many generations the fate of the Counts
of Toulouse was intimately tied to that of the Dukes
(William) IX Duke of Aquitaine
(William) X Duke of Aquitaine
IX, Duke of Aquitaine (the Troubadour)
(October 22, 1071 - February 10, 1126)
Guilhèm IX duc d'Aquitània e de Gasconha,
Guilhèm VII comte de Peitieus.
Guilaume IX duc d'Aquitaine
William IX was Duke of Aquitaine and Gascony and Count
of Poitou between 1086 and 1126. He was the son of William
VIII of Aquitaine by his third wife Hildegarde of Burgundy.
He inherited the duchy at the age of fifteen. In 1088, at
the age of sixteen, William married his first wife, Ermengarde
of Anjou (the daughter of Count Fulk, "Fulk the Contrary").
Ermengarde was pretty and well-educated but suffered from
extreme mood-swings. This, coupled with her failure to conceive
a child, led William to send her back to her father and
have the marriage dissolved in 1091.
1094 William married Philippa of Toulouse, the daughter
and heiress of Guilhem (William) IV of Toulouse. (Phillipa had been
recently widowed by the death of her first husband, Sancho
Ramírez of Aragon). William had two sons and five
daughters by Philippa, including William's heir, another
William later to become William
X of Aquitaine.
Pope Urban II spent Christmas 1095 at the court of William
IX. The pope urged him to take the cross and leave for the
Holy Land, but William was more interested in the territories
of the Counts of Toulouse, to which the Dukes of Aquitaine
believed they had a long standing claim, now bolstered by
William's marriage to Philippa. He took advantage of the
absence of Raymond IV Count of Toulouse, his wife's uncle,
to press his claim to Toulouse. Urban was not convinced,
so without the help of the Church, William and Philippa
captured Toulouse in 1098, an act for which they were threatened
with excommunication. Partly out of a desire to avoid this,
William joined the Crusade of 1101 an expedition inspired
by the success of the First Crusade in 1099. To fund this
he mortgaged Toulouse to Bertrand of Toulouse, the son of
Raymond IV. He arrived in the Holy Land in 1101 and stayed
there until the following year. William fought mostly skirmishes
in Anatolia without notable success. His recklessness led
to his army being ambushed on several occasions. In September
1101 his entire army was destroyed by the Turks at Heraclea;
William himself barely escaped and, according to Orderic
Vitalis, he reached Antioch with only six surviving companions.
William was excommunicated twice, the first time in 1114
for an alleged infringement of the Church's tax privileges.
He was excommunicated a second time for abducting Viscountess
Dangerosa), the wife of his vassal Aimery I de Rochefoucauld,
Viscount of Châtellerault - though it has to be said
that Dangerosa herself seems to have been a willing party.
William installed her in the Maubergeonne tower of his castle
in Poitiers, which lead to her nickname 'La Maubergeonne').
Returning to Poitiers from Toulouse Philipa was enraged
to discover Dangerosa living in her palace. Humiliated Philippa
left in 1116 to retire to the Abbey of Fontevraud , where
she was befriended by William's first wife Ermengarde of
Anjou,. According to the abbey records Philippa e died there
on the 28th of November 1118.
Relations between the Duke and his elder son William also
became strained. Father and son improved their relationship,
however, after the marriage of the younger William to Aenor
of Châtellerault in 1121. (To close the family circle,
Aenor was the daughter of Dangerosa and her lawful husband
Aimery I de Rochefoucauld, Viscount of Châtellerault)
After Phillipa's death, Ermengarde, William's first wife,
stormed down from Fontevraud Abbey to the Aquitainian court.
She demanded to be reinstated as the Duchess of Aquitaine.
