Richard The Lionheart: England's Crusader King
How the King of England led a Crusade for the Holy Land against Saladin.
Richard was born on September 8, 1157 in England. His father was King Henry II. The English monarch had seized the French territories of William the Conqueror’s successors in the 1140s, including the Duchy of Normandy and the County of Maine in northern France. Henry had fought for years against his cousin, Stephen I, for possession of England and Wales. Three years prior to Richard’s birth, Henry had inherited Stephen’s lands, bringing the protracted civil war to its conclusion.
Richard’s mother was Eleanor of Aquitaine, a powerful medieval woman who had married French King Louis VII, before divorcing him and marrying the English Henry in 1154. As the successor to the Duchy of Aquitaine, located in western France, she had brought this territory to Henry by marriage.
Angevin Empire
Richard’s royal dynasty was called the Plantagenets, named after a flower of the order of Planta Genista, which Henry II’s father used to wear. The Plantagenets ruled over vast territories on both sides of the English Channel. Richard’s childhood saw his family as a powerful dynasty in both England and France, and he spent time in both nations.
Henry II was King of England and Lord of Wales. As a descendent of William the Conqueror, Henry ruled over the Duchy of Normandy in northern France, along with several other territories in northern and western France, such as the County of Maine.
Henry’s vast empire rivaled that of the French Crown. But due to the unique features of English geography, the English monarchy had to swear nominal allegiance to their French rivals. During Richard’s youth, Henry sought to establish a new English lordship across the Irish Sea. The Angevin Empire stretched across England, Wales, Ireland, and most of northern and central France. This was the empire that Richard himself would inherit.
Education
Little is known of Richard’s early life and education, but he probably received a normal aristocratic upbringing. He was educated in military affairs, and was able to speak Latin at a high level. He had a keen interest in poems and music. Several medieval Muslim writers later claimed the Englishman had a profound interest in Arab culture. Was this true, or were these Muslim writers simply attesting to Richard’s cultural tolerance? It is not entirely clear.
Crisis in the family
As an adult, Richard was more connected with France than England. At the age of 14, in June of 1172, he became the Duke of Aquitaine. A year later, he became implicated in an internal revolt within the Plantagenet dynasty. Eleanor and her sons aligned themselves with rival French King Louis VII against their English father. During this rebellion, Richard was knighted by King Louis. He saw his first military action in Normandy in the summer of 1173. Weeks later, Henry offered his son territory, but Richard refused. He was staunchly devoted to his mother.
The dynamics of the rebellion changed when, in 1173, Eleanor was captured by Henry. The fighting continued for months later, until Henry the Younger and King Louis made peace with Henry II. Richard eventually caved as well. Although terms were given to the sons, Eleanor remained her husband’s prisoner for years to come.
Duke of Aquitaine
Henry II was deeply impressed by his second son’s performance in the war. Such familial revolts were not exactly uncommon in the Middle Ages. In the aftermath of the revolt, Henry gave Richard partial control of the armed forces in Aquitaine. This was Richard’s first taste of real power. He had the responsibility of putting down revolts in the Duchy.
From 1175 into the 1180s, Richard crushed rebellions by the nobles of western and central France. In 1176 and 1177, military campaigns reached as far south as the borders of Navarre, a small Basque kingdom along the Pyrenees in both France and Spain. To curry favor with his monarchical father, Richard was especially brutal in his violent crushing of local rebellions, even going so far as to tear apart castles piece by piece. Even by the barbaric standards of medieval Europe, Richard was a ruthless man.
At a very young age, Richard distinguished himself for his military excellence. Just short of age 20, he had already earned his famous nickname Richard Coeur de Lion, or “Richard the Lionheart.” This name was in widespread use by the 1180s.
Personality
Richard was very tall, about six foot. He was handsome, with reddish blonde hair and a pale complexion. He was distinguished by his military prowess, an image that he carefully cultivated in public. A cultured man, Richard was a generous patron of troubadours and poets. But he was also prone to pride, greed, and anger.
After extensive negotiations, a marriage was arranged between Richard and a woman named Berengaria of Navarre. The union never produced any children. Because of this, as well as comments made by his contemporaries, some 20th-century historians speculated that King Richard was gay. But the evidence is ambiguous, and other historians think he was bisexual.
Philip’s revolt
Richard hoped to carve out the Duchy of Aquitaine as a separate fiefdom from the Angevin Empire. As his father Henry approached age 50, royal succession became an increasingly important issue.
His brothers, Geoffrey and Henry the Younger, staged a new revolt after their father in 1183. When the younger Henry died of dysentery, Richard was left the oldest son and heir apparent of Henry II’s empire. Geoffrey died in a jousting tournament in 1186.
