The Crusade was preached, but it had now become a frequent practice, of which Henry III. was a lamentable example, lightly and hastily to assume the Cross in a moment of excitement, or even as a means of being disembarrassed from troublesome claims by the privileges of a Crusader, and then to purchase from the Pope absolution from the vow. It had become such an actual matter of traffic, that Richard of Cornwall positively obtained from Gregory IX. a grant of the money thus raised from recreant Crusaders. The landless William of Salisbury, going to the Pope, who was then at Lyons, thus addressed him: “Your Holiness sees that I am signed with the Cross. My name is great and well known: it is William Longespee. But my fortune does not match it. The King of England has bereft me of my earldom, but as this was done judicially, not out of personal ill-will, I blame him not. Yet, poor as I am, I have undertaken the pilgrimage. Now, since Prince Richard, the King’s brother, who has not taken the Cross, has obtained from you a grant to take money from such as lay it aside, surely I may beg for the like–I, who am signed, and yet without resource.”
He obtained the grant, and thus raised 1,000 marks, while Richard of Cornwall actually gained from one archdeacon L600, and in proportion from others.
Louis, for three years, was detained by the necessity of arranging matters for the tranquillity of his own kingdom, and not till the Friday in Whitsun-week, 1248, was he solemnly invested at St. Denis with the pilgrim’s staff and wallet, and presented with the oriflamme, the standard of the convent, which he bore as Count of Paris. His two brothers, Robert Comte d’Artois, and Charles Comte d’Anjou, and his wife Marguerite of Provence, accompanied him, together with a great number of the nobility, among whom the most interesting was the faithful and attached Sieur de Joinville, Seneschal of Champagne, who has left us a minute record of his master’s adventures.
They sailed from Aigues Mortes, August 25th, 1248, and Joinville reflected that he could not imagine how a man in a state of mortal sin could ever put to sea, since he knew not, when he fell asleep at night, whether morning would not find him at the bottom of the sea. On coming near the coast of Barbary, Joinville’s ship seems to have been becalmed, for it continued for three whole days in view of the same round mountain, to the great dismay of the crew, until a _preux d’homme_ priest suggested, that in his parish, in cases of distress, such as dearth, or flood, or pestilence, processions chanting the Litany were made on three Saturdays following. The day was Saturday, and the crew acted on his advice, making the procession round the masts, even the sick being carried by their friends. The next day they were out of sight of the mountain, and on the third Saturday safely landed at Cyprus. Here the Crusaders remained for eight months, since Egypt was the intended point of attack, and they wished to allow the inundation of the Nile to subside. At length, in the summer of 1249, they arrived before Damietta, which was even better fortified than when it had previously held out for fifteen months; but it now surrendered, after Fakreddin, the Mameluke commander, had suffered one defeat under its walls, and the Christians entered in triumph. Here Louis made an unfortunate delay, while waiting for reinforcements brought by his brother Alfonse, Comte de Poitiers.
To the rude and superstitious noblesse, a Crusade appeared a certain means of securing salvation, as indeed the clergy led them to believe; and this belief seemed to remove all restraint of morality from the ill-disposed, so that the pure and pious King was bitterly grieved by the license which he found himself unable to restrain. Much harm was done by the excess in which the troops indulged while revelling in the plunder of Damietta. The prudent would have reserved the stores there laid up for time of need, but old crusaders insisted on “the good old custom of the Holy Land,” as they called it, namely, the distribution of two-thirds among the army; and though the King ransomed some portion, the money did as much harm in promoting revelry as the provisions themselves.
Longespee arrived, with 200 English knights; but the small band of English and their landless leader met with nothing but contumely from their allies, especially the King’s brother, Robert Comte d’Artois, a haughty and impetuous youth. The English took a small castle on the road to Alexandria, where one of the Saracen Emirs had placed his harem. It was reported that Longespee had acquired a huge treasure there, and Robert insulted him to his face, and deprived him of his just share of the spoil. Longespee, complained to the King; but Louis could give him no redress. “You are no King, if you cannot do justice,” said William.
Louis meekly suffered the reproach. He had, in his submission, made over his judgment and authority to the papal legates–men far less fit than he to exercise power–and matters went chiefly as they and his fiery brothers chose to direct. Wiser counsellors recommended securing the other seaport, Alexandria; but Prince Alfonse declared, that the only way to kill a snake, was to strike the head, and persuaded the council that the move should be upon Grand Cairo, or, as the Crusaders chose to call it, Babylon.
On November 25th, 1249, the army advanced, and the conjuncture should have been favorable, for the Sultan was just dead, and his son absent at Damascus; but nothing could have been worse concerted than the expedition–ill-provisioned, without boats to cross the canals, without engines of war, the soldiery disorganized; while the Mameluke force were picked soldiers, recruited from the handsomest Circassian children, bred up for arms alone, and with an _esprit de corps_ that rendered them a terror to friend and foe almost down to our own times. They harassed the Christians at every step, and destroyed their machines, and terrified them excessively by showers of Greek fire, a compound of naphtha and other combustibles launched from hollow engines, which ignited as it traversed the air, and was very hard to extinguish.
The Franks regarded it with a superstitious horror, as a fiendish mystery, and compared it to a fiery dragon with a tail as long as a lance; but it did not actually cause many deaths, and they met with no serious disaster till they came to the canal of Aschmoum, which flowed between them and Mansourah. They tried to build a causeway across it, but their commencement was destroyed by the Greek fire, and a Bedouin offered, for 500 bezants, to show them a ford on the Shrove Tuesday of 1250. Robert d’Artois begged to lead the vanguard, and secure the passage of the rest; and when the King hesitated to confide so important a charge to one so rash and impetuous, he swore on the Gospels that, when he should have gained the bank on the other side, nothing should induce him to leave it till the whole army should have crossed. The King consented, but placed the command in the hands of the wise Guillaume de Sonnac, Grand Master of the Templars, who, with his knights, the Hospitallers, Longespee and the English, and Robert’s own band, formed a body of 1,400.
The Saracens who guarded the ford were taken by surprise, and fled in confusion; and the Christians, mounting the bank, beheld the inhabitants and garrison of Mansourah hurrying away in terror.
The temptation made the impetuous prince forget his promises, and he was dashing forward in pursuit, when the Grand Master tried to check him, by representing that, though the enemy were at present under the influence of panic terror, they would soon rally, and that the only safety for the I,400 was to wait, with the canal in their rear, until the rest of the army should have crossed; otherwise, as soon as their small number should be perceived, they would infallibly be surrounded and cut off.
The fiery youth listened with scorn and impatience. “I see,” cried he, “that it is well said, that the Orders have an understanding with the Infidel! They love power, they love money, and so will not see the war ended. This is the way that so many crusading princes have been served by them.”
“Noble Count,” said Pierre de Villebride, the Grand Master of St. John, trying to calm him, “why do you think we gave up our homes and took these vows? Was it to overthrow the Church and lose our own souls? Such things be far, far from us, or from any Christian.”
But De Sonnac would not parley; he called to his esquire, “Spread wide the Beauseant banner. Arms and death must decide our honor and fate. We might be invincible, united; but division is our ruin.”
Longespee interposed. “Lord Count,” said he, “you cannot err in following the counsel of a holy man like the Grand Master, well tried in arms. Young men are never dishonored by hearkening to their elders.”
“The tail! that smacks of the tail!” exclaimed the headstrong Robert.
[Footnote: On Thomas a Becket’s last journey to Canterbury, Raoul de Broc’s followers had cut off the tails of his pack-horses. It was a vulgar reproach to the men of Kent that the outrage had been punished by the growth of the same appendage on the whole of the inhabitants of the county; and, whereas the English populace applied the accusation to the Kentishmen, foreigners extended it to the whole nation when in a humor for insult and abuse, such as that of this unhappy prince.]
“Count Robert,” rejoined William, “I shall be so forward in peril to-day, that you will not even come near the tail of my horse.”
With these words they all set out at full gallop, Robert’s old deaf tutor, Sir Foucault de Nesle, who had not heard one word of the remonstrance, holding his bridle, and shouting, “_Ores a eux! ores a, eux!_” They burst into the town, and began to pillage, killing the Saracen Emir Fakreddin, as he left his bath; but in the meantime, Bendocdar, another Mameluke chief, had rallied his forces, threw a troop between them and the ford, and thus, cutting them off, attacked them in the streets, while the inhabitants hurled stones, boiling water, and burning brands from above.
Separated and surprised as they were, the little band sold their lives dearly, forgot their fatal quarrels, and fought as one man from ten o’clock till three. Robert entrenched himself in a house, defended himself there for a long time, and finally perished in its ruins. Longespee was killed at the head of his knights, who almost all fell with him; and his esquire, Robert de Vere, was found with his banner wrapped around his dead body. Only thirty-five prisoners were made, among them Pierre de Villebride. Sonnac, after having lost a hundred and eighty of his knights, fought his way through with the loss of an eye.
The King had, in the meantime, crossed the canal, and grievous was his disappointment on finding that the Saracens were between him and his brother. Every effort was made to break through to the rescue, but in vain; and at one moment Louis himself was in the utmost danger, finding himself singly opposed to six Saracens, whom, however, he succeeded in putting to flight. With difficulty could his forces even maintain their footing on the Mansourah side of the canal, and it was not till after a long and desperate conflict that there was time to inquire for the missing. The Prior de Rosnay came to the royal tent, to ask whether there were any tidings of the Count, “Only that he is in Paradise,” said the King. “God be praised for what He sends to us.” And he lifted up his eyes, while the tears flowed down his cheeks.
It was believed, in England, that the Countess Ella of Salisbury had on that day a vision of her son received into Paradise.
The bon Sieur de Joinville had his part in the brave deeds of the day: he, with the Comte de Soissons and four other knights, guarded a bridge against a mighty force of Saracens. “Seneschal,” cried the Count, “let this canaille roar and howl; you and I will yet talk of this day in our lady’s chamber.”
And Joinville fought on cheerfully, though twice dismounted, and in great danger. But he kept up his heart, crying out, “Beau Sire, St. James, help me, and succor me in my need!” and he came off safely, though pierced with five arrows, and his horse with fifteen wounds.
The following day was a doubly sorrowful Ash-Wednesday in the Christian camp; while the Mussulmans triumphed, calling the battle of Mansourah the key of joy to true believers; and fancying, from the fleur-de-lys on the surcoat, that the corpse of Robert was that of Louis himself, they proclaimed throughout their camp, “The Christian army is a trunk without life or head!”
They learnt their error on the Friday, when they made a furious attack on the Crusaders, and Louis’s valor made itself felt, as he dashed through showers of arrows and of Greek fire, and drove back the enemy as they were surrounding his brother Charles. His other brother, Alfonse, was for a moment made prisoner, but being much beloved, the butchers, women, and servants belonging to the army, suddenly rushed forward and rescued him. The Grand Master of the Templars lost his other eye, and was soon after killed; and though the Christians claimed the victory, their loss was so severe, especially in horses, that it was impossible to advance to Cairo, and they therefore remained encamped before Mansourah.
Nothing more fatal could have been done: the marshy ground, the number of dead bodies that choked the stream, the feeding on fish that had preyed upon them–for the Lenten fast prevented recourse to solid food–occasioned disease to break out–fever, dysentery, and a horrible disorder which turned the skin as black and dry (says Joinville) as an old boot, and caused great swelling and inflammation of the gums, so that the barbers cut them away piecemeal.
