshal’s troops, surprised in their turn while groping about in the darkness of the deserted camp, were routed with heavy loss. The victors, thinking the fight was over, went back to their sleeping-quarters, but had scarcely reached them when they were roused up again, to see, in the dim light of the August sunrise, the hostile fleet bearing down upon them. In a few minutes the two river-banks and the pontoon were lined with armed Frenchmen. Still the boats held on their course till the foremost of them touched the bridge; and despite a ceaseless shower of arrows from either shore, and of stones, iron missiles, and boiling oil and pitch from the engines mounted on the wooden turrets of the bridge, the crews began to hew at the cables and stakes in a desperate effort to break it down, and kept its defenders at bay till the Seine ran red with blood. At last an enormously heavy oaken beam fell directly upon the two foremost ships and sank them. The rest, stricken with sudden terror, rowed away in disorder as fast as oars could move them. Gaubert of Mantes and three other gallant French sailors sprang each into a little boat, set off in pursuit, and succeeded in capturing two of the fugitive ships, which they brought back in tow, with their stores and all of their crews who survived.[2099] The delay in the arrival of the fleet, caused by the difficulties of navigation in the Seine,[2100] had ruined John’s plan for the relief of the Isle of Andely. The fate of its garrison was soon decided; and again the hero of the day was Gaubert of Mantes. The fort was encircled by a double palisade or rampart of wood, outside the walls. Gaubert tied a rope round his waist, took in his hand two iron vessels coated with pitch and filled with burning charcoal,[2101] swam to the easternmost point of the island, which the garrison, trusting to the proximity of Château-Gaillard on this side, had ventured to leave unguarded, and threw these missiles against the palisade. The wood instantly caught fire; the wind carried the flames all round the ramparts and into the fort itself. Some of the garrison made their escape by swimming or on rafts; some were stifled in the cellars and galleries in which they sought a refuge from the fire; the rest surrendered to the French king. Philip lost no time in repairing and garrisoning the fort and rebuilding the bridge on its western side. At the sight of his success the whole population of the Lesser Andely fled in a body to Château-Gaillard; Philip entered the town in triumph, sent for new inhabitants to fill the places of the fugitives, and intrusted its defence to two companies of mercenaries, whose strength may be estimated from the statement that the leader of one of them, Cadoc by name, received from the royal treasury a thousand pounds daily for himself and his men.[2102]

[2099] Will. Armor. _Philipp._, l. vii. vv. 144–335 (Duchesne,
_Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v. pp. 171–174; Deville,
_Château-Gaillard_, pp. 129–134). Cf. _Gesta Phil. Aug._
(Duchesne as above), p. 83.

[2100] Will. Armor. as above, vv. 206, 207 (Duchesne as above,
p. 172; Deville as above, p. 131).

[2101] See Deville’s note, _Château-Gaillard_, p. 66.

[2102] Will. Armor., _Philipp._, l. vii. vv. 336–398 (Duchesne,
_Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v. pp. 174, 175; Deville,
_Château-Gaillard_, pp. 134–136). Cf. _Gesta Phil. Aug._
(Duchesne as above), p. 83.

