460

RICHARD AND THE POPE.

into prison, and loaded with chains. This severity was in some degree excusable, for the homicidal priest had been Richard's most persevering and unscrupulous enemy. He had opposed, traduced, and thwarted him in the Holy Land; and, after his capture in Austria, had laboured more diligently than any one to keep him in prison. Richard even declared that he had been loaded with more chains than an ass could carry, entirely at the instigation of the Bishop of Beauvais; and it is generally supposed that to his counsels might be attributed the persevering enmity which his relation, Philip, had displayed towards the King of England. His ransom was fixed at a very large sum; and the bishop, highly indignant, applied to his brother prelates to interfere. None

of them, however, would undertake to advocate his cause, except one bound to him by the ties of blood. He then addressed himself to the Pope, endeavouring to stir up the pontiff's wrath against Richard, for his severity to a priest. The sovereign pontiff replied, that all he could do, in the circumstances in which the bishop had been taken, was to seek Richard's lenity for the captive, as a matter of favour; for though it was considered not only justifiable, but praiseworthy, in a prelate to take arms for the deliverance of the holy sepulchre, it was looked upon as a crime to use those arms against his fellow-Christians. Nor did the Pope fail to perform his promise; but in his letter of intercession he unfortunately called the prisoner " his son, the Bishop of Beauvais." Richard immediately sent back the hauberk in which the prelate had been taken, begging to know if his holiness recognised his son's coat. This rejoinder stopped all further application. The pontiff replied that the garment was certainly not that of a son of the Church, but of a son of Mars; and the bishop remained in prison till after Richard's death.

Philip in the mean time had neither ventured to follow his adversary into Beauvoisis, nor to march to the relief of St. Omer, which surrendered to the Count of Flanders; but gathering together the remains of his army, and raising fresh troops, he entered Normandy, and penetrated as far as Neubourg and Beaumont le Roger. In this incursion he met with little or no opposition; but suddenly, and upon motives

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which puzzled his historians greatly, he disbanded his troops and left the field open to the enemy.

In the life of Philip there are many passages which must probably ever remain dark and unexplained; and it would seem he was subject to rare but strongly-marked fits of hypochondriac melancholy, which chequered his usually clear, decided, and politic course with occasional inconsistency. It has been supposed that his conduct, on this occasion, proceeded from a knowledge that Peter of Capua, Cardinal of St. Mary, was on his way to France, as legate from Innocent III. (who had lately succeeded Celestine in the papal chair), in the hope of bringing about a lasting peace. But this affords no just explanation of the monarch's sudden abandonment of resistance; for Philip was too politic not to know that in negotiation more is granted to strength than to intercession.

The cardinal arrived in France about Christmas, and immediately proceeded to perform his pious office. Negotiations were commenced under his auspices, conferences were held; and at length, after many difficulties, a truce for five years was signed by the two kings. Richard met Philip in amity; for his resentments were rarely long-lived; but Philip did not forgive so easily, and he is said to have secretly informed the King of England that his brother John had once more been plotting against him. He even, we are assured, displayed documents which convinced Richard that such was the case; and the English monarch's conduct was in consequence so completely changed towards the Count of Montagne, that John demanded an explanation. It was given frankly; and the prince appealed to the whole course of his actions, since his reconciliation with his brother, for the refutation of the calumny. He did more; he gave Philip publicly the lie, and sent to dare him to prove his assertion in the lists. But the King of France returned no answer, and Richard, convinced, perhaps without sufficient proof, that his brother had been traduced, extended his favour to him more frankly than ever.

I have thought fit, in tracing the course of Richard's military movements, after his deliverance from captivity, to abstain, as far as possible, from introducing any of those

isolated events and collateral circumstances, which more or less affected his history, but were not actually connected with his operations in the field. Some of the principal of these events I propose to mention in the succeeding book, before the scene closes upon the hero of the twelfth century.

BOOK XXIV.

SINCE his return from the Holy Land, Richard had only spent a few weeks in England; for the state of his continental possessions required his constant attention and personal superintendence, and in the justiciary, the Archbishop of Canterbury, he had a friend and minister to whom he could entrust with perfect security both the general government of the country and any military operations which circumstances might render necessary. Before the conclusion of the truce of five years, brought about by the mediation of the Cardinal of St. Mary's, a number of events had occurred in Europe which altered Richard's position towards several other princes.

