RICHARD I, King of England, called Coeur de Lion. - Fourth-born son of King Henry II Plantagenet and of Eleanor of Aquitaine, b. at Oxford on 8 Sept. 1157, d. at Châlus in the Limousin on 6 Apr. 1199. When his elder brother William (1153-56) died in early childhood, and the younger brother Henry died without heirs in 1183, Richard ascended the throne without difficulty in 1189. But previously he had rebelled several times, with his mother and his brothers, against Henry II at the instigation of the kings of France Louis VI and Philip Augustus; and it was precisely in 1189 that the king of England died, defeated and abandoned by his own.
Richard set about strengthening the truly "imperial" ambition of his dynasty and turned his attention only to his territories overseas and especially to Aquitaine; thus he hoped, like his father, one day to dominate the county of Toulouse and to reach the Mediterranean. He married at Cyprus, during the Crusade, a Spanish woman, Berengaria, daughter of King Sancho VI of Navarre (May 1191); he also dreamed of becoming king of Jerusalem and of taking up on his own account the imperial crown of Henry VI and his claims upon Constantinople. Richard's megalomania could have destroyed Capetian sovereignty, surrounded on every side, had France, with Philip Augustus, not had an intelligent and energetic king; Richard nevertheless succeeded in exhausting the resources of the Angevin Empire and could have entirely ruined the work of Henry II, had he not had good and faithful servants in England, which, however, he did not deign to visit except on rare occasions.
Henry II had died on 6 July 1189; Richard went to spend six months in England to have himself crowned (5 Sept.); but already at the end of the year he set out for the Crusade, from which he did not return until five years later (1194).
The kings of the West had banded together in league to wrest Jerusalem from Saladin, after it had fallen into his hands in 1187. Richard and Philip Augustus, bound by an apparent friendship, set out together, lingered in Sicily, then separated so that the one might conquer Cyprus and the other reach St. John of Acre. Together they retook the city from the infidels, after a siege that was the longest and deadliest of the Middle Ages (June 1189-July 1191), and there Richard won a legendary fame for valor. Having quarreled with Philip, Richard attempted, alone, to retake Jerusalem; but in vain, for he had to negotiate with Saladin a truce that would permit pilgrimages. Returning to the West through central Europe, Richard was imprisoned by Duke Leopold of Austria, handed over to the emperor Henry VI and freed upon payment of a ransom.
On his return, Richard found his states in precarious and dangerous conditions; Philip Augustus had sought to take advantage of his absence to dismember the Plantagenet Empire, encouraging the ambitions of John Lackland, an ungrateful brother, who sought to usurp the goods and perhaps even the crown of his absent brother; he indeed stirred up the discontent of the English barons and bishops, supported the citizens of London, who were forming themselves into a commune. But Richard's interests were well defended and his errors corrected by Walter Hubert, great "justiciar" and archbishop of Canterbury, who governed England from 1193 to 1198 with a rod of iron. Thanks to him, Richard could content himself with making a brief appearance in his Kingdom in 1194 and then regain his possessions on the continent, from which he never returned.
If Normandy, administered with order, remained faithful, Aquitaine was continually the theater of feudal uprisings. Richard also encountered strong resistance on the part of the Bretons, faithful to his [nephew] Arthur, whom he counted on despoiling. Everywhere the Plantagenet encountered the hostility of the Capetians. In Richard's absence, Philip had annexed the eastern regions of Normandy (Vexin, the county of Aumale and of Eu). After the return of the King of England, war devastated for five years the borders of Berry and of Normandy; Philip was defeated several times, especially at Fréteval, in 1194, and his adversary, to prevent his access to Normandy, built a series of fortresses, of which Château-Gaillard, in the valley of the Seine, remains still the most important testimony. Richard also raised up new adversaries against him: Renaud of Boulogne and above all the count of Flanders, Baldwin IX; and he added to his own allies the emperor Otto of Brunswick, to whom the king of France sought to oppose Philip of Swabia. It thus seemed that Richard must triumph; everyone, however, forgot the Crusade; and the Pope, recalling it to their memory, very opportunely for Philip Augustus, imposed upon the two enemies a truce (1199). A few months later, Richard's ambition and glory collapsed by reason of his obscure death at the siege of the castle of Châlus (6 Apr. 1199).
Bibliography13 works
Guglielmo Mollat