Philip’s mastery of the river was still precarious and incomplete without the reduction of Château-Gaillard. For an attack upon the Saucy Castle itself, however, his courage seems as yet to have failed; and striking north-westward by the road which leads from Les Andelys into the valley of the Andelle, on the last day of August he again sat down before Radepont. In two or three weeks it surrendered.[2103] This time John made no attempt to save it, but fled away to the depths of his own old county of Mortain,[2104] leaving Rouen to its fate. Philip however dared not advance upon Rouen with Château-Gaillard still unconquered in his rear; and at the opening of the vintage-season he moved back to Les Andelys and girded himself up for his task. A brief survey of the Rock convinced him that assault was well-nigh hopeless; his best chance was in a blockade. On the north the Lesser Andely occupied by his mercenaries, on the west the river commanded by his troops in the island-fort, sufficed to imprison the garrison. The next step was to dig out a double trench two hundred feet deep, starting from the brow of the hill over against the south-eastern extremity of the castle-rock, extending northward to the margin of the lake of Andely and westward to the bank of the Seine, and completely enclosing the two ravines which furrowed the sides of the rock. Each line of entrenchment was garnished with seven _bretasches_ or wooden forts, placed at regular intervals, each surrounded by a ditch of its own, furnished with a wooden draw-bridge, and filled with as many soldiers as it could hold. The rest of the army took up their quarters in the trenches, where they built themselves little huts of wood and thatch for a shelter against the wet and cold of the coming winter--shelter against other foes they needed none, for they were out of bowshot from the castle[2105]--and whiled away their time in jesting and making songs in mockery of the straits to which the Saucy Castle was reduced--“So many thousands girt about with a single girdle,”--“The eyrie overcrowded with nestlings, who will have to turn out when the spring comes.”[2106] The greater part of the “nestlings” were turned out before the spring came. The blockade once formed, Roger de Lacy soon perceived the terrible blunder he had made in admitting within his walls the townsfolk of the Lesser Andely. According to one computation, the number of these non-combatants now huddled within the castle-enclosure was no less than two thousand two hundred souls; at the lowest reckoning, they seem to have amounted to fourteen hundred--all, in a military point of view, simply useless mouths, devouring in a few weeks the stores of food that should have furnished rations for a year and more to the little garrison which was amply sufficient to hold the castle for John. One day, therefore, Roger opened the castle-gate and turned out five hundred of the oldest and weakest. They were suffered to pass unmolested through the blockading lines, and were followed a few days later by five hundred more. Philip however, who meanwhile had returned to his own dominions, no sooner heard what was going on than he issued strict orders that every man, woman or child, of whatever age or condition, who might issue from the castle should be driven back again without mercy. A large number still remained of whom Roger was as eager to be rid as Philip was anxious that he should be obliged to keep them. He took account of his stores, and found that he had enough to feed the regular garrison for a whole year. Hereupon he called together all the remaining non-combatants, and sent them forth, as they thought, to rejoin their families and friends. To their horror, as soon as they approached the French lines, they were overwhelmed with a volley of arrows. They rushed back to the castle-gate, only to find it closed against them. For three months this multitude of people dragged out a wretched existence in the ravines around the fortress, with no shelter against the wet and the cold but what they might find in the clefts of the rock, and no food but the dry leaves and scant herbage which they could pick up at its foot, and the flesh of the dogs which the garrison soon let loose for the purpose of yet further economizing their rations. This last resource was exhausted, and the horrors of cannibalism were already reached, when Philip came back to see how the siege was progressing. As he was crossing the bridge to the island-fort these unhappy beings caught sight of him and lifted up their voices in agonizing appeal; the king, moved with a tardy compassion, and perhaps also by fear of the not improbable outbreak of a pestilence which might easily have spread into his own entrenchments, ordered that immediate relief should be given to all who survived. These however amounted to no more than half of the original number, which seems to have been something over four hundred; and most of them had been so long without food that their first meal proved fatal.[2107]

[2103] Rigord (Duchesne as above), p. 47, says the siege of
Radepont began on the last day of August and lasted fifteen
days. Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (_ibid._), p. 82, makes
it last three weeks; in _Philipp._, l. vii. vv. 399, 400 (_ib._
p. 175; Deville, _Château-Gaillard_, p. 136), he extends its
duration to a month.

[2104] He went to Falaise on September 13--the day after the
fall of Radepont, according to Rigord’s reckoning. Thence he
went on the 17th to Mortain, on the 19th to Dol, and back to
Mortain again on the 22d. Hardy, _Itin. K. John_, a. 5 (_Intr.
Pat. Rolls_).

[2105] Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
Scriptt._, vol. v.), pp. 83, 84; _Philipp._, l. vii. vv.
414–450 (_ib._ pp. 175, 176; Deville, _Château-Gaillard_, pp.
136, 137).

[2106] Will. Armor. _Philipp._, l. vii. vv. 451–456 (Duchesne,
p. 176; Deville, p. 137).

[2107] Cf. Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (Duchesne, _Hist.
Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 84, and _Philipp._, l. vii. vv.
467–606 (_ib._ pp. 176–179; Deville, _Château-Gaillard_, pp.
138–142).

