Gone Medieval - Richard the Lionheart

Episode Date: May 21, 2024

King Richard I of England - Richard the Lionheart - is one of those historical figures whose reputation stands out so much that the legends cover up the myriad of complex details that we have about their lives. After all, you don't get a name like Lionheart without a serious amount of artful effort, both on the battlefield and in the halls of power.In this episode of Gone Medieval, Dr. Eleanor Janega talks to Dr. Richard Huscroft - author of Ruling England: 1042 to 1217 - about the tumultuous and fabled life of one of medieval Europe's most famous men.This episode was edited by Ella Blaxill and produced by Rob Weinberg.Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts. Get a subscription for £1 per month for 3 months with code MEDIEVAL - sign up here.You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. It's a sad fact that we're never going to get to know much about the great majority of people who lived and died in the medieval period. Most ordinary people simply won't ever enter the historical record by virtue of being, well, ordinary. And even when we get famous rulers or saints, sometimes the details of their lives are lost to us. However, sometimes the opposite is true. Once in a while there are individuals whose reputations stand out so much that their legends cover up the myriad of complex details that we have about their lives.

One of these individuals is the legendary King Richard I, who you may better know as Richard the Lionheart. I'm Dr. Eleanor Yonaga. And today, on Gone Medieval from History Hit, I'm speaking with Dr. Richard Husscroft, the author of, among several other books, ruling England, 1042 to 1217, and tales from the long 12th century, the rise and fall of the Angevin Empire. Richards will help us to understand the tumultuous and fabled life of one of medieval Europe's most famous men.

We'll consider what it means to be a medieval ruler, how piety and power are often intertwined, how historians sometimes judge the detestines of the past based on what we want them to value and how we're trying to get better at that. Overall, we'll see that you don't get a name like Lionheart without a serious amount of artful effort, both on the battlefield and in the halls of power. Well, Richard, first of all, thank you so much for being here.

Great to be here. I'm very excited to have you here today because I'm very excited to talk about Richard I think this is one of those household names from the medieval period. Everybody knows Richard the Lionheart. But I don't think that people really understand much about him beyond sort of the Robin Hood ideas of him being a great king who's a way. But he comes from a very complex and interesting family, of course. And can you talk to us a little bit about his origins? Sure. You're absolutely right. Richard is one of England's most famous kings, but beyond certain well-known stereotypes.

He's little known, really, I think, and it's great to have the chance to reintroduce him to a wider audience. So Richard is very much a 12th century man. He's born in 1157 in Oxford. he's the fourth-born child and the second-born son, second surviving son, I should say, of King Henry II of England and of Henry II's wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. It's fair to say, I think, that this is one of the most, if not the most extraordinary family in 12th century Europe, if not medieval Europe more generally. They're known as the Angevins to historians, principally because their ancestral heartland is in the county of Anjou in northern France. But by the time Richard is born, his father, Henry II,

is ruler of much more than the county of Angus. He's the King of England. He's the Duke of Normandy. He's the Duke of Aptain. He's perhaps the most powerful ruler in Western Europe. The Angevins have a reputation in their own time as a ferociously energetic, restless and volatile and unpredictable, prone to ferocious anger as individuals and capable of great cruelty as well. See that in all of them, Henry II, Richard and his brothers. But they're also cultured, illiterate, they are glamorous, they are sophisticated. So yes, they're an extraordinary bunch, but they're a bunch full of clashing egos and idiosyncratic personalities. Now, I suppose this is one of those things that we could say influences Richard to a certain extent,

because he's the second-born son. He's not really groomed to be King of England. when he starts out, no? That's certainly right. His older brother, Henry, named after their father, is earmarked for the succession. Not to the whole of Henry's lands. He's only going to inherit a portion of those. He's going to be King of England.

He's going to be Duke of Normandy. He's going to be Count of enjou. Not a bad outcome. Richard, though, is earmarked for other things. Richard is sent to the homeland of his mother from a very young age. Aquitaine. Aquitaine takes up most of what today is. Southern France, essentially. It's a huge principality. Eleanor of Actawain was the Duchess of Aquitaine.

