King of the North Wind: The Life of Henry II in Five Acts. Claudia Gold
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Map and Gerald of Wales later accused her of sleeping with Henry’s father Geoffrey. Walter claimed she ‘married Henry despite rumours circulating to the effect that she had already shared Louis’ bed with Geoffrey, Henry’s father’. Walter went on to speculate that ‘this … is why their progeny, sullied as their origins were, finally came to naught’.205 If true, it would have made their marriage incestuous in the eyes of the church. The chronicler William of Newburgh believed it was Eleanor who ‘longed to be wed to the duke of Normandy as one more congenial to her character’, and Gervase of Canterbury wrote that ‘people said that it was she who had cleverly brought about that contrived repudiation’, as she had grown tired of Louis’ ‘decrepit Gallic embraces’. Helinand de Froidmont, writing at the beginning of the thirteenth century, went even further, ascribing Eleanor’s desire to divorce entirely to her desire for Henry: ‘It was on account of her lasciviousness that Louis gave up his wife, who behaved not like a queen but more like a [whore].’206
And as late as the early twentieth century, one historian of the counts of Poitou explained Eleanor’s pursuit of marriage to Henry thus: she had grown bored of Louis’ ‘almost effeminate grace’, and rather she ‘wished to be dominated, and as the vulgar crudely put it, she was among those women who enjoy being beaten’.207
Eleanor was far more likely to have been seduced by promises of autonomy rather than Henry’s personal charms alone. Henry was a risk-taker and an optimist. His parents and his tutors had imbued him with self-belief since babyhood. Henry – young, arrogant and talented – likely believed that the crown of England was his; despite Eustace’s formidable claim, he had only to wait. England, Normandy, Maine and Anjou, together with the cornucopia of Aquitaine offered by marriage to Eleanor, would all eventually be theirs if she chose him as her new husband.
No wonder Henry left Paris ‘full of joy’; he had secured a promise of marriage from the wealthiest heiress in the western world. Now he planned to travel to England immediately, to fight Stephen and Eustace.
The historian Kate Norgate, quoting the chronicler Peter Langtoft, says that Matilda was also in Paris with Henry and Geoffrey, and if so it is likely that both parents were party to his plans.208 But if Matilda was there to help to smooth the negotiations with Louis, she left before Henry and Geoffrey. The worldly Geoffrey, under Bernard’s ‘curse’, could not have imagined he would have so little time to live. On their way to Lisieux to meet with Henry’s Norman barons, Geoffrey caught a fever and died. Henry was not with him, although Geoffrey’s last thoughts were of his eldest son. He is purported to have left him sound advice: to govern each of his diverse provinces by its own laws, and not as one ‘empire’.209
Geoffrey’s sudden and shocking death meant that Henry immediately doubled his possessions. He was now lord of Normandy, Anjou and Maine and his territories already dwarfed Louis’. But he was unable to travel to England to aid his desperately beleaguered supporters – at least not for now. He buried his father in the Cathedral of St Julian at Le Mans, his own birthplace, and commissioned a splendid tomb effigy, which reputedly contained a portrait of Geoffrey rendered in gold and precious gems.210 Henry mourned; later, he would pay for two chaplains to say prayers daily for his father.211 For now, he stayed in Anjou, asserting his authority over his Angevin barons.
As Henry grieved, Louis prepared for divorce. By Christmas he had pulled his forces out of Aquitaine, ready to give the duchy back to Eleanor.212 Would Louis have ceded nearly half of France so easily had he known of Eleanor’s designs? It is doubtful.
He certainly knew nothing of her plans with Henry when, on 18 March 1152 at Beaugency Castle, halfway between Paris (Louis’ capital) and Poitiers (Eleanor’s), their marriage was dissolved. Eleanor left behind her young daughters Marie and Alix. Even if she had remained in her marriage to be close to her children, one historian has pointed out that the girls left the French court the following year to join their fiancés’ households – Louis’ troublesome vassals the brothers Henry of Champagne and Theobald of Blois, whom he hoped to appease by the marriages. We have no evidence that Eleanor ever saw them again.213
No records survive of the proceedings at Beaugency, but anecdotal evidence tells us that Bishop Geoffrey of Langres nastily suggested an investigation into Eleanor’s supposed adultery, which was thwarted by the archbishop of Bordeaux, Eleanor’s subject.214 The archbishop proposed instead that the marriage be dissolved because it was consanguineous. The archbishop of Sens pronounced the marriage annulled, and their daughters legitimate, as Eleanor and Louis had been unaware their marriage was incestuous.215 Eleanor’s property was returned to her in its entirety. After years of wrangling, it was all over within hours. Louis immediately went north, and Eleanor south.
Luck was on Henry’s side – and Eleanor’s. As she rode towards Poitiers, she was ambushed in two separate attacks, by two noblemen who attempted to kidnap her and force her into marriage, to acquire her wealth and power – the count of Blois (who would later marry her daughter Alix), and Henry’s own seventeen-year-old brother Geoffrey, smarting and sulking at his puny inheritance of only four castles. But Eleanor escaped and sent an urgent message to Henry at Lisieux, as he prepared to sail for England. The news that Eleanor was free, however, made him turn around and race to her at Poitiers.
Here, on Whit Sunday, 18 May 1152, a scant eight weeks after her divorce, they were married at the city’s cathedral in a secret ceremony, bringing Aquitaine under Henry’s control.
Henry and Eleanor were together for nearly a month; Henry then rode for Barfleur, and England.216 But at Barfleur, on 16 July, he was forced to turn around once more to deal with Louis’ reaction to their marriage.
Louis was furious and bellicose. Although the boundaries of allegiance owed by the rulers of Aquitaine to the French kings were still, in the mid-twelfth century, unclear, Eleanor had at best humiliated him.217 Eleanor’s language, in contrast, was respectful and pacific. In a grant to Fontevraud Abbey she made at this time, she referred to her divorce from Louis in the following way: ‘separating from my lord Louis, the very illustrious king of the Franks, because we were related’.218 But to Louis, two of his vassals had flouted his authority and married without his permission. Eleanor’s stupendous inheritance had turned his erstwhile relatively minor vassal into one of the most powerful princes in Europe.
Now Louis declared Henry’s lands in France forfeit and went to war, joined in an unholy trinity with Eustace, the thwarted count of Blois, and Henry’s brother Geoffrey.
First, Henry dealt with Louis. He surprised and confused him with a devastating attack on the lands of his brother, Robert of Dreux, and laid waste to the Vexin. Then, in August, he moved against his brother Geoffrey, taking his castles away – its castellans surrendered completely to him. He besieged Montsoreau, stronghold of the rebels, where Geoffrey was forced, humiliatingly, to yield. Henry clearly would not be able to rely on his brother to help him fulfil his ambitions.
Henry’s military training had been exceptional; now he showed himself to be a level-headed general, fighting tenaciously, with cool and excellent judgement, on many fronts. Speed, one of the defining traits of his warfare, was key to Henry’s success. As he marched his armies along at a lightning pace (far beyond the seventeen and a half miles per day averaged by a medieval army) he would soon become known as the ‘King of the North Wind’.219 Henry’s father, Geoffrey, had reputedly studied the fifth-century AD Roman military author, Vegetius. Henry too may have