The Saracens let them alone, only now and then launching volleys of Greek fire. The King, on seeing these coming, would kneel down, and cry, “Lord, spare my people!” But worse enemies were at work. Warrior after warrior succumbed to his sufferings, and the clergy, going about among the dying, caught the infection, till there were hardly sufficient to perform the daily offices of religion. Joinville rose from his bed to lift up his chaplain, who, while singing mass, fainted on the step of the altar. Supported in his arms, he finished the mass, but, says the Seneschal, “he never chanted more.”
Patiently and steadfastly all was borne: the Christians repented of their late license, and suffered without murmurs, desertion, or submission, encouraged by their good King, who spent his time in going from one bed to another to encourage the sick, attend to their wants, and offer his prayers with them. He was vainly entreated not to expose himself to the infection. But love and duty equally led him among his people, and his sad, resigned face never failed to cheer the sufferers, till he too was laid on a bed of sickness.
Easter came, but famine was added to their miseries, and those who were recovering from illness died of hunger. The new Sultan, Touran Chah, or Almoadan, had at length arrived, and Louis tried to negotiate with him, offering to surrender the town of Damietta, provided Jerusalem were placed in his hands. The Sultan would have agreed, but required hostages, and, when Louis offered his two brothers, refused any guarantee but the person of the King himself. With one voice the French knights vowed that they would all be killed rather than make a pledge of their King, and the project was ineffectual.
Louis now resolved to attempt to retreat in secret, and on the 5th of April he collected as many boats as possible upon the canal, there by night to embark the sick, that they might ascend the Nile to Damietta. Those who yet had strength to fight were to go by land; and he, though very ill, refused to desert his army, and resolved to accompany them. In the midst of the embarkation the Saracens discovered what was going on, and fell upon them, shooting arrows at the sick as they were carried on board. They hurried the vessels off, notwithstanding loud cries from the land army of “Wait for the King! wait for the King!”–for the French soldiery only longed to see their King in safety; but he came not, and they pushed off. Before long the Sultan’s galleys met them with such showers of Greek fire, that Joinville, one of those unfortunate sick, declares that it seemed as if all the stars were falling. Soon they were boarded by the enemy; Joinville gave himself up for lost, threw overboard all his relics, lest they should be profaned, and prayed aloud; but a Saracen renegade who knew him, came up to him, and by calling out, “The King’s cousin!” saved his life, and that of a little boy in his company. All who seemed capable of paying a ransom were made prisoners; the rest had the choice of death or apostasy, and too many chose the last.
The rest of the army fared no better by land. Louis had mounted his horse, though so weak that he could not wear his armor, and rode among the knights, who strove to cut their way through the foe. The two good knights, Geoffroi de Sargines and Gautier de Chatillon rode on each side of him, and, as he afterward said, guarded, him from the Saracens as a good servant guards his master’s cup from flies. They were obliged to support him in his saddle after a time, so faint and exhausted did he become; and at last, on arriving at a little village named Minieh, Sargines look him from his horse, and laid him down just within a house, his head on the lap of a Frenchwoman whom he found there, and watched over him, expecting each breath to be the last.
Chatillon defended the entrance, rushing each moment on the Saracens, and only resting to draw out the arrows with which he was covered. At last he was overcome by numbers, and slaughtered; and another knight, Philippe de Montfort, making his way to the King, who had somewhat revived, told him that five hundred knights remained in full force, and, with his permission, he could make good terms. Louis consented, and the Saracen Emir was in the act of concluding a truce, when a traitor cried out, “Sir French knights, surrender! the King bids you! Do not cause him to be slain!” They instantly laid down their arms unconditionally, and the Emir, whose ring had been already off his finger, looking round, said, “We make no truce with prisoners.”
All was thus lost. The Saracens entered the village, and finding the King, loaded him with chains, and placed him on board a vessel. His brothers were likewise taken, and even the knights who were far advanced on the way to Damietta, on hearing of their monarch’s captivity, dropped their arms, and became an easy prey. The crosses and images of the Saints were trodden under foot and reviled by the Mussulmans, and the prisoners, when all those of importance had been selected, were placed in an enclosure, and each man who would not deny his faith was beheaded.
The news of the ruin of the army and the captivity of her husband reached Queen Marguerite at Damietta, where she was daily awaiting the birth of an infant. Her despair and terror were such, that her life was in the utmost danger, and nothing soothed her except holding the hand of an old knight, aged eighty years, who did his utmost to calm her. If she slept for a few moments, she awoke starting, and fancying the room was full of Saracens, and the old knight had to assure her that he was there, and she need fear nothing. Once she sent every one else out of the room, and, kneeling down, insisted that he should make oath to do what she should require of him. It was, that, should the enemy take the city, he would sweep off her head with his sword, rather than let her fall into their hands. “Willingly,” said the old knight. “Had you not asked it of me, I had thought of doing so.”
The morning after, a son was born to her, and named Jean Tristan, on account of the sadness that reigned around. On that very day word was brought to her that the Genoese and Pisans, who garrisoned the town, were preparing their vessels to depart. The poor Queen sent for their leaders, and as they stood round her bed, she held up her new-born babe, and conjured them not to desert the town and destroy all hopes for the King. They told her that they had no provisions: on which she sent to buy up all in the town, and promised to maintain them at her own expense; thus awakening sufficient compassion and honor to make them promise at least to await her recovery. Her first pledge of hope was a bulbous root, on which, with a knife, had been cut out the word “_Esperance_,” the only greeting the captive King could send to her. No wonder that plant has ever since borne the well-omened name.
Louis, meanwhile, was carried by water to Mansourah, where he lay very ill, and only attended by one servant and two priests. A book of Psalms and the cloak that covered him were the sole possessions that remained to him; but with unfailing patience he lay, feebly chanting the Psalms, never uttering one word of complaint, and showing such honor to the office of the priests, that he would not endure that they should perform for him any of the services that his helplessness required. Nor did he make one request from his enemies for his own comfort; though Touran Chah, struck with his endurance, sent to him a present of fifty robes for himself and his nobles; but Louis refused them, considering that to wear the robes of the Saracen would compromise the dignity of his crown. The Sultan next sent his physician, under whose care his health began to return, and negotiations were commenced. The King offered as his ransom, and that of his troops, the town of Damietta and a million of bezants; but the Sultan would not be contented without the cities of the Crusaders in Palestine, Louis replied that these were not his own; and when Touran Chah threatened him with torture or lifelong captivity, his only reply was, “I am his prisoner; he can do as he will with me.”
His firmness prevailed, and the Sultan agreed to take what he offered. Louis promised the town and the treasure, provided the Queen consented; and when the Mahometans expressed their amazement at a woman being brought forward, “Yes,” he said, “the Queen is my lady; I can do nothing without her consent.”
The King ransomed all his companions at his own expense, and there was general rejoicing at the hopes of freedom; but, alas! the Sultan, Touran Chan, was murdered by his own Mamelukes, who hunted him into the river, and killed him close to the ship where Joinville had embarked. They then rushed into the vessels of the Christians, who, expecting a massacre to follow, knelt down and confessed their sins to each other. “I absolve you, as far as God has given me power,” replied each warrior to his brother. Joinville, seeing a Saracen with a battle-axe lifted over him, made the sign of the Cross, and said, “Thus died St. Agnes.” However, they were only driven down into the hold, without receiving any hurt.
Louis was in his tent with his brothers, unable to account for the cries he heard, and fearing that Damietta had been seized, and that the prisoners were being slain. At last there rushed in a Mameluke with a bloody sword, crying, “What wilt thou give me for delivering thee from an enemy who intended thy ruin and mine?”
Louis made no answer.
“Dost thou not know,” said the furious Mameluke, “that I am master of thy life? Make me a knight, or thou art a dead man.”
“Make thyself a Christian,” said the undaunted King, “and I will make thee a knight.”
His calm dignity overawed the assassin; and though several others came in, brandishing their swords and using violent language, the sight of the majestic captive made them at once change their demeanor; they spoke respectfully, and tried to excuse the murder; then, putting their hands to their brow, and salaaming down to the ground, retired. They sounded their drums and trumpets outside the tent, and it is even said they deliberated whether to offer their crown–since the race of Saladin was now extinct–to the noble Frank prince. Louis had decided that he would accept it, in hopes of converting them, but the proposal was never made.
The Mamelukes returned to the former conditions of the treaty with the King, but, when the time came for making oaths on either side for its observance, a new difficulty arose. The Emirs, as their most solemn denunciation, declared that, “if they violated their promises, they would be as base as the pilgrim who journeys bareheaded to Mecca, or as the man who takes back his wives after having put them away.”
In return, they required the King to say that, if he broke his oath, he should be as one who denied his religion; but the words in which this was couched seemed to Louis so profane, that be utterly refused to pronounce them.
The Mahometans threatened.
“You are masters of my body,” he said, “but you have no power over my will.” His brothers and the clergy entreated in vain, though the Mamelukes, fancying that his resistance was inspired by the latter, seized the Patriarch of Jerusalem, an old man of eighty, and tied him up to a stake, drawing the cords so tight round his hands that the blood started.
“Sire, sire, take the oath!” he cried; “I take the sin upon myself.”
But Louis was immovable, and the Emirs at last contented themselves with his word, and retired, saying that this was the proudest Christian that had ever been seen in the East.
They knew not that his pride was for the honor of his God.
On the 6th of May, Geoffroi de Sargines came to Damietta, placed the Queen and her ladies on board the Genoese vessels, and gave up the keys to the Emirs.
The King was, on this, set free, but his brother Alfonso was to remain as a hostage till the bezants were paid. The royal coffers at Damielta could not supply the whole, and the rest was borrowed of the Templars, somewhat by force; for Joinville, going to their treasurer in his worn-out garments and his face haggard from illness, was refused the keys, till he said “he should use the royal key,” on which, with a protest, the chests were opened.
Philippe de Montfort managed to cheat the Mamelukes of 10,000 bezants, and came boasting of it to the King; but Louis, much displeased, sent him back with the remaining sum.
The King then embarked, still in much anxiety whether the Emirs would fulfil their engagements and liberate his brother; but, late at night, Montfort came alongside of the vessel, and called out, “Sire, speak to your brother, who is in the other ship!”
In great joy Louis cried, “Light up! light up!” and the signals of the two princes joyfully answered each other in the darkness.
The King sailed for Acre, and after some stay there, finding that his weakened force could effect nothing, and hearing that the death of his mother, Queen Blanche, had left France without a regent, he returned home, and landed 5th of September, 1254, six years after his departure.
The Countess Ella and her son Nicholas, Bishop of Salisbury, raised an effigy to William like that of his father, and the figures of the father and son lie opposite to each other in the new cathedral founded by Bishop Poore.
CAMEO XXX.
SIMON DE MONTFORT.
(1232-1266.)_King of England._
1216. Henry III.
_Kings of Scotland._
1214. Alexander II.
1249. Alexander III.
_Kings of France._
1226. Louis IX.
_Emperor of Germany._
1209. Friedrich II.
1249. Conrad IV.
1255. William.
_Popes._
1227. Gregory IX.
1241. Celestin IV.
1242. Innocent IV.
1254. Alexander IV.
1261. Urban IV.
The lawlessness of John Lackland led to the enactment of Magna Charta; the extravagance of Henry of Winchester established the power of Parliament, and the man who did most in effecting this purpose was a foreigner by birth.