She inherited it from her father, which is really why Henry II wanted to marry her, essentially, to add that title of Duke of Aptain to his domain. For Richard is sent there, I guess, before he's nine or ten, really, to learn his trade. And in 1172, so when he's about 15, he actually becomes formerly a Duke of Aquitaine. And he spends the next 15 years in Aquitaine, really. That's where he learns to become a warrior. He learns to become a politician, a diplomat. And yes, he grows up, essentially. It's where he makes his name, where he starts to make his reputation as a warrior. Accretain is normally described by historians as very difficult to govern, mainly because the nobility there have a reputation of independence and autonomy and resistance to centralise

control. That's true up to a point, I think, but I don't think that the Akritainian nobility is any more turbulent than the English nobility or the French nobility, if they're not controlled by a masterful strong king or duke, the problem with Akatein essentially is that it's just really big and therefore very difficult to manage. It should also say it's very rich. It gets a lot of money from commerce, particularly two things, salt and wine. It's also a centre of culture in the second half the 12th century. It's a place where poets and musicians are flourishing, the image of the troubadour, the travelling minst. poet, which becomes fashionable later in the Middle Ages, that really has its origins in Aquitaine.

Richard partakes in that. Richard himself, he's very fond of music, poems and songs of his own. It's a glamorous but lively place, Aquitaine, I think. I'm quite obsessed with these years of his because, well, I'm quite partial to Richard's mother, Eleanor. It's not my fault. You know, I was named after her. What was I supposed to do? But I find that it quite interesting because one of the things that's sort of thrown around is that, oh, he's a bit of a mummy's boy, not in the way that we would say that this kind of means that he is particularly effeminate, but we're given to understand that he's Eleanor's particular favorite. Now, is that something that we could say is true, or is this just sort of a function

of what ends up happening between him and his father later? It's difficult to pin that down. I think certainly, given the 15 years he spends in Aquitaine, then that's his relationship with his mother is likely to be much close than it is to his father. And where Richard is reputed, as you say, to have been at Eleanor's favourite. John, Richard's younger brother, is later reported to have become Henry II's favourite, which will come on to this, I'm sure, leads to some of the problems at the end of Henry the second's reign with the succession. Beyond that, beyond the circumstances, which bring them together, it's hard to single that out,

I think. They do, of course, rebel against Henry II together, which must be a kind of bonding experience, I think. So in 1173, Henry's children, or his sons, young Henry, his eldest son, Richard, not John, because John isn't really old enough. The third brother, Jeffrey, they rebel against their father, mainly because he's not giving them any of the things he promised them, and they're straining at the least for power of their own, particularly the case of young Henry, and Eleanor joins them.

And arguably, Ellen doesn't just join them. She brings them together against her husband. That relationship is a very difficult one. After the rebellion, when the sons are forgiven by their father, Eleanor, of course, is not. And she's imprisoned really comfortable captivity, no doubt. but imprisoned nevertheless for the rest of Henry's reign. And then, you know, we get to the end of Henry's reign, but by now we've lost the young Henry.

He's peeled off. That's one of the sliding doors moments that I do wonder a bit about. You know, it's the dashing kind of star of the tournament scene. What would he have been like as a king? But unfortunately, we'll never know. And here comes Richard to ascend to the throne. What is this like in terms of assent? Well, it's not straightforward.

As we've said, young Henry is marked out for the succession in the late 1160s. He rebels twice against his father because he's not given any kind of interim power by Henry. You can see Henry the second is a kind of, about wishing to sound too flippant, there's a kind of 12 centuries of Loban Roy, dangling the question of the succession above the heads of his children. I think his children are probably more capable than Logan Roy's children, but nevertheless, it's not dissimilar. When young Henry dies in 1183, again, in the course of a rebellion,

against his father, one which actually Richard didn't take part in on that occasion, Richard steps up a level to become what should be, air apparent. But then the next six years, the last six years of Henry II's life, Henry never quite makes it clear enough to Richard that he is his chosen successor now. And rumours start to circulate. Richard starts to pick up the idea that maybe Henry is thinking of overlooking him in favour of his younger brother John, who by the mid-1180s is in his teams. So this is something which Richard is very, very frustrated by and constantly asks his father for reassurance and confirmation

