Anderson Kingship in Miniature: Phillips Richard I and the Tird Crusade Just days afer lavishly celebrating Easter with his crusade army in April of 1192, King Richard I of England received some stunningly bad news. A messenger from England informed him that his younger brother John had expelled the king’s administrators and would soon seize most of Richard’s lands and revenues if the king did not return to England immediately.1 Te Tird Crusade had not been going well, and afer some deliberation Richard elected to leave for home as soon as possible. Before heading to England, the crusader-king needed to grant someone the authority to command the crusade in his absence. Guy of Lusignan, whom Richardtraces supported, and Conrad of Montferrat, who enjoyed the support of many of the barons in the crusader states, emerged as the most likely candidates. Richard could not simply appoint his preferred candidate and be on his way, however. According to Ambroise, the eyewitness Tird Crusade chronicler who authored L’Estoire de la Guerre Sainte, the king’s men informed him that “if he did not create in the land a lord who understood war and whom everyone could support…they would all follow him and 1 Ambroise, L’Estoire de la Guerre Sainte, ed. Marianne Ailes and Malcolm Barber, trans. Marianne Ailes (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2003), 146. 204 Anderson Phillips This 1927 oil painting by artist Glen Warren Philpot depicts Richard I departing England for the Holy Land with his crusading host. (Photo courtesy of www.parliament.uk.)1 abandon the land.”2 Faced with this reality, Richard put the issue to a vote, and the crusade army unanimously voiced their support for Conrad. Although Richard did not care for this outcome, he had little choice but to respect the camp’s decision. Tis episode perfectly encapsulated Richard’s style of command both as a ruler of the Angevin empire and as a monarch on crusade. Far from an all-powerful ruler, Richard needed the support of his men in order to lead successfully, and he rarely acted without at least consulting a council of advisors, even on crusade.3 Te king ultimately derived his power through the support of the great men of the realm. If his support base dried up, the monarch faced political catastrophe. Richard therefore used a variety of methods to ensure both the stability of his position and the satisfaction of the aristocrats surrounding him. Angevin rulership entailed a constant give- and-take between the king and his leading men, and an armed expedition into the Levant proved no diferent for Richard I. Tis article argues that Richard I efectively transposed many of the 2 Ibid., 148. 3 Ibid., 173. 205 The UNC-Chapel Hill Journal of History ruling strategies he employed in governing the Angevin Empire onto his attempt to lead the Tird Crusade. For Western European monarchs in the late twelfh century, successful rule required a delicate balance of negotiation, persuasion, and occasional force, and this balance could ofen be quite difcult to strike correctly. Indeed, the crusader camp became something of a laboratory for Richard, allowing him to experiment with and determine the degree to which various aspects of Angevin kingship translated to the Levant. Richard the Lionheart’s preferred methods of rule proved exceedingly adaptable, to the point that the king of England enjoyed great success implementing them during his pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Tese malleable tools of the trade included the king’s personality and skillful manipulation of his image, patronage, readiness to negotiate, and warfare tactics. Historians of Richard I generally fall into one of two schools, viewing Richard as either a poor monarch who neglected and exploited his kingdom, or conversely as an exemplary ruler who either met or exceeded contemporary ideals of kingship. Te less rosy view of Richard’s reign came into prominence in the late nineteenth century, with the publication of England Under the Angevin Kings by Kate Norgate, who found Richard to be a reckless warmonger, and something of a political lightweight.4 Sir Steven Runciman reinforced this negative portrait in the 1950s with his towering work, A History of the Crusades. Runciman cast Richard as an impetuous hothead who “had neither the political astuteness and administrative competence of his father, nor Queen Eleanor’s sound sense.”5 In 1974, James Brundage largely echoed Runciman’s view of Richard as a talented military leader with few other virtues of note, going so far as to label Richard “one of the worst rulers that England has ever had.”6 Tis school of thought held sway until the late 1970s, when John Gillingham began attempting to counterbalance what he viewed as inaccurate portrayals of Richard’s reign. In 1999 he published a biography, Richard I, that stands as the premier piece of scholarship in the feld.7 4 Kate Norgate, England Under the Angevin Kings (London: MacMillan, 1887). 