Amicia, the heiress of the earldom of Leicester, was the wife of Simon, Count de Montfort, an austere warrior, on whom fell the choice of Innocent III. to be leader of the so-called crusade against the unfortunate Albigenses. Heretics indeed they were; but never before had the sword of persecution been employed by the Church, and their fate is a grievous disgrace to Rome, and to the Dominican order. Strict in life, but of cruel temper, Count Simon was a fit instrument for the massacres committed; and being a leader of great skill, he gained complete victories over the native princes of the heretics, who, though not holding their opinions, were unwilling to let them perish without protection. Raymond de St. Gilles Count de Toulouse, Gaston Count de Bearn, and all the most famous names of the south of France, took up arms in their defence; and even Pedro, King of Aragon, joined, the confederacy; but at the battle of Muret all were totally defeated, and Pedro lost his life.
The nobles were imprisoned, the peasants murdered by wholesale, villages burnt down and the inhabitants slain, with out distinction of Catholic or heretic, and all the time the followers of Montfort deemed themselves religious men. The Lateran Council actually invested Simon with the sovereignty of the counties of Toulouse and Carcassonne; but he was extremely hated there, and Count Raymond, recovering his liberty, attacked him, and regained great part of his own dominions. Montfort was besieging the town of Toulouse, when, while hearing mass, intelligence was brought to him that the garrison were setting fire to his machines. He rose from his knees, repeating the first verse of the Song of Simeon, and rushing out to the battle, was struck on the head by a stone from a mangonel on the walls, and killed on the spot, June 25, 1218. He was a remarkable type of that character fostered by the system of the Middle Ages, where ambition and cruelty existed side by side with austere devotion, and were encouraged as if they did service to Heaven.
His second son, Simon, had the same strong sense of religion, together with equal talents, and unusual beauty of person, skill in arms, and winning grace of deportment. The elder son, Amaury, was the heir of the county of Montfort, and for some time Simon remained landless, the earldom of Leicester having been forfeited on account of the adherence of the family to the party of Louis the Lion in the wars that followed the signing of Magna Charta.
In 1232, however, young Simon came to England to attempt the recovery of his mother’s inheritance, and his graceful manners and Southern tongue at once delighted Henry III. Another heart was at the same time gained; the King’s sister, Eleanor, who had been left a widow at sixteen by the death of the brave Earl of Pembroke, had, in her first despair, made a vow of perpetual widowhood, and received the ring of dedication from the Archbishop; but at the end of six years all this was forgotten; she fell in love with the handsome Provencal, and prevailed on the King to sanction with his presence a hasty private wedding in St. Stephen’s Chapel.
For some time the marriage remained a secret, and when it became known, great was the indignation alike of clergy and laity. The Barons even collected troops, and headed by Richard, the King’s brother, whom they called the Staff of Fortitude, assembled at Southwark, and dreadfully alarmed the poor King; but Montfort, who always possessed a great power over men’s minds, managed to reconcile himself to Prince Richard, and to disperse the other nobles. Still, the Archbishop termed it no marriage at all, and Simon therefore set out at once for Rome, carrying letters from Henry, and raising money by every means in his power, till he was able to offer a sufficient bribe to obtain from the Pope a dispensation, with which he returned to England a few days before the birth of his eldest child, Henry.
Simon was now in high favor; the Barons, who at first looked on him as one of the hated Southern adventurers, were gained over by his address and adoption of their manners; and when, by the royal favor and the formal cession by his brother Amaury, he obtained the earldom of Leicester, they readily identified him with themselves. At court he was highly beloved; his children were constantly at the palace; and in 1239, when Edward, heir of the crown, was baptized, he was one of the nine godfathers–an honor, perhaps, chiefly owing to his wealth, for this was at one of the times when Henry’s finances were at so low an ebb that he, or his messengers, made the birth of the child an excuse for their rapacity. Each noble to whom the tidings were sent was obliged to make a costly gift; and if he did not offer enough, his present was returned on his hands with intimation that it must be increased. “God has given us this child,” said a jester; “the King sells him to us.”
Montfort’s English popularity seems suddenly to have rendered the fickle King jealous; for, to his great surprise, on the day of the churching of the Queen, Henry suddenly met him, and forbade him to join in the service, reviling him furiously for the circumstances of his marriage, and ordering him at once to leave his dominions. Returning with his wife to his lodgings, he was at once followed by messengers, ordering them both away; and before sunset he was obliged to embark with Eleanor in a small vessel, leaving behind them their infant son.
He placed his wife in safety in France, and proceeded to the Holy Land, where he highly distinguished himself, and, as usual, gained every one’s affection, so that the Barons of Palestine would fain have had him for their leader in the absence of their young Queen Yolande and her husband, Friedrich II. of Germany.
King Henry had forgotten his displeasure by the time he returned, and the next ten years were spent in peace by the Earl and Countess, at their castles of Kenilworth and Odiham, and the government of Gascony. Their five sons were brought up as the playfellows of their royal cousins, and were under the tutorship of the great Robert Grosteste, while the noble and magnificent earl stood equally well with sovereign and people. His chaplain, Adam de Marisco, seems to have been an admirable man, who never failed to administer suitable reproofs to the Countess for love of dress and other failings, all which she seems to have taken in good part.
Meantime Henry was plunging deeper in debt and difficulty. Every time his council met they charged him with breaches of the Great Charter, and refusing, in spite of his promises and pleas, to grant him any money, left him to devise means of obtaining it by extortion. The Jews had always been considered a sort of lawful property of the sovereign, who plundered them without remorse; but even this resource was not inexhaustible, and he looked with covetous eyes on the prosperous citizens of London. Once, when he was in great distress, and it was suggested to him to pawn to them his plate and jewels, he broke out passionately: “If the treasures of Augustus were put up to sale, these clowns would buy them. Is it for them to assume the style of Barons, and live sumptuously, while we are in want of the necessaries of life?” Thenceforth he made still more unscrupulous demands of the citizens, under the name of New-Year’s gifts, loans, &c.; and Queen Eleanor had even less consideration, so that their Majesties became the objects of the utmost hatred in the city.
In 1252 the Earl of Leicester was summoned from Gascony to answer various charges of maladministration. His brother-in-law, Prince Richard, took his part, with the two great Earls of Gloucester and Hereford, and it was reported that he had pledged the Gascons by a solemn oath not to make any complaint of his government. At any rate, they declared their intention of withdrawing their allegiance if he were superseded, and he himself refused to resign his post unless he were repaid the sums he had expended.
“I am not bound to keep my word with a traitor,” said Henry–words which put Simon into a passion, and he replied:
“It is a lie! and whoever said so, I will compel to eat his words. Who can believe you to be a Christian prince? Do you ever go to confession?”
“A Christian I am; I have often been to confession.”
“Vain confession, without repentance and reparation!”
“I repent of nothing so much,” cried the King, “as having fattened one who has so little gratitude and so much ill manners.”
The friends of Simon checked further reply. Henry’s wrath was like straw on fire; but he forgot that by it he lighted a flame more enduring, though at first less visible; and he was vexed when the offended Montfort removed his eldest son, Henry, from court. However, Gascony was wanted as a government for Prince Edward, who was only thirteen years old, and therefore Leicester was forced to resign, though he would not do so without full compensation, such as Henry was ill able to afford. Yet, affronted as he was, when the office of high steward of France was offered to him, he would not accept it, by the advice of Grosteste, lest he should seem unfaithful to his master.
To carry Prince Edward to Guienne was at present Henry’s favorite scheme, and for this end every means of raising money was resorted to. The King met the parliament, as he had done often before, with entreaties for a grant to enable him to go and redeem the Holy Sepulchre; but this had been far too frequently tried, and was unnoticed; so he next tried the bribe of confirmation of the charters. All the assembly went to Westminster Abbey, the bishops and abbots carrying tapers, and there the Archbishop of Canterbury pronounced sentence of excommunication against whosoever should infringe these charters. As he spoke, the tapers were dashed at once on the ground, with the words, “May his soul who incurs this sentence be thus extinguished for ever!” while Henry added, “So help me God! I will keep these charters, as I am a man, as I am a Christian, as I am a knight, as I am a king crowned and anointed.”
Yet a few days after, when the parliament was dismissed and the money in his hands, the temptation to transgress the charter again occurred. His conscience was still overawed, and he hesitated; but his uncles and half-brothers bade him remember that, while he kept his oath, he was but the shadow of a King, and that, should he scruple, three hundred marks sent to the Pope would purchase his dispensation and discharge him of guilt.
There was real need in Guienne; for Alfonso, King of Castile, had set up a claim to that county, and threatened to invade it. Arriving there, Henry gained some advantages, and concluded a peace, which was to be sealed by a marriage between Edward of England and Dona Leonor of Castile, Alfonso’s sister. Young as they were–Edward only fourteen and Leonor still younger–they were at once brought to Burgos and there united; after which a tournament was held, and the prince received knighthood from the sword of Alfonso. Bringing his bride back to his father at Bordeaux, Edward was received with a full display of luxury; all Henry’s money, and more too, having been laid out on the banquetting, so that the King himself stood aghast, and dismally answered one of his English guests, “Say no more! What would they think of it in England?”
The young bride, Eleanor, as the English called her, was brought to England, while Edward remained in Guienne, sometimes visiting the French court, and going wherever tournaments or knightly exercises invited him. He was far better thus employed, and in intercourse with St. Louis, than in the miserable quarrels, expedients, and perplexities, at home; and thus he grew up generous, chivalrous, and devout, his whole character strongly influenced by the example he had seen at Paris. His features were fair, and of the noblest cast, perfectly regular, and only blemished by a slight trace of his father’s drooping eyelid; the expression full of fire and sweetness, though at times somewhat stern. His height exceeded that of any man in England, and his strength was in proportion; he was perfectly skilled in all martial exercises, and we are told that he could leap into the saddle when in full armor without putting his hand on it.
All the wealth in the family had always been in the hands of Prince Richard, Earl of Cornwall, whose tin mines yielded such a revenue that he was esteemed the richest prince in Europe. He had wisely refused the Pope’s offer of the crown of Sicily; but at this time, the death of Friedrich II., and of his son Conrad, leaving vacant the imperial crown, he was so far allured by it, that he set off to offer himself as a candidate, carrying with him thirty-two wagons, each drawn by eight horses, and laden with a hogshead of gold. Judiciously distributed, it purchased his election by the Archbishop of Mainz and some of the electors, while others gave their votes to Alfonso of Castile, whose offers had been also considerable.
Alfonso thenceforth was called _El Emperador_, and Richard was generally known as King of the Romans, and his son as Henry d’Almayne, or of Germany; but the Germans took no notice of either claimant beyond taking their presents, and the only consequence was, that Richard was a poorer man, and that his brother, the King, was ruined.
It was in 1258, while Richard was gone to be crowned at Aix-la-Chapelle, that the long-gathering peril began to burst. There had been a severe famine, which added to the general discontent; and though Richard sent home forty vessels laden with corn, his absence was severely felt, and his mediation was missed. The King saw Simon de Montfort in conference with the nobles, and feared the consequences. Once, when overtaken by a sudden storm on his way to the Tower, Henry was forced to take refuge at Durham House, then the abode of the Earl, who came down to meet him, bidding him not to be alarmed, as the storm was over.
“Much as I dread thunder and lightning, I fear thee more than all,” said the poor King.
“My Lord,” said Montfort, “you have no need to dread your only true friend, who would save you from the destruction your false councillors are preparing for you.”