of his succession plans, which you never get. What this means is that for the last two years of Henry's reign, roughly, Richard is actually in rebellion against his father, in alliance with, talk about this separately why this happened, but the alliance with the King of France, Philip II, and both of them essentially gang up, on Henry II, who by 1188, 1189 is old, he's ailing, he's exhausted, and eventually they corner him and make him commit to Richard's succession. And promptly, having done that, Henry

dies. So it's a very shabby and grubby end, really, to Henry II reign. But should we said, he's not the first English kings in his 1066 to make a mess of the succession. It seems to be what they all do to some extent or other. I do think that you've touched on a really interesting point here, which is this sort of on and off again, off again interference from the King of France. And one does sort of wonder why he would want Richard so much. Is this, you know, because he sees him as being quite French and then therefore someone who he can theoretically puppet, which I think is a silly thing. It does down Richard's abilities a bit. But the King of France has his finger in every little thing with this family. And traditionally, we would see this as kind of a no-go zone, really.

Yes, very much so. I mean, on one level, it's not surprising they get on. They're sort of roughly similar ages and brought up in a similar context. They have a lot in common on that kind of level. But it's much more than that. This is a political relationship. It's complicated because on one level, Henry II is the King, he's the King of England, just like Philip II is the King of France. So they're equals. But also Henry II, because he is Duke of Normandy, because he is Count of enjou, because he is Duke of Quetrain, he's also a vassal of the King of France at the same time. He's also a vassal of the King of France at the same time. is a subject, albeit a leading and very important subject of the King of France. So he has obligations towards the King of France. He is a subordinate of the King of France. But, of course, that's complicated further by the fact that Henry II, actually, although he's only a prince of France, controls more territory in France, has more resources in France than the King of France does himself who only controls a very small amount of territory directly around Paris. So the dynamic between Philip and Henry is very complicated. Philip comes to the throne as a teenager in 1180, determined to push back against Henry's power to redress some of this imbalance. And as the 1180s

go on and Philip grows up and becomes more mature, he sees in Richard and indeed John eventually a means by which he can undermine Henry, a means by which he can weaken Henry. If he can piggyback, as it were, on the grievances of Richard, piggyback on the grievances of John, he can undermine Henry's position and he can further his own position. So that's the very complicated, as I say, dynamic going on in France during the 11-8 is a power struggle, essentially. It's a power struggle between Richard and Henry. On a broader level, it's a power struggle between the French King and the ruler of the Adrian Empire. I suppose that if you were the French King, you would really want to make sure you had some control over these people. I mean, the amount of lands that they

control is just simply so vast. I mean, the better part of France, really, at this point? It's huge. It's absolutely huge. Famous phrase it stretches from the cheviates on the borders of Scotland to the Pyrenees in the south of France. It's massive. No English king has ever controlled so much territory. It gives them enormous power. It gives them enormous influence. But it's also problematic as well. ruling it is very difficult. Keeping it together is very, very difficult. Historians would say there are kind of inbuilt structural weaknesses to this so-called Angevin Empire. That's the name they tend to give it, which means. mean that it's very vulnerable if it's poked and stressed in the right way. That's what Philip eventually does. And it's eventually going to be Philip and brings it all clattering down. But not, not yet. Well, okay, so I suppose that we should say, here comes Richard and he ascends the throne. His father dies. He's done it. He's now the King of England, in addition to the Duke of Normandy, the Duke of Aquitaine, any number of other things. And he seems to celebrate this by immediately going

on crusade. It can be a bit confusing for us. As outsiders, you know, when we're talking about this incredibly difficult to rule amount of land in terms of size, in terms of all the varying political structures, all the people that you have to keep happy, he's been fighting for years upon years to be recognized as the ruler of England. And he finally gets it and then immediately leaves. But it kind of makes sense, though, if what we're talking about is the 12th century, though, yes? Yes, very much so. This is the age of the Crusades, the First Crusade taking place at the end of the 11th century, and throughout the 12th century, crusading is a major preoccupation for the nobility of Western Europe. This all crystallizes in 1187 when the Muslim Warlord Saladin recaptured the city of Jerusalem,