The last act of this tragedy must have taken place soon after Christmas. For three months the whole military power of the French Crown had been concentrated on the investment of Château-Gaillard; and in all this time John had done absolutely nothing. From his expedition to the Breton border he had indeed returned to Rouen for a few days in the beginning of October. Not a hand did he lift, however, to check the progress of the blockade which was being formed almost before his eyes. Soon he was again far away in the Bessin; thence he suddenly moved across the duchy to Verneuil, and in the second week of November he was once more at Rouen.[2108] It was probably during one of these visits to the capital that he wrote to Roger de Lacy: “We thank you for your good and faithful service, and desire that, as much as in you lies, you will persevere in the fealty and homage which you owe us, that you may receive a worthy meed of praise from God and from ourselves, and from all who know your fidelity to us. If, however, which God forbid, you should find yourselves in such straits that you can hold out no longer, then do whatsoever our trusty and well-beloved Peter of Préaux, William of Mortemer and Hugh of Howels our clerk shall bid you in our name.”[2109] Whether this letter ever found its way through the blockading lines into the castle it is scarcely worth while to inquire. If it did, it failed to shake the courage or the loyalty of the garrison, although it must have proved to them what they doubtless guessed already, that their sovereign had forsaken them, and that they were serving him for nought. Of the crowning proof of his desertion they probably remained unconscious until all was over for them. After dismantling Pont-de-l’Arche, Moulineaux and Montfort,[2110] John, on November 12, again left Rouen; for three weeks he flitted aimlessly up and down the country, from Bonneville and Caen to Domfront and Vire, and back again to Barfleur and Cherbourg;[2111] on December 6 he quitted Normandy altogether;[2112] and while the burghers of the Lesser Andely were starving and freezing to death in the valleys round Château-Gaillard, and the garrison of the castle were anxiously reckoning how much longer their provisions would enable them to hold out for his sake, he was keeping his Christmas feast at Canterbury at the expense of Archbishop Hubert.[2113]

[2108] Hardy, _Itin. K. John_, a. 5 (_Intr. Pat. Rolls_).

[2109] Letter in Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, p. 1059.

[2110] Will. Armor. _Philipp._, l. vii. vv. 826–828 (Deville,
_Château-Gaillard_, pp. 147, 148; Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
Scriptt._, vol. v. p. 182).

[2111] Hardy as above.

[2112] Rog. Wend. (Coxe), vol. iii. p. 173, says he landed at
Portsmouth on S. Nicolas’s day. The _Itinerary_ (as above)
shews him at Barfleur on December 5 and at Portsmouth on the
7th.

[2113] “H. archiepiscopo omnia necessaria festivitati regiæ
ministrante.” Rog. Wend. (Coxe), vol. iii. p. 174.

By the end of February 1204[2114] Philip grew impatient of the blockade of Château-Gaillard, and probably also uneasy lest John should return from England with an overwhelming force for its relief. He therefore resolved to try whether it could not, after all, be taken by assault. He himself took up his station at the central point of the entrenchment, on the crest of the hill, facing the narrow neck of land by which it was joined to the castle-rock. This isthmus, the only direct approach to the castle itself, he caused to be levelled and widened till he could erect upon it a wooden gallery or covered way leading from his own lines up to the edge of the outermost ditch of the fortress. When, with considerable difficulty and loss of life, this was accomplished, he caused a _beffroy_ or wooden tower on wheels to be carried through the gallery, set up when it reached the further end, and moved along the edge of the fosse, the cross-bowmen with whom it was filled doing deadly execution upon the soldiers on the ramparts, who however made a gallant defence. Meanwhile, the French were bringing through their covered way earth, wood, stones, turf, everything they could find to fill up the ditch. Before it was half full they lost patience and adopted a quicker method of approach. They dropped down the perpendicular counterscarp by means of their scaling-ladders, and set these up again on the sloping inner side of the ditch, under the foot of the great round tower which formed the head of the first ward. The ladders were too short for the ascent; but despite a heavy fire of stones and arrows from the tower, the storming-party scrambled up, crawling on hands and knees, or using their swords and daggers by way of Alpine-staves, till the base of the wall was reached. Then, while a shower of missiles rattled down upon the shields held over them by their comrades, the sappers dug and hewed at the foundations till the tower was undermined; the fuse was inserted and fired, and the miners had just had time to withdraw when a large portion of the wall fell crashing into the ditch. The French rushed to the breach; Roger de Lacy, seeing that the first ward was lost, ordered the wooden buildings within it to be fired; he and his men withdrew across the drawbridge into the second ward, and when the fire died down, they saw the ruined fragment of the tower crowned by the banner of Cadoc.[2115]

[2114] “Superveniente cathedrâ S. Petri” (February 22). Rigord
(Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 47.

