Richard the Lionheart was the greatest warrior prince in Christian Europe

This edited article about Richard the Lionheart first appeared in Look and Learn issue number 516 published on 4 December 1971.

Richard the Lionheart on the First Crusade

The dying moments of Henry the Second, King of England, were worthy of a grand opera. Raising himself on an elbow, he glared at the tall figure of his son Richard and, in a weak, quavering voice, gasped: “God grant that I do not die until I have had my revenge upon you!”

Then the King fell back and died.

Richard the Lionheart probably did not blink an eyelid at his father’s last words. After all, the old King had cursed him many times before – what was another curse or so if it comforted him on his deathbed?

If Henry’s last words to his heir seem extraordinary now, they would not have seemed so to his son. For Richard had all his father’s tempestuous temper. With his three brothers he had fought, harried and defied his royal father the length and breadth of Europe. Father and brothers had publicly abused each other many times. All England and all France were familiar with the white-hot heat of the old King’s wrath, all of it inherited with remarkable exactness by his four quarrelsome, trouble-making sons.

Richard was King of England now. He didn’t much care. He would have much preferred to be master of his original inheritance, the duchy of Aquitaine in France. “I would sell London if I could find a buyer!” he had once shouted when he was trying to raise money. In fact, he was destined to spend only a few months of his entire reign in England.

Richard was just 16 when, with his three brothers, he first took up arms against his father in France. A few months later, the turbulent family spirit momentarily overcome by the sight of blood, he was kneeling at the old king’s feet, weeping and begging for forgiveness.

Another bitter quarrel followed between father and son during a conference with King Philip of France before the assembled royal armies of the two countries. Philip sided with Richard, and King Henry was said to be so astonished that for once in his life he was speechless.

Fighting was in Richard’s blood – he made no secret of the fact that he enjoyed it more than any other pastime. He never knew when a battle was over. At sight of the enemy fleeing he would mount his horse and lead the pursuit after them, for mile after mile.

Once, when his father fled from him, hot-tempered Richard led his nobles in a chase after Henry which was only ended when Henry’s rearguard killed Richard’s horse under him. Richard had been so anxious to make a fight of it that he had started the pursuit half-dressed.

Visiting Cyprus as king, Richard met the island’s Emperor, Isaac. After a short fight which Richard won with ease, both leaders embraced in friendship. Isaac then decided to get out of the way of this mad English King as fast as he could and, collecting his men, fled towards Nicosia. With a shout of triumph, Richard went after him across the island, riding through hot sunshine and bright moonlight, and wielding his sword at Isaac’s men who were desperately harassing his rearguard.

Soon Isaac had to surrender. On his knees he declared, “Great king, spare my life. Do what you may with me, but I pray you do not put me in irons.”

Richard’s sojourn in Cyprus occurred while he was on his way to the Crusade which he led with Philip of France – “the Lion and the Lamb” their followers dubbed them. A crusade, with all its promise of blood and valour, was irresistible to the fiery Richard. But the depth of planning that went into it showed another side of the turbulent King’s character – although he loved fighting, he was never so foolhardy as to be unprepared for it.

With a fleet of 150 ships filled with knights and crossbow men, sumpter horses and siege engines, Richard sailed towards Acre, the Saracen city that the Crusaders were already besieging.

Until Richard’s arrival the Crusade was not having much success. But Richard got busy with his siege machines and soon the walls of the city crumbled. The Crusaders poured through the breaches and took Acre by storm. Up front watching them, and cursing his luck for not leading them, was the English King. He had caught a fever and was shaking horribly, so he had to be content with lying on his bed in the open air, picking off Saracens with his crossbow – for he was a deadly shot.

Philip of France soon decided to withdraw from this Crusade, leaving Richard in charge. With the resourcefulness of a great general, Richard now marched his 100,000 soldiers, sweltering under their chain mail in the blistering heat, towards Jaffa. On the way Saracens harassed them continually. When things became impossible, Richard himself rode back down the line and led a charge against the enemy. As they fled, he went after them, leaving the countryside littered with their dead.

When the Crusaders were 30 miles from Jaffa, in September, 1191, Saladin, the Saracen leader, changed his tactics, and regrouped his men for a battle. Though outnumbered three to one, Richard was ready. His conduct during the battle was shrewd and calculating, and when the final charge came, there was Richard, swinging his sword, at the head of it. At the day’s end, 7,000 Saracens lay dead.

Saladin was bewildered by this huge English King. Richard, regarded almost like a god by the Crusaders, was a living legend among the enemy, and at the mere sight of him the Saracens fled. Saladin himself declared, “If I must lose my land, I would rather lose it to a man like this than any other prince I have seen.”

Time and again Richard courted death, deliberately riding out on patrols to engage the enemy and bringing back Saracen heads, chopped from their bodies, which he hung from the saddle of his horse.

Once, before a battle, he rode out alone between the two armies half-a-dozen times and challenged any Saracen to come out and fight him. During one of these challenges – which none accepted – he announced he was hungry, whereupon several Saracens ran forward with food.

Despite its leader’s bravado, the Crusade was in difficulties. Winter, cold, wet and muddy, had set in and supplies were running low. It fell to Richard to make a momentous decision that was outside his character – they would have to turn back. Jerusalem, the holy prize, was abandoned.

Richard’s journey home from the Crusade is one of the great stories of British history. He was helped by pirates up the Adriatic Sea and got himself shipwrecked near Venice. Continuing his journey overland he arrived near Vienna, where the local ruler was Leopold of Austria, an enemy of Richard’s. When Leopold heard about his unwelcome visitor his soldiers surrounded the inn where the King was staying and Richard, we are told, hastily disguised himself as a cook. The ruse failed, and the King of England was taken prisoner.

Leopold’s overlord, the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, decided that a king must be worth a king’s ransom. Richard had therefore to remain in the mountain fortress of Triffels, on the borders of Lorraine, until someone paid up.

While England was raising the 150,000 marks the Emperor demanded, one Blondel, a minstrel, decided to go and find the King. Walking across Europe, he sang and played beneath every forbidding tower he saw until the bull-like voice of Richard the Lionheart answered his song from the lonely tower of Triffels. Blondel wept with joy.

Richard was released in February, 1194, and arrived in London to a tumultuous welcome the next month. Of course the nobles who had profited under the stewardship of Richard’s younger brother John were sorry to see him return, and John himself may have hoped that he never would. But Richard always had a soft spot for the youngest in his family. “Don’t be afraid,” he said when John fell on his knees before him. “You have had bad counsellors, and they shall pay for it.”

Lesser men might have been content to linger at home after what Richard had been through. Instead, he took ship at once to France. King Philip had incurred Richard’s enmity ever since he had deserted the Crusade and, true to nature, Richard chased him hither and thither across France. During one crusading battle he had been wounded by a Saracen javelin; now he was wounded by a French arrow. Yet as ever he was always up front at every siege, scorning death like an immortal man.

So it was at Chalus, an insignificant fortress which Richard was besieging. Standing on a high tower, a French crossbowman sighted the English King and took careful aim. Richard had spotted him, too, and shouted defiantly at the crossbowman before raising his shield to cover himself. But the King moved a fraction too late and the arrow pierced his side.

When Chalus finally fell, Richard was dying from his wound. He had sworn that all in the fortress should be hanged; now, he said, one man was to be spared – the crossbowman who had shot him. The strange code of chivalry that Richard stood by was not, however, observed by his followers, for no sooner did the King die than they executed his assassin.