A Great and Glorious Adventure Read Online Free Page A

continent, and from 1194 Richard spent most of his time in
Europe recovering the lost lands and castles, and building new defence works – notably Château Gaillard, which still looms 300 feet above the River Seine – to protect them. Then,
at a militarily insignificant skirmish at Châlus, twenty miles south-west of Limoges, Richard sustained a wound from a crossbow bolt which went septic and from which he died on 6 April 1199,
aged forty-two. As hismarriage to Berengaria of Navarre was childless, he was succeeded by his brother John.
    John has not been treated kindly by history, but it is difficult to see how this could have been otherwise: he was a younger son who rebelled against his father; sided with the French in an
invasion of England; was a spectacular failure as governor of Ireland, where he managed to alienate both the native Irish and the Anglo-Norman lords who were carving out lands for themselves in
England’s Wild West; attempted to usurp his brother’s throne; and spent a large part of his reign in opposition to his barons. His succession was accepted in England and Normandy, but
not in Anjou, Maine or Touraine, where the local lords announced that they recognized John’s nephew, Arthur, duke of Brittany, as their overlord. As Arthur was twelve years old in 1199, he
would be unlikely to interfere with the magnates’ governance of their fiefs as they wished, and, as the only legitimate grandson of Henry II in the male line, he was inevitably going to find
himself cast as a pawn. He had been a ward of Richard I’s, had spent time at the French court, and had done homage to the French king, and to John, for Anjou, Maine and Brittany.
    Then, in what seemed a shrewd and advantageous move, John put aside his first wife, Isabella of Gloucester, and married another Isabella, this time of Angoulême. 9 The second Isabella had lands that lay between Normandy and Aquitaine which would be a useful addition to English France. There was, however, a snag. The lady had previously been
engaged to marry one Hugh of Lusignan, who objected to being deprived of his fiancée (and, presumably, of the lands that she would bring with her) and appealed to King Philip of France.
Philip, seizing the chance to discommode the English king, summoned John to appear before him, and, when John refused, in April 1200 he declared all John’s continental fiefs forfeit.
    In what was to be his only successful military campaign, John recovered the disputed territories and captured Arthur. The young duke disappeared into an English prison in Falaise, may or may not
have been mutilated on the orders of John, was transferred to Rouen, and was never seen again, although the legends vary: some say he was killed by John personally andhis
body thrown in the Seine, others that he escaped and stood ready to reappear in Brittany when the time was ripe. This, anyway, was John’s last chance to retain his lands in France, for in
1204 the French king declared the dukedom of Normandy forfeit and subsumed into the crown lands of France, the exception being the Channel Islands, which remain British to this day. 10
    The tide of war now turned against the English and John lost all his French territories except Poitou – and that was on the verge of surrender, only rescued by an expedition in 1206. From
now on, John – his nickname now ‘Softsword’ because of his military reverses rather than ‘Lackland’ from his lack of patrimony as a younger son – put all his
energies into raising the wherewithal to recover his lost lands. This meant that he spent longer in England than any previous ruler since the Norman Conquest, and also meant increased and
increasing taxation, leading to more trouble with his barons, a breakdown in relations between church and state, a papal interdict on England and the excommunication of John
personally, 11 civil war, the signing of Magna Carta, 12 invasion and civil war again.
    When John died in 1216, his