[2115] Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 84; _Philipp._, l. vii. vv. 612–726
(_ib._ pp. 179–181; Deville, _Château-Gaillard_, pp. 142–145).

The French were one step nearer to the goal; but the next step looked as impracticable as ever. Between them and the besieged there yawned another ditch as wide and deep, there rose another rampart as mighty and as inaccessible as the first. In vain they prowled about the edge of the fosse seeking for a point at which they could venture upon an attack, till a young squire or man-at-arms, by name Peter, but more commonly known in the camp as “Bogis” or “Snub-nose,” caught sight of a little window just above the wall at the south-eastern corner of the rampart.[2116] This window was the sole external opening in John’s new building, which was otherwise accessible only on the inner side, by two doors, one leading into the storehouse which formed the lower story, one into the chapel above it, and both opening towards the courtyard. Bogis at once communicated his discovery to a few trusty comrades; they reconnoitred the ditch till they found a somewhat shallower place on its southern side, where it was possible to scramble down; thence they crawled along the bottom till they were directly under the window, and then clambered up the sloping side to the foot of the wall. By standing on the shoulders of a comrade Bogis managed to reach the window; he found it unbarred, unguarded, and wide enough for his body to pass through; he sprang in, let down to his companions a rope which he had brought for the purpose, and drew them up one by one till they were all safe inside the building, which proved to be the storehouse under the chapel.[2117] Finding the door locked, they began to hammer at it with the hilts of their daggers. This noise and the shouts with which they accompanied it soon alarmed the garrison. They, thinking that the French had entered the new building and occupied it in force, hastily set it on fire; unhappily, the wind caught the flames and spread them in a few minutes over the whole enclosure. The garrison fled to their sole remaining refuge, the citadel; Bogis and his companions escaped out of the blazing ruins into the casemates; the bulk of the French host, anxiously watching the scene from the opposite side of the ditch, thought they had all perished; but when the flames died down and the smoke began to clear away, Bogis himself appeared at the gate and let down the drawbridge for the army to pass over in triumph.[2118]

[2116] I cannot understand M. Deville’s idea of this window.
In his plan of the castle he marks it about the middle of the
south-western side of John’s building--the side looking towards
the river. But Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (as above), p.
85, says it was “in latere orientali.” And if it had not been
there, how could Bogis, from the foot of the rampart of the
first ward, ever have seen it at all?

[2117] So says M. Deville (_Château-Gaillard_, p. 82),
following the _Philippis_; but in the _Gesta Phil. Aug._
William makes it the chapel, _i.e._ the upper instead of the
lower story. One would naturally expect the solitary window to
be in the chapel rather than in the storehouse under it.

[2118] Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug_. (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 85; _Philipp._, l. vii. vv. 727–791
(_ib._ pp. 181, 182; Deville, _Château-Gaillard_, pp. 145–147).

Philip’s engines and their own too hastily-kindled fires had made havoc among the besieged garrison; they were now reduced to a hundred and eighty fighting-men.[2119] Even this small number, however, might have sufficed to hold for an indefinite time the remains of Richard’s matchless fortress, but for one strange error on the part of the royal architect. Richard had indeed taken the precaution of making the sole gate of his citadel open not directly towards the courtyard of the second ward, but at a much less accessible point to the north-eastward, where only a narrow strip of ground intervened between the counterscarp of the ditch and the outer rampart. Most unaccountably, however, instead of furnishing this gate with a drawbridge, he left a portion of the rock itself to serve as a natural passage over the ditch hollowed out beneath it. Across this immovable bridge a machine known by the name of “cat”--a sort of tent upon wheels, moved by the men inside it--was, as the epic bard of the siege expresses it, “made to crawl” close up to the gate, which the sappers, hidden under this shelter, at once began to undermine. Roger de Lacy, alarmed no doubt by the fate of the first tower which had been thus dealt with, tried the effect of a countermine, which was so far successful that the French were for a moment compelled to retire; but the “cat” was speedily replaced by a mighty engine discharging heavy stones with immense force. At the third discharge, the wall, undermined as it was from both sides, suddenly fell in. The French troops poured through the breach; Roger and his little band were quickly surrounded, and it was no fault of theirs that they were not slaughtered to a man, for every one of them refused to yield, and was only disarmed by main force. The hundred and twenty men-at-arms and thirty-six knights who still remained were, however, made prisoners without further bloodshed; and thus, on March 6, 1204, Philip became master of Château-Gaillard.[2120]

[2119] Will. Armor. _Philipp._, l. vii. v. 775 (Duchesne as
above, p. 181; Deville, p. 146).

