History of the World/History of the World (Bureau Development, Inc.)(1992).BIN/dp/0050/00508.txt

Text File | 1992-10-11 | 21KB | 341 lines

$Unique_ID{how00508}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{A Child's History Of England
Chapter XIII.  England Under Richard The First, Called The Lion-Heart.}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Dickens, Charles}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{king
richard
english
french
himself
jews
army
castle
thou
three}
$Date{}
$Log{}
Title:       A Child's History Of England
Author:      Dickens, Charles

Chapter XIII.  England Under Richard The First, Called The Lion-Heart.

     In the year of our Lord 1189, Richard of the Lion Heart succeeded to the
throne of King Henry the Second, whose paternal heart he had done so much to
break.  He had been, as we have seen, a rebel from his boyhood; but the moment
he became a king against whom others might rebel, he found out that rebellion
was a great wickedness.  In the heat of this pious discovery, he punished all
the leading people who had befriended him against his father. He could
scarcely have done anything that would have been a better instance of his real
nature, or a better warning to fawners and parasites not to trust in
lion-hearted princes.

     He likewise put his late father's treasurer in chains, and locked him up
in a dungeon from which he was not set free until he had relinquished, not
only all the crown treasure, but all his own money too.  So Richard certainly
got the lion's share of the wealth of this wretched treasurer, whether he had
a lion's heart or not.

     He was crowned king of England, with great pomp, at Westminster; walking
to the cathedral under a silken canopy stretched on the tops of four lances,
each carried by a great lord.  On the day of his coronation, a dreadful
murdering of the Jews took place, which seems to have given great delight to
numbers of savage persons calling themselves Christians.  The king had issued
a proclamation forbidding the Jews (who were generally hated, though they were
the most useful merchants in England) to appear at the ceremony; but as they
had assembled in London from all parts, bringing presents to show their
respect for the new sovereign, some of them ventured down to Westminster Hall
with their gifts, which were very readily accepted.  It is supposed now that
some noisy fellow in the crowd, pretending to be a very delicate Christian,
set up a howl at this, and struck a Jew who was trying to get in at the hall-
door with his present.  A riot arose; the Jews who had got into the hall were
driven forth; and some of the rabble cried out that the new king had commanded
the unbelieving race to be put to death.  Thereupon, the crowd rushed through
the narrow streets of the city, slaughtering all the Jews they met; and when
they could find no more out of doors (on account of their having fled to their
houses, and fastened themselves in), they ran madly about, breaking open all
the houses where the Jews lived, rushing in and stabbing or spearing them,
sometimes even flinging old people and children out of window into blazing
fires they had lighted up below.  This great cruelty lasted four-and-twenty
hours, and only three men were punished for it.  Even they forfeited their
lives, not for murdering and robbing the Jews, but for burning the houses of
some Christians.

     King Richard, who was a strong, restless, burly man, with one idea always
in his head, and that the very troublesome idea of breaking the heads of other
men, was mightily impatient to go on a crusade to the Holy Land, with a great
army.  As great armies could not be raised to go, even to the Holy Land,
without a great deal of money, he sold the crown-domains, and even the high
offices of state; recklessly appointing noblemen to rule over his English
subjects, not because they were fit to govern, but because they could pay high
for the privilege.  In this way, and by selling pardons at a dear rate, and by
varieties of avarice and oppression, he scraped together a large treasure.  He
then appointed two bishops to take care of his kingdom in his absence, and
gave great powers and possessions to his brother John, to secure his
friendship.  John would rather have been made Regent of England; but he was a
sly man, and friendly to the expedition, saying to himself, no doubt, "The
more fighting, the more chance of my brother being killed; and when he is
killed, then I become King John!"

     Before the newly levied army departed from England, the recruits and the
general populace distinguished themselves by astonishing cruelties on the
unfortunate Jews, whom, in many large towns, they murdered by hundreds in the
most horrible manner.

     At York, a large body of Jews took refuge in the castle, in the absence
of its governor, after the wives and children of many of them had been slain
before their eyes.  Presently came the governor, and demanded admission. "How
can we give it thee, O Governor!" said the Jews upon the walls, "when, if we
open the gate by so much as the width of a foot, the roaring crowd behind thee
will press in and kill us?"

     Upon this the unjust governor became angry, and told the people that he
approved of their killing those Jews; and a mischievous maniac of a friar,
dressed all in white, put himself at the head of the assault, and they
assaulted the castle for three days.