These words were better understood when, on the 2d of May, Henry, on going to meet his parliament at Westminster, found all his Barons sheathed in full armor, and their swords drawn. These they laid aside on his entrance, but when he demanded, “What means this? Am I your prisoner?” Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, a proud, violent man, who had once before given the lie to the King, answered:
“Not so, sir; but your love of foreigners, and your own extravagance, have brought great misery on the realm. We therefore demand that the powers of government be entrusted to a committee of Barons and Prelates, who may correct abuses and enact sound laws.”
William de Valence, one of Henry’s half-brothers, took upon him to reply, and high words passed between him and the Earl of Leicester; but the royal party were overmatched, and were obliged to consent to give a commission to reform the state to twenty-four persons, half from the King’s council, and half to be chosen by the Barons themselves, in a parliament to be held at Oxford.
This meeting, noted in history as the Mad Parliament, commenced on the 11th of June, and the Barons brought to it their bands of armed retainers, so as to overpower all resistance. The regulations were made entirely at their will, and the chief were thus: That parliaments should assemble thrice a year, that four knights from each county should lay before them every grievance, and that they should overlook all the accounts of the Chancellor and Treasurer. For the next twelve years this committee were to take to themselves the power of disposing of the government of the royal castles, of revoking any grant made without their consent, and of forbidding the great seal to be affixed to any charter–the same species of restraint as that under which King John had been placed at Runnymede.
The King’s half-brothers would not yield up the castles in their possession, but Montfort told William de Valence that he would have them, or his head, and brought charges against them before the council, which so alarmed them, that they all fled to Wolvesham Castle, belonging to Aymar, as intended Bishop of Winchester. Thither the Barons pursued them, and, making them prisoners, sent them out of the realm, with only six thousand marks in their possession.
Their defeat proved how vain was resistance, and the whole royal family were obliged to swear to observe the Acts of Oxford, as they were called. The King’s nephew, Henry d’Almayne, protested that they were of no force in the absence of his father, the King of the Romans. “Let your father look to himself,” said Leicester. “If he refuse to act with the Barons of England, not a foot of land shall he have in the whole realm.”
And accordingly, on his return, Richard was not allowed to land till he had promised to take the oath, which he did at Dover, in the presence of the King and Barons.
Queen Eleanor expressed herself petulantly as to the oath, and Prince Edward was scarcely persuaded to take it; but at length he was forced to yield, and having done so, retired from the kingdom in grief and vexation; for, having sworn it, he meant to abide by it, not being as well accustomed to oaths and dispensations as his father, who, of course, quickly sent to Rome for absolution.
On the other hand, when the twenty-four had to swear to it, the most backward to do so was Simon de Montfort himself, who probably discerned that the pledge was likely to be a mere mockery. When he at length consented, it was with the words, “By the arm of St. James, though I take this oath, the last, and by compulsion, yet I will so observe it that none shall be able to impeach me.”
Prince Edward might have said the same; he even incurred the displeasure of his mother for refusing to elude or transgress his oath, and was for a time accused of having joined the Barons’ party. Meanwhile, the King and Queen were constantly and needlessly affronting their subjects. “What! are you so bold with me, Sir Earl?” said the King to Roger Bigod. “Do you not know I could issue my royal warrant for threshing out all your corn?”
“Ay,” returned the Earl; “and could not I send you the heads of the threshers?”
The hot-tempered, light-minded Queen Eleanor’s open contempt of the English drew upon her such hatred, that vituperative ballads were made on her, some of which have come down to our times. One attacks even her virtue as a wife, and another is entitled a “Warning against Pride, being the Fall of Queen Eleanor, who for her pride sank into the earth at Charing Cross, and rose again at Queenhithe, after killing the Lady Mayoress.” Unfortunately, popular inaccuracy has imputed her errors to the gentle Eleanor of Castile, her daughter-in-law, and thus the ballad calls her wife to Edward I., instead of Henry III. “A Spanish dame,” was a term that might fairly be applied to the Provencal Eleanor, whose language was nearly akin to Spanish, and whose luxury was sufficient to lead to the accusation of
“Bringing in fashions strange and new, With golden garments bright;”
And that
“The wheat, that daily made her bread Was bolted twenty times:
The food that fed this stately dame Was boiled in costly wines.
The water that did spring from ground She would not touch at all,
But washed her hands with dew of heaven That on sweet roses fall.
She bathed her body many a time
In fountains filled with milk,
And every day did change attire
In costly Median silk.”
Eleanor of Provence, when “drest in her brief authority” as Lady Chancellor, had arbitrarily imprisoned the Lord Mayor, and this the ballad converts into a persecution of the unfortunate Lady Mayoress, whom she sent”–into Wales with speed,
And kept her secret there,
And used her still more cruelly
Than ever man did bear.
She mude her wash, she made her starch, She made her drudge alway,
She made her nurse up children small, And labor night and day,”
and in conclusion slew her by means of two snakes.
Afterward her coach stood still in London, and could not move, when she was accused of the crime, and, denying it, sunk into the ground, and rose again at Queenhithe; after which she languished for twenty days, and made full confession of her sins!
The real disaster that befell Queen Eleanor in London was an attack by the mob as she was going down the Thames in her barge. She was pelted with rotten eggs, sheeps’ bones, and all kinds of offal, with loud cries of “Drown the witch!” and at length even stones and beams from some houses building on the bank assailed her, and she was forced, to return in speed to the Tower.
Prince Edward was not always blameless. He had been employed against the Welsh, and after the campaign, not knowing whither to turn for means of paying his troops, he broke into the chests of the Knights Templars, to whom his mother’s jewels had been pledged, and carried off not only these, but much property besides that had been committed to the keeping of the order by other parties.
As to the unfortunate Jews, each party considered them fair game; and there were frequent attacks upon them, and frightful massacres, when the choice of death or of Christianity was offered to them, and the Barons seized their treasures. The curses of Deuteronomy, of the trembling heart, and the uncertainty of life and possession, were indeed fulfilled on the unhappy race.
For four years the committee of twenty-four held their power with few fluctuations, until matters were driven to extremity by a proposal to render the present state of things permanent, and at the same time by an attack on the property of the moderate and popular King of the Romans on the part of the Barons.
On this the royal party determined to submit the dispute to the arbitration of the King of France, whose wise and fair judgments were so universally famed that the Barons readily consented, with the exception of Leicester, who was convinced that Louis would incline to the side of Henry, both as fellow-king and as brother-in-law, and therefore refused to attend the conference, or to consider himself bound by its decisions.
The judgment of Louis IX, was perfectly just and moderate. He declared that Magna Charta was indeed binding on the King of England, and that he had no right to transgress it; but that the coercion in which he had been placed by the Mad Parliament was illegal, and that the Acts of Oxford were null, since no subjects had a right to deprive their sovereign of the custody of his castles, nor of the choice of his ministers.
As Montfort had foreseen, the Barons would not accept this decision, and its sole effect was to release Prince Edward’s conscience, and open the way to civil war. The two Eleanors, of Provence and Castile, were left under the charge of St. Louis; and their namesakes of the other party, the Countess of Leicester and her daughter, the Damoiselle de Montfort, fortified themselves in their castle of Kenilworth, while arms were taken up on either side.
Leicester, who held that the guilt of perjury rested with the other party, and who had with him the clergy opposed to the Italian usurpation, deemed it a holy war, and marked the breasts of his soldiers with white crosses, imagining himself the champion of the truth, as he had been taught to think himself, when bearing his first arms under his father in what was esteemed the Provencal Crusade. Alas, when honorable and devout minds have the fine edge of conscience blunted! Thus did the gallant and beloved “Sir Simon the Righteous” become a traitor and a rebel.
The scholars of Oxford, who had not at all forgotten their quarrel with king and legate, came out _en masse_ under the banner of the University (for once disloyal), to join Leicester’s second son, Simon, who was collecting a body of troops to lead to his father in London.
Prince Edward, however, attacked them at Northampton, and effected a breach in the wall. Young Montfort attempted a desperate sally, but was defeated, and his life only saved by his cousin, the Prince, who extricated him from beneath his fallen steed, and made him prisoner.
The King and Prince next marched to seize the Cinque Ports, and, while in Sussex, Leicester followed them, and came up with them in a hollow valley near Lewes. Here, with a sort of satire, the Barons sent to offer the King 30,000 marks if he would make peace, and a like sum to the King of the Romans if he would bring him to terms. The proposals were angrily repelled by Edward, who, with accusations of his godfather as traitor and “_foi menti_,” sent him a personal challenge.
Leicester spent the night in prayer, and in early morning knighted Gilbert de Clare, the young Earl of Gloucester, who was at this time enthusiastically attached to him. The battle then began, each army being arrayed in three divisions. Prince Edward and Henry d’Almayne were opposed to their two cousins, Henry and Guy de Montfort, with the bands from London. Mindful of the outrage that his mother had sustained from the citizens, Edward charged them furiously, and pursued them with great slaughter, never drawing rein till he reached Croydon.
But, as they rode back to Lewes, the impetuous young soldiers beheld a sight very different from their triumphant anticipations. The field was scattered with the corpses of the Royalists, and the white-crossed troops of the Barons were closely gathered round the castle and priory of Lewes. In dismay, William and Guy de Lusignan turned their horses, and rode off to embark at Pevensey. Seven hundred men followed them, and Edward and Henry were left with the sole support of Roger Mortimer, a Welsh-border friend of the former, with his followers.
The hot pursuit of the fugitive plunderers had ruined the day. Montfort had concentrated his forces, and had totally routed the two kings; Richard was already his prisoner, and Henry had no chance of holding out in the priory. The princes undauntedly strove to collect their shattered forces, and break through to his rescue, but were forced to desist by a message that, on their first attack, the head of the King of the Romans should be struck off.
To save his life, the two cousins therefore agreed to a treaty called the Mise of Lewes, May 15th, 1264, by which they gave themselves up to the Barons as hostages for their fathers, stipulating that the matter at issue should be decided by deputies from the King of France, and that the prisoners on either side should be set free.
Now began the great trial of Simon de Montfort–that of power and prosperity–and he failed under it. Whatever might have been his first intentions in taking up arms, he now proved himself unwilling to lay aside the authority placed in his hands, even though he violated his oaths in maintaining it, and incurred the sentence of excommunication which the Pope launched against him. But when the most saintly English bishops of their own time had died under it, it lost its power on the conscience.
No measures were taken for the French arbitration, nor were the prisoners set free. The King of the Romans was confined at Kenilworth, and the two young princes at Dover, the custody of which castle was committed to one of their cousins, the Montforts, who allowed them no amusement but the companionship of Thomas de Clare, the young brother of the Earl of Gloucester. King Henry was indeed nominally at liberty, but watched perpetually by Leicester’s guards, and not allowed to take a step or to write a letter without his superintendence; and when the Mayor of London swore fealty to him, it was with the words, “As long as he was good to them.” Edward was made, on promise of liberation, to swear to terms far harder than even the Acts of Oxford, and when the bitter oath had been taken, he was pronounced at full liberty, and then carried off, under as close a guard as ever, to Wallingford Castle.
Queen Eleanor was acting with great spirit abroad, gathering money and collecting troops in hopes of better times, and seven knights still held out Bristol for the King. They made a sudden expedition to Wallingford, in hopes of rescuing the Prince; but the garrison were on the alert, and called out to them that, if they wanted the prince, they might have him, but only tied hand and foot, and shot from a mangonel; and Edward himself, appearing on the walls, declared that, if they wished to save his life, they must retreat.
This violent threat went beyond the instructions of Leicester, who removed his nephew from the keeping of this garrison, and placed him at Kenilworth.