[2120] Will. Armor. _Philipp._, l. vii. vv. 792–811
(Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v. p. 182; Deville,
_Château-Gaillard_, p. 147). Cf. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (Duchesne
as above), p. 85. The date is from Rigord (_ibid._), p. 47
(who, however, puts it under a wrong year, 1202), and Rog.
Wend. (Coxe), vol. iii. p. 180. This last writer has a wholly
different version of the capture, but it is not worthy of
consideration. The number of prisoners is stated by Will.
Armor. in the _Gesta Phil. Aug._ as forty knights, a hundred
and twenty men-at-arms, “and many others.” (By his own account
in _Philipp._, l. vii. v. 775, these “many” cannot have been
more than twenty. See above, p. 422). Rigord speaks only of the
knights, whom he reduces to thirty-six, saying that four had
been slain during the siege.

On that March day the king of England really lost not only his Saucy Castle, but his whole continental dominions north of Loire. Thenceforth all resistance in Normandy was at an end; and in three months the whole duchy laid itself without a struggle at the victor’s feet. Soon after John’s departure over sea Philip had opened negotiations with the citizens of the chief Norman towns, representing to them that the king of England had deserted them, that he himself was their rightful overlord and sovereign, and bidding them either receive him as such, or prepare to be all hanged or flayed alive when he should have overcome their resistance by force. After some discussion they made a truce with him for a year, promising that if no succour came from England within that time, they would submit to him without reserve.[2121] On the fall of Château-Gaillard they all, together with the constables of the remaining fortresses throughout John’s trans-marine dominions, sent messages to John setting forth the difficulties of their position and remonstrating earnestly with him on his tardiness in coming to their aid. He bade them look for nothing from him, but do each of them whatsoever they might think good.[2122] A few weeks later he despatched the bishops of Norwich and Ely with the earls of Pembroke and Leicester to see if there was any possibility of coming to terms with the king of France.[2123] But it was too late. Philip sarcastically retorted that the first preliminary to peace must be the restoration of Arthur;[2124] and on the Sunday after Easter he marched again into Normandy. Falaise surrendered after a week’s siege;[2125] Domfront, Séez, Lisieux, Caen, Bayeux, Barfleur, Cherbourg, Coutances,[2126] opened their gates at his mere approach. Meanwhile Guy of Thouars, who had been governing Britanny since Arthur’s death,[2127] with four hundred knights and an immense host of Bretons attacked and burned the Mont-St.-Michel, sacked Avranches, and marched ravaging and burning through the Bessin to join the king at Caen. Philip sent them back again, together with the count of Boulogne, William des Barres, a large body of French knights, and a troop of John’s mercenaries who had changed sides after the surrender of Falaise, to finish the subjugation of Mortain and the Avranchin,[2128] while he himself returned to complete his conquest of eastern Normandy. Only three important places were still unsubdued there: Arques on the northern coast, Verneuil on the southern border, and Rouen itself. The three bodies of soldiers and townsfolk came to a mutual understanding whereby those of the capital, on the Tuesday in Rogation-week--June 1--made a truce with Philip for thirty days, stipulating that their brethren at Arques and Verneuil should receive the same benefit if they applied for it within a certain time, and promising in the name of all alike that if no succour came from John within the specified interval, they would give themselves up unreservedly to the king of France.[2129] None of them, however, waited for the expiration of the truce. On midsummer-day Rouen opened its gates;[2130] Arques and Verneuil followed its example,[2131] and Normandy was won.

[2121] Rog. Wend. (Coxe), vol. iii. pp. 173, 174.

[2122] _Ib._ pp. 180, 181.

[2123] “Post mediam Quadragesimam,” _i.e._ in the beginning of
April. R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 144. The earl of Pembroke
(or Striguil), it will be remembered, was William the Marshal.

[2124] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 145.

