Louis: The French Prince Who Invaded England (10 page)

Louis found his standing in France improved, and in November 1212 he took Philip’s place at an official meeting with Frederick of Hohenstaufen, claimant to the crown of the Holy Roman Empire. This vast and powerful realm comprised the land which is now variously eastern France, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, western Poland, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia and northern Italy. It was therefore France’s immediate neighbour to the east, and had been the scene of a bitter succession conflict for more than a decade. Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI had died in 1198 leaving only a four-year-old son, who had been overlooked in a two-way struggle for the crown between Henry’s brother Philip of Swabia and Otto of Saxony, an ambitious representative of the rival Welf dynasty. After years of conflict it seemed that Otto had emerged the winner after he had Philip of Swabia assassinated in 1208 and subsequently married Beatrice, the eldest of Philip’s four surviving daughters (she was barely into her teens at the time, and died of an unspecified illness just three weeks after the wedding). However, Otto enjoyed only a short period of ascendancy before a new claimant appeared on the scene: Frederick of Hohenstaufen, Henry VI’s son now grown to young manhood. Frederick was supported by Philip Augustus, while King John backed Otto, who also happened to be his nephew as he was the son of John’s elder sister Matilda and her late husband Henry, the duke of Saxony. John and Otto therefore formed a dangerous coalition with France sandwiched in the middle, so it was imperative that Philip’s candidate for the throne be supported against them.

As Louis’s first formal embassy on behalf of his father it was fortunately not too complex, for both parties were predisposed to want the support of the other. Louis accomplished his task without any problems, and a final treaty was sealed on 19 November 1212 in which Frederick and Philip each promised that they would not make peace with either John or Otto, or with any of their allies. Louis’s name did not actually appear on the document, but William the Breton makes it clear that it was he who conducted the negotiations.

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Unusually, we are rather well informed about what Louis did during the next few months, as a fragment of his accounts survives that covers the period October 1212 to February 1213. From this document, no doubt considered dull in its time, we can open a small window on his life and peer through at his activities and priorities.

Just over half of the expenditure recorded in the fragment was spent in Artois: campaign expenses, payments to individuals, and works on the castle at Lens including payments to the master mason and carpenter. Louis’s diplomatic side is revealed in payments to messengers for travelling with letters to the great men of the realm and to Blanche’s father in Castile; he gave a present of money to one Henry, concierge of the royal palace on the Île de la Cité and no doubt a man who was well informed on the latest developments at court. Interestingly, there were also payments to two men of King John’s, who were currently out of favour and banished across the Channel: Simon Langton (the brother of Stephen Langton, archbishop of Canterbury, also in exile at this time), and Robert de St Germain.

The accounts show Louis to be very much a noble lord of his time: there are expenses for hunting and hawking, for horses and military equipment, for squires and grooms. He also had his household to run, with payments made to cooks, bakers and clerks, and for food including expensive imports such as almonds and ginger; there was expenditure for the purchase and transport of wine.

Louis the family man is also revealed by his accounts. Blanche’s principal residence was now at Lorrez-le-Bocage, 50 miles (80 km) south of Paris and therefore away from the dangers of disease which were prevalent in any large city; Louis’s expenses show that he made frequent trips there, and that he paid for Blanche’s ladies-in-waiting and servants. A Parisian doctor made several trips out to see Blanche during the winter of 1212–13, as she was with child. And, finally, Louis gave his little brother Philip Hurepel a gift of £10 when he came to visit – a substantial sum (enough, for example, to buy a very decent horse or a wardrobe of clothes) which the boy no doubt appreciated.

In January 1213 Blanche was confined at the royal castle at Lorrez-le-Bocage. Birthing customs had not changed since the time of Louis’s own birth, and even if he was in the castle he would not have known until the news leaked out of the chamber that she had been delivered of twin boys.