But Simon was made to feel that he had little control over his followers, and especially over his wild sons, who had learnt no respect to authority at all, and outran in their violence even the doings of the Lusignan family. Henry de Montfort seized all the wool in England, which was sold for his profit, while Simon and Guy fitted out a fleet and plundered the vessels in the Channel, without distinction of English or foreigners, and thus turned aside the popularity which Leicester had hitherto enjoyed in London. The Barons, too, already discontented at having only changed their masters, so as to have the mighty Montfort over them instead of the weak Plantagenet, could not bear with the additional lawlessness of sons who made themselves vile without restraint. A violent quarrel arose between these youths and Earl Gilbert de Clare, who challenged them to a joust at Dunstable; but their father, dreading fatal consequences, forbade it, and Gloucester retired to his estates in high displeasure.
Here he was joined by his brother Thomas, who came full of descriptions of the princely courtesy and sweetness of manner of the royal Edward, which contrasted so strongly with the presumption of his upstart cousins that the young Earl was brought over to concert measures with the Prince’s friend, Roger Mortimer.
In order to overawe the Welsh borderers, who were much attached to Edward, Simon had carried his captive to Hereford Castle, whither Thomas de Clare now returned as his attendant, taking with him a noble steed, provided by Mortimer, with a message that his friends would be on the alert to receive him at a certain spot.
Edward mounted his horse, rode out with his guard, set them to race, and looked on as umpire, till, their steeds being duly tired, he galloped off, and the last they saw of him was far in advance meeting with a party of spears, beneath the pennon of Mortimer. And now the Earl of Leicester experienced that “success but signifies vicissitude.” After his reign of one year, his fall was rapid.
The Earl of Gloucester had at once joined Edward, and in vain did Leicester use the King’s name in calling on the military tenants of the Crown; only a small proportion of his old partisans came to his aid, and he remained on the banks of the Severn, waiting to be joined by his son Simon, who had been besieging Pevensey, but now marched to his aid.
On his way, young Simon summoned Winchester, but was refused admittance. However, the treacherous monks of St. Swithin’s let in his forces through a window of their convent on the wall, and the city was horribly sacked, especially the Jewry. Afterward he went to the family castle of Kenilworth, where he awaited orders from his father. A woman named Margot informed the Prince that it was the habit of Simon and his knights to sleep outside the walls, for the convenience of bathing in the summer mornings; and Edward, suddenly making a night-march, fell upon them while in the very act, and took most of them prisoners, Simon just escaping into the castle with his pages in their shirts and drawers, all his baggage and treasures being taken.
Ignorant of this disaster, the Earl of Leicester proceeded, in hopes of effecting a junction with his son, and had just arrived at Evesham when banners were seen in the distance. Nicholas, his barber, who pretended to have some knowledge of heraldry, declared that they belonged to Sir Simon’s troops; but the Earl, not fully satisfied, bade him mount the church-steeple and look from thence. The affrighted barber recognized the Lions of England, the red chevrons of De Clare, the azure bars of Mortimer, waving over a forest of lances.
“We are dead men, my Lord,” he said, as he descended.
And truly, when the Earl beheld the marshalling of the hostile array, he could not help exclaiming, “They have learnt this style from me! Now God have mercy on our souls, for our bodies are the Prince’s!”
Henry, the only son who was with him, exhorted him not to despair.
“I do not, my son,” replied the Earl; “but your presumption, and the pride of your brothers, have brought me to this pass. I firmly believe I shall die for the cause of God and justice.”
He prayed, and received the sacrament, as he always did before going into battle; then arrayed his troops, bringing out the poor old King, in order to make his followers imagine themselves the Royalists. He tried in vain to force the road to Kenilworth; then drew his troops into a compact circle, that last resource of gallant men in extremity, such as those of Hastings and Flodden. Their ranks were hewn down little by little, and the Prince’s troops were pressing on, when a lamentable cry was heard, “Save me! save me! I am Henry of Winchester!”
Edward knew the voice, and, springing to the rescue, drew out a wounded warrior, whom he bore away to a place of safety. In his absence, Leicester’s voice asked if quarter was given.
“No quarter for traitors,” said some revengeful Royalist; and at the same moment Henry de Montfort fell, slain, at his father’s feet.
“By the arm of St. James, it is time for me to die!” cried the Earl; and, grasping his sword in both hands, he rushed into the thickest of the foe, and, after doing wonders, was struck down and slain. Terrible slaughter was done on the “desperate ring;” one hundred and sixty knights, with all their followers, were slain, and scarcely twelve gentlemen survived. The savage followers of Mortimer cut off the head and hands of Leicester, and carried the former as a present to their lady; but this was beyond the bounds of the orders of Prince Edward, who caused the corpses of his godfather and cousin to be brought into the abbey church of Evesham, wept over the playfellow of his childhood, and honored the burial with his presence.
The battle of Evesham was fought on the 4th of August, 1265, fourteen months after the misused victory of Lewes.
So died the Earl of Leicester, termed, by the loving people of England, “Sir Simon the Righteous”–a man of high endowments and principles of rectitude unusual in his age. His devotion was sincere, his charities extensive, his conduct always merciful–no slight merit in one bred up among the savage devastators of Provence–and his household accounts prove the order and religious principle that he enforced. His friends were among the staunch supporters of the English Church, and, unlike his father, who thought to merit salvation as the instrument of the iniquities of Rome, he disregarded such injunctions and threats of hers as disagreed with the plain dictates of conscience. Thinking for himself at length led to contempt of lawful authority; but it was an age when the shepherds were fouling the springs, and making their own profit of the flock; and what marvel was it if the sheep went astray?
He was enthusiastically loved by the English, especially the commonalty, who, excommunicate as he was, believed him a saint, imputed many miracles to his remains, and murmured greatly that he was not canonized. After-times may judge him as a noble character, wrecked upon great temptations, and dying as befitted a brave and resigned man drawn into fatal error.
“If ever, in temptation strong,
Thou left’st the right path for the wrong, If every devious step thus trode
Still led thee further from the road, Dread thou to speak presumptuous doom
On noble ‘Montfort’s’ lowly tomb;
But say, ‘he died a gallant knight, With sword in hand, for England’s right.'”
For, though the rebellion cannot be justified, it was by the efforts and strife of this reign that Magna Charta was fixed, not as the concession wrung for a time by force from a reluctant monarch, but as the basis of English law.
Prince Edward, in the plenitude of his victory, did not attempt to repeal it; but, at a parliament held at Marlborough, 1267, led his father to accept not this only, but such of the regulations of the Barons as were reasonable, and consistent with the rigid maintenance of the authority of the Crown.
Evesham was the overthrow of the Montfort family. Henry was there slain with his father–though, according to ballad lore, he had another fate–the blow only depriving him of sight, and he being found on the field by a “baron’s faire daughter,” she conveyed him to a place of safety, tended him, and finally became his wife, and made him “glad father of pretty Bessee.” For years he lived and throve (as it appears) as the blind beggar of Bethnal Green, till his daughter, who had been brought up as a noble lady, was courted by various suitors. On her making known, however, that she was a beggar’s daughter,
“‘Nay, then,’ quoth the merchant, ‘thou art not for me.’ ‘Nor,’ quoth the inn-holder, ‘my wiffe shalt thou be.’ ‘I lothe,’ said the gentle, ‘a beggar’s degree; And therefore adewe, my pretty Bessee.'”
However, there was a gentle knight whose love for “pretty Bessee” was proof against the discovery of her father’s condition and the entreaties of his friends; and after he had satisfied her by promises not to despise her parents, the blind beggar counted out so large a portion, that he could not double it, and on the wedding-day the beggar revealed his own high birth, to the general joy.
Unfortunately, it does not appear as if Henry de Montfort might not have prospered without his disguise. His mother was generously treated by the King and Prince, and retired beyond sea with her sons Amaury and Richard; and her daughter Eleanor, and his brother Simon, a desperate and violent man, held out Kenilworth for some months, which was with difficulty reduced; afterward he joined his brother Guy, and wandered about the Continent, brooding on revenge for his father’s death.
The last rebel to be overcome was the brave outlaw, Adam de Gourdon, who, haunting Alton Wood as a robber after the death of Leicester, was sought out by Prince Edward, subdued by his personal prowess, and led to the feet of the King.
The brave and dutiful Prince became the real ruler of the kingdom, and England at length reposed.
CAMEO XXXI.
THE LAST OF THE CRUSADERS.
(1267-1291.)
_Kings of England_.
1216. Henry III.
1272. Edward I.
_Kings of Scotland_.
1249. Alexander III.
1285. Margaret.
(Interregnum.)
_Kings of France_.
1226. Louis IX.
1270. Philippe III.
1285. Philippe IV.
_Emperor of Germany_.
1273. Rodolph I.
_Popes_.
1265. Clement IV.
1271. Gregory X.
1276. Innocent V.
1277. John XXI.
1277. Nicholas III.
1281. Martin IV.
1285. Honorius IV.
1288. Nicholas IV.
A hundred and seventy years had elapsed since the hills of Auvergne had re-echoed the cry of _Dieu le veult_, and the Cross had been signed on the shoulders of Godfrey and Tancred. Jerusalem had been held by the Franks for a short space; but their crimes and their indolence had led to their ruin, and the Holy City itself was lost, while only a few fortresses, detached and isolated, remained to bear the name of the Kingdom of Palestine. The languishing Royal Line was even lost, becoming extinct in Conradine, the grandson of Friedrich II. and of Yolande of Jerusalem, that last member of the house of Hohenstaufen on whom the Pope and Charles of Anjou wreaked their vengeance for the crimes of his fore-fathers. Charles of Anjou, brother of St. Louis, but of utterly dissimilar character, had seized Conradine’s kingdom of the two Sicilies, and likewise assumed his title to that of Jerusalem, thus acquiring a personal interest in urging on another Crusade for the recovery of Palestine.
Less and less of that kingdom existed. Bibars, or Bendocdar Elbondukdari, one of the Mameluke emirs, who had become Sultan of Egypt during the confusion that followed the death of Touran Chah, was so great a warrior that he was surnamed the Pillar of the Mussulman Religion and the Father of Victories–titles which he was resolved to merit by exterminating the Franks. Cesarea, Antioch, Joppa, fell into his hands in succession, and Tripoli and Acre alone remained in the possession of the Templars and Hospitallers, who appealed to their brethren in Europe for assistance.
The hope of a more effective crusade than his first had never been absent from the mind of Louis IX.; he had carried it with him through court and camp, dwelt on it while framing wise laws for his people, instructing his nobles, or sitting to do justice beneath the spreading oak-tree of Vincennes. Since his return from Damietta, he had always lived as one devoted, never wearing gold on his spurs nor in his robes, and spending each moment that he could take from affairs of state in prayer and reading of the Scripture; and though his health was still extremely frail and feeble, his resolution was taken.
On the 23d of March, 1267, he convoked his barons in the great hall of the Louvre, and entered the assembly, holding in his hand that sacred relic, the Crown of Thorns, which had been found by the Empress Helena with the True Cross. He then addressed them, describing the needs of their Eastern brethren, and expressing his own intention of at once taking the Cross. There was a deep and mournful silence among his hearers, who too well remembered the sufferings of their last campaign, and who looked with despair at their beloved King’s worn and wasted form, so weak that he could hardly bear the motion of a horse, and yet bent on encountering the climate and the labors that had well-nigh proved fatal to him before.
