End Game
In mid-January 1199, a boat approached the bank of the Seine River. Standing proudly on the deck was Richard the Lionheart, while waiting on the riverbank was Philip. Two of Europe’s most powerful men spent their last meeting together shouting terms to one another, and although they could not conclude a permanent truce, they did agree to further mediation. Those further discussions yielded a five-year halt in hostilities.

With peace secured, Richard was able to refocus his efforts on bringing internal order to the south of the Angevin empire. One permanent thorn in his side had been the counts of Angoulème and Limoges.

It is part of Richard’s mythology that in March 1199 he attacked Achard, the lord of Chalus (vassal of the count of Limoges), because of buried treasure. The accepted account says that Achard’s men had discovered hidden loot, Roman perhaps, and had delivered it to their master. Protocol dictated that Achard send some of the wealth to the count of Limoges as well as to Richard, his supreme overlord. Achard left Richard out of the cut. When Richard found out that a vast hoard of wealth had been discovered and he had been deprived of his share, he launched an invasion. His death at Chalus — a small castle defended by no more than 40 men — was viewed by French chroniclers with glee. They saw the hunt for treasure and his death as proof that God was displeased with his avarice and lust for power.

Anglo-Norman chroniclers also blamed Richard’s lust for gold. His death while hunting treasure was described as divine justice. But the crux of their accounts was the moral dimension: Richard pardoned his killer and then asked for forgiveness from God for his own sins. The Lionheart’s behavior just before death was underlined as the paradigm of Christian behavior and the action of a legendary Crusader king. Mercadier, his loyal mercenary, had no such chivalrous proclivities. After Richard died, Mercadier had the hapless crossbowman who had struck Richard flayed to death and the rest of Chalus’ defenders hanged.

Fact has become irrevocably mixed with fiction. Bernard of Itier, a monk in the Benedictine abbey of St. Martial in Limoges, recorded that Richard’s objective was to destroy the count of Limoges’ castles and towns, and did not mention treasure. On March 26, Richard had gone out virtually unarmed to view the progress of the sappers’ work. Various names of the defender who wounded the king have been given, but Bernard of Itier stated that Pierre Basile, after parrying a number of besiegers’ arrows with a gigantic frying pan, fired his crossbow at Richard. The English king was so impressed that he applauded the man’s courage before ducking — but he did so too late, and the crossbow bolt lodged between his neck and shoulder.

Riding confidently back to his tent, Richard sought medical attention. A surgeon who tried to extricate the bolt botched the job and was described as a butcher by the chronicler Roger of Howden. Gangrene set in, and Richard was much too experienced a campaigner to believe he might recover. He may well have forgiven the man who shot him, but he certainly called for the Queen Mother, Eleanor, to come to his bedside. On April 6, 1199, he died in the arms of his mother, who mourned him, saying, I have lost the staff of my age, the light of my eyes.

Had Richard the Lionheart lived, war with Philip would have probably resumed sooner rather than later. The English king would probably have worked his way like a steamroller onto Philip’s lands and forced a settlement in his own favor. That, however, remains speculation. If anyone could turn the tide of war against Richard it was Philip, the man who had managed until 1198 to keep the war mainly inside the English king’s territories.

When Philip faced Richard’s successor, the story was a different matter — King John was simply not up to the job of defeating this wily and experienced campaigner. Indeed, John failed so abysmally (even discounting bad luck) that by the time Philip died in 1223, the French king had achieved his longed-for goal: He had shattered the Angevin empire that Richard had fought like a lion to maintain. By outlasting the Lionheart, Philip II went down in French annals as Philip Augustus, while Richard’s hapless successor earned the sobriquet of John Lackland.

This article was written by Simon Rees and originally published in the September 2006 issue of Military History magazine. For more great articles be sure to subscribe to Military History magazine today!

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