which has been taken by the Crusaders in 1099, and proceeds to occupy much of the territory which the Crusaders had acquired during the course of the 12th century. This is a catastrophe for Western Europe, that the Holy City in Christendom, the site of the crucifixion, the site of the resurrection, this has fallen back into Muslim hands. And by the end of the 12th century, it's generally accepted that the leading figures of Western Europe should play their part in crises such as this. The Second Crusade in the 1140s, I've seen the Kings of France and Germany taking part.

It was leading nobleman from France and Germany as well. And so it's no great surprise when Richard responds to Saladin's conquests. by undertaking to go on crusade. He does that in 1187. So before his father dies, this is another reason why he wants to get the succession issue sorted out so urgently and why he puts such pressure on his father

because he doesn't want to leave Western Europe on crusade without that issue resolved, without his status as king or as heir, but then subsequently as king settled and done with. So Richard would feel he has a duty to go on crusade as a Christian prince, And there is also more to it than that, I think. Is Richard motivated by kind of spiritual concerns?

Is this an aspect of his Christian piety that he wants to recover Jerusalem for Christianity? It's hard to know about Richard's piety, really. It was conventional. That's often a word historian used about kings piety. It was conventionally. He went to mass. He was a generous benefactor to monasteries. But beyond that, it's hard to know if he was particularly devout or pious.

It's a family matter for Richard as well, the crusade. His grandfather, Fulke, Count of Anjou, had been King of Jerusalem in the 1130s. So there's a family connection there. The current King of Jerusalem in 1187, the king who's defeated by Saladin, is a man called Gida Lucignan, and he is a member of a family from Aquitaine. So Richard has that connection with them. So he would see it has sorting out family business as well, extent, but there is no getting away from the fact that Richard was interested in his image. He's interested in fame. He's interested in reputation.

He's interested in establishing himself as a great knight, as a great warrior, as a hero. Now, it's easy to criticize him for that. But I think in a 12th century context, I don't think contemporaries would have seen it like that. This is a period in which notions of chivalry are starting to develop. Not chivalry in its fully developed, well-known context of knights and shining arms. and damsels in distress, but chivalry, which is essentially a way of men of a certain rank, establishing their honour, their prestige, their warrior credentials.

Richard wants good stories to be told about him when he's dead. This is the way of making sure that that happens. So the personal, the family, the spiritual, the political, they all merge in Richard's motives for the crusade, and it's a complicated picture. It's not simply fame. It's not arrogance. That's too simplistic. I mean, I think ultimately this is just sort of good statescraft at the time, really.

I think that you can't praise, Richard, for being a part of this really incredibly refined milieu in Aquitaine and having, you know, all of the wonderful cultured ways of being a minstrel and participating in these things and then say, oh, and I can't believe that he's got off to Jerusalem because the two things are part of the same milieu. You know, you can't just like say, oh, well, please ignore all of the culture all around you and do this thing that I think is more expedient. Because I do think that it would have been a little bit more difficult. And to be fair, even if we think maybe this was a little bit foolhardy, there's a reason that we still continue to romanticize Richard I. There is a reason why we do call him Richard the Lionheart. And it is things like this, is these very canny political moves where, I mean, if you're a reason. even if it's not the easiest way of keeping a kingdom together, it certainly is a way of getting your name in the history books.

No, absolutely. And there's no real sense that contemporaries criticize Richard for any of this, but any criticism really of Richard for his focus on, first of all, the Crusade, and then later on when he's back from Crusade on France, and his perceived kind of neglect of England, these are not contemporary criticisms. These are very much modern criticisms, particularly kind of 18th-19th century criticisms,

from historians who thought, how could any sensible English king neglect England when England's so fantastic. So he seemed to have let England down in the 19th century, a great warrior but a terrible king, saw England only as a source of funds for his foreign vanity projects. But, as I say, contemporaries wouldn't have viewed it like that at all. I think that also slightly does Eleanor Vauquitaine down a bit. She's a perfectly consummate ruler. You know, if you're going to leave someone in charge of England, I think it's a perfectly fine person. Yeah, what happens in England whilst Richard is away is an interesting story in itself.