5 Steven Runciman, A History of the Crusades, vol. 3, The Kingdom of Acre and the Later Crusades (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954), 35. 6 James A. Brundage, Richard Lion Heart (New York: Scribner, 1974), 258. 7 John Gillingham, Richard I (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999). 206 Anderson Phillips Gillingham contends that, far from a neglectful king or feckless knight- errant, by the standards of his day Richard I was an excellent monarch and skilled diplomat. Jean Flori’s excellent study of Richard’s reign in connection with the emerging chivalric ethic arrives at many of the same conclusions, although Flori chides Gillingham for his tendency toward hero-worship.8 Nevertheless, Gillingham’s view of Richard I gained traction throughout the fnal decades of the twentieth century, particularly in the works of J.O. Prestwich and Richard Heiser. Prestwich praises King Richard as a ruler “intelligibly concerned to employ his great military talents in the widely extended interests of the house of Anjou,” while Heiser points to Richard’s shrieval appointments as proof of his administrative competence.9 Even so, such positive portrayals of Richard’s reign by no means enjoy universal acceptance, and in many ways his legacy remains a topic of debate.10 Regardless, this almost obsessive focus on whether Richard ought to be remembered as a “good’ or “bad” monarch has lef a gap in scholarship that this paper is intended to fll. While the reign of Richard I has been scrutinized extensively, particularly his involvement in the Tird Crusade, there has been no study analyzing the commonalities between Richard’s strategies of rulership in the Angevin and his strategies of command on crusade. Te majority of the work dealing with Richard’s time on crusade attempts to determine whether the Tird Crusade should ultimately be deemed a “success” or a “failure.” As with the good king/bad king dichotomy, this preoccupation does little to forward our understanding of Richard I or the period in which he lived. By looking at Richard’s methods of command and governance both in Europe and on crusade, this paper sheds some light on a neglected area ripe for further study. 8 Jean Flori, Richard the Lionheart: King and Knight, trans. Jean Birrell (Paris: Edinburgh University Press, 1999), 40. 9 J.O. Prestwich, “Richard Coeur de Lion: Rex Bellicosus,” in Richard Coeur de Lion in History and Myth, ed. Janet L. Nelson (Exeter, UK: Short Run Press, 1992), 15. See also Richard R. Heiser, “Richard I and His Appointments to English Shrievalties,” English Historical Review 112, no. 445 (1997): 2. 10 Michael Markowski, “Richard Lionheart: bad king, bad crusader?” Journal of Medieval History 23, no. 4 (1997): 351-365. 207 The UNC-Chapel Hill Journal of History Te Man Who Would Be King: Richard I in Aquitaine and the Angevin At its height, the Angevin Empire extended from England’s Scottish border to the Pyrenees.11 It encompassed all of England, as well as large swaths of continental territory that included Brittany, Poitou, and Normandy, among others. Te term “empire,” however, with its connotations of centralization and relatively unifed governance, is something of a misnomer in the Angevin case. Te territories comprising Angevin dominions functioned as completely separate entities, a loosely connected collection of lands with distinct sets of laws and customs.12 Henry II treated his “empire” as something akin to a family business, owned and operated by the king and his sons. Each son received a parcel of land for his own that he then ruled as a fef.13 Despite his position as the duke of Aquitaine, however, Richard remained his father’s vassal, owing him both loyalty and service. In contrast to more frmly attached Angevin dominions like England and Normandy, Richard’s duchy of Aquitaine harbored an independent streak that ofen made it more difcult to rule efectively. As Gillingham put it, “in Aquitaine … it is not that ducal authority did not exist at all; it is rather that it was ‘patchy.’”14 As duke of Aquitaine, Richard found himself constantly at odds with rebellious local lords, particularly Viscount Aimar of Limoges and Count William of Angoulême. Dealing with this cabal of enemies dominated Richard’s time and eforts until his accession to the throne.15 Tus, the nature of the Angevin Empire, and feudal societies more generally, accustomed Richard I to recognizing another’s authority over him, as well as to the difculties of enforcing his will on unruly vassals and seigneurs. Te concept of an all-powerful king simply did not exist in twelfh-century Western Europe. In its place there existed a constantly shifing balance of power between the king and his nobles.