In October 1119, she popped up at the Council of Reims,
presided over by Pope Calixtus II, demanding that the Pope
excommunicate William (though he was already excommunicated),
oust Dangereuse from the ducal palace, and restore her (Erningarde)
to her rightful place. The Pope declined to accommodate
her, and William's existing excommunication was lifted in
1220, but she continued to trouble William for several years
afterwards, which may have contributed to his decision to
join the armies fighting the Moors in Spain. William joined
forces with the kingdoms of Castile and León. Between
1120 and 1123, Aquitanian troops fought side by side with
Queen Urraca of Castile, in an effort to conquer the Moors
of Cordoba and complete the Reconquista.
In 1122, he lost Toulouse, Philippa's dower land and now
rightfully the domain of his eldest son, to Alphonse-Jordan
William added to the palace of the counts of Poitou which
had stood since the Merovingian Era. Later added to by his
of Aquitaine. It survives as the Palace of Justice in
Poitiers as to the present day.
William's greatest legacy to history was as a poet. He
was the first known troubadour,
or lyric poet employing the Occitan
language. Eleven of his songs survive. They are attributed
to him under his title as Count of Poitou (lo coms de Peitieus).
The topics vary, treating sex, love, women, his own sexual
prowess, and feudal politics. He is among the first Romance
poets of the Middle Ages, one of the founders of the troubadour
His frankness, wit and vivacity caused scandal and won
admiration at the same time. William was a man who loved
scandal and no doubt enjoyed shocking his audiences. He
composed a song about founding a convent in his lands, where
the nuns would be picked from among the most beautiful whores
in the region, depending on the translation. By most standards
he can fairly be described as a character. An anonymous
13th century biography of William, forming part of the collection
Biographies des Troubadours, remembers him as follows:
Click on the following link for songs (in Occitan with English translations) by William IX of Aquitaine
X, Duke of Aquitaine "the Saint" (1099
April 9, 1137)
Guilhèm X duc d'Aquitània e de Gasconha, Guilhèm
VIII comte de Peitieus
Guilaume X duc d'Aquitaine
William was Duke of Aquitaine and Gascony and Count of
Poitiers as William VIII of Poitiers between 1126 and 1137.
William was born in Toulouse during the brief period when
his parents ruled the capital. Later that same year, 1126,
his father William IX mortgaged Toulouse to his wife's cousin,
Bertrand of Toulouse. His wife, Philippa of Toulouse was
less than pleased, and less pleased still when he then left
on Crusade. Philippa and her infant son were left in Poitiers.
Long after William IX's return, he took up with the wife
of one of his vassals, and set aside his wife, Philippa.
This caused strain between father and son, although the
strife seems to have been resolved when the younger William
married Ænor of Châtellerault (the daughter
of his father's mistress) in 1121. The couple had three
Aliaenor, or Eleanor, who would later
become heiress to the Duchy;
Aelith ( aka Petronilla), who married
Raoul I of Vermandois;
William Aigret, who died young.
William's wife Ænor and their son William Aigret
both died in 1130.
Like his father before him, William X was a patron of troubadours,
music and literature. He was an educated man and gave his
two daughters an excellent education - just one example
of the gap between the sophisticated culture of Occitania
and the rest of western Christendom (It was rare enough
to give boys a good education, and generally considered
"unnatural" and even blasphemous to educated girls.
Senior churchmen objected loudly and often).
William became involved in conflicts with Normandy and
France. Inside his own borders he faced an alliance of the
Lusignans and the Parthenays against him, happily resolved
by total destruction of the enemies.
In 1137, Duke William X set out from Poitiers to Bordeaux,
taking his daughters with him. In Bordeaux, he left Eleanor
and Petronilla in the charge of the Archbishop of Bordeaux
who could be entrusted with the safety of the Duke's daughters.
The Duke then set out for the Shrine of Saint James of Compostela
in North-western Spain, in the company of other pilgrims;
however, on 9th April (Good Friday) 1137 he was stricken
with sickness, probably food poisoning. He died that evening,
having bequeathed Aquitaine to his fifteen-year-old daughter,
On his deathbed, he expressed his wish to have King Louis
VI of France as protector of Eleanor, and to charge him
with finding her a suitable husband. Louis VI, putting his
own interests first, as ever, married Eleanor
the new Duchess of Aquitaine to his own son, also called
Louis, later King Louis VII.
Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122April
of Aquitaine was one of the most powerful women in Europe
during the High Middle Ages. She was Queen consort in turn
of both France and England and took part in the Second Crusade.
Her father was William
X Duke Aquitaine, and her mother was Aenor de Châtellerault,
the daughter of Aimeric I, Vicomte of Chatellerault. William's
and Aenor's marriage had been arranged by his father, William
IX of Aquitaine "the Troubadour",
and her mother, Dangereuse, William IX's long-time mistress.
Eleanor was named after her mother and called Aliénor,
which means "another Aenor" in Occitan,
but she is better known by variations of her name (
Eleanor was the eldest of three children. She was raised
in one of Europe's most cultured courts, the birthplace
of courtly love. By all accounts, Eleanor was the apple
of her father's eye, who made sure she had the best education
possible: she could read, speak Latin, and was well-versed
in music and literature. She also enjoyed riding, hawking,
and hunting. Eleanor was very outgoing and stubborn. She
was regarded as very beautiful during her time; most likely
she was red-haired and brown-eyed as her father and grandfather
were. After the death of her brother, William Aigret, at
age 4, along with their mother she became heiress to Aquitaine
and 7 other counties, She had only one other sibling, a
younger sister named Aelith in Occitan,
but more commonly known by the name of Petronilla.
About the age of 15 Eleanor became the Duchess of Aquitaine,
and the most eligible heiress in Europe. As these were the
days when kidnapping an heiress was seen as a viable option
for attaining title, William had dictated a will on the
very day he died on his way to Compostella in Spain, bequeathing
his domains to Eleanor and appointing King Louis VI "the
Fat" as her guardian. He requested that the King take
care of both the lands and the Duchess, and to find a suitable
husband for Eleanor. Until a husband was found, the King
had the right to enjoy Eleanor's lands. The Duke also insisted
to his companions that his death be kept a secret until
Louis was informed - the men were to journey from Saint
James across the Pyrenees as quickly as possible, to call
at Bordeaux to notify the Archbishop, and then to make all
speed to Paris, to inform the French King.
The King of France himself was also gravely ill at that
time, suffering from dysentery from which he seemed unlikely
to recover. Presenting a solemn and dignified manner to
the grieving Aquitainian messengers, upon their departure
he became overjoyed, stammering in delight. Rather than
act as guardian to the Duchess and Duchy, he decided, he
would marry the Duchess to his heir, and bring Aquitaine
under the French crown, thereby greatly increasing the power
and prominence of France and the Capets. Within hours Louis
had arranged for his son, Prince Louis, to be married to
Eleanor. Abbot Suger was charged with arranging the wedding.
Louis was sent to Bordeaux with an escort of 500 knights.
He arrived in Bordeaux on 11 July and the next day, accompanied
by the Archbishop of Bordeaux, the couple was married in
the cathedral of Saint-André in Bordeaux. It was
a magnificent ceremony with almost a thousand guests. The
land would remain independent of France, and Eleanor's oldest
son would be both King of France and Duke of Aquitaine.
Her holdings would not therefore be merged with France until
the next generation.
Eleanor was not popular with the French who were, to put
it as generously as possible, at an earler stage of civilisation.
They were not accustomed to string minded and highly educated
women, let alone pretty young ones. Her conduct was repeatedly
criticised by Church leaders such as Bernard of Clairvaux
and Abbot Suger. The King, however, was madly in love with
his beautiful and worldly bride, and granted her every whim,
even though her behaviour baffled and troubled him.
Though Louis was a pious man he came into conflict with
Pope Innocent II. In 1141, the archbishopric of Bourges
became vacant. The king put forward a candidate one of his
chancellors, Cadurc, and vetoed another candidate, Pierre
de la Chatre. Pierre was promptly elected by the canons
of Bourges and consecrated by the Pope. Louis bolted the
gates of Bourges against the new Bishop. The Pope, recalling
a similar incident in Poitou under William X, blamed Eleanor.
