4 - The Aftermath of the Third Crusade

Summary

Richard the Lionheart's captivity

On his way home from the Third Crusade in December 1192 Richard was captured and imprisoned by Duke Leopold of Austria. This was despite the fact that Richard was a crusader-pilgrim, and such an action was strictly forbidden by the Church and punishable by excommunication. In February 1193 Leopold handed him on to his brother-in-law, the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI, and the king spent nearly a year and a half being moved from one prison to another. William of Newburgh reported that Richard himself later said that he had at first been treated well, but that after the French king's cousin Philip of Beauvais came to the imperial court he was loaded down with chains so heavy that a horse or a donkey would have struggled to move, and Peter of Blois wrote in a letter to Archbishop Conrad of Mainz that ‘Richard was held in chains and made to go hungry, his face pale and his body weak.’ Gillingham suggests that ‘if anything like this did happen it is likely to have been in the weeks immediately after Easter 1193 when he was imprisoned in the castle of Trifels’. From here he was rescued by the diplomacy of William of Longchamp, who persuaded Henry to allow him to return to the imperial court and negotiated a date for his release. Gillingham relates that ‘Longchamp was then sent back to England with letters from both Richard and Henry VI exhorting the prisoner's subjects to find the money as quickly as possible, with similar letters being sent to other parts of Richard's dominions.’ This is likely to have been when he composed his famous song in Old French (RS 1891) to help raise his ransom.

Ja nus homs pris ne dira sa raison

Adroitement si con hon dolanz non;

Mes par confort puet il fere chanzon.

Pro ai d'amis mes povre sont li don;

Honte i auront se por ma raençon

Sui ça deus ivers pris.

Ce sevent bien mi home e mi baron,

Englais, Normant, Poitevin et Gascon,

Qe je n'avoie si povre conpaignon

Qe je laissasse por avoir en prison.

Je nel di pas por nulle retraçon,

Mes encor sui je pris.