The legate, the Cardinal Ottoboni, then made an exhortation, after which Louis assumed the Cross, and was imitated by his three sons, Philippe, Tristan, and Pierre, and his son-in-law, Thibault, King of Navarre, with other knights, but in no great numbers, for the barons were saying to each other, that it was one of the saddest days that France had ever seen. “If we take the Cross,” they said, “we lose our King; if we take it not, we lose our God, since we will not take the Cross for Him.” The Sire de Joinville absolutely refused on account of his vassals, and openly pronounced it a mortal sin to counsel the King to undertake such an expedition in his present state of health; but Louis’ determination was fixed, and in the course of the next three years he collected a number of gallant young Crusaders.
He had always had a strong influence over his nephew, Edward of England, and the conclusion of the war with Montfort, as well as a personal escape of his own, had at this period strongly disposed the Prince to acts of devotion. While engaged in a game at chess with a knight at Windsor Castle, a sudden impulse seized him to rise from his seat. He had scarcely done so, when a stone, becoming detached from the groined roof over his head, fell down on the very spot where he had been sitting. His preservation was attributed by him to Our Lady of Walsingham, and the beautiful church still existing there attests the veneration paid to her in consequence, while he further believed himself marked out for some especial object, and eagerly embraced the proposal of accompanying the French King on his intended voyage.
Ottoboni preached the Crusade at Northampton on the 25th of June, 1269, after which he gave the Cross to King Henry, to the Princes Edward and Edmund, to their cousin Henry of Almayne, son to Richard of Cornwall, and to about one hundred and fifty knights. The King intended as little to go on the expedition as on any of the former ones, and he soon made over his Cross to his son. Edward, who was fully in earnest, made every arrangement for the safety of the realm in his absence, taking with him the turbulent Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, and appointing guardians for his two infant sons, John and Henry, in case the old King should die during his absence. His wife, Eleanor of Castile, insisted on accompanying him; and when the perils of the expedition were represented to her, she replied, “Nothing ought to part those whom God hath joined together. The way to heaven is as near, if not nearer, from Syria as from England or my native Spain.”
The last solemnity in which Edward assisted before his departure was the translation of the remains of Edward the Confessor to their new tomb in Westminster Abbey, the shrine of gold and precious stones being borne upon the shoulders of King Henry himself, after which the princes took leave of their father, and commenced their expedition, meeting on the way their uncle, the King of the Romans, who was bringing home a young German wife, Beatrice von Falkmart. Embarking at Dover on the 20th of August, 1270, the princes made all speed to hasten across France, so as to come up with Louis, who had set sail from Aigues Mortes on the 1st of July, with his three sons, his daughter Isabelle, and her husband the King of Navarre, and Isabelle the wife of his eldest son Philippe, as well as a gallant host of Crusaders. He had appointed Cagliari as the place of meeting with Edward of England, and with his brother Charles, King of Sicily; but he found his sojourn there inconvenient; the Pisans, who held Sardinia, were unfriendly, provisions were scarce, and the water unwholesome, and he became desirous of changing his quarters.
The reasons which conduced to his fatal resolution have never been clearly ascertained: whether he was influenced by his brother, the King of Sicily, who might reasonably wish to see the Moors of Tunis, his near neighbors, overpowered; or whether he was drawn along by the impatience of his forces, who were weary of inaction, and thought the plunder of any Mahometan praiseworthy; or whether he had any hope of converting the King of Tunis, Omar, with whom he had at one time been in correspondence. When some ambassadors from Tunis were at his court, a converted Jew had been baptized in their presence, and he had said to them, “Tell your master that I am so desirous of the salvation of his soul, that I would spend the rest of my life in a Saracen prison, and never see the light of day, if I could render your King and his people Christians like that man.” It does not seem improbable that Louis might have hoped that his arrival might encourage Omar to declare himself a Christian. But be this as it might, he sailed from Cagliari, and on the 17th of June appeared upon the coast of Africa, close to the ruins of ancient Carthage.
All the inhabitants fled to the mountains, and the shore was deserted, so that the French might have disembarked at once; but Louis hesitated, and waited till the next morning, when they found the coast covered with Moors. However, the landing proceeded, the Moors all taking flight–happily for the Christians, for their disorder was so great, that a hundred men might have prevented their disembarkation. A proclamation was then read, taking possession of the territory in the name of our Lord, and of Louis, King of France. His servant.
The spot where the army had landed was a sandy island, a league in length, and very narrow, separated from the mainland by a channel fordable at low water, without any green thing growing on it, and with only one spring of fresh water, which was guarded by a tower filled with Moorish soldiers. A hundred men would have been sufficient to dislodge them; but few horses had been landed, and those were injured by their voyage, and the knights could do nothing without them. The men who went in search of water were killed by the Moorish guard, and thirst, together with the burning heat of the sun reflected by the arid sand, caused the Christians to suffer terribly.
As to the King of Tunis, far from fulfilling Louis’ hopes, he sent him word that he was coming to seek him at the head of 100,000 men, and that he would only seek baptism on the field of battle; and at the same time he seized and imprisoned every Christian in his dominions, threatening to cut off all their heads the instant the French should attack Tunis.
After three days’ misery in the island, the Christians advanced across the canal, and entered a beautiful green valley, where Carthage once had stood, full of rich gardens, watered by springs arranged for irrigation. The Moors buzzed round them, throwing their darts, but galloping off on their advance without doing any harm. There was a garrison in the citadel, which was all that remained of the once mighty town; and the Genoese mariners, supported by the cavalry, undertook to dislodge them. This was effected, and the ruinous city was in the hands of the French. A number of the inhabitants had hidden themselves, with their riches, in the extensive vaults and catacombs, and, to the shame of the Crusaders, their employment was to search these wretches out and kill them, often by filling the vaults with smoke.
Louis had promised his brother Charles to wait for him before marching against Tunis, and messengers daily arrived with intelligence that the Sicilian troops were embarking; but, as the days passed on, the malaria of the ruined city and the heat of the climate were more fatal to the French army than would have been a lost battle. The desert winds which swept over them were hot as flame, and brought with them clouds of sand, which blinded the men and choked up the wells, while the water of the springs swarmed with insects, and all vegetable food failed. Disease could not be long wanting in such a situation, and a week after the taking of Carthage the whole camp was full of fever and dysentery, till the living had not strength to bury the dead, but heaped them up in the vaults and the trenches round the camp, where their decay added to the infection of the air. The Moors charged up to the lines, and killed the soldiers at their posts every day; and a poet within Tunis made the menacing verses: “Frank, knowest thou not that Tunis is the sister of Cairo? Thou wilt find before this town thy tomb, instead of the house of Lokman; and the two terrible angels, Munkir and Nekir, will take the place of the eunuch Sahil.”
Lokman and Sahil had been Louis’ guards in his Egyptian captivity, and the Moorish poet contrasts them with the two angels whom the Mahometans believed received and interrogated the dead.
As long as his strength lasted, Louis went about among the tents, encouraging and succoring the sufferers; but nearly at the same time himself and his two sons, Philippe and Tristan, were attacked by the malady. On Tristan, a boy of sixteen, born in the last Crusade, the illness made rapid progress, and the physicians judged it right to carry him from his father’s tent and place him on board ship. His strength rapidly gave way, and he expired soon after the transit. Louis constantly inquired for his son, but was met by a mournful silence until the eighth day, when he was plainly told of his death, and shed many tears, though he trusted soon to rejoin his young champion of the Cross in a better world. The Cardinal of Alba, the papal legate, was the next to die; and Louis’ fever increasing, so that he could no longer attend to the government of the army, he sent for his surviving children, Philippe and Isabelle, and addressed to them a few words of advice, giving them each a letter written with his own hand, in which the same instructions were more developed. They were beautiful lessons in holy living, piety, and justice, such as his descendant, the Dauphin, son of Louis XV., might well call his most precious inheritance. He bids his daughter to “have one desire that should never part from you–that is to say, how you may most please our Lord; and set your heart on this, that, though you should be sure of receiving no guerdon for any good you may do, nor any punishment for doing evil, you should still keep from doing what might displease God, and seek to do what may please Him, purely for love of Him.” He desires her, in adornment, to incline “to the less rather than the more,” and not to have too great increase of robes and jewels, but rather to make of them her alms, and to remember that she was an example to others. His parting blessing is, “May our Lord make you as good in all things as I desire, and even more than I know how to desire. Amen.”
To her he gave two ivory boxes, containing the scourge and hair-cloth which he used in self-discipline, and which she afterward employed for the same purpose, though unknown even to her confessor, until she mentioned it at her death.
To Philippe he said much of justice and mercy, desiring him always to take part against himself, and to give the preference to the weak over the strong. He exhorted him to be careful in bestowing the benefices of the Church, and to keep a careful watch over his nobles and governors, lest they should injure the clergy or the poor. To reverence in church, and to guarded language, he also exhorted him. Indeed, Joinville records, that in all the years that he knew the King, he never heard from him one careless mention of the name of God, or of the saints, nor did he hear him ever lightly speak of the devil; and in this the Seneschal so followed his example, that a blow was given in the Castle of Joinville for every profane word, so that he hoped the ill habit was there checked.
The good King thus concludes: “Dear son, I give thee all the blessing that father can and ought to give to son. May God of His mercy guard and defend thee from doing aught against His will; may He give thee grace to do His will; so that He may be honored and served by thee; and this may our Lord grant to me and thee by His great largesse, in such manner that, after this mortal life, we may see and laud and love Him without end.”
His children then took leave of him, and he remained with his confessors, after which he received the last rites of the Church, and was so fully conscious, that he made all the responses in the penitential Psalms. When the Host was brought in, he threw himself out of bed, and received it kneeling on the ground, after which he refused to be replaced in bed, but lay upon a hair-cloth strewn with ashes. This was on Sunday, at three o’clock, and from that time, while voice lasted, he never ceased praising God aloud, and praying for his people. “Lord God,” he often said, “give us grace to despise earthly things, and to forget the things of this world, so that we may fear no evil;” or, “Make Thy people holy, and watch over them.” On Monday he became speechless; but he often looked around him _debonnairement_, and fixed his eyes on the cross planted at the foot of his bed, while sometimes his attendants caught a faint whisper of “O Jerusalem! Jerusalem!”
It was the heavenly Jerusalem that was before him now; and after lying as if asleep for half an hour, he joined his hands, saying, “Good Lord, have mercy on the people that remain here, and bring them back to their own land, that they may not fall into the hands of their enemies, nor be forced to deny Thy holy name!” Soon after, “Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit,” and, looking up to heaven, “I will enter into Thy house, and worship in Thy tabernacle.”
It was three o’clock in the afternoon of the 25th of August, when Louis drew his last breath, and his chaplains were still standing round his bed of ashes, when, the sound of trumpets fell on their ears. The Sicilian fleet had anchored, and the troops had landed while all the French were hanging in suspense on each report of the failing strength of their King, and had not even watched for that long-delayed arrival. The dead silence that met the newcomers was their first intimation of the calamity; and when Charles of Anjou reached his brother’s tent, and saw his calm features fixed in death, he threw himself on his knees, and bitterly reproached himself for his tardiness in coming to his aid.
The Sicilian troops gained some advantages over the Moors, and it was proposed to finish the enterprise St. Louis had begun; but sickness still made great ravages in the army, and the new King, Philippe III., was so ill, that a speedy departure could alone save his life: a peace was therefore concluded with the Tunisians, which was hardly signed when Edward, with his English force, arrived upon the coast. He accompanied the melancholy remains of the French army to Trapani in Sicily, whither misfortunes still followed them. The young wife of Philippe III. was thrown from her horse, and died in consequence; and his sister Isabelle, and her husband the King of Navarre, both sank under the disorders brought from Carthage. Broken in health and spirit, Philippe resolved to desist from the Crusade, and both he and his uncle would have persuaded the English to do the same, since their small force alone could effect nothing; but Edward was undaunted. “I would go,” said he, “if I had no one with me but Fowen, my groom.”
