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William VII., Duke of Aquitaine, had, at his death, intrusted to him the guardianship of his daughter Eleanor, heiress of all his dominions, that is to say, of Poitou, of Saintonge, of Gascony, and of the Basque country, the most beautiful provinces of the south-west of France, from the lower Loire to the Pyrenees.
The intentions of the King of England were made still more manifest by his writing a letter to the Flemish towns, saying that, having heard that the Duke of Burgundy was gathering an army of Flemings to march into Aquitaine to wage war upon and destroy his subjects, and particularly his very dear and well-beloved cousins the Dukes of Berri, Orleans, and Bourbon, and the Counts of Alencon and Armagnac, and the Lord d'Albreth, he therefore begged them to inform him whether they were willing to conform to the truce concluded between them and England without in any way assisting their lord in his wicked purpose.
He took Le Mans and destroyed its walls in punishment, and sent a force to aid his mother in Aquitaine; but the threatening attitude of Philip made it impossible for him to accomplish very much. No slight influence on the side of John was the strong support and vigorous action in his favour of that remarkable woman, Eleanor of Aquitaine, then about eighty years of age.
In the hands of the Justiciar, Ranulf de Glanvill, England remained peaceful through the last stormy months of his reign, and his successor Richard found it undisturbed when he came for his crowning in the autumn of 1189. Though born at Oxford, Richard had been bred in Aquitaine; he was an utter stranger to his realm, and his visit was simply for the purpose of gathering money for a Crusade.
One of the largest towns has a history typical of this part of France, where wars of religion and conquest were once the order of the day. It was taken and retaken by the Goths, Huns, Burgundians, and Saracens, nobody knows how many times, and belonged, successively, to the kings of France, to the dukes of Aquitaine, to the kings of England, and to the counts of Toulouse.
"The English having lost Normandy, the vassalage ceased." "Yes, so far as regards Normandy; but, in the meantime, Louis le Jeune, King of France, unfortunately divorced his wife, Elenor of Aquitaine, who afterwards married an English prince, and added Guienne, another French dukedom to the English crown." "So another vassalage sprung up." "Exactly.
We have already had the story of this king's unfortunate crusade from 1147 to 1149, the commencement at Antioch of his imbroglio with his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and the fatal divorce which, in 1152, at the same time that it freed the king from a faithless queen, entailed for France the loss of the beautiful provinces she had brought him in dowry, and caused them to pass into the possession of Henry II., King of England.
I have a trusty emissary in Burgundy's household, and as soon as the duke comes to the conclusion that he must beg for peace I shall have intelligence of it, and shall give early news to the queen and to Aquitaine, who would hail it with gladness; for, seeing that the latter's wife is Burgundy's daughter, he does not wish to press him hard, and would gladly see peace concluded."
The Spanish Christians appealed for help to their northern neighbours; armies of volunteers from Normandy, from Aquitaine, and from Burgundy, poured over the Myrenees to strike a blow for the Cross against the Crescent, and incidentally to gain rich spoils or found a colony. The movement was early taken under the patronage of Rome.
Richard was now on good terms with his father; it would even appear that he had been restored to the rule of Aquitaine; at any rate Henry's last act before his return to England in April had been to hand over to Richard a great sum of money with directions to subdue his foes. Richard took the money and made successful and cruel war on the Count of Toulouse, on what grounds we know not.
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