[2125] _Ibid._ Will. Armor. _Philipp._, l. viii. (Duchesne,
_Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v. p. 183); _Gesta Phil. Aug._
(_ibid._), p. 85. Rigord (_ibid._), p. 47. The dates come from
the two last, both of whom however make the year 1203 instead
of 1204.

[2126] Cf. Rigord as above; Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._
as above; _Philipp._ l. viii. (_ibid._), pp. 183, 184; and R.
Coggeshall as above.

[2127] As guardian of his own daughter by Constance, the infant
Alice, whom the Bretons and the French recognized as heiress of
Britanny, in place of her half-sister Eleanor, who was in the
custody of John.

[2128] Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 85. _Philipp._, l. viii. (_ibid._), pp.
184, 185.

[2129] Duchesne, _Hist. Norm. Scriptt._, pp. 1057–1059.

[2130] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 146. Rigord (Duchesne,
_Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 47, giving the date.
Cf. Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (_ibid._), p. 85, and
_Philipp._, l. viii. (_ibid._), p. 186.

[2131] R. Coggeshall as above.

Cadoc and his mercenaries had established their head-quarters at Angers;[2132] the whole of Anjou and Touraine, except the strongholds of Chinon and Loches, was already secured; Aquitaine alone still remained to be conquered. This, indeed, was likely to prove a more difficult task; for however bitterly the men of the south might hate their Norman or Angevin rulers, their chances of regaining or preserving their independence under a sovereign who must henceforth be parted from them by the whole width of the Bay of Biscay would be obviously so much better than under one whose direct sway now stretched all along the northern bank of the Loire from its mouth almost to its source, that they were certain to veer round at once to the side of John, simply for the purpose of keeping Philip out. Such was in fact the result throughout the whole country south of the Dordogne; Savaric of Mauléon, lately John’s enemy and prisoner, at once became his most energetic and devoted champion;[2133] while Angoulême was secured for John as the heritage of his queen Isabel. But the link which had bound Guyenne to the Angevin house was broken at last; Queen Eleanor had died on April 1.[2134] There was no longer any legal obstacle to the execution of the sentence of forfeiture passed two years ago; and on S. Laurence’s day Philip assembled his host for the conquest of Poitou.[2135] Robert of Turnham, John’s seneschal,[2136] did what he could in its defence, but he was powerless against the indifference of the people and the active hostility of William des Roches and the Lusignans.[2137] Poitiers was soon taken; and in a few weeks all Poitou, except La Rochelle, Niort and Thouars, submitted to Philip as its liege lord.[2138] At the approach of winter Philip returned to his own dominions, leaving a body of troops to blockade Chinon, which was held for John by Hubert de Burgh, and another to form the siege of Loches, no less bravely defended by Gerald of Atie.[2139] At Easter 1205 the king marched with a fresh host upon Loches and took it by assault.[2140] On midsummer-eve Chinon fell in like manner.[2141] Robert of Turnham had already been made prisoner by the French;[2142] the viscount of Thouars now made his submission to Philip, and received from him the seneschalship of Poitou in Robert’s stead;[2143] Niort and La Rochelle were left alone in their resistance to the French king.

[2132] Will. Armor. as above, pp. 86 and 188.

[2133] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 146.

[2134] Ann. Waverl. a. 1204 (Luard, _Ann. Monast._, vol. ii. p.
256). R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 144, and Mat. Paris, _Hist.
Angl._ (Madden), vol. ii. pp. 102, 103, give the same year;
the latter takes occasion to describe Eleanor as “admiribalis
domina pulchritudinis et astutiæ,” and says she died at
John’s newly-founded abbey of Beaulieu. The Chron. S. Albin.
(Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 53) places her death a year earlier,
and at Poitiers.

[2135] Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p.
47.

[2136] Brother of Stephen of Turnham, and apparently seneschal
of Anjou at the close of Richard’s reign; transferred to Poitou
in 1201. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. pp. 86, 142, 176.

[2137] R. Coggeshall as above.

[2138] _Ibid._ Rigord as above. Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._
(_ibid_.), p. 86. Rog. Wend. (Coxe), vol. iii. p. 181.

[2139] R. Coggeshall and Rigord as above. Will. Armor. as
above; _Philipp._, l. viii. (_ibid._), pp. 189, 190.

[2140] Rigord (as above), pp. 47, 48, and Will. Armor. _Gesta
Phil. Aug._ as above; both under a wrong year. R. Coggeshall
(Stevenson), p. 152.