He also observed that Louis was only a child and should
be taught manners. Affronted, Louis swore upon holy relics
that, so long as he lived, Pierre should never enter Bourges.
This brought an interdict upon the king's lands.
Pierre de la Chatre was given refuge by Count Theobald
II of Champagne, which did not endear him to Louis. Before
long Louis was involved in a war with Count Theobald of
Champagne. Louis had permitted Raoul I of Vermandoisand
(seneschal of France) to repudiate his wife, Theobald's
niece, Leonora so that he could marry Eleanor's sister (Petronilla).
Eleanor urged Louis to support her sister's marriage to
Raoul of Vermandois. This war lasted from 1142 to 1144 and
ended with the occupation of Champagne by the royal army.
Louis was personally involved in the assault and burning
of the town of Vitry. More than a thousand people who had
sought refuge in the church died in the flames. Desiring
an end to the war, Louis made peace with Theobald, who agreed
to support the lifting of the interdict on Raoul and Petronilla.
It was duly lifted and Theobald's lands were restored to
him. But now Raoul refused to repudiate Petronilla, prompting
Louis to return to the Champagne and ravage it again. Peace
was restored later that year. Theobald's provinces were
once again returned and Pierre de la Chatre was installed
as Archbishop of Bourges.
In 1145, Eleanor gave birth to a daughter, Marie.
Louis, still burned with guilt over the massacre at Vitry-le-Brule,
and wanted to make a Pilgrimage to the Holy Land to atone
for his sins. In the Autumn of 1145, Pope Eugenius requested
Louis to lead a Crusade to the Middle East. Louis declared
on Christmas Day 1145 at Bourges his intention of going
on a crusade.
Eleanor as well as Louis took up the cross during a sermon
preached by Bernard of Clairvaux. She insisted on taking
part in the Crusades as the feudal leader of the soldiers
from her duchy. Her launch of the Second Crusade from Vézelay,
the rumoured location of Mary Magdalene´s burial,
emphasised the role of women in the campaign. In Constantinople,
Eleanor was much admired. She was compared with Penthesilea,
the mythical queen of the Amazons, by the Greek historian
From the moment the Crusaders entered Asia Minor, the Crusade
went badly. The Crusade itself would achieve little. Louis
was a weak and ineffectual military leader with no concept
of strategy, tactics, troop discipline or morale.
Louis started off optimistically. He had been preceded
by the German Emperor Conrad who Louis thought had won a
great victory against a Moslem army. As Louis camped near
Nicea, the sad remnants of the German army, including Emperor
Conrad, straggled into the French camp, bringing news of
their disaster. The French, with what remained of the Germans,
then made off, back towards Antioch. Louis decided to cross
the Phrygian mountains directly, in the hope of speeding
his arrival in antioch where they would find refuge with
Eleanor's uncle, Raymond
II of Tripoli, in Antioch. As they ascended the mountains,
they past the unburied corpses of the previously slaughtered
On the day set for the crossing of Mount Cadmos, Louis
chose to take charge of the rear of the column, where the
unarmed pilgrims and the baggage trains marched. The vanguard,
with which Queen Eleanor marched, was commanded by her Aquitainian
vassal, Geoffrey de Rancon; this, being unencumbered by
baggage, managed to reach the summit of Cadmos, where de
Rancon had been ordered to make camp for the night. De Rancon
however chose to march further, deciding in concert with
the Count of Maurienne (Louis´ uncle) that a nearby
plateau would make a better camp. As the army was divided
in two, the Turks attacked, took the strategic mountain
peak and happily set about massacring yet another army of
incompetents. The King was saved by his own lack of presence
- having scorned a King's apparel in favour of a simple
solder's tunic, he escaped notice. As one chronicler noted,
while his bodyguards were having their skulls smashed open,
Louis "nimbly and bravely scaled a rock by making use
of some tree roots which God had provided for his safety,".