     Then said Jocen, the head Jew (who was a rabbi or priest) to the rest,
"Brethren, there is no hope for us with the Christians who are hammering at
the gates and walls, and who must soon break in.  As we and our wives and
children must die, either by Christian hands or by our own, let it be by our
own.  Let us destroy by fire what jewels and other treasure we have here, then
fire the castle, and then perish."

     A few could not resolve to do this, but the greater part complied.  They
made a blazing heap of all their valuables, and when those were consumed, set
the castle in flames.  While the flames roared and crackled around them, and,
shooting up into the sky, turned it blood-red, Jocen cut the throat of his
beloved wife and stabbed himself.  All the others who had wives or children
did the like dreadful deed.  When the populace broke in, they found (except
the trembling few, cowering in corners, whom they soon killed) only heaps of
greasy cinders, with here and there something like part of the blackened trunk
of a burnt tree, but which had lately been a human creature, formed by the
beneficent hand of the Creator, as they were.

     After this bad beginning, Richard and his troops went on, in no very good
manner, with the holy crusade.  It was undertaken jointly by the King of
England and his old friend Philip of France.  They commenced the business by
reviewing their forces, to the number of a hundred thousand men. Afterwards
they severally embarked their troops for Messina, in Sicily, which was
appointed as the next place of meeting.

     King Richard's sister had married the king of this place, but he was
dead; and his uncle Tancred had usurped the crown, cast the royal window into
prison, and possessed himself of her estates.  Richard fiercely demanded his
sister's release, the restoration of her lands, and (according to the royal
custom of the island) that she should have a golden chair, a golden table,
four-and-twenty silver cups, and four-and-twenty silver dishes.  As he was too
powerful to be successfully resisted, Tancred yielded to his demands; and then
the French king grew jealous, and complained that the English king wanted to
be absolute in the Island of Messina and everywhere else.  Richard, however,
cared little or nothing for this complaint; and, in consideration of a present
of twenty thousand pieces of gold, promised his pretty little nephew Arthur,
then a child of two years old, in marriage to Tancred's daughter.  We shall
hear again of pretty little Arthur by and by.

     This Sicilian affair arranged without anybody's brains being knocked out
(which must have rather disappointed him), King Richard took his sister away,
and also a fair lady named Berengaria, with whom he had fallen in love in
France, and whom his mother, Queen Eleanor (so long in prison, you remember,
but released by Richard on his coming to the throne), had brought out there to
be his wife, and sailed with them for Cyprus.

     He soon had the pleasure of fighting the king of the Island of Cyprus,
for allowing his subjects to pillage some of the English troops who were
shipwrecked on the shore; and, easily conquering this poor monarch, he seized
his only daughter, to be a companion to the Lady Berengaria, and put the king
himself into silver fetters.  He then sailed away again with his mother,
sister, wife, and the captive princess; and soon arrived before the town of
Acre, which the French king with his fleet was besieging from the sea.  But
the French king was in no triumphant condition; for his army had been thinned
by the swords of the Saracens, and wasted by the plague; and Saladin, the
brave sultan of the Turks, at the head of the numerous army, was at that time
gallantly defending the place from the hills that rise above it.

     Wherever the united army of Crusaders went, they agreed in few points
except in gaming, drinking, and quarrelling in a most unholy manner; in
debauching the people among whom they tarried, whether they were friends or
foes; and in carrying disturbance and ruin into quiet places.  The French king
was jealous of the English king, and the English king was jealous of the
French king, and the disorderly and violent soldiers of the two nations were
jealous of one another; consequently the two kings could not at first agree,
even upon a joint assault on Acre; but when they did make up their quarrel for
that purpose, the Saracens promised to yield the town, to give up the
Christians the wood of the holy cross, to set at liberty all their Christian
captives, and to pay two hundred thousand pieces of gold.  All this was to be
done within forty days; but not being done, King Richard ordered some three
thousand Saracen prisoners to be brought out in the front of his camp, and
there, in full view of their own countrymen, to be butchered.