[2141] Rog. Wend. (Coxe, vol. iii.), pp. 182, 183; R.
Coggeshall (Stevenson), pp. 154, 155; cf. Rigord (Duchesne,
_Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 48; Will. Armor. _Gesta
Phil. Aug._ (_ibid._), p. 86; and Chron. S. Albin. a. 1203
(Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 54).

[2142] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 152.

[2143] Will. Armor. as above.

John, however, was now at last threatening an attack from over sea. Three weeks after his return to England, in January 1204, he had held a council at Oxford and compelled all the tenants-in-chief, including the bishops and abbots, to promise a scutage of two marks and a half on the knight’s fee,[2144] and a contribution, from which even the parish churches were not exempt, of a seventh of all moveable goods;[2145] all under the plea of gathering a great host for the recovery of his lost dominions.[2146] In May he held a council at Northampton,[2147] which resulted in a summons to the fleet and the host to meet him at Porchester at Whitsuntide, prepared to accompany him over sea. When all was ready, however, the expedition was countermanded, at the urgent entreaty, it was said, of Archbishop Hubert and William the Marshal, the latter of whom had lately returned from Gaul, and might therefore be supposed to know the condition of affairs there better than the king could know it himself. John, after a great shew of resistance, yielded to their entreaties; the soldiers and sailors were made to pay a fine in commutation of their services, and dismissed, grumbling bitterly, to their homes.[2148] The king gained a considerable sum of money by the transaction; and the primate and the marshal, in their boundless loyalty, were content to take upon themselves the burthen of its shame, which John felt, or affected to feel, so keenly that he actually put to sea with a small escort several days after the dispersion of the fleet. He landed again, however, at Wareham on the third day,[2149] and contented himself with sending his half-brother Earl William of Salisbury and his own son Geoffrey with a body of knights to reinforce the garrison of La Rochelle.[2150] A year later he again assembled his fleet at Portsmouth;[2151] and this time he led it in person direct to La Rochelle. He landed there on June 7,[2152] and marched to Montauban, which he besieged and captured;[2153] the fickle viscount of Thouars, being now in revolt against Philip, speedily joined him;[2154] they advanced to Angers together, won it on September 6,[2155] ravaged Anjou with fire and sword, and were doing the like in south-eastern Britanny[2156] when Philip again crossed the Loire and harried the viscounty of Thouars under their very eyes.[2157] John at once proposed a truce; the terms were formally drawn up at Thouars on October 26;[2158] but when the English king’s signature was required, he was no longer to be found. He had slipped away the night before, and was out of reach at La Rochelle;[2159] and thence, on December 12, he sailed for England once more.[2160]

[2144] Rog. Wend. as above, p. 175.

[2145] Mat. Paris, _Chron. Maj._ (Luard), vol. ii. p. 483.

[2146] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 144.

[2147] _Ibid._ Date, May 21–25; Hardy, _Itin. K. John_, a. 7
(_Intr. Pat. Rolls_).

[2148] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), pp. 152, 153. Cf. Rog. Wend.
as above, p. 183.

[2149] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 154. Rog. Wend. (Coxe),
vol. iii., p. 183. This happened June 13–15; see note 1 to R.
Coggeshall as above, and Hardy, _Itin. K. John_, a. 7 (_Intr.
Pat. Rolls_).

[2150] R. Coggeshall as above.

[2151] Rog. Wend. (as above), p. 186. John was at Porchester
from Whit-Monday, May 22, to Friday, May 26. Hardy, _Itin. K.
John_, a. 8 (_Intr. Pat. Rolls_).

[2152] He crossed from Stoke to Yarmouth on Trinity Sunday, May
28, and thence to La Rochelle on Wednesday, June 7; cf. Hardy,
as above, with Rog. Wend. as above, who has twice written
“Julii” for “Junii.”

[2153] On August 1, after fifteen days’ siege, says Rog. Wend.
(as above), p. 187; but see Hardy as above.

[2154] Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p.
48. Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (_ibid._), p. 86.

[2155] _Ibid._ Date from Chron. S. Albin. a. 1206 (Marchegay,
_Eglises_, pp. 54, 57).

[2156] Will. Armor. as above.

[2157] Rigord (_ibid._), p. 48. Chron. S. Albin. a. 1206 (as
above, pp. 56, 57).