In the following years, Henry II gave to favor his younger son John. He wanted John to inherit the Duchy of Aquitaine. Richard was enraged. He aligned with French King Philip II in 1187.
Philip II had inherited the throne of France in 1180, when he was just 15 years old. He and Richard had a decade-long rivalry. But during the late 1180s, their relationship became increasingly amicable. In 1189, Richard and Philip teamed up and defeated Henry II. Henry, now elderly and dying of illness, cursed his son. He died days later, leaving Richard as his unambiguous successor.
Richard moved quickly to secure his kingship. He was invested as the Duke of Normandy two weeks later, on July 20. Later that summer, he made a brief visit to England, where he was crowned as King. Finally, after 15 years of civil war, the Angevin Empire appeared to reach an equilibrium. Just as Richard consolidated his power, he received a call from the Crusader States of the Holy Land.
Crusades for the Holy Land
The Crusades were an ongoing series of wars by European Christians since the late 11th century to reclaim the Holy Land around Palestine and Syria, especially Jerusalem, on behalf of Christendom.
For centuries after the rise of Christianity, the Holy Land had remained in the hands of the Christian Byzantine Empire. These lands were conquered by the Arabs, and incorporated into their caliphate, which ruled from Baghdad.
While the loss of the Holy Places associated with Jesus were a blow for Christendom, the powers of Christian Europe were relieved by the general tolerance of the Muslim occupiers. The Islamic powers generally allowed Europe’s Christians to visit the Holy Sites. But over the course of the 11th century, this changed radically with the rise of the Seljuk Turks. Coming out of Central Asia, the Turks were aggressive expansionists who conquered most of the Middle East. They threatened the Byzantine capital at Constantinople. In response, Byzantium’s imperial government appealed to the Christian powers of Western Europe for aid. The results were two centuries of crusading activity between the 1090s and the 1290s.
First and Second Crusades
In 1095, Pope Urban II preached the First Crusade to reclaim the Holy Land for Christianity. This was met with a highly enthusiastic response by European Christians. Many of them took up the Crusader Cross and headed to the east, including the nobles of France, England, and Germany.
By 1099, the Crusaders had recaptured the Holy Land and installed several crusader states, including the newly established Kingdom of Jerusalem. These principalities flourished for decades, until the Muslims reconquered the city of Edens in 1144. This triggered a Second Crusade, from 1147 to 1150.
Although France’s King Louis VII and Germany’s King Conrad III went east, the Second Crusade was met with little success. Calm restored for years afterward, but in the 1170s and early 1180s, a new Muslim ruler from Kurdistan united the disparate Islamic kingdoms of Syria and Egypt, thus encircling the Christian Crusader Kingdoms. This man was Saladin, whose name means “the goodness of faith.”
Saladin’s jihad
In the summer of 1187, Saladin and his Muslim forces won a ground-breaking victory at the Battle of Hatton. By autumn, Jerusalem was recaptured from the Christians. The remaining Crusader states were now in serious peril. They appealed frantically to the Christian powers of Europe.
News of Saladin’s success reached the ears of Europe. In the following months, Philip II and Henry II, prior to his death, had committed to a crusade to recapture the Holy Land.
With his ascension to the throne, King Richard was intent on crusading. He organized plans in 1189. He raised funds for a naval fleet to move across the Mediterranean, as well as massive logistical support over several years.
A tithe, or 10% tax, was raised to fund the Crusade. It was known as the Saladin Crusade. It was begun by King Henry II before his death. The various Angevin territories across Europe were forced into paying for Richard’s war in the Middle East.
Third Crusade
Led by King Richard, the Third Crusade began. Richard’s Crusader army left the shores of Sicily on April 10, 1191. He had over 200 ships and 17,000 soldiers. Many ships were scattered or destroyed by storms.
Richard’s bride-to-be, Berengina, found herself lost in the Byzantine territory of Cyprus. Isaac Komnenos declared himself a rival emperor against Byzantium, and captured Berengina. This dragged King Richard into a conflict with the Byzantines. He assaulted the city of Limassol. By June, Cyprus was conquered by Richard. It would be a vital Crusader base for years to come. Cyprus became an indepdentn Christian kingdom, ruled by the Lusignans up until the 15th century.
When Richard arrived in the Middle East, he aligned himself with the leaders of the Crusader states. The Kingdom of Jerusalem was divide by a civil war between Guy de Lusignan and Conrad de Montferrat. Those rival factions were joined together in a fragile alliance by the King of France. King Philip had Jerusalem under siege. With Richard’s reinforcements now in the Holy Land, the Arabs were not unable to maintain their control, and they surrendered to the Christian Crusaders. King Philip returned speedily to Europe, hoping to exploit Richard’s preoccupation with the Middle East and consolidate his own power back home.
