Richard the Lionheart. A Foolish King?
Richard is often regarded as a great warrior king, yet his capture spelled disaster for his country.
King Richard is most remembered for his efforts in defeating Saladin at Jerusalem and managing to secure an uneasy truce between Muslim and Christian forces. His character is drawn upon in great novels like Ivanhoe, and has influenced countless images of the warrior knight waging a holy crusade against the Saracens.
What is less often told, is the massacre of 4,000 innocent inhabitants that he led outside of the walls of Acre after the city’s capture, Richard’s utter disdain for his crusading allies, the pogrom against the Jews of England he failed to suppress, and his relentlessly shrewd method of removing political opponents. Together with his Norman cousins throughout England, France, and Sicily, his dynasty struck fear in the hearts of every man, woman, and child.
So, how did he manage to get himself captured by an Austrian duke, locked numerous castles for two years, and require his mother to intervene and ransom him at the cost of three years of England’s income, only to die in a reckless and pointless siege of a northern French castle?
Richard’s First Faux Pas
King Richard I of England (Plantagenet), known colloquially as the Lionheart, was the son of the Norman-English King, Henry II, and the Duchess of Aquitaine, Eleanor. True to the warring spirit of his Viking ancestors, Richard was easily roused into action and even assisted his mother to incite a rebellion against his father with the support of her ex-husband, the King of France.
Needless to say, the rebellion of 1173 – 1174 AD was messy and only served to sully Richard’s name upon the European Continent. After all, the Holy Roman Emperor at that time, Frederick I, was something of a friend to Richard’s father. Frederick’s troublesome cousin, Henry the Lion, even married one of Henry II’s daughters, Mathilda.
Within the Holy Roman Empire (HRE), rebellious sons were not held in high regard—even if they had managed to reconcile themselves with their formerly inimical fathers. The reigning imperial Hohenstaufen Dynasty was notoriously tribal with regard to their own members, managing to keep sons and fathers continuously allied and directed toward the same goals. As the most powerful secular Western European monarch, the emperor had to show strength and the brash aggression of Richard was received with an expectation that he would one day be troublesome.
The Eve of the Third Crusade
On Easter in the year 1188 AD, Emperor Frederick accepted the scrip of a pilgrim, indicating his plan to reconquer Jerusalem that had been lost one year prior. To that end, he dispersed his envoys and marshals to muster the largest crusading force ever to be assembled. Estimates of the time suggest close to 200,000 warriors, though the actual amount of fighters was likely much smaller. Nevertheless, a count of 200,000 men is not unreasonable considering the sheer amount of servants required by each knight.
While calling his army at Mainz, the emperor also declared that any man injuring a Jew on the eve of a crusade would be receive the penalty of death in order to avoid the massacre that ensued on the eve of the First Crusade 90 years earlier. In fact, his marshals put down a number of smaller anti-Semitic skirmishes in the Rhineland, and the emperor himself led a procession alongside Rabbi Moses of Mainz (משה הכהן ממגנצא).
The assembly of the imperial army even included ecclesiastical princes—accounting for nearly 30% of the princes accompanying the emperor upon his crusade—and incorporated thousands of ministeriales who loyalty was unquestionable.
Now, contrast this scenario with Richard, whose coffers were so barren that he had to tax his people nearly to the breaking point. Furthermore, he only managed to muster around 9,000 men—a fraction of the imperial force. To the great horror of the emperor, Richard’s England erupted into an anti-Semitic pogrom during Lent of 1190 AD. While the Jews of the HRE were protected by the imperial marshals, the Jews of England were slaughtered by crusading knights.
Richard’s role in the affair is yet undetermined, though he was apparently outraged by the event. Despite his possible misgivings, he failed to suppress it and went about his business siphoning every last pence from his own people.
The Third Crusade
Provided that many of his men were on an island (England), he needed ships to deliver them, as opposed to the imperial army that marched by land. The use of ships was not uncommon, and especially not for the Normans, whose conquest was determined by their naval abilities. He set off first for Byzantine Cyprus, which he conquered and declared a Norman territory while waiting for the rest of his army to join him in the Holy Land.
His ferocity as a warrior was unmatched, as was his propensity to pitch a battle. Together with the King of France—and a number of other allies with whom he had been at war with just months prior—Richard marched on Jerusalem.
Meanwhile, the imperial army suffered a colossal setback with the sudden death of Emperor Frederick I, who died of a stroke while swimming in the Saleph (Göksu) River in modern-day Turkey. As a result, the majority of the imperial army returned home, especially the ministeriales who served as the administrators of the various estates and were typically responsible for maintaining the realm in the monarch’s absence.
Even without the bulk of the imperial army, Richard pressed forth, winning victory after victory until the hubris of his success overshadowed the respect normally due to a conquering king. After defeating the Muslim forces at Acre, he ordered his army to execute thousands of the city’s inhabitants, assuming that the act would strike more fear in the hearts of his enemies.
However, it was not only the Muslims who hated him for the action, but the leader of the remaining imperial forces as well: Duke Leopold V of Austria. The duke’s anger was incited not only by the mass-killing, but for the fact that Richard had removed Leopold’s banner from among the victorious leaders refusing to recognize a duke as equal to a king. As a result, the duke left for home accompanied by the remaining imperial troops, and insatiable wrath against the English king.