Twins: the cause of the death of Louis’s mother. Knowing as we do that he cared deeply for his wife, we can assume that he must have been frantic; and knowing as we do that medical science had not evolved into anything like its modern form, we can also be sure that he could do very little for her, other than to pay for the doctor and to pray. The two boys, who both died within days, are named in one lesser-known chronicle as John and Alfonso, but they made such a fleeting and tiny impression on life that none of the major writers mentions their names.

To have two sets of twins born in successive generations, when there had been none before in the French royal line, implies that it may have been Louis’s mother who introduced a genetic predisposition; instances of twins appear regularly in the family tree thereafter, although none survived their first year until the fifteenth century and none reached adulthood until the eighteenth century. Had Louis’s brothers or sons lived, there would have been repercussions for the order of succession: one twin, naturally, would have been born first, but there was a theory prevalent at the time that a twin born second had actually been conceived first and should therefore be considered the elder.

None of this would have been uppermost in Louis’s mind as he gazed down at the tiny bodies and prayed for the souls of his sons. His natural grief is likely to have been tempered by the knowledge that the boys had lived long enough to be baptised, and that they would not therefore be denied eternal life in heaven. He would also have given thanks that Blanche had been spared; carefully nurtured back to health, she was pregnant again by the end of the year.

It was in February 1213, shortly after the babies’ deaths, that Louis took a vow to join the Albigensian crusade against the Cathars in Languedoc, the southern region of France. Pope Innocent III had been calling for nearly a decade for the kings and lords of Christendom to eliminate the sect of Christians known as Cathars, whose beliefs were so different from the prevailing Catholic orthodoxy that they were considered heretics, heathens on a par with the Moors and Saracens. Catharism was a ‘dualist’ heresy, which meant that adherents believed in two deities: a good god who had created the spiritual realm, and an evil god who had created the physical world. Thus the physical world and everything in it including humans (and, by extension, Jesus Christ) was evil. Cathars recognised only one sacrament, the Consolamentum, which removed all sin and made the receiver a member of the Perfecti. The Perfecti were considered to be of the spiritual, rather than the physical, world, and among other restrictions they could not eat the flesh of animals or engage in sexual relationships or procreation. Therefore most Cathars were ordinary believers who sought the Consolamentum, if at all, only shortly before death. Those who were living Perfecti were considered exemplars and leaders.

The Catholic Church objected, unsurprisingly, to the depiction of Jesus Christ as evil, and also to other Cathar practices such as their rejection of marriage and the other sacraments, the equality of the sexes in religious leadership, and their belief in reincarnation. So divergent were Cathar beliefs from Catholic doctrine that the Church decided that such heretics were not to be forgiven and brought back into the fold; they were to be exterminated. Innocent had written to Philip Augustus as early as 1204 to urge him to ‘remove this territory from the control of sectarian heretics; and then place it into the hands of true Catholics who will … serve Our Lord in all faithfulness’. In 1208 the papal legate in the region had been murdered and Innocent had declared that the campaign to rid the world of Cathars was now a holy crusade. The call had been answered by many noblemen acting on their own accounts, but the kings of England, France and the Holy Roman Empire had variously been involved in wars and succession disputes or been under sentence of excommunication themselves and were therefore not eligible to participate. Equally their mutual suspicion meant that none was willing to leave his lands for fear that one of the others would attack while he was gone.

But here was Louis: a prince of impeccable Catholic credentials, enthusiastic about military activity, keen to ride and to fight in a holy cause, and with no particular lands or responsibilities to leave behind in other hands. What could be more suitable? He had to look after his own person, of course, but as he had a son of his own and a half-brother to act as back-up heirs, the situation for France was not as precarious as it had been previously. Philip allowed Louis to take the cross, and at an assembly in Paris in March 1213 plans were made for his departure. However, Louis’s wish to fight on behalf of the Church to stamp out the Cathar heresy would have to wait, as the question of England had reared its head again.

