CHAPTER XXIII

TURNING TO BAY

It soon appeared too clear to be doubted, even by the most incredulous, that the King of England was bent on having his revenge on the Anglo-Norman barons at all hazards and at all sacrifices, and that the feudal magnates who had confederated to humble their sovereign in the dust had too good grounds for the alarm with which the news of his preparations inspired them. Ere October (then known as the wine-month) drew to a close, and the vineyards and orchards yielded their annual crop--indeed, almost ere the corn was gathered from the fields into the garners and barnyards--the torch of war was lighted, and an army of mercenaries was let loose on “merry England.”

The knights despatched by John as early as the middle of June to raise fighting men on the Continent had executed their commission with a zeal and fidelity worthy of a better cause; and all the bravoes and cut-throats of Flanders, France, and Brabant, attracted by the hope of pay and plunder, came to the trysting-places on the coast as vultures to the carnage, headed by captains already notorious for cruel hearts and ruthless hands. Falco, and Manlem, and Soltim, and Godeschal, and Walter Buch, were men quite as odious--unless they are belied by chroniclers--as Hugh de Moreville had represented them to be. Falco was known as “without bowels,” Manlem as “the bloody,” Soltim as “the merciless,” Godeschal as “the iron-hearted,” and Walter Buch as “the murderer,” and none of them knew much more of humanity than the name and the form. All of them were not, however, destined to reach the land which was to be made over to their tender mercies. A large number, under the command of Walter Buch, were caught in a gale and wrecked and lost, as if even the elements had interfered between England and her king’s wrath. But the others weathered the storm and gradually reached the English coast; and early in October John found himself at the head of a force so formidable and so fierce that he intrusted the castle of Dover to the custody of Hubert de Burgh, a valiant warrior and a Norman noble of great note in his day, and led his hireling army towards Rochester.

Rochester Castle--the stately ruins of which, hard by the Medway, still attest its ancient grandeur, and recall the days when it stood in feudal pride, guarded by moat, and rampart, and lofty battlements--was deemed a place of immense importance; and Robert Fitzwalter and his confederates had intrusted it to the keeping of William Albini, Earl of Arundel, a great noble whose family had long maintained feudal state at Castle Rising, in Norfolk, and whose ancestor had acquired Arundel with the hand of Adelicia of Louvaine, the young widow of Henry Beauclerc. Albini was a brave warrior, and quite equal to the duties of his post under ordinary circumstances; but the castle was without engines of war, and very slenderly furnished with provisions, when, about the middle of October, John, with his army of foreigners, appeared before the walls, and summoned the place to surrender.

No doubt William Albini was “some whit dismayed.” Perhaps, however, he expected some aid from the barons, who were with their fighting men in London. Accordingly, he prepared for resistance; and the barons, on hearing that John had left Dover, did march out of the city with some vague idea of relieving the imperilled garrison. On drawing near to the king’s army, however, they began to remember that the better part of valour was discretion, and after their vanguard was driven back they quickly retreated to the capital and took refuge behind the walls, leaving Albini to his fate.

Meanwhile, John laid siege to Rochester, and, impatient to proceed with his campaign before winter set in, hurried on the operations, and, by making promises to the besiegers and hurling threats at the besieged, did everything in his power to bring the business to a close. But, with all chances against him, Albini made an obstinate resistance, and weeks passed over without any clear advantage having been gained by the king. Even after his sappers had thrown down part of the outer wall, matters continued doubtful. Withdrawing into the keep, the garrison boldly resisted, and for a time kept the assailants at bay. At length, by means of a mine, one of the angles was shattered, and John urged his mercenaries to force their way through the breach. But this proved a more difficult matter than he expected. Every attempt to enter was so bravely repulsed, that the king, under the influence of rage and mortification, indulged in loud threats of vengeance. At length, on the last day of November, when his patience was well-nigh exhausted, famine, which had been for some time at work among the besieged, brought matters to a crisis, and William Albini and his garrison threw themselves on the royal mercy.

“Hang every man of them up!” cried John, who at that moment naturally thought with bitter wrath of the delay which they had caused him when time was so peculiarly valuable.

“Nay, sire,” said Sauvery de Manlem, the captain of mercenaries, “that were perilous policy, and would lead to retaliations on the baronial side too costly to be hazarded by men who hire out their swords for money.”