     The French king had no part in that crime; for he was by that time
travelling homeward with the greater part of his men, being offended by the
overbearing conduct of the English king, being anxious to look after his own
dominions, and being ill, besides, from the unwholesome air of that hot and
sandy country.  King Richard carried on the war without him, and remained in
the East, meeting with a variety of adventures, nearly a year and a half.
Every night when his army was on the march, and came to a halt, the heralds
cried out three times, to remind all the soldiers of the cause in which they
were engaged, "Save the holy sepulchre!" and then all the soldiers knelt and
said "Amen!" Marching or encamping, the army had continually to strive with
the hot air of the glaring desert, or with the Saracen soldiers animated and
directed by the brave Saladin, or with both together.  Sickness and death,
battle and wounds, were always among them; but through every difficulty King
Richard fought like a giant, and worked like a common laborer.  Long and long
after he was quiet in his grave, his terrible battle-axe, with twenty English
pounds of English steel in its mighty head, was a legend among the Saracens;
and when all the Saracen and Christian hosts had been dust for many a year, if
a Saracen horse started at any object by the wayside, his rider would exclaim,
"What dost thou fear, fool?  Dost thou think King Richard is behind it?"

     No one admired this king's renown for bravery more than Saladin himself,
who was a generous and gallant enemy.  When Richard lay ill of a fever,
Saladin sent him fresh fruits from Damascus, and snow from the mountain- tops.
Courtly messages and compliments were frequently exchanged between them; and
then King Richard would mount his horse, and kill as many Saracens as he
could, and Saladin would mount his, and kill as many Christians as he could.
In this way King Richard fought to his heart's content at Arsoof and at Jaffa;
and finding himself with nothing exciting to do at Ascalon, except to rebuild,
for his own defence, some fortifications there which the Saracens had
destroyed, he kicked his ally, the Duke of Austria, for being too proud to
work at them.

     The army at last came within sight of the holy city of Jerusalem, but
being then a mere nest of jealousy, and quarrelling and fighting, soon
retired, and agreed with the Saracens upon a truce for three years, three
months, three days, and three hours.  Then the English Christians, protected
by the noble Saladin from Saracen revenge, visited our Saviour's tomb; and
then King Richard embarked with a small force at Acre to return home.

     But he was shipwrecked in the Adriatic Sea, and was fain to pass through
Germany under an assumed name.  Now, there were many people in Germany who had
served in the Holy Land under that proud Duke of Austria who had been kicked;
and some of them, easily recognizing a man so remarkable as King Richard,
carried their intelligence to the kicked duke, who straightway took him
prisoner at a little inn near Vienna.

     The duke's master, the Emperor of Germany, and the King of France, were
equally delighted to have so troublesome a monarch in safe keeping.
Friendships which are founded on a partnership in doing wrong are never true;
and the King of France was now quite as heartily King Richard's foe as he had
ever been his friend in his unnatural conduct to his father.  He monstrously
pretended that King Richard had designed to poison him in the East; he charged
him with having murdered there a man whom he had in truth befriended; he
bribed the Emperor of Germany to keep him close prisoner; and finally, through
the plotting of these two princes, Richard was brought before the German
legislature, charged with the foregoing crimes, and many others.  But he
defended himself so well, that many of the assembly were moved to tears by his
eloquence and earnestness.  It was decided that he should be treated, during
the rest of his captivity, in a manner more becoming his dignity than he had
been, and that he should be set free on the payment of a heavy ransom. This
ransom the English people willingly raised.  When Queen Eleanor took it over
to Germany, it was at first evaded and refused.  But she appealed to the honor
of all the princes of the German Empire in behalf of her son, and appealed so
well that it was accepted, and the king released.  Thereupon the King of
France wrote to Prince John, "Take care of thyself; the Devil is unchained!"

     Prince John had reason to fear his brother; for he had been a traitor to
him in his captivity.  He had secretly joined the French king, had vowed to
the English nobles and people that his brother was dead, and had vainly tried
to seize the crown.  He was now in France, at a place called Evreux. Being the
meanest and basest of men, he contrived a mean and base expedient for making
himself acceptable to his brother.  He invited the French officers of the
garrison in that town to dinner, murdered them all, and then took the
fortress.  With this recommendation to the good-will of a lion-hearted
monarch, he hastened to King Richard, fell on his knees before him, and
obtained the intercession of Queen Eleanor.  "I forgive him," said the king;
"and I hope I may forget the injury he has done me, as easily as I know he
will forget my pardon."