It's not straightforward at all, and historians differ to the extent that they think Richard made a good job of making arrangements or made a bad job of making arrangements for his absence. But, you know, it's still there when he gets back. So it's not straightforward, but it's not a disaster either. What do you make, going back just to crusade a little bit of these ideas that he and Saladin ended up actually getting on a bit? Do you think that this is, again, a romanticisation that we? are trying to do? Or is this just a way of, I don't know, him saving face a little bit for the fact that, you know, the Crusades don't really go in the way of Europe would want them to do? Sure. Maybe it's worth just explaining a little bit about the context for the Crusade.

By the time Richard gets to the Holy Land, the territory controlled by the Franks, as they are known throughout 12th century, has shrunk to almost nothing. And what Richard manages to achieve during the Crusade is to reconstruct some of that territory. When he arrives, the Crusaders control one city on the coast of the Mediterranean city of Tyre. By the time he leaves, they've extended that control down the coastline, a strip of territory from Tyre in the north to the town of Jaffa in the south. It's not enormous that reconquest, but it is enough to guarantee the survival of what historians call the Kingdom of Jerusalem for the next 100 years. So it is a significant achievement. It's not what the Crusade sets out to achieve, though. The Crusade does not recover Jerusalem.

The Crusade does not roll back all of Saladin's conquests. The crusade does not recover the great holy relic of the true cross, which was lost during Saladin's great victory at the Battle of Cattine in 1187. So the crusade does fall short, but it still achieves something significant. So Richard can be credited with that, to a large extent, that is down to him. As to his relationship with Saladin, it's disappointing to know or to find out that they never actually met. They never actually confronted each other actually were face-to-face in battle, although they were pretty close at times.

So Richard and Saladin never met. They seem to respect each other from a distance. They spoke well of each other, or sources we have, have them speaking well of each other, mutually respectful and the like. That Richard fights Saladin is personally, is a later story. story. There are stories of him having kind of hand-to-hand combat with the Sultan, which are not based in reality at all. All about Richard's image creation, which is a separate story, really, about 13th and 14th centuries. But Richard came this figure of some of myth and legend,

essentially, during the 13th and 14th century, more than a figure of historical reality. So the crusade is a limited achievement. Richard gets a lot of credit for it, but whether he deserves all the credit he gets for his crusading exploits, I'm not sure. He does well, but not as well as he would have liked. Fundamentally, he does not recapture the city of Jerusalem. There are good reasons for that, the good strategic reasons why he doesn't do that. But in the end, he kind of lets his own troops down because that's why they're there. And there are certainly grumbles about that within the rank and file that when he has the chance to take Jerusalem, he decides not to do it because he thinks he wouldn't be able to hold onto it. And he doesn't want to capture it only for it

to be retaken almost immediately once he's left. So yeah, the crusade is where Richard's reputation based posthumously, but in reality, as I say, while the achievements are significant, they're not overwhelming. It's quite interesting because it is this romanticization that we see all over his legacy in general. At the time, perhaps this isn't the number one thing that everybody wanted to see, but I think as historians looking back, we're quite impressed. I'm quite impressed by the fact that he was able to do anything at all. Getting enough people in ships and over to the Holy Land to do something at this point is quite remarkable in the context of how successful Saladin was otherwise. I think that's right. The Third Crusade is a massive operation

involving all sorts of preparations, logistical, financial. Richard leaves from the south of France. The leaders of the Third Crusade take the sea routes to Palestine, which is they're the first to do that really on a major crusade. So that requires enormous amounts of planning and preparation and resources. You're quite right. I mean, the fact is Richard is the first, perhaps the only English medieval king to operate on a world stage. We get very excited about, you know, as 12th century, 13th century historians about what's going on in England and France, great. But it's a pretty top-left-hand corner of Europe kind of thing, really. Richard is there in the centre of the world, really, and he is calling the shots to a significant extent. So that's

certainly something unique about him. And the creation of his image starts during his lifetime. Western contemporaries write about him on the Crusades in glowing terms. His nickname, his famous nickname, Kurt Leone Lionheart, comes from his own lifetime. It's a contemporary epithet. Muslim writers writing about the Third Crusade admire Richard greatly, in some cases, more than Saddam, actually. So one of them called him the most remarkable man of his times, and this is from a Muslim commentator.