Philippe set out on his return to France, carrying with him five coffins–those of his father, his brother, his wife, his sister, and brother-in-law. Henry d’Almayne took the opportunity of his escort to return to England, since the failing health of Henry III., and of his brother Richard, made his presence desirable. He had arrived at Viterbo, when he entered a church to hear mass. The Host had just been elevated, when a loud voice broke on the solemnity of the service, “Henry, thou traitor, thou shalt not escape!”
Henry turned, and beheld his cousins, Simon and Guy de Montfort, the latter of whom had married the daughter of the Italian Count Aldobrandini, and was living in the neighborhood. Their daggers were raised, and Henry was unarmed. He sprang to the altar, and the two officiating priests interposed; but the sacrilegious Montforts killed one, and left the other for dead, and, piercing Henry again and again, slew him at the foot of the altar. Then going to the church-door, where their horses awaited them, one of them said, “I have satisfied my vengeance.”
“What!” said an attendant, “was not your father dragged through the streets of Evesham?”
At these words the savages returned, and dragged the corpse by the hair to the door of the church, after which they rode safely off.
Henry’s body was carried home, and buried in the Abbey of Hales. His father probably never was aware of his death, for his own took place a few months after.
The murderers were never traced out, and the remissness on the part of Philippe and Charles left an impression on Edward’s mind that they had connived at the murder. Of this Philippe at least may be acquitted; he completed his sad journey, and buried his father at St. Denis, amid the mourning of the whole nation, and yet their exultation, for miracles were thought to be wrought at his tomb, and the Papal authority enrolled him among the Saints. Old Joinville was cheered by a dream, in which he beheld him resplendent with glory, and telling him that he would not quickly depart from him, whereupon he placed an altar in the castle chapel to his honor, and caused a mass to be said there every day.
St. Louis’ wisdom should be judged of rather by his admirable conduct in daily life, and in the government of his people, than by his actions in his unfortunate Crusades, when he seemed to give up all guidance and common sense. At home he was so prudent, just, and wise, that few kings have ever equalled him, and even the enemies of the faith that prompted him cannot withhold their testimony that “virtue could be pushed no further.”
In the spring, Edward, with 300 knights, sailed for Acre, and, on arriving here [Footnote: Edward at Acre, 1271], made an expedition to Nazareth, where he put all the garrison to the sword. He spent the winter in Cyprus, and returned again to Syria in the spring; but he could never collect more than 7,000 men under his standard, and an advance on Jerusalem was impossible. He therefore remained in his camp before Acre, while his knights went on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and, while there, he narrowly escaped becoming a seventh royal victim, to the Crusade.
The heat of the weather had affected his health, and he was lying on his couch, only covered with a single garment, when a messenger approached with letters purporting to be from the Emir of Joppa. While he was reading them, the man suddenly drew out a poniard, and was striking at his side, when Edward, perceiving his intention, caught the blow on his arm, and threw him to the ground by a kick on the breast. The murderer arose, and took aim again, but had only grazed his; forehead, when the Prince dashed out his brains with a wooden stool. The attendants rushed in, and were beginning to make up for their negligence by blows on the corpse, when Edward stopped them, by sternly demanding what was the use of striking a dead man.
It is on the authority of a Spanish chronicle that we hear that Eleanor, apprehending that the weapon had been poisoned, at once sucked the blood from her husband’s wounds. The fear was too well founded, and Edward was in great danger; so that his men, in their first rage, were about to put to death all their Saracen captives, when he roused himself to prevent them, by urging, that not only were these men innocent, but that the enemy would retaliate upon the many Christian pilgrims absent from the army.
The Grand Master of the Templars brought a surgeon, who gave hopes of saving the gallant English prince by cutting out the flesh around the wound. Edward replied by bidding him work boldly, and spare not; but Eleanor could not restrain her lamentations, till he desired his brother Edmund to lead her from the tent, when she was carried away, struggling and sobbing, while Edmund roughly told her that it was better she should scream and cry, than all England mourn and lament.
The operation was safely performed, but Edward made his will, and resigned himself to die. In fifteen days, however, he was able to mount his horse, and nearly at the same time Eleanor gave birth to her eldest daughter, Joan, called of Acre, whose wild, headstrong temper was little fitted to the child of a Crusade.
The army was weakened by sickness, and Edward decided on prolonging his stay no longer; therefore, as soon as Eleanor had recovered, he left the Holy Land, with keen regret, and many vows to return with a greater force. These vows were never fulfilled, nor was it well they should have been. Acre was a nest of corruption, filled with the scum of the European nations, and a standing proof that the Latin Christians were unworthy to hold a foot of the hallowed ground; and in 1291, eighteen years after the conclusion of the seventh Crusade, it was taken by the Sultan Keladun, after a brave defence by the Templars and Hospitallers; and since that time Palestine has remained under the Mahometan, dominion.
Louis and Edward were the last princely Crusaders, though the idea lived on in almost every high-souled man through the Middle Ages. Henry V. and Philip le Bon of Burgundy both schemed the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre; and the hope that chiefly impelled the voyage of Columbus was, that his Western discoveries might open a way to the redemption of the Holy Land. “Remember the Holy Sepulchre!” is a cry that can never pass from the ears of men.
Death had been busy in England as in the crusading host, and the tidings met Edward in Sicily that his home was desolate. His kind and generous uncle, Richard, his gentle, affectionate father, and his two young children, had all died during his absence. The grief that the stern Edward showed for his father’s death was so overpowering, that Charles of Sicily, who probably had little esteem for Henry, and thought the kingdom a sufficient consolation, marvelled that he could grieve more for an aged father than for two promising sons. “The Lord, who gave me these, can give me other children,” said Edward; “but a father can never be restored!”
Before his return to England, Edward obtained from Pope Gregory X. justice upon the murderers of Henry d’Almayne. Simon was dead, but Guy was declared incapable of inheriting or possessing property, or of filling any office of trust, and was excommunicated and outlawed. After Edward had left Italy, the unhappy man ventured to meet the Pope at Florence in his shirt, with a halter round his neck, and implored that his sentence might be changed to imprisonment. The Pope had pity on him, and, after a confinement of eleven years, he was liberated, and returned to his wife’s estates. He afterward was taken prisoner in the wars in Sicily, but his subsequent fate does not appear.
The history of the last of the Crusaders must not be quitted without mentioning that the scene of St. Louis’ death is now in the hands of the French, and that the spot has been marked by a chapel erected by his descendant, Louis Philippe; and that our own Edward sleeps in his father’s church of Westminster, beneath a huge block, unornamented indeed, but of the same rock as the hills of Palestine; nay, it is believed that it is probably one of those great stones whereof it was said; that not one should remain on another.
CAMEO XXXII.
The CYMRY.
(B.C. 66 A.D. 1269.)
In ancient times the whole of Europe seems to have been inhabited by the Keltic nation, until they were dispossessed by the more resolute tribes of Teuton origin, and driven to the extreme West, where the barrier of rugged hills that guards the continent from the Atlantic waves has likewise protected this primitive race from extinction.
Cym, or Cyn, denoting in their language “first,” was the root of their name of Cymry, applied to the original tribe, and of which we find traces across the whole map of Europe, beginning from the Cimmerian Bosphorus, going on to the Cimbri, conquered by Marius, while in our own country we still possess Cumberland and Cambria, the land inhabited by the Cymry.
The Gael, another pure Keltic tribe, who followed the Cymry, have bestowed more names, as living more near to the civilized world, and being better known to history. Even in Asia Minor, a settlement of them had been called Galatians, and the whole tract from the north of Italy to the Atlantic was, to the Romans, Gallia. The name still survives in the Cornouailles of Brittany and the Cornwall of England (both meaning the horn of Gallia), in Gaul, in Galles, in the Austrian and Spanish Galicias, in the Irish Galway and the Scottish Galloway, while the Gael themselves are still a people in the Highlands.
Mingling with the Teutons, though receding before them, there was a third tribe, called usually by the Teuton word “_Welsh_” meaning strange; and these, being the first to come in contact with the Romans, were termed by them Belgae. The relics of this appellation are found in the German “Welschland,” the name given to Italy, because the northern part of that peninsula had a Keltic population, in Wallachia, in the Walloons of the Netherlands, who have lately assumed the old Latinized name of Belgians, and in the Welsh of our own Wales.
This last was the region, scarcely subdued by the Romans, where the Cymry succeeded in maintaining their independence, whilst the Angles and Saxons gained a footing in the whole of the eastern portion of Britain. The Britons were for the most part Christian, and partly civilized by the Romans; but there was a wild element in their composition, and about the time of the departure of the Roman legions there had been a reaction toward the ancient Druidical religion, as if the old national faith was to revive with the national independence. The princes were extremely savage and violent, and their contemporary historian, Gildas, gives a melancholy account of their wickedness, not even excepting the great Pendragon, Arthur, in spite of his twelve successful battles with the Saxons. Merlin, the old, wild soothsayer of romance, seems to have existed at this period under the name of Merddyn-wilt, or the Wild, and bequeathed dark sayings ever since deemed prophetic, and often curiously verified.
Out of the attempt to blend the Druid philosophy with Christianity arose the Pelagian heresy, first taught by Morgan, or Pelagius, a monk of Bangor, and which made great progress in Wales even after its refutation by St. Jerome. It was on this account that St. Germain preached in Wales, and produced great effect. The Pelagians gave up their errors, and many new converts were collected to receive the rite of baptism at Mold, in Flintshire, when a troop of marauding enemies burst, on them. The neophytes were unarmed and in their white robes, but, borne up by the sense of their new life, they had no fears for their body, and with one loud cry of “Hallelujah!” turned, with the Bishop at their head, to meet the foe. The enemy retreated in terror; and the name of Maes Garman still marks the scene of this bloodless victory.
After this the heresy died away, but the more innocent customs of the Druids continued, and the system of bards was carried on, setting apart the clergy, the men of wisdom, and the poets, by rites derived from ancient times. Be it observed, that a Christian priest was not necessarily of one of the Druidical or Bardic orders, although this was generally preferred. Almost all instructions were still oral, and, for convenience of memory, were drawn up in triads, or verses of three–a mystic number highly esteemed. Many of these convey a very deep philosophy. For instance, the three unsuitable judgments in any person whatsoever: The thinking himself wise–the thinking every other person unwise–the thinking all he likes becoming in him. Or the three requisites of poetry: An eye that can see Nature–a heart that can feel Nature–a resolution that dares to follow Nature. And the three objects of poetry: Increase of goodness–increase of understanding–increase of delight.
Such maxims were committed to the keeping of the Bards, who were admitted to their office after a severe probation and trying initiatory rites, among which the chief was, that they should paddle alone, in a little coracle, to a shoal at some distance from the coast of Caernarvonshire–a most perilous voyage, supposed to be emblematic both of the trials of Noah and of the troubles of life. Afterward the Bard wore sky-blue robes, and was universally honored, serving as the counsellor, the herald, and the minstrel of his patron. The domestic Bard and the chief of song had their office at the King’s court, with many curious perquisites, among which was a chessboard from the King. The fine for insulting the Bard was 6 cows and 120 pence; for slaying him, 126 cows. With so much general respect, and great powers of extemporizing, the Bards were well able to sway the passions of the nation, and greatly contributed to keep up the fiery spirit of independence which the Cymry cherished in their mountains.