     While King Richard was in Sicily, there had been trouble in his dominions
at home; one of the bishops whom he had left in charge thereof arresting the
other, and making, in his pride and ambition, as great a show as if he were
king himself.  But the king hearing of it at Messina, and appointing a new
regency, this Longchamp (for that was his name) had fled to France in a
woman's dress, and had there been encouraged and supported by the French king.
With all these causes of offence against Philip in his mind, King Richard had
no sooner been welcomed home by his enthusiastic subjects with great display
and splendor, and had no sooner been crowned afresh at Winchester, than he
resolved to show the French king that the Devil was unchained indeed, and made
war against him with great fury.

     There was fresh trouble at home about this time, arising out of the
discontents of the poor people, who complained that they were far more heavily
taxed than the rich, and who found a spirited champion in William Fitz-Osbert,
called Longbeard.  He became the leader of a secret society, comprising fifty
thousand men; he was seized by surprise; he stabbed the citizen who first laid
hands upon him, and retreated, bravely fighting, to a church, which he
maintained four days until he was dislodged by fire, and run through the body
as he came out.  He was not killed, though; for he was dragged, half dead, at
the tail of a horse to Smithfield, and there hanged. Death was long a favorite
remedy for silencing the people's advocates; but, as we go on with this
history, I fancy we shall find them difficult to make an end of, for all that.

     The French war, delayed occasionally by a truce, was still in progress
when a certain lord named Vidomar, Viscount of Limoges, chanced to find in his
ground a treasure of ancient coins.  As the king's vassal, he sent the king
half of it; but the king claimed the whole.  The lord refused to yield the
whole.  The king besieged the lord in his castle, swore that he would take the
castle by storm, and hang every man of its defenders on the battlements.

     There was a strange old song in that part of the country, to the effect,
that in Limoges an arrow would be made by which King Richard would die.  It
may be that Bertrand de Gourdon, a young man who was one of the defenders of
the castle, had often sung it, or heard it sung of a winter night, and
remembered it when he saw, from his post upon the ramparts, the king, attended
only by his chief officer, riding below the walls surveying the place.  He
drew an arrow to the head, took steady aim, said between his teeth, "Now, I
pray God speed thee well, arrow!" discharged it, and struck the king in the
left shoulder.

     Although the wound was not at first considered dangerous, it was severe
enough to cause the king to retire to his tent, and direct the assault to be
made without him.  The castle was taken; and every man of its defenders was
hanged, as the king had sworn all should be, except Bertrand de Gourdon, who
was reserved until the royal pleasure respecting him should be known.

     By that time unskillful treatment had made the wound mortal, and the king
knew that he was dying.  He directed Bertrand to be brought into his tent.
The young man was brought there heavily chained.  King Richard looked at him
steadily.  He looked as steadily at the king.

     "Knave!" said King Richard, "what have I done to thee, that thou shouldst
take my life?"

     "What hast thou done to me?" replied the young man.  "With thine own
hands thou hast killed my father and my two brothers.  Myself thou wouldst
have hanged.  Let me die, now, by any torture that thou wilt.  My comfort is,
that no torture can save thee.  Thou, too, must die; and through me the world
is quit of thee."

     Again the king looked at the young man steadily.  Again the young man
looked steadily at him.  Perhaps some remembrance of his generous enemy
Saladin, who was not a Christian, came into the mind of the dying king.

     "Youth," he said, "I forgive thee.  Go unhurt!"

     Then, turning to the chief officer who had been riding in his company
when he received the wound, King Richard said, -

     "Take off his chains, give him a hundred shillings, and let him depart."

     He sunk down on his couch, and a dark mist seemed in his weakened eyes to
fill the tent wherein he had so often rested, and he died.  His age was
forty-two: he had reigned ten years.  His last command was not obeyed; for the
chief officer flayed Bertrand de Gourdon alive, and hanged him.

     There is an old tune yet known, - a sorrowful air will sometimes outlive
many generations of strong men, and even last longer than battle-axes with
twenty pounds of steel in the head, - by which this king is said to have been
discovered in his captivity.  Blondel, a favorite minstrel of King Richard, as
the story relates, faithfully seeking his royal master, went singing it
outside the gloomy walls of many foreign fortresses and prisons, until, at
last, he heard it echoed from within a dungeon, and knew the voice, and cried
out in ecstasy, "O Richard!  O my king!" You may believe it, if you like; it
would be easy to believe worse things.  Richard was himself a minstrel and
poet.  If he had not been a prince too, he might have been a better man
perhaps, and might have gone out of the world with less bloodshed and waste of
life to answer for.