Eleanor paid for Louis' incompetence. Geoffrey de Rancon,
who had made the decision to continue beyond the peak, was
Eleanor's vassal. Worse, the Aquitainians had been in the
vanguard which had escaped the massacre. And worse yet hostile
Church chroniclers soon found a new excuse: the baggage
train had been slow because of all of the finery carried
for Eleanor and her ladies. In any case the remainder of
the army continued to Antioch.
While in the eastern Mediterranean,
Eleanor learned about maritime conventions developing there,
she introduced those conventions in her own lands, on the
island of Oleron in 1160 and later in England as well -
the beginnings of what would become Admiralty law. She was
also instrumental in developing trade agreements with Constantinople
and trade ports of in the Holy Lands.
Even before the Crusade, Eleanor and Louis were becoming
estranged. Eleanor's reputation was further tarnished by
an alleged affair with her uncle, Raymond, Prince of Antioch.
The city of Antioch had been annexed by Bohemond of Hauteville
in the First Crusade, and it was now ruled by Eleanor's
flamboyant uncle Raymond who had gained the principality
by marrying its reigning Princess, Constance of Antioch.
Eleanor supported her uncle Raymond's desire to re-capture
the nearby County of Edessa, the cause of the Crusade; in
addition, having been close to him in their youth, she now
showed conspicuous affection towards her uncle. Historians
today dismiss this as familial affection, noting their early
friendship, and his similarity to her father and grandfather,
but at the time hostile Church chronicler believed, or at
least reported, that the two were involved in an incestuous
and adulterous affair.
Louis was directed by the Church to visit Jerusalem instead.
When Eleanor (allegedly) declared her intention to stay
with Raymond along with her Aquitaine forces, Louis had
her brought out by force. His long march to Jerusalem and
back north debilitated his army, and her imprisonment disheartened
her knights. Divided Crusade armies could not overcome the
Muslim forces. At the insistence of Church leaders, who
were even more incompetent than Louis, the Crusade leaders
targeted Damascus, an ally until the attack. Failing, they
retired to Jerusalem, and then left for home in 1152.
The royal couple, on separate ships due to their disagreements,
were first attacked in May by Byzantine ships attempting
to capture both. Although they escaped, stormy weather drove
Eleanor's ship south to the Barbary Coast. In mid-July,
Eleanor's ship finally reached Palermo in Sicily, where
she discovered that she and her husband had both been given
up for dead. She was given shelter and food by servants
of King Roger of Sicily, until Louis eventually reached
Calabria. She set out to meet him there. Later, at King
Roger's court in Potenza, she learnt of the death of her
Instead of returning to France, they now went off to visit
the Pope in Tusculum (where he had been driven by a Roman
revolt). Pope Eugenius III did not, as Eleanor had hoped,
grant a divorce; instead, he asserted that it might not
be dissolved under any pretext. He manoeuvred events so
that Eleanor had no choice but to sleep with Louis in a
specially prepared bed. The papal bed seems to have been
efficacious because Eleanor conceived their second child
- another daughter, Alix of France. But perhaps not entirely
efficacious because Alix doomed the marriage. Faced with
another disappointment over the lack of a male heir, opposition
to Eleanor from many French Barons, and his wife's desire
for divorce, Louis bowed to the inevitable. On March 11,
1152, they met at the royal castle of Beaugency to dissolve
the marriage. Louis and Eleanor were both present. On March
21 four archbishops, with the approval of Pope Eugenius,
granted an annulment due to consanguinity within the fourth
degree (Eleanor and Louis were third cousins, once removed,
sharing a common ancestry with Robert II of France). Their
two daughters were declared legitimate and custody of them
awarded to King Louis. Eleanor's land's reverted to her.
Two lords - Theobald of Blois, son of the Count of Champagne,
and Geoffrey of Anjou (brother of Henry, Count of Anjou
and Duke of Normandy) - tried to kidnap Eleanor to marry
her and claim her lands on Eleanor's way to Poitiers. This
was a normal way for Christian men of all classes to find
a wife throughout the middle ages (and into modern times
in strongly Catholic countries). Both attempts failed. As
soon as she arrived in Poitiers, Eleanor sent envoys to
Count of Anjou and Duke of Normandy, asking him to come
at once and marry her.
