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