So Richard's image creation stories starts during his own lifetime. When his life is over, it goes on to a new level. In the 13th and the 14th centuries, stories get added to this, which are based on very little by way of historical fact. The Lionheart story acquires a new dimension in the 13th century. I think he's only written down in the 14th century text, but probably a 13th century story where when Richard is imprisoned on his way home, he falls in love with the daughter of his captor, or that I'll rather, they have a relationship.

And the dukes, who is the father of this young woman, is angry about this, therefore, decides to kill Richard by sending a lion into his cell. Richard, of course, is totally unfazed by this and kills the lion by putting his hand down its throat and pulling out his heart, then marching up to the Duke and eating it in front of him. I don't think that's likely to have happened. You may disagree with Ele, but I don't think that's very likely. But it's that kind of story. There's the story of Blondell, Richard's minstrel, again arising from his captivity on the way home, the loyal Blondell, Richard's minstrel, travels around Western Europe trying to find his imprisoned master. It's only when he hears a song coming out of the tower of Dernstein Castle,

which he wrote with Richard, that he knows he's found him. So it's a story about loyalty. It's a story about how inspirational Richard is that he can inspire this kind of loyalty. The stories go on from there, really. But for a long time, up till the 16th and 17th century, really, Richard was seen as England's greatest medieval king. He was the model of kingship. He fulfilled 12th century ideals of kingship, but he also fulfilled later ideals of kingship as well. It's only from the 17th, 18th, 19th centuries, really, that Richard's reputation starts to go into reverse. Now, let's just touch, I think, briefly here on Richard's trip home from the Holy Land, because I'm quite obsessed with this. You've got this glorious prince and king. He's on his way home

from the Holy Land. He's done this wonderful thing, and then he's immediately under arrest in any number of places across the German lands. Can you talk us through that a little? little bit. Yes, well, Richard goes home from Crusade in 1192, and he goes home rather urgently because he knows that King Philip, who's gone back to France before him, is conspiring and plotting with Richard's younger brother John to undermine Richard, maybe to take Richard's territory, essentially, to present Richard with a fait accompli when he gets back, that Philip has acquired lots of Normandy, John has taken over lots of territory. Anyway, so Richard knows about this, and he rushes, decides to go home. He has various options about how to get home, but eventually he decides to go

overland mostly through Germany. And this is dangerous because he ends up travelling through the lands of the Duke of Austria. And the Duke of Austria is someone who Richard has offended and upset during the Crusades. At the siege of Acre, the great port city of Acre, the Duke Leopold of Austria had put his standard on one of the towers to show his kind of ownership, his possession of that part of the citadel, that part of the fortress. Richard had torn it down and the Duke had been offended ever since by this and gone home in something over half really. So when Richard falls into his hands, as it were, he's delighted. He imprisons Richard and then he hands him over to his own overlord, who is the German emperor Henry the 6th. Henry has his own reasons, his own

political diplomatic reasons for wanting to use Richard as a pawn in his game of international diplomacy. And he imprisons him for a while. He's not known what's happened to Richard, that there are rumors in England that he's dead, which only excites Prince John even further. But eventually, Richard's whereabouts are established, and it's agreed that he will be released on payment of a very large ransom of £100,000, which will have to be raised in England. Which is rather the style at the time, isn't it? If you've got the opportunity to take a king ransom, you absolutely do that. You know, it's a great way of raising money for oneself. And, you know, if you're foolish enough to show up in someone's backyard, they can kind of take you if they

