King of the North Wind

Whether or not Louis believed that Eleanor had committed adultery, there were evidently some in his entourage ready to accuse the queen. It is probable that she and Raymond spoke together in the language of the southern Aquitaine, the langue d’oc (oc meaning ‘yes’) or Provençal. It probably sounded similar to modern Italian, and was unfathomable to most northerners, who spoke the completely different dialect of langue d’oȉl. Although Eleanor spoke the langue d’oȉl fluently, by choosing to converse with her uncle in the Aquitaine tongue, it may have increased suspicion of her. On their way back to France, on 9 October, the royal couple arrived at the papal court at Tusculum, where they had been invited to stay by Pope Eugenius III. Here, they discussed their marital problems with Eugenius.

John of Salisbury wrote an account of the pope’s intercession; evidently neither Eleanor nor Louis was calm. Eleanor had been kidnapped on the way to Italy. Although she was rescued almost immediately, this, added to her violent arguments with Louis, his refusal to divorce her and his ignoring of her military advice, must have made her agitated. She also learned at Tusculum of Raymond’s brutal death in battle, at the end of June 1149. Nur ad-Din defeated Raymond and his allies at the battle of Inab. To celebrate, he decapitated Raymond and sent his head and right arm to the caliph of Baghdad.199 Raymond had apparently fought valiantly, ‘like the high-spirited and courageous warrior he was’.200 We have no evidence, but Eleanor may have blamed Louis for refusing to help Raymond militarily, and for his bloody death.

It was in this atmosphere that Eleanor and Louis put their cases to Eugenius, who, acting the role of marriage counsellor and friend, sought to heal their relationship.

John recorded that:

He reconciled the king and queen after hearing severally the accounts each gave of the estrangement begun at Antioch, and forbade any future mention of their consanguinity: confirming their marriage, both orally and in writing, he commanded under pain of anathema that no word should be spoken against it and that it should not be dissolved under any pretext whatever. This ruling plainly delighted the king, for he loved the queen passionately, in an almost childish way. The pope made them sleep in the same bed, which he had had decked with priceless hangings of his own; and daily during their brief visit he strove by friendly converse to restore love between them.201

They departed the following day. The pope cried as they left: ‘though he was a stern man, he could not hold back his tears’.202 But he had succeeded. There would be no divorce for the king and queen of France. Eugenius’ intervention worked – or at least for the time being.

Eleanor and Louis arrived back in Paris in November 1149, over two years after they had left on their crusade. The experience had been bruising for them both: Eleanor appears to have lost all respect for Louis, and Louis in turn allowed her no power once they returned to France. Yet Eleanor was pregnant again – she may have conceived at Tusculum in the pope’s beautiful bed – and Louis was once more full of hope for a son. She gave birth to another daughter, Alix, in 1150.

Alix’s birth finally persuaded Louis that the marriage was incestuous in the eyes of God, and to grant Eleanor a divorce. Ever pious, Louis now believed God would never give them a son. The pair disliked one another, and the prevailing view of the church – following the teachings of Hippocrates – was that a woman who did not enjoy sex would not produce a ‘seed’, and would therefore not conceive.203 The marriage was by this point so dreadful that it was difficult to imagine, even for Louis, that she would become pregnant again. The death of Abbot Suger – who had been a strong advocate of the marriage – in January 1151 allowed other voices to be heard, particularly Bernard of Clairvaux’s.

Why did Eleanor push so hard for a divorce? She is rumoured to have said that Louis was ‘more monk than man’, a statement which implies incompatibility, whether sexual or otherwise.204 But leaving aside any marital discord or a lack of power in her ancestral lands, Eleanor was an aristocratic woman who had lived all her life at a court, whether her father’s or her husband’s. Although we have very little evidence of her personality for this period in her life, we have a great deal for her last fifteen years. The older Eleanor was intelligent, brave, determined, a capable and respected politician.

Looking at her character in her twenties through the prism of what we know of the woman in her seventies and early eighties, we may make an intelligent guess that the younger Eleanor was pragmatic enough to realise that she had to be married to someone. If Louis granted her a divorce, as duchess of Aquitaine she would become his vassal; he would have the power to marry her to whomever he pleased, probably a court acolyte – anything to hold on to Aquitaine until Marie was old enough to inherit. Eleanor would not be allowed to rule alone.