Soon thereafter, Richard began meddling in the election of the new King of Jerusalem, and organized the assassination of Conrad of Monferrat, thus paving the way for his own nephew, Henry I of Champagne, to assume the crown. Unfortunately for Richard, Conrad was a beloved cousin of Duke Leopold who had already returned home and complained to the new emperor, Henry VI.
As a member of the illustrious Babenberger family (written about earlier), Leopold’s grievances were a state concern for the young emperor. Unlike his father, the new emperor could be as shrewd and as ruthless as Richard, but his coffers were many times larger and he fielded mightier armies.
Richard’s Capture
While attempting to sail home, Richard fleet was scattered by a storm and he landed in Byzantium. However, his previous seizure of Cyprus angered the Byzantine Emperor who still considered Cyprus part of his territory. Thus, Richard was sent away with only his entourage, eager to make for the feudal lands of his brother-in-law, the Saxon Duke Henry the Lion. However, he would need to get through most of the Holy Roman Empire first.
Richard’s luck soon ran out after he landed in the north Adriatic—as the territory turned out to belong to Duke Leopold, who promptly took the English King captive. The capture reached the ear of the pope who resented the fact that the European princes were involved in ransoming one another and excommunicated the duke.
Despite the excommunication, the caliber of the duke’s prize immediately caught the attention of Emperor Henry VI, who began to concoct a scheme that none could have foreseen. A scheme that would spell the downfall of the Norman threat that required the perfect bargaining token: Richard’s life.
Imprisoned and Ransomed
The emperor stole Richard away from Duke Leopold and imprisoned the king in a variety of places, parading him around as a Roman Emperor would a captured enemy in triumphal fashion, until he put him in Castle Trifels, which at that time housed the imperial regalia. Henry VI demanded that the English crown pay for Richard’s ransom—something that only Richard’s mother, Eleanor, was actually eager to do. Richard’s brothers and enemies feared his wrath that continued to swell as the emperor increased the severity of his imprisonment.
Eventually, Eleanor succumbed to the demand and had 100,000 silver marks—three times the entire income of the English realm—delivered to the emperor. True to his word, Henry VI released Richard, but the silver marks were not the only conditions. The English also had to give 200 knights and 50 war ships for one year.
Richard was sent on his way and the emperor prepared his assault on the Norman stronghold of the Mediterranean: The Kingdom of Sicily. Despite the fact that the emperor was married to a Sicilian princess, his in-laws caused him significant political distress due to their relation to Richard. The young emperor set out to silence them once and for all and amassed a great fleet in the Summer of 1194 AD and sailed for Palermo.
The first to attack were the Norman-English knights won by the ransom that the emperor forced to attack their Sicilian-Norman cousins. The fraternal slaughter paved the way for Henry’s furious army of ministeriales who were feared no less than anyone else at the time. Sicily was conquered and the Norman’s lost their influence within the Middle Sea. Soon thereafter, Richard managed to get himself killed by an errant arrow shot by a cook during a petty conflict in northern France, leaving his surviving brother with the shards of a once powerful realm.
Was Richard a Good King?
Richard was a rebellious son, sought conflict with nearly everyone around him, and ensured that his family would lose the majority of their land and power. The torrent of his actions eventually created rifts with the other European monarchs that became insurmountable. The list of his enemies grew in direct proportion to his hubris which failed to decrease even during the extent of his imprisonment.
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His ransom cost the English populace more than they could offer, ushering in a period of social unrest left for his younger brother, John Lackland. The ensuing century included numerous barons’ revolts, territorial loss, and political collapse.
So, was he a good king? The facts speak for themselves.
Look to there sources for more information:
Ehlers, Caspar. „Der Speyerer Hoftag und seine Folgen: Die verzögerte Auslieferung von Richard Löwenherz“. In Richard Löwenherz: König-Ritter-Gefangener, herausgegeben von Alexander Schubert, 1. Aufl., 265–71. Regensburg, Germany: Verlag Schnell und Steiner, 2018.
Engl, Richard. „Mit dem Lösegold finanziert: Kaiser Heinrich VI. erobert das Königreich Sizilien“. In Richard Löwenherz: König-Ritter-Gefangener, herausgegeben von Alexander Schubert, 1. Aufl., 280–81. Regensburg, Germany: Verlag Schnell und Steiner, 2018.
Görich, Knut. „Gefangnahme und Gefangenschaft Richards I. Löwenherz“. In Richard Löwenherz: König-Ritter-Gefangener, herausgegeben von Alexander Schubert, 1. Aufl., 245–51. Regensburg, Germany: Verlag Schnell und Steiner, 2018.
Kötz, Stefan. „Das Lösegeld für Richard I. Löwenherz im Licht der Numismatik“. In Richard Löwenherz: König-Ritter-Gefangener, herausgegeben von Alexander Schubert, 1. Aufl., 284–85. Regensburg, Germany: Verlag Schnell und Steiner, 2018.
Witowski, Janis. „Die teuer erkaufte Freiheit: Das Lösegeld für Richard I. Löwenherz“. In Richard Löwenherz: König-Ritter-Gefangener, herausgegeben von Alexander Schubert, 1. Aufl., 282–83. Regensburg, Germany: Verlag Schnell und Steiner, 2018.