‘Johnny Loads of Land returns to being Johnny Lackland!’.
‘You know Johnny you are sliding back to being: I, John lack land’!
‘Johnny, you forgot that you have to keep faith with your original loyal band’!
‘But Johnny…. you didn’t, well, perhaps you couldn’t!
So your huge inherited empire eventually turned into sand’!
News of John’s appalling and foolish conduct in Normandy was music to the ears of Philip ‘de-esgusting’ Augustus. The king of France had long cast covetous eyes over its green and fertile terrain.
The year of 1204 was not a happy one for King John. In March, ‘de-esgusting’ Augustus won an important victory over him and in April, his mother, the inimitable Eleanor died at the age of about eighty one .
The death of a woman who was married to both the king of England and the king of France, and whose two sons also wore the crown of England, cannot go without appropriate comment.
R.I.P
Eleanor of Acquitaine.
This remarkable woman, who had been the wife of two kings and also the mother of two more, died at Fontevraud on March 31st 1204. The two marriages brought happiness to neither bride nor the bridegroom.
Eleanor’s first husband, King Louis VI of France whom she married in 1137 was the father of King Philip Augustus, the future nemesis of the Plantagenet clan.
The marriage ceremony of King Louis of France and Eleanor of Aquitaine.
In 1147 Eleanor had accompanied Louis on the Second Crusade, and endured its rigours with her customary enthusiasm and fortitude. However, when the union produced no son, the couple had had their marriage annulled on grounds of consanguinity. This was ironic as Eleanor would bear five sons with her second husband Henry II of England whom she married in 1152. To live to be over eighty in the 12th century was quite an incredible feat, and longevity was clearly a boon to a woman who believed that life was for living to the full. In Eleanor’s case a long life did not come without some considerable personal cost and tragedy. Of the ten children that Eleanor bore, only two, Eleanor of Castille and John would survive her.
Joan of Sicily who would predecease her mother.
In August of 1203 the French King made his move by besieging the Lionheart’s flagship Chateau Gaillard, eventually capturing it in the next melancholy year. Situated on the bank of the Seine at Andelys, Richard had built this massive castle to act as an impregnable obstacle to Philip ‘de-esgusting’ Augustus in the event of his attempting to invade Normandy. Indeed, Chateau Gaillard was generally considered as being impervious to assault, but the fickleness of the Lionheart’s younger brother King John had yet to be factored in. It was the events at Chateau Gaillard that would earn John his nickname ‘softsword’.
The commander of the Chateau Gaillard was the loyal Roger de Lacy from Pontrefact in Yorkshire. Confident behind the castle’s huge defensive walls, de Lacy did nonetheless expect John to send the necessary supplies and also an army to successfully raise the siege. In the event, neither expectation was realised and the siege would last eight months.
John conceived a plan to raise the siege, which consisted of a combined strategy involving a closely concerted land and water borne attack manoeuvre. It was a bold and really quite imaginative strategy which was calculated to succeed, but unfortunately for John and fortuitously for ‘de-sgusting’ Augustus, circumstances dictated otherwise. Roger de Lacy had destroyed the nearby bridge in order to stop the French army from being able to move from one side of the Seine to the other. King Philip ordered that a line of boats be placed across the Seine to act as a substitute bridge.
Chateau Gaillard as it is today.
John decided to send heavily armed supply boats which were to destroy the French ‘boat-bridge’ and then deliver the urgently needed provisions to the besieged army. Simultaneously, a land force was to attack the besiegers who, once their bridge of boats had been destroyed, would be trapped on one bank of the Seine with their backs to the river.
Sadly for John, his attempt to defeat Philip ‘de-esgusting’ Augustus on the banks of the Seine were all in vain!
This failure would result in the loss of Normandy, Anjou, most of Poitou and all of Maine!
However, the supply flotilla failed to arrive on time because John’s commanders had misjudged the timing of the currents. This miscalculation ensured the failure of the land borne assault. Initially, the attack by John’s forces under William Marshall was successful, as the French were taken by surprise. But because their ‘boat-bridge’ was still intact, the French were able to retreat across it to the other bank and regroup in preparation for a counter-attack. The French army’s endeavours were successful, and John’s army was driven back. John also tried to draw the besiegers away by wreaking havoc in Brittany but Philip ‘de-esgusting’ Augustus failed to take the bait. In despair, John gave up on Chateau Gaillard and to the disgust of his followers decamped for England. The siege continued into the spring of 1204.
John’s brother, the Lionheart had designed and built the massive structure that was and is Chateau Gaillard. The fortress’s high towers, immense walls and the rooftops of its lofty chambers, made it an incredible sight to behold to anyone sailing casually along the Seine. It was the Lionheart’s memorial and monument, constructed to defend and also to endure. A towering construction built by a sovereign who towered over others.
Kid brother John’s only contribution to the vast building was the addition of a chapel and a garderobe, in other words, a toilet. It was John’s decision to cater for the voiding of his bladder and bowels whilst residing there that were to have fatal consequences not only for Chateau Gaillard but also for the Angevin empire.
King John built a toilet by the chapel so that when he went to pray he would not be caught short!
Because of the king’s need of a convenience, we are now going to lose the whole damn fort!
The French army were able to reach the outer bailey by conventional methods of warfare such as siege engines.
The defenders then retreated to the inner bailey. The French soldiers happened to notice the chute of John’s recently built lavatory, and realised that this offered them a relatively safe but foul-smelling and extremely slippery passageway to the inner bailey. Clambering up, sliding and slipping amidst the faecal matter that inevitably gathered along the toilet tunnel, Philip’s men must have been euphoric at the shock that they were about to deliver to the garrison. History does not record whether the toilet was being used at the time, but if it was, this would be for one unsuspecting soldier, the very last call of nature. There would never be another!
Soon John’s men were surprised by hordes of French soldiers dripping with urine and covered in excrement as they hurtled towards the startled defenders. The oncoming stench twisting their nostrils, the besieged soldiers tried their best to repel the fetid intruders. One of John’s men may well have crudely remarked:
This battle is really going down the toilet!
Another might have replied:
No! the problem is actually coming up through the toilet!
The sewage encrusted French soldiers with their their filth smeared weapons drove John’s men back as they fought to stand their ground in the Chateau’s vast domain.
‘I know that war is a dirty business but this is ridiculous!
Abandoned by his king, Roger de Lacy, knowing that he had no option surrendered to Philip ‘de-esgusting’ Augustus in March 1202. This capitulation, along with the death of his mother only weeks later, made the spring of 1204 an especially memorable, nay unforgettable, one for King John. However, worse was yet to come for the last of Henry and Eleanor’s sons.
King Henry II and Queen Eleanor at court. Together at the apex of the Angevin empire.
By 1206, John had been relieved of most of the Plantagenet family’s continental possessions. So now King John was rightly named John ‘Lackland’.