We can deduce that Eleanor, although queen of France, rich, and with access to her young daughters, was extremely and irrevocably unhappy, and this is why she manoeuvred for Louis to divorce her. She had no guarantees that she would be any happier in a second marriage than in her first, but Eleanor needed to leave Louis.

By August 1151, the matter was not quite decided – Louis may well still have been deliberating. When Henry arrived in Paris in late summer, he must have appeared to Eleanor as a gift. He erupted into her life, and his energy, self-belief and optimism would have been luminous to her.

Everything we know of their characters suggests that Henry was able to persuade Eleanor to marry him by offering her a match of equals and mutual advantage. For Henry, marriage to Eleanor would provide him with wealth, land and heirs enough to gain and secure an empire. For Eleanor, if she took the gamble, this young duke would be her best chance for autonomy. Louis had denied her power in Aquitaine, and she likely envisaged the rest of her life married to him, the mother of daughters, gradually losing every shred of influence. From our knowledge of Eleanor, we may imagine this would have been intolerable to her. Henry appeared at the right moment, promising her heart’s desire: real power, rather than its trappings – the rightful duchess of Aquitaine, in deed as well as name. Theirs would be far more of a partnership than Louis had ever offered her. It was the best she could hope for from a marriage.

As far as we know, there were no witnesses to any formal agreement between Henry and Eleanor, nor are there any surviving documents that attest to it. Meanwhile, the chroniclers – mostly churchmen – were too consumed with Eleanor’s supposed sexual voraciousness to pay it much attention. Walter 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 remembered Vegetius’ lesson: ‘Courage is worth more than numbers, and speed is worth more than courage.’220 In 1152, at Barfleur, forced to abandon his plan to sail to England as he turned to defend Normandy instead, he moved his army along at such a breakneck pace that Robert of Torigni and Gerald of Wales noted that horses died.221

Louis, unable to fend off Henry’s whirlwind attacks, developed a fever and sought peace. Louis’ allies, including an apoplectic Eustace, who had only remained in France to murder Henry, were forced to comply. By the autumn, Henry had routed them all, as swiftly as Hermes. Louis, Henry’s overlord for his lands in France, had failed utterly to bring his rebellious vassal to heel.

Henry was now free to return to Eleanor in Aquitaine, where they embarked on a progress of her lands. Henry made known what sort of a duke he would be; at Limoges, the abbot of Saint-Martial withheld money, and the people of the town attacked his men. Henry’s brutal response was to raze the walls of the town, his instinct in Aquitaine being to keep the local lords under his control with a heavy hand.

While Henry had been preoccupied with marrying Eleanor and fighting Louis and his allies, the Angevin party in England was desperately fending off Stephen’s attacks. When Stephen’s men captured Wallingford on the banks of the Thames, not strategically important in itself but a potent symbol of Angevin strength, its defenders begged Henry to help them.

As far as Stephen and Louis were concerned, England was lost to Henry; it would be impossible for him to leave France. Eustace continued his relentless pursuit, and Louis, Henry knew, would stick to their truce only to resume his attack in the spring.

But they had underestimated Henry FitzEmpress. He was a gambler, trusting his intuition that Eustace would follow him, and that Louis and Geoffrey would not be overly troublesome in their harassment of his lands. He left a now pregnant Eleanor in Rouen with his mother, gave Normandy over to Matilda’s charge, and sailed from Barfleur during a storm, two weeks after Christmas, at the beginning of 1153. No one but a madman or Henry would have sailed in such conditions, and no one expected him in England. He sailed with a mercenary force of 140 knights and 3,000 foot soldiers in thirty-six vessels, paid for with borrowed money, ready to seize his birthright.222

A new man, the ‘King of the North Wind’, was about to storm Stephen’s world.

* Medieval church law stipulated that if you had sexual relations with a relative by marriage, or with someone related to you within the degrees forbidden by the church, you were guilty of incest. It also decreed that if you had already had sexual relations with a close relative of your future husband or wife, you were barred from marrying them as you would be committing incest.

† William’s bride was not on the White Ship. She travelled instead with King Henry.

‡ A mark was roughly equivalent to two-thirds of a pound.

§ These lands, known as the Papal States, were ruled over directly by the papacy for over 1,000 years, until 1870.

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