John listened, acknowledged that there was reason in Manlem’s words, and consented to spare life. Accordingly, Albini and his knights were sent as prisoners to the castles of Corfe and Nottingham; the other men belonging to the garrison were pressed into the royal service.

The loss of Rochester was felt to be a severe blow to the baronial cause; and the pope having meantime annulled the charter, as having been exacted from the king by force, John’s star was once more in the ascendant, and after making arrangements for the safe keeping of Rochester, and little guessing the circumstances under which the fortress was to change hands within the next six months, he marched from Kent to St. Albans, his mercenary forces spreading terror wherever they appeared. But it was towards the North that his eye and his thoughts were directed; for the chiefs of the houses of De Vesci, De Roos, De Vaux, Percy, Merley, Moubray, De Brus, and D’Estouteville were conspicuous among the confederate barons; and, moreover, Alexander, the young King of Scots, had not only allied himself with the feudal magnates, but raised his father’s banner, on which “the ruddy lion ramped in gold,” and at the head of an army crossed the Tweed to make good his title to the three Northern counties with which the barons had gifted him.

At St. Albans, accordingly, about the middle of December, John divided his forces into two armies: one he placed under William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, to keep the barons in check and maintain the royal authority in Hertford, Essex, Middlesex, and Cambridge; while at the head of the other he marched northward to avenge himself on the barons of the North and the King of Scots. With a craving for vengeance still gnawing at his heart, he passed the festival of Christmas at the castle of Nottingham, and then, still breathing threats, precipitated his troops on the North.

It was on the 2nd of January, 1216, when John entered Yorkshire with fire and sword. The snow lay thick on the ground; the streams were frozen; and the cold was intense; but the king, who but recently had been branded by his foes as a tyrant fit only to loll in luxury, and averse to war and fatigue, now appeared both hardy and energetic, and urged his bravoes up hill and down dale. It was a terrible expedition, and one long after remembered with horror. Fire and sword rapidly did their work in the hands of the mercenaries who composed the royal army; men were slaughtered; houses and stackyards given to the flames; and towns, castles, and abbeys ruthlessly destroyed. Beyond the Tyne the country fared almost worse. Morpeth, the seat of Roger de Merley, Alnwick, the seat of Eustace de Vesci, and Wark, one of the castles of Robert de Roos, were stormed and sacked; and John, crossing the Tweed at Berwick, prepared to inflict his vengeance on the King of Scots.

“Now,” said he to his captains, as he found himself beyond the Marches, “we must unkennel this young red fox.”

The captains of the royal army offered no objection; and while John burned Roxburgh--a royal burgh and castle at the junction of the Teviot and the Tweed--the mercenaries pursued the King of Scots to the gates of Edinburgh, and, during their return, deliberately burned Haddington, Dunbar, Berwick, and the fair abbey of Coldingham, associated with the legend of St. Ebba and her nuns. Nothing, indeed, was spared; and John, having intrusted the government of the country between the Tees and the Tweed to Hugh Baliol and Philip de Ullecotes, with knights and men-at-arms sufficient to defend it, returned southward with such satisfaction as he could derive from the reflection that he had taken revenge on his baronial foes, and included in his vengeance many thousands who had not given him the slightest cause of offence.

But whatever may have been his feelings on the subject--and it is impossible to suppose that he had not his hours of compunction--John was destined, ere long, to find that his revenge had been dearly purchased. Scarcely had he returned to the South with blood on his hands, and the execrations of two countries ringing in his ears, when he received tidings which made his heart sink within him.

It was when the winter had passed, and the spring had come and gone, that messengers brought to John, who was then at Dover, intelligence that his baronial foes, driven to desperation, had taken a step which was likely to detach his mercenary soldiers from his standard, and leave him almost alone and face to face with an exasperated nation. It was a terrible contingency, and one on which the king, in pursuing his schemes of vengeance, had not calculated. But there was no mistake about the news; and John trembled as he foresaw how that, as soon as it spread among his mercenaries, the army which, while ministering to his vengeance, had made him odious to the nation on whose support he might otherwise have counted in case of the worst, would melt as surely as had melted the winter’s snow through which he had urged on that army to devastation and carnage.