Pope Celestine, his constant friend, had died in 1198, at the age of ninety, after seeing the commencement of a new crusade, undertaken by an immense body of German princes. Both Richard and Philip had been urged to join in this enterprise; but Philip had no inclination to visit Palestine again; and the King of England, whatever were his inclinations, was deterred by a remembrance of the disastrous events which had occurred in his European possessions during his first expedition to Syria.

The Emperor Henry assumed the cross; but before he set out, he paused to take possession of another kingdom, and to oppress a woman and a child. Tancred, King of Sicily, an usurper it is true, but one who had gained the affection and commanded the respect of his people, died in the year

*

* I cannot concur in the high eulogium pronounced upon this prince by Gibbon upon interested and partisan authority. For individual facts we are obliged, in the absence of public documents, to depend upon contemporary chroniclers; but in the estimation of character, the general course and result of each man's

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1194, leaving a widow, and a son in extreme youth. The heiress of the direct Norman line of Roger, the conqueror of Sicily, was Constantia, the wife of the Emperor Henry. Her claims had been frequently put forward, but without success, during the reign of Tancred; and the moment that prince had ceased to exist, the emperor hastened to seize upon the now defenceless kingdom.

Without a leader, the Normans of Italy and Sicily made little, if any, resistance. Henry's march from Capua to Palermo was a triumphal procession; and the widow and child of the last Norman prince fell into the hands of the conqueror. The emperor basely misused his advantage, deprived the unfortunate boy of sight and manhood, and then prepared to expiate offences disgraceful to a knight, a Christian, and a man, by prosecuting the war against the infidels of Syria.

The terms of the treaty between Saladin and Richard had been faithfully observed by Henry of Champagne, notwithstanding the death of Saladin, and the civil broils of his successors. The Pope and the princes of Christian Europe, however, did not consider themselves bound by the engagements of the King of England. A new crusade was preached by Celestine, which was successful, at least in Germany. Four bishops, three dukes, and an immense number of the inferior nobility, took the cross in 1196; and a large body of crusaders set out under the command of the Archbishop of Mayence. Henry himself proposed to follow immediately, and the success which attended the arms of those who preceded him probably confirmed his resolution. From Messina he wrote to Richard, entreating him to lend his aid in the good work, which now, for the first time, promised complete success; but Richard declined the dangerous allurement, and the progress of Henry himself was stopped by the hand of death. He was taken ill at Messina, some say, without any good authority, from the effects of poison administered by his wife Constantia. He died, it would appear, with decent remorse for the many iniquitous acts he had committed during his life. On his death-bed, moved by

actions are surer guides than the pens of flatterers or satirists. Judging from these, we cannot look upon Tancred as a very wise, a very just, or a very honest prince.

464 ELECTION OF OTHO TO THE IMPERIAL CROWN.

the remonstrances of the bishops and the threats of the Church, he sent, we are assured, to offer the King of England compensation, either in money or land, for the ransom he had exacted from him; but before the message could be delivered, the rapid progress of his disease carried the emperor to the grave. His son Frederick succeeded to the throne of Sicily, though destined to a higher fate at an after period; and his brother Philip came forward as a candidate for the imperial crown.

A formidable competitor, however, appeared in the person of Otho of Saxony, nephew of the King of England; and the Pope espoused the cause of the latter, while Richard eagerly endeavoured to promote his election. It does not enter into the scope of this work to notice the intrigues and the struggles that followed. Suffice it to say that, notwithstanding a treaty entered into by Philip with the King of France, Otho obtained and preserved the imperial crown. A party of the electors indeed still adhered to Philip; but the sanction of the Church confirmed the dignity of Otho.

Richard was invited to the election, as nominal King of Provence; but he declined the empty honour, although greatly interested in his nephew's success. Indeed, Otho and Henry of Champagne had ever been objects of his especial tenderness and care; and after seeing the latter elected King of Jerusalem, he strove by every means to compensate the former for the evils which fortune had inflicted upon him. Soon after his return to Europe, he had endeavoured to negotiate a marriage between the Saxon prince and the eldest daughter of William, King of Scotland, in the hope that, as the monarch had at that time no son, the Scottish crown might descend upon the head of his nephew. Frustrated in this expectation by the opposition of William's nobility, Richard granted large estates in Poitou to Otho, who retained them till his elevation to the imperial dignity; and Richard had the satisfaction of seeing him placed at the highest point of success. The election of Otho, his near relationship to Richard, and his devoted affection for that monarch, the favour which the Holy See extended to both, and the indignation with which the Pope regarded Philip's divorce of Ingeburga and his marriage with Agnes de