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King John, who as we will see in the next chapter was by this time troubled, excommunicated and with his kingship being contested, was forming an alliance. He and Otto of Saxony were joined by Ferrand, count of Flanders, and by another disaffected French nobleman, Renaud de Dammartin, count of Boulogne, who had borne a grudge against Philip Augustus since a judicial decision went against him some years previously and who had defected and done homage to John in 1212. The text of John’s letter accepting Renaud’s homage is illustrative in more ways than one: ‘Know that we have accorded to our friend and liegeman Renaud de Dammartin, count of Boulogne, the assurance that we will not conclude without him either peace or truce with the king of France nor with his son Louis.’ The specific mention of Louis’s name indicates that, as far as John and Renaud were concerned, he was now considered a force in his own right.

William the Breton, who tells us of this letter, is admittedly not very keen on Renaud de Dammartin. He felt the count’s betrayal of his king very deeply and heaps accusations upon him: Renaud persecutes his neighbours, says William; he dispossesses widows and orphans, gives himself up to debauchery and promenades his concubines in public, to the shame of his wife in whose right he holds his lands. The Minstrel of Reims goes even further, depicting Renaud engaging in a bout of unseemly and almost certainly fictional fisticuffs in the royal court itself. While we must allow for the Minstrel’s dramatic licence and William’s own chagrin, and not take all the accusations at face value, it seems clear that feelings were running deep in France over Renaud’s defection to John.

King Philip, already in conflict with John and Otto, could not let lie the treachery of two of his own lords. It was at this time that he first formed an idea of invading England, possibly reckoning that attack was the best form of defence. At the same time, the spring of 1213, he finally agreed to reinstate Ingeborg to her rightful position as queen (although he did not consent to live with her as husband and wife), thus becoming at a stroke the pope’s new favourite son. Pope Innocent was still in conflict with John over John’s refusal to accept the preferred papal candidate, Stephen Langton, as archbishop of Canterbury, and he eventually lost patience, declaring that John should be dispossessed of his crown, and appointing Philip as the man to carry out the sentence. In April Philip called a council of his nobles at Soissons, and stated his intention to conquer England and name Louis as its king.

Why did Philip not want the crown for himself? He was probably not all that interested in England, and may not have had any desire to cross the Channel himself, but it would make France more secure to have the neighbouring realm out of Plantagenet hands, and if Philip did not want the crown for himself then Louis, his faithful and obedient son, was clearly the next best choice. As one might expect, the offer was hedged around with conditions: Louis swore that if he were to become king of England he would make no claim on any French territory while Philip still lived, and he would demand from his English subjects that they would not seek to harm the king or the kingdom of France. For Philip the plan, if it succeeded, would be a win–win situation: his own kingdom would be safe from danger, the threat from England eliminated, and an outlet provided for Louis’s martial ardour and political ambitions, without Philip having to give up anything which was his. For Louis the attractions were equally obvious: a chance for military glory and a kingdom of his own.

The date set for the gathering of the fleet was 10 May 1213, but due to the huge logistical operation required to collect and outfit the ships it did not actually happen until 22 May. At first glance the extra twelve days should not have made much of a difference, but the delay allowed two things to happen. Firstly there was good news for Philip and Louis: an experienced naval commander known as Eustace the Monk, of whom we shall learn more later, deserted the English camp and sold his services, his knowledge and his wealth of maritime experience to the French. But the second occurrence was to turn all the French plans to dust.

Perhaps realising what very real danger he and his kingdom were in, John had been considering desperate measures and was already in contact with Pope Innocent to negotiate the question of ceding to him the whole of England and holding it as a papal fief. As the threat of invasion became more imminent, the arrangements were finalised: on 13 May 1213, just as the papal legate Pandulf Masca was sailing across the Channel, John had letters patent (that is, letters which were meant for public proclamation, not for private correspondence) drawn up which set out the terms, and on 15 May he officially placed England – and Ireland – under the pope’s control.