On Whit Sunday, May 18, 1152, six weeks after her annulment,
Eleanor married Henry.
She was about 11 years older than him (and, incidentally,
related to him more closely than she had been to Louis -
a marriage between Henry and Eleanor's daughter, Marie,
had been declared impossible for this very reason). Over
the next thirteen years, she bore Henry
five sons and three daughters:
- William, Count of Poitiers
- Henry ("Henry the Young King")
- Matilda of England,
- Richard (Richard
I of England, The Lionheart.
- Geoffrey II, Duke of Brittany
- Leonora of Aquitaine
- John (King
John of England)
The period between Henry's accession to the throne of England,
II and the birth of their youngest son was to see turbulent
events: Aquitaine defied the authority of Henry
as Eleanor's husband; attempts to claim Toulouse, the inheritance
of Eleanor's grandmother and father, were made, ending in
1167 saw the marriage of Eleanor's third daughter, Matilda,
to Henry the Lion of Saxony, during which time Eleanor remained
in England with her daughter for the year prior to Matilda's
departure to Normandy in September. Following that, Eleanor
proceeded to gather together her movable possessions in
England and packed them up, transporting them on several
ships in December to Argentan. At the royal court, celebrated
there that Christmas, she appears to have agreed to a separation
Certainly, she left for her own city of Poitiers immediately
after Christmas. Henry
did not stop her; on the contrary, he and his army personally
escorted her there, before attacking a castle belonging
to the rebellious Lusignan family. Henry then went about
his own business outside Aquitaine, leaving Earl Patrick
as her protective custodian. When Patrick was killed in
a skirmish, Eleanor was left in control of her inheritance.
She ransomed Patrick's captured nephew, the young William
Away from Henry, Eleanor was able to centre her court on
courtly love. According to some, Henry
and the Church expunged the records of the actions and judgements
of this court. A small fragment of her codes and practices
was written by Andreas Capellanus. She was the patroness
of such literary figures as Wace, Benoît de Sainte-More,
and Chrétien de Troyes
concentrated on controlling his increasingly-large empire,
badgering Eleanor's subjects in attempts to control her
patrimony of Aquitaine and her court at Poitiers.
In March 1173, aggrieved at his lack of power and encouraged
by his father's enemies, the younger Henry launched the
Revolt of 1173-1174. He fled to Paris. From there 'the younger
Henry, devising evil against his father from every side
by the advice of the French King, went secretly into Aquitaine
where his two youthful brothers, Richard
and Geoffrey, were living with their mother, and with her
connivance, so it is said, he incited them to join him'.
The Queen sent her younger sons to France 'to join with
him against their father the King'. Once her sons had left
for Paris, Eleanor encouraged the lords of the south to
rise up and support them. Sometime between the end of March
and the beginning of May, Eleanor left Poitiers to follow
her sons to Paris but was arrested on the way and sent to
the King in Rouen. Henry
did not announce the arrest publicly. For the next year,
her whereabouts are unknown. On July 8, 1174, Henry
took ship for England from Barfleur. He brought Eleanor
on the ship. As soon as they disembarked at Southampton,
Eleanor was taken away either to Winchester Castle or Sarum
Castle and held there.
Eleanor was imprisoned for the next fifteen years, much
of the time in various locations in England. During her
imprisonment, Eleanor had become more and more distant with
her sons, especially Richard
who had always been her favourite. She did not get the chance
to see her sons very often during her imprisonment, though
she was released for special occasions such as Christmas
(One such occasion is the setting for the classic film The
Lion in Winter). About four miles from Shrewsbury and
close by Haughmond Abbey is "Queen Eleanor's Bower,"
the remains of a triangular castle which is believed to
have been one of her prisons.