When the Saxons began to embrace Christianity, and Augustine came on his mission from Rome, the Welsh clergy, who had made no attempts at converting their enemies, looked on him with no friendly eyes. He brought claims, sanctioned by Gregory the Great, to an authority over them inconsistent with that of the Archbishop of Caerleon; and the period for observing Easter was, with them, derived from the East, and differed by some weeks from that ordained by the Roman Church. An old hermit advised the British clergy, who went to meet Augustine, to try him by the test of humility, and according as he should rise to greet them, or remain seated, to listen to his proposals favorably or otherwise. Unfortunately, Augustine retained his seat: they rejected his plans of union; and he told them that, because they would not preach to the Angles the way of life, they would surely at their hands suffer death.
Shortly after, the heathen king, Ethelfrith, attacked Brocmail, the Welsh prince of Powys, who brought to the field 1,200 monks of Bangor to pray for his success. The heathens fell at once on the priests, and, before they could be protected, slew all except fifty; and this, though the Welsh gained the victory, was regarded by the Saxon Church as a judgment, and by the Welsh, unhappily, as a consequence of Augustine’s throat. The hatred became more bitter than ever, and the Welsh would not even enter the same church with the Saxons, nor eat of a meal of which they had partaken.
Cadwallader, the last of the Pendragons, was a terrible enemy to the kings of Mercia and Northumbria, and with him the Cymry consider that their glory ended. Looking on themselves for generation after generation as the lawful owners of the soil, and on the Saxons as robbers, they showed no mercy in their forays, and inflicted frightful cruelties on their neighbors on the Marches. Offa’s curious dyke, still existing in Shropshire, was a bulwark raised in the hope of confining them within their own bounds:
“That Offa (when he saw his countries go to wrack), From bick’ring with his folk, to keep the Britons back, Cast up that mightly mound of eighty miles in length, Athwart from sea to sea.”
The Danish invasions, by ruining the Saxons, favored the Welsh; and contemporary with Alfred lived Roderic Mawr, or the Great, who had his domains in so peaceful a state, that Alfred turned thither for aid in his revival of learning, and invited thence to his court his bosom friend Asser, the excellent monk and bard. Roderic divided his dominions–Aberfraw, or North Wales, Dinasvawr, or South Wales, and Powys, or Shropshire–between his three sons; but they became united again under his grandson, Howell Dha, the lawgiver of Wales.
Actuated perhaps by the example of Alfred, Howell collected his clergy and bards at his hunting-lodge at Tenby, a palace built of peeled rods, and there, after fasting and praying for inspiration, the collective wisdom of the kingdom compiled a body of laws, which the King afterward carried in person to Rome to receive the confirmation of the Pope; and much edified must the Romans have been if they chanced to glance over the code, since, besides many wise and good laws, it regulated the minute etiquettes and perquisites of the royal household. If any one should insult the King, the fine was to be, among other valuables, a golden dish as broad as the royal face, and as thick as the nail of a husbandman who has been a husbandman, seven years. Each officer’s distance from the royal fire was regulated, and even the precedence of each officer’s horse in the stable–proving plainly the old saying, that the poorer and more fiery is a nation, the more precise is their point of honor. It seems to have been in his time, as a more enlightened prince, that the Welsh conformed their time of keeping Easter to that of the rest of the Western Church. But Howell was no longer independent of the English: he had begun to pay a yearly tribute of dogs, horses, and hawks, to Ethelstane, and the disputes that followed his death brought the Welsh so much lower, that Edgar the Peaceable easily exacted his toll of wolves’ heads; and Howell of North Wales was one of the eight royal oarsmen who rowed the Emperor of Britain to the Minster of St. John, on the river Dee.
The Welsh had destroyed all their wolves before the close of Dunstan’s regency, and Ethelred the Unready not being likely to obtain much respect, the tribute was discontinued, until the marauding Danes again exacted it under another form and title of “Tribute of the Black Army.”
Fierce quarrels of their own prevented the Welsh from often taking advantage of the disturbances of England. As in Ireland, the right of gavelkind was recognized; yet primogeniture was also so far regarded as to make both claims uncertain; and the three divisions of Wales were constantly being first partitioned, and then united, by some prince who ruled by the right of the strongest, till dethroned by another, who, to prove his right of birth, carried half his genealogy in his patronymic.
Thus Llewellyn ap Sithfylht, under whom “the earth brought forth double, the cattle increased in great number, and there was neither beggar nor poor man from the South to the North Sea,” was slain in battle, in 1021, by Howell ap Edwin ap Eneon ap Owayn ap Howell Dha, who reigned over South Wales till the son of Llewellyn, or, rather, Gryflyth ap Llewellyn ap Sithfylht ap, &c., coming to age, dispossessed him, and gained all Wales. It was this Gryffyth who received and sheltered Fleance, the son of Banquo, when flying from Macbeth, and gave him in marriage his daughter Nesta, who became the mother of Walter, the ancestor of the line of kings shadowed in Macbeth’s mirror.
In the early part of Gryffyth’s reign, the Welsh flourished greatly. Earl Godwin, in his banishment, made friends with him, and, favored by Saxon treachery, he overran Herefordshire, and pillaged the cathedral. But, after Godwin’s death, Harold, as Earl of Wessex, deemed it time to repress these inroads, and, training his men to habits of diet and methods of warfare that rendered them as light and dexterous as the wild mountaineers, he pursued them into their own country, and burnt the palace and ships at Rhuddlan, while Gryffyth was forced to take refuge in one of his vessels.
Harold set up a pillar with the inscription, “Here Harold conquered;” and the Welsh gave hostages, and promised to pay tribute, while Harold erected a hunting-seat in Monmouthshire, and made an ordinance that any Welshman seen bearing weapons beyond Offa’s dyke should lose his right hand. Welshwomen might marry Englishmen, but none of the highborn Cymry might aspire to wed an Englishwoman. Hating the prince under whom they had come to so much disgrace, the Welsh themselves captured poor Gryffyth, and sent his head, his hands, and the beak of his ship, to Edward the Confessor, from whom they accepted the appointment of three of their native princes to the three provinces.
Thus the strength of Wales was so far broken, that William the Conqueror had only to bring a force with him, under pretext of a pilgrimage to the shrine of St. David, to obtain the submission of the princes; and, in fact, the Cymry found the Norman nobles far more aggressive neighbors than the Angles had been since their first arrival in Britain.
The mark, or frontier, once the kingdom of Mercia, was now called the March of Wales, where the Norman knights began to effect settlements, by the right of the strongest, setting up their impregnable castles, round which the utmost efforts of the Welsh were lost. Martin de Tours was one of the first, and his glittering host of mail-clad men so overawed the inhabitants of Whitchurch that they readily submitted, and he quietly established himself in their bounds, treating them, as it appears, with more fairness and friendliness than was then usual. He was a great chess-player, and the sport descended from father to son, even among the peasantry of Whitchurch, who long after were most skilful in the game.
Hugh Lupus, the fierce old Earl of Chester, was likewise a Lord Marcher, and had, like the Bishop of Durham, the almost royal powers of a Count Palatine, because, dwelling on the frontier, it was necessary that the executive power should be prompt and absolute. Indeed, the Lords Marchers, as these border barons were called, lived necessarily in a state of warfare, which made it needful to entrust them with greater powers than their neighbors, around whom they formed a sort of _cordon_, to protect them from the forays of the half-savage Welsh.
Twenty-one baronies were formed in this manner along the March of Wales, which constantly travelled toward the west. Robert Fitzaymon, by an alliance with one Welsh chief, dispossessed another of Glamorgan, which he left to his daughter Amabel, the wife of Earl Robert of Gloucester; and Gilbert de Clare, commonly called Strongbow (the father of the Irish Conqueror), obtained a grant from Henry I. of Chepstow and Pembroke, but had to fight hard for the lands which had more lawful owners. In and out among these Lords Marchers, and making common cause with them, were settlements of Flemings. Flanders, that commercial state where cloth-weaving first flourished as a manufacture, had suffered greatly from the inundations of the sea, and the near connection subsisting between the native princes and the sons of the Conqueror had led to an intercourse, which ended in the weavers, who had lost their all, being invited by Henry I. to take up their abode in Pembrokeshire, where they carried on their trade while defending themselves against the Welsh, and thus first commenced the manufactures of England. Resolute in resistance, though not rash nor aggressive, and of industrious habits, they acted as a great protection to the English counties, and down even to the time of Charles I. they had a language of their own.
Owayn ap Gwynned, King of Aberfraw, or North Wales, had many wars with Henry II.; and, uniting with the bard king, Owayn Cyvelioc, of Powysland, did fearful damage to the English, which Henry attempted to revenge by an incursion into Merionethshire; but though he gained a battle at Ceiroc, he was forced to retreat through the inhospitable country, his troops harassed by the weather, and cut off by the Welsh, who swarmed on the mountains, so that his army arrived at Chester in a miserable state. He had many unfortunate hostages in his hands, the children of the noblest families, and on these he wreaked a cowardly vengeance, cutting off the noses and ears of the maidens, and putting out the eyes of the boys.
Well might Becket, in his banishment, exclaim, on hearing such tidings, “His wise men are become fools; England reels and stagers like a drunken man.”
“You will never subdue Wales, unless Heaven be against them,” said an old hermit to the King.
However, Henry had been carried by a frightened horse over a ford, of which the old prophecies declared that, when it should be crossed by a freckled king, the power of the Cymry should fall, and this superstition took away greatly from satisfaction in the victory. The Welsh princes were becoming habituated to the tribute, and in 1188, under pretext of preaching a Crusade, Archbishop Baldwin came into Wales, and asserted the long-disputed supremacy of Canterbury over the Welsh bishopries. He was attended by Gerald Barry, or Giraldus Cambrensis, a half-Norman half-Welsh ecclesiastic, who was one of the chief historians of the period, and had the ungracious office of tutor to Prince John.
When Owayn ap Gwynned died, in 1169, the kingdom of Aberfraw, or North Wales, was reduced to the isle of Anglesea and the counties of Merioneth and Caernarvon, with parts of Denbigh and Cardigan. A great dispute broke out for the succession. Jorwarth, the oldest son, was set aside because he had a broken nose; and Davydd, the eldest son by a second wife, seized the inheritance, and slew all the brethren save one, named Madoc, who sailed away to the West in search of new regions. Several years after, he again made his appearance in Aberfraw, declaring that he had found a pleasant country, and was come to collect colonists, with whom, accordingly, he departed, and returned no more. Many have believed that his Western Land was no other than America, and on this supposition Drayton speaks of him, in the “Polyolbion,” as having reached the great continent “Ere the Iberian powers had found her long-sought bay, or any western ear had heard the sound of Florida.”
Southey has, in his poem, made Madoc combine with the Aztecs in the settlement of Mexico, but traces were said to be found of habits and countenances resembling those of the Welsh among the Indians of the Missouri; and, in our own days, the traveller Mr. Buxton was struck by finding the Indians of the Rocky Mountains weaving a fabric resembling the old Welsh blanket. If this be so, Christianity and civilization must have died out among Madoc’s descendants: but the story is one of the exciting riddles of history, such as the similar one of the early Norwegian discovery of America.
CAMEO XXXIII.
THE ENGLISH JUSTINIAN.
(1272-1292.)
_King of England_.
1272. Edward I.