[2158] Rymer, _Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 95.

[2159] Will. Armor. as above. He was at La Rochelle on October
25; Hardy as above.

[2160] Rog. Wend. as above, p. 188.

Of the two devoted English ministers who had stood by him through so much obloquy, only the Marshal was now left. A month after the humiliating scene at Porchester in 1205, Archbishop Hubert died.[2161] “Now for the first time am I truly king of England!” was the comment of his ungrateful master upon the tidings of his death.[2162] The words were words of ill omen for John himself, even more than for his people. He was indeed king of England, and of England alone. The prophecy of Merlin, which had been working itself out for a hundred years in the history of the Norman and Angevin houses, was fulfilled in yet one more detail: “the sword was parted from the sceptre.”[2163] The sword of Hrolf the Ganger and William the Conqueror, of Fulk the Red and Fulk the Black, had fallen from the hand of their unworthy descendant. The sceptre of his English forefathers was left to him. But the England over which he had to wield it was no longer the exhausted and divided country which had been swallowed up almost without an effort in the vast dominions of the young Count Henry of Anjou. It was an England which was once more able to stand alone--a new England which had been growing up under the hands of Henry himself, of his ministers, and of the ministers of his successor, silently and imperceptibly, they themselves knew not when or how; and between this new England and its stranger-king the day of reckoning was now to come.

[2161] _Ib._ p. 183. R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 156.

[2162] Mat. Paris, _Hist. Angl._ (Madden), vol. ii. p. 104.

[2163] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 146.

NOTE.

THE DEATH OF ARTHUR.

Only two contemporary writers even pretend to give a circumstantial account of Arthur’s death: the Annalist of Margam and William of Armorica. The former tells us that John, “post prandium, ebrius et dæmonio plenus” [did John, as well as Richard, make the demon-blood answerable for his sins?], slew Arthur with his own hand, and having tied a great stone to the body, flung it into the Seine; thence it was drawn up in a fisherman’s net, recognized, and buried secretly, “propter metum tyranni,” in Notre-Dame-des-Prés (Ann. Margam, a. 1204; Luard, _Ann. Monast._, vol. i. p. 27). William allows the murderer no such excuse, if excuse it be, but works up the story into a long and horrible romance, in which John deliberately and of set purpose takes Arthur out alone with him by night in a boat on the Seine, plunges a sword into his body, and then rows along for three miles before he flings the corpse overboard (Will. Armor. _Philipp._, l. vi.; Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v. pp. 166, 167). Both these writers place the scene at Rouen. The Chron. Brioc. (Morice, _Hist. Bret., preuves_, vol. i. col. 39) transfers it to Cherbourg: “Apud Cæsaris-burgum duxit, et ibi proditorie et tyrannice eum in mare submersit.” Rigord says not a word of the matter. R. Coggeshall (Stevenson, p. 145) only speaks of it incidentally, saying that Philip “sæviebat ... permaxime pro nece Arthuri, quem in Sequanâ submersum fuisse audierat.” Rog. Wend. (Coxe, vol. iii. p. 170) says merely “subito evanuit.” Mat. Paris in _Chron. Maj._ (Luard, vol. ii. p. 480) copies this, and adds: “modo fere omnibus ignorato; utinam non ut fama refert.” In _Hist. Angl._ (Madden, vol. ii. p. 95) he gives three stories as currently reported: accidental drowning, death from grief, and the third, “ipsum manibus vel præcepto regis Johannis fuisse peremptum”--this last being the assertion of the French, “quibus propter hostilitatem plena fides non est adhibenda.” But his own words in the _Chron. Maj._ shew that he could not wholly reject the unavoidable conclusion of John’s guilt.

The date of Arthur’s disappearance or death is given only by the Margam annalist. He places it on Maunday Thursday; but unluckily he has damaged his own authority on chronological matters by putting the whole affair a year too late, viz. in 1204 instead of 1203. Will. Armor., on the other hand, tells us that for three days before the murder John was at Moulineaux, near Rouen. These two chronological indications do not exactly agree, for in 1203 Maunday Thursday was April 3, and the _Itin. K. John_, a. 4 (Hardy, _Intr. Pat. Rolls_), shews that the king was at Moulineaux on Wednesday, April 2, but on the two preceding days he was at Rouen. It is however plain from the after-history that the deed must have been done shortly before Easter.