In 1183, Henry the Young tried again. He was in debt and
had been refused control of Normandy. He tried to ambush
his father at Limoges. He was joined by troops sent by his
brother Geoffrey and Philip II of France. Henry
II's troops besieged the town, forcing his son to flee.
Henry the Young wandered aimlessly through Aquitaine until
he caught dysentery. On Saturday, 11 June 1183, the Young
King realised he was dying and was overcome with remorse
for his sins. When his father's ring was sent to him, he
begged that his father would show mercy to his mother, and
that all his companions would plead with King
Henry to set her free. Henry
sent Thomas of Earley, Archdeacon of Wells, to break the
news to Eleanor at Sarum.
In 1183, Philip of France claimed that certain properties
in Normandy belonged to The Young Queen but Henry
insisted that they had once belonged to Eleanor and would
revert to her upon her son's death. For this reason Henry
summoned Eleanor to Normandy in the late summer of 1183.
She stayed in Normandy for six months. This was the beginning
of a period of greater freedom for the still supervised
Eleanor. Eleanor went back to England probably early in
1184. Over the next few years Eleanor often travelled with
her husband and was sometimes associated with him in the
government of the realm.
death on July 6, 1189, Richard
was his undisputed heir. One of his first acts as king was
to send William Marshal to England with orders to release
Eleanor from prison, but her custodians had already released
her when he demanded this. Eleanor rode to Westminster and
received the oaths of fealty from many lords and prelates
on behalf of the King. She ruled England in Richard's
name, signing herself as 'Eleanor, by the grace of God,
Queen of England'. On August 13, 1189, Richard
sailed from Barfleur to Portsmouth, and was received with
enthusiasm. She ruled England as regent again when Richard
went off on the Third Crusade. When he was captured by the
Austrians on his way home, she personally negotiated his
ransom by going to Germany.
Eleanor survived Richard
and lived well into the reign of her youngest son King
John. In 1199, under the terms of a truce between King
Philip II of France and King
John, it was agreed that Philip's twelve-year-old heir
Louis would be married to one of John's
nieces of Castile. John
deputed Eleanor to travel to Castile to select one of the
princesses. Now 77, Eleanor set out from Poitiers. Just
outside Poitiers she was ambushed and held captive by Hugh
IX of Lusignan, which had long ago been sold by his forebears
II. Eleanor secured her freedom by agreeing to his demands
and journeyed south, crossed the Pyrenees, and travelled
through the Kingdoms of Navarre and Castile, arriving before
the end of January, 1200. King Alfonso VIII and Queen Leonora
of Castile had two remaining unmarried daughters, Urraca
and Blanche. Eleanor selected the younger daughter, Blanche.
She stayed for two months at the Castilian court. Late in
March, Eleanor and Blanche de Castile journeyed back across
Bordeaux, she fell ill and made her way to Fontevraud, where
John visited her. Eleanor
was again unwell in early 1201. When war broke out between
John and Philip, Eleanor
set out from Fontevraud Abbey for her capital Poitiers to
prevent her grandson Arthur, John's
enemy, from taking control. Arthur learned of her whereabouts
and besieged her in the castle of Mirabeau. As soon as King
John heard of this he marched south, overcame the besiegers
and captured Arthur. Eleanor
then returned to Fontevrault where she took the veil
as a nun, as her daughter Jeanne Countess of Toulouse had
died in 1204 and was buried in Fontevraud Abbey near her
husband Henry, her son Richard,
and her daughter Jeanne, joined later by her grandson Raymond
VII of Toulouse. Her tomb effigy shows her reading a
Bible and is decorated with magnificent jewellery. By the
time of her death she had outlived all of her children except
John of England and Queen Leonora. She is acclaimed
by many as the most interesting woman ever to have lived.
Certainly few describe her life as dull. Requiescat in pacem,
Jeanne (or Joan) of England (October, 1165 - 4 September 1199)
Jeanne was the seventh child of King Henry II
of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine
- the younger sister of William, Count of Poitiers,
- the younger sister of Henry ("Henry the Young King")
- the younger sister of Matilda of England,
- a younger sister of Richard (Richard I King of England, The Lionheart.