Richard was now the uncontested leader of the Third Crusade. He moved up the coast of Palestine, solidifying Crusader positions for a fresh drive to retake Jerusalem. Arriving at Acre, Richard ordered the execution of 3,000 Muslim prisoners of war. This was because Saladin had failed to pay the ransom. Richard led his forces south, toward Jaffa. He stayed close to the coast, where his forces could be reinforced by the Crusader fleet in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Battle of Arsuf
Richard finally confronted Saladin at the Battle of Arsuf, on September 7, 1191. For days, Saladin and his 25,000 men, mostly light cavalry, had been harassing Richard’s smaller but better equipped force of 10,000 infantry and 1,500 heavy cavalry. Richard’s horsemen were among the most formidable in the Holy Land, but lacked the agility of Saladin’s light cavalry. Richard was unwilling to move far from his water supplies, and this harmed his war effort.
Saladin’s troops succeeded in breaking into Richard’s Crusader formation early on. But Richard orchestrated a successful counterattack, exploiting the weakness of his rival’s forces. The Arab forces were broken up and killed.
Richard had won a crushing victory. Saladin lost about 5,000 men, while Richard only lost about 1,000. It opened up the route to Jaffa, which the Crusaders reached three days. Saladin’s walls around Jerusalem were deconstructed and replaced by new ones.
Richard came to believe that, to maintain Christian control of Jerusalem, he had to strike at Saladin’s dominions in Egypt. He aimed to seize Cairo. But he was overruled by Guy, Conrad, and his fellow Crusaders, who favored a direct strike at Jerusalem. But Richard would never be the one to actually do it.
A failed Crusade
By the end of 1191, the King’s Crusade had conquered Cyprus. It retook the Palestinian coast from Acre to Jaffa. The route to Jerusalem was prepared for strike. By 1192, Richard’s short-lived glory had died out. The Crusader leadership was utterly divided by internal squabbling. The English King withdrew to Acre, where he received troubling news from Western Europe.
Back in Europe, Richard’s brother John had been openly plotting with the French Crown to seize Richard’s territories. In 1192, Richard quickly scrambled back to Europe. Before he could leave the Holy Land, the Lionheart had to decide on who would be his successor there. He summoned a council, and chose Conrad as the new head of the Crusader states. He sold off Cyprus to Guy for a sum of 60,000 bezants.
Richard’s Crusade began to quickly unravel. Conrad was killed by assassins. Saladin rapidly recaptured Jaffa. Not willing to stay in the Middle East, King Richard made a hurried settlement with Saladin, securing the rights of Christian pilgrims to enter Jerusalem. With this, the Lionheart returned home by October.
Wars with Philip
Richard returned home to Europe in 1194. For the time being, he agreed to a truce with King Philip of France, leaving his brother John as the King of England. The truce was short-lived. Within months, a full-scale war had broken out.
Richard focused his attention on securing central France. By 1195, the monarchs of England and France agreed to a settlement. They agreed to stop fighting, in exchange for the arrangement of a politically expedient marriage between relatives. But the proposal was short-lived, and Richard continued to make further conquests at Philip’s expense. By January 1196, King Philip was forced into a treaty. Under the Treaty of Louviers, Philip relinquished all of his gains from Richard’s period of absence, except a small part in northwestern France, and a handful of border castles.
In 1196, Philip furiously assembled a coalition of states to combat King Richard’s influence on both sides of the Channel. Philip’s war was ultimately unsuccessful, and the Lionheart emerged more powerful than ever. But the French Crown was far from done, and would expand at England’s expense for the next several centuries, before completing the process going into the 1550s.
The Lionheart’s Legacy
Despite the short-lived success of the King’s Crusade, Richard’s efforts would prove for naught over the coming centuries. Europe waged many crusades, but could not recapture the Holy Land. Jerusalem was briefly seized by the Sixth Crusade in the 1220s, but lost control of the Holy City after just 15 years. With the Fall of Tripoli in 1289, and the Siege of Acre in 1291—a hundred years after the Lionheart’s Crusade—it was game over for Christendom. The Muslims conquered Jerusalem permanently.
Still, King Richard remains one of England’s most acclaimed kings. Ruling for just 10 years, half of which were spent away in the Middle East, the King was still able to leave an indelible mark on medieval European history.
The King’s Crusade signaled a much-needed victory for exhausted Europe, after its seemingly endless string of defeats at the hands of Islam. The English Crusader King broke the illusion of Saladin’s invincibility. His crusade was the most successful for European Christendom since the First Crusade a century before. To medieval Christians, he represented the triumph of European Christendom against the Islamic powers of the Middle East.
With the ongoing War on Terror, the Lionheart remains a rallying cry and a powerful image for the defense of Western civilization against the menace of radical Islamic terrorism.
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