Richard I 1157-1199

His voyage was delayed by storms, and he appears to have been perplexed as to the safest route. The natural route overland through Marseilles and Toulouse was held by his enemies ; that through the empire from the head of the Adriatic was little safer, since Leopold of Austria was on the watch for him. Having adopted the second of these alternatives, he was captured at Vienna in a mean disguise (Dec. 20, I192) and strictly confined in the duke's castle of Diirenstein on the Danube. His mishap was soon known to England, but the regents were for some weeks un certain of his whereabouts. This is the foundation for the tale of his discovery by the faithful minstrel Blondel, which first occurs in a French romantic chronicle of the next century. Early in 1193 Leopold surrendered his prize, under compulsion, to the em peror Henry VI., who was aggrieved both by the support which the Plantagenets had given to the family of Henry the Lion and also by Richard's recognition of Tancred in Sicily. Although the detention of a crusader was contrary to public law, Richard was compelled to purchase his release by the payment of a heavy ran som and by doing homage to the emperor for England. The ransom demanded was 150,000 marks ; though it was never dis charged in full, the resources of England were taxed to the utmost for the first instalments; and to this occasion we may trace the beginning of secular taxation levied on movable property.

Richard reappeared in England in March 1194; but his stay lasted only a few weeks, and the remainder of his reign was en tirely devoted to his continental interests. He left England to be governed by Hubert Walter (q.v.), and his personal authority was seldom asserted except by demands for new subsidies. The rule of the Plantagenets was still popular in Normandy and Aquitaine; but these provinces were unable or unwilling to pay for their awn defence. Though Richard proved himself consistently the superior of Philip in the field, the difficulty of raising and paying forces to resist the French increased year by year. Richard could only stand on the defensive; the keynote of his later policy is given by the building of the famous Château Gaillard at Les Andelys (1196) to protect the lower courses of the Seine against invasion from the side of France. He did not live to see the futility of such bulwarks. In 1199 a claim to treasure-trove embroiled him with the viscount of Limoges. He harried the Limousin and laid siege to the castle of Chalus; while directing an assault he was wounded in the shoulder by a crossbow bolt, and, the wound mortifying from unskilful treatment or his own want of care, he died on April 6, 1199. He was buried by his own desire at his father's feet in the church of Fontevrault. Here his effigy may still be seen'. Though contemporary, it does not altogether agree with the portraits on his Great Seal, which give the impression of greater strength and even of cruelty. The Fontevrault bust is no doubt idealized.

The most accomplished and versatile representative of his gifted family, Richard was, in his lifetime and long afterwards, a favourite hero with troubadours and romancers. This was natural,

as he belonged to their brotherhood and himself wrote lyrics of no mean quality. -But his history shows that he by no means em bodied the current ideal of chivalrous excellence. His memory is stained by one act of needless cruelty, the massacre of over two thousand Saracen prisoners at Acre ; and his fury, when thwarted or humbled, was ungovernable. A brave soldier, an experienced and astute general, he was never happier than when engaged in war. As a ruler he was equally profuse and rapacious. Not one useful measure can be placed to his credit ; and it was by a fortunate accident that he found, in Hubert Walter, an adminis trator who had the skill to mitigate the consequences of a reckless fiscal policy. Richard's wife was Berengaria, daughter of Sancho VI., king of Navarre, whom he married in Cyprus in May 1191. She was with the king at Acre later in the same year, and during his imprisonment passed her time in Sicily, in Rome and in France. Husband and wife met again in 1195, and the queen long survived the king, residing chiefly at Le Mans. She died soon after 123c). Berengaria founded a Cistercian monastery at Espau.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

The more important of the general chronicles are: Gesta Henrici Secundi, ascribed to Benedict of Peterborough ( Rolls Series, 2 vols., 1867) ; the Chronica of Roger of Hoveden (Rolls Series, 4 vols., 1868-71) ; the Chronica of Gervase of Canter bury (Rolls Series, 1879) ; the Imagines Historiarum of Ralph of Diceto (Rolls Series, 2 vols., 1876) ; the Historia Rerum Anglicarum of William of Newburgh (in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, etc., Rolls Series, 2 vols., 1884-85) ; the De rebus gestis Ricardi Primi of Richard of Devizes (in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, etc., vol. iii., Rolls Series, 1886) ; the Chronicon Anglicanum of Ralph of Coggeshall (Rolls Series, 1875) ; the Flores Historiarum of Roger of Wendover (Rolls Series, 3 vols., 1886-89) ; the Gesta Philippi Augusti of Rigord (Societe de l'histoire de France, Paris, 1882) and of Guillaume le Breton (op. cit.). A detailed narrative of Richard's crusade is given in L'Estoire de la guerre sainte, a rhyming French chronicle by the minstrel Ambroise (ed. Gaston Paris, Paris, 1897), and in the Latin prose version known as the Itinerarium 0. Pere grinorum et gesta Regis Ricardi; this last, with some valuable his torical letters, is printed in W. Stubbs's Chronicles and Memorials of the Reign of Richard I. (Rolls Series, 2 vols., 1864-65). Of modern works the following are useful: W. Stubbs's preface to vols. iii. and iv. of Hoveden; the same author's Constitutional History of England, vol. i. (Oxford, 1897) ; Miss K. Norgate's England under the Angevin Kings, vol. ii. (1887) and Richard the Lion Heart (1924) ; Sir J. H. Ramsay's Angevin Empire (1903) ; R. Rohricht's Geschichte des Konigreichs Jerusalem (1898) ; W. B. Stevenson's Crusaders in the East (Cambridge, 1907) ; A. Cartellieri's Philipp II. August (Leipzig, 2899, etc.). (H. W. C. D.)