- a younger sister of Geoffrey II, Duke of Brittany
- a younger sister of Leonora of Aquitaine.
- an older sister of John (King John of England)
Jeanne was a younger half-sister of Marie de Champagne and of Alix of France (from Eleanor of Aquitaine's first marriage to the King of France)
Jeanne was born at Angers, in Anjou. She spent her youth at her mother's courts at Winchester and Poitiers. She was Richard's favourite sister. In 1176, King William II of Sicily sent ambassadors to England to ask for Jeanne's hand in marriage. The betrothal was confirmed and on August 27 Jeanne set sail for Sicily, escorted by an uncle and the bishop of Norwich.
In Saint-Gilles, the home town of the Counts
of Toulouse, her entourage was met by representatives
of the King of Sicily: After a hazardous voyage, the party
arrived safely in Sicily, and on February 13, 1177, Jeanne
married William II of Sicily and was crowned Queen of Sicily
at Palermo Cathedral.
They had one son, Bohemond, born in 1181, who died in infancy.
Following William's death she was kept a prisoner by the
new king, Tancred of Sicily. Her brother Richard
I of England arrived in Italy in 1190, on the way to
the Holy Land. He demanded her return, along with her dowry.
Tancred baulked at these demands so Richard
seized a nearby monastery and the castle of La Bagnara.
Deciding to spend the winter there he attacked and subdued
the city of Messina. Outclassed, Tancred now agreed to the
terms and sent back Jeanne's dowry.
In March 1191 Eleanor
of Aquitaine arrived in Messina with Richard's prospective
bride, Berengaria of Navarre. Eleanor
returned to England, leaving Berengaria in Jeanne's
decided to postpone his wedding. He put his sister
and bride on a ship, and set sail for the Holy Land. Two
days later the fleet was hit by a storm which destroyed
several vessels and blew Jeanne and Berengaria's ship off
landed in Crete, but his sister and fiancée were
stranded near Cyprus. The Despot of Cyprus, Isaac Comnenus
was just about to capture them when Richard's fleet appeared.
Both princesses were saved, but the ambitious Isaac made
off with Richard's treasure. Richard
pursued and captured Isaac, threw him into a dungeon, and
sent Jeanne and Berengaria on to Acre in the County
of Tripoli, an Occitan
speaking state belonging to the the
House of Toulouse.
Once established in the Holy Land, Richard
proposed marrying Jeanne to Saladin's brother, Al-Adil,
and making the couple joint rulers of Jerusalem. This excellent
plan failed as Jeanne declined to marry a Muslim, Al-Adil
declined to marry a Christian and neither wanted to convert
(which would in any case have largely defeated the object
of the plan).
Jeanne was married in 1196 to Raymond VI of Toulouse, with Quercy and the
Agenais as her dowry. The marriage took place in Beaucaire,
presided over by Richard
I himself. The following year she bore a son, also called
Raymond, later to become Raymond
VII of Toulouse.
Raymond does not seem to have treated his wife well, and
Jeanne came to fear him and his nobles. In 1199, while pregnant
with a second child, she was left to face a rebellion. She
laid siege to the castle of the ringleaders, the lords of
Saint-Félix-de-Caraman les Cassès. Fearing
treachery from her own troops she fled to the Limousin,
hoping for Richard's
protection, but she found him dead at Chalus.
She then fled to the court of her mother, Eleanor
of Aquitaine, at Rouen, where she found refuge. Jeanne
subsequently asked to be admitted to Fontevraud Abbey.
She died there in childbirth, aged thirty-four years old,
a veiled nun. In the west at this time, caesarean operations
invariably meant death for the mother, and in this case
for the baby too. It was a second son who lived long enough
to be baptised Richard after his recently dead uncle. Jeanne
was buried at Fontevraud Abbey along with her brother Richard,
and presumably her son Richard. Later they would be joined
of Aquitaine and fifty years later by her first son
VII of Toulouse.