wish to do so. Yes, I think that's right. It's a perfect conventional way of dealing with a high profile, high status captive. But when I'm teaching this sometimes, my pupils sometimes ask me, how did they know who he was when he's traveling through Germany, presumably not with a very large entourage, presumably trying to keep himself relatively incognito. How do you know what Richard the first looks like? I'm not sure if you're a kind of local Austrian in the countryside, and these half a dozen men come past you. You can tell they're kind of important, but yeah, really, Richard was the first. How does that get back to the Duke Leopold? I'm not sure. I think there is a story that Richard is given away by his jewelry. He's wearing a very expensive ring or something

like that. But the mechanics of all that always intrigued me. A dire warning not to wear one's bling while on holiday, I suppose. But eventually this is quite an interesting part of his story because, you know, he is released. There is this big ransom is made. Eleanor is writing letters furiously back and forth to try to get him out. And, you know, he's sort of on his way back. And he dies in just the most sort of silly offhand way. After all of this, after all of the drama and the international stakes of it all, you know, it's just, oh, a bit of a crossbow bolt by some kid at some other castle. It's so ignominious after such a glorious life, I would say. It is a very anticlimactic end, but a lot does happen between his release and his death. So he comes back

initially to England after being released to reassert his authority there, which he does very straightforwardly. But then, of course, he spends the next five years in France, the second half of his reign. Richard is famous for his crusade, quite rightly so. But he spends the bulk of his reign in France fighting against King Philip to recover the territory which Philip has taken during Richard's absence on crusade. For all Richard exploits on crusade, these military skills were never better displayed, really, than during that 1194, 1198 period in France. It's a very difficult and grind process to recover these towns, these fortresses, these strategic locations to push, fill it back to the border of Normandy. And it costs a lot of money, it costs a lot of men. And again,

it's been used against Richard. Why is he spending so much time in France? He's an English king. During the course of his 10-year reign, he spends six months in England. So tiny proportion. So why is he spending so much time in France? Is it because he's a foreigner and just doesn't like England. No, it's because he has, again, duties to protect, to recover his ancestral territories. He's clearly a man who, for whatever else he's motivated by, Richard has a very strong sense of duty. He has a very strong sense of family responsibility. And there's nothing particularly glamorous or prestigious about this kind of warfare. It's grinding, as I say, it's monotonous, it's dirty and grubby, sieges and skirmishes and ravaging and all that kind of

He needs to meet and drink, nuts and bolts of 12th century warfare, nothing spectacular about it. But he does it relentlessly. He does it remorselessly. And he's very successful at it. He's very close when he dies to having recovered all of the territory which Philip has taken, and basically putting Philip back in his box. And as you say, it's only when he is killed very, well, needlessly, essentially in 1199, that that process comes to an end.

His death takes place during a siege in southern France, actually. He left Normandy for the time being to go and besiege some castles in Nemoge, where the local duke is acting up. There's nothing, again, grand about it. It's a little local dispute. Richard goes out to inspect the siege works at the end of one day. He's not planning to get involved, so he doesn't put his armour on. And one of the crossbow men in the castle sees him, takes a pock shot at him,

and hits him in the shoulder. So not a fatal wound, but it's a wound which turns gangrenous. Richard, we're told, we're told that Richard doesn't let out a sound when he's hit because he doesn't want to alarm his entourage. He goes back to his tent, tries to pull out the arrow from his shoulder himself, only succeeds in snapping it off and leaving the metal barb in his shoulder. A surgeon has to get that out. They do that, but the shoulder is very much hacked about in the process. I can't imagine how awful this must be. And the wound then gets infected, turns gangreness, the infection spreads, and Richard dies. So it is a very pathetic end to a glorious career, but in our sense, he's not unusual. His father was the same, disappointing end to a

great life. His elder brother was the same, a very sordid end to the young king's life. John will be the same again, a pretty anticlimactic end to his life. Seems to run in the family. I suppose that If you are doing this kind of nuts and bolts work that it takes to be a real ruler, you're also opening yourself up to this. If you are actually on the battlefield, if you are concerned about making sure your patrimony continues in the line that you expect it to, it's very easy to get dysentery, isn't it? It's very easy to be wounded and have that get infected.

It's very easy to have these small things, which now wouldn't kill someone, but in a world before antibiotics, they certainly do. that's when these things get in. One of my people's wrote in an essay once about the middle ages that people died more often in the middle ages, they said, which I thought, kind of knew what they meant, it's easier to die, essentially, and things which today wouldn't concern us,

which would be easily treated are faint. Dysentry is the classic example. We still see this in a developing world today, where water is infected or in short supply and services aren't what they are in the developed world. Dysentry is a major problem. I suppose one of the things that I really like about Richard, though, is after his death,

I like how he's buried in multiple different places because it really, to me, sort of cements the way that he thinks about all of his lands and himself as a ruler. I wonder if you can talk us through that. Well, yes, so Richard dies, and he knows he's going to die. Once the infection sets in,

he's seen enough people die, I think, in battle of their wounds to know what this means. So he makes his arrangements very clear. On one level, their practical arrangements, when a king dies, and we see this with Henry I, the body has to be dealt with very quickly. The entrails, the viscera, have to be taken out, because the body will probably have to be transported somewhere for burial. If the body isn't eviscerated, then gases will build up in the body and all sorts of consequences will flow, as William McConkra can show William McConk's corpse exploded when they tried to force it into his sarcophagus in Normandy. So nobody wanted that.

That was a practical necessity. But Richard also had a mind for where different bits of his body should go. So his brain and his entrails, he stipulated, should be taken to an abbey in Pu. Patou is part of Akritain, northern part of Akritain. The Abbe of Cháru in Puaude would be honoured by receiving the brain and entrails of Richard. Why Sharoos? All I know about Charu is that Charlemagne was reputedly its founder. So that may have been a connection that Richard wanted to maintain.

his heart was taken out and sent to Rouen for burial, Ruan, the chief city of Normandy. So it was buried there alongside his older brother, Henry, who was buried in Ruein. When Richard's heart was taken out, one chronicler said he was noted as being unusually large. I don't know what that means, but there we are, Lionheart, it's another version of that. You literally had a huge heart. So heart to Ruan, and the rest of him, his corpse, essentially, was taken to the family burial place at the Abbeufont-Rue in Aung. where he was buried at his father's feet.

So they might not have got on the last few years of Henry the Second's life, but they spend eternity together, nevertheless. Well, I mean, I think that is nice to have a little bit of a catharsis at the end of so much family drama. And I do think it really recommends him as a person, this sort of thoughtful way

of saying how he's going to be divided up. And it also really cements how important all of these lands were to him. And I think it's really easy for us in the 21st century to sit back and say, well, why don't you care? Why don't you care more about England? And I suppose, well, England's safe. You know that you've got this in control. But all of the French lands are really up for debate.

And his actions simply follow the smartest thing that you can do in terms of getting those on board, I think. Yes. I don't know how much to read into the symbolism of these locations, really, but it is obvious that nothing of Richard ends up in England. Yeah. All of his various bits and pieces are buried in one French territory or another, some in Normandy, some in enjou, some in Appetain, but not in England. So although Richard was born in England, he's still very much a Frenchman, spoke French, very hard to know, probably didn't speak more than a few words of English. That doesn't mean he didn't value England. They gave him a royal title, which none of his other territories did.

But it's that perceived neglect of England, which has counted against Richard in the last 200 years, really, that he ignored his duties as an English king. I don't think historians view it like that anymore. The assessments of Richard are much more balanced and based really on contemporary understandings of what a 12th century king who ruled extensive territories and had a whole wide range of duties and responsibilities what that kind of ruler shouldn't be expected to do.

Richard, I think that that is the perfect place to leave it. I'd like to thank you so much for talking me through one of my favorite people in the Middle Ages. You're very welcome. Thank you for having me. Thanks so much as always for listening. and thank you to Richard once again for joining me. This has been Gone Medieval from History Hit, and if you like what you've heard,

don't forget to rate, review, follow the podcast, and tell your friends about it. If you fancy suggesting an episode, you can drop us an email at Gone Medieval at HistoryHit.com. My co-host Matt Lewis will retake the Gone Medieval Throne on Friday. And as always, I'll see you again next Tuesday.

Until next time.