Transcript
A (0:00)
Hello folks. Dan Snow here. I am throwing a party to celebrate 10 years of Dan Snow's history. I'd love for you to be there. Join me for a very special live recording of the podcast in London in England on 12th September to celebrate the 10 years. You can find out more about it. Get tickets with the link in the show notes. Look forward to seeing you there.
B (0:27)
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A (1:30)
Did I talk too much? Can't I just let it go?
B (1:35)
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A (1:57)
Better he was the ultimate medieval warrior, the greatest knight in the world, according to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Kings begged him to save their realms and he obliged. He won tournaments. He helped to save Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine from capture. He he was entrusted with the most sensitive diplomatic missions. He prayed at Christ's tomb in Jerusalem, he served five kings, fought in more melees and sieges than we have time to even list. He fought and won one of the most decisive battles in English history in his 70s. In the end, he held the fate of the Plantagenet family in his grip and more the fate of England itself. He was born William Marshal, although by his death his name had been adorned with a list of titles Earl of Pembroke, Earl Marshal, Guardian of England, His Life, as you're about to hear, is packed from start to finish. And thankfully we know that from a wonderful, relatively newly discovered source, his son commissioned a biography of him and that was lost until the 19th century. And so that's why the Marshall has not really been embedded as much as he deserves in our national psyche. He doesn't appear that prominently in Shakespeare. He was unknown to those early writers of history, like Macaulay. But that is changing now and I'm very grateful to Thomas Asbridge's excellent recent biography and of course, the OG biography, the original one, the first known detailed biography of a medieval knight. The Marshal's life tracks and it shaped some of the most tumultuous and extraordinary years in English medieval history. The late 12th, the early 13th century, folks, those are years when you will see it all. They're the years of the best and worst of English royal sovereigns. They're years of triumph and disaster. He embodies the fascinating story of England's short lived massive European empire, when the Plantagenet family, or the Angevins, as they would have called themselves, the Angevin dynasty, ruled from Ireland to the Mediterranean, ruling over more of what is now France than the kings of France themselves. The Marshal was there at its zenith. He spent decades fighting to protect it. And he was there to pick up the pieces when it vanished as quickly as it had burst into life. If you want to watch as well as listen to me telling this story, then you can do so on the new Dan Snow's history hit YouTube page, please go and check it out. In the meantime, let's get into it. A story of war, sacrifice, glory and how one man saved a kingdom. Atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the King. No black white unity till there is first some black unity. Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off and the shuttle has cleared the tower. The Marshal was forged in war. Conceived by a warlord and a woman forced into his bed at the negotiating table, he was born into a violent, fractured kingdom. When King Henry I died, following an unwise banquet in which he consumed too many eels, his kingdom was thrown into anarchy. His daughter Matilda fought her first cousin Stephen for the throne. Their grandfather, William the Conqueror, had had too many sons for a peaceful transition. Henry I had had too few. The Anglo Saxon Chronicle records that the earth bore no corn, for the land itself was all laid waste. And people said openly that Christ and his saints slept. Fields went untended. You could apparently travel an entire day on horseback and see only abandoned settlements and agricultural landscapes. People Starved to death. The chronicle also says that every rich man built his castles. They filled the land full of castles, they cruelly oppressed the wretched men of the land. And when the castles were made, they filled them with devils and evil men. And I have absolutely no doubt at all that one of those rich and cruel, possibly evil men was John Fitzgibbon, the marshal, father of our subject today. John had inherited the title of marshal from his father. The name sprang from the office the person was responsible for the King's horses, but it now denoted a more sort of general administrative role at court. John's father had come over with William the Conqueror. He was 1 of the 150 or so nobles to whom William had parceled out England. John, like his father, helped to run the court. He made sure chimneys were maintained and fireplaces swept. He made sure that the King's tents were stored in warm, dry conditions through the winter so they'd be ready for the next season's campaigns. So that's two generations of this family serving two generations of Norman kings. But then Henry had died at the start of December 1135, and in a stunning lightning journey, his nephew Stephen had travelled to England, secured the backing of London, dashed to Winchester, where his brother Handley was Bishop of Winchester, secured the royal treasury and convinced the Archbishop of Canterbury to crown him all. Within three weeks, boom. It was job done. King Stephen was now on the throne and John the Marshal rushed to welcome his new sovereign. And he was granted a juicy royal castle, Marlborough, to run in Stephen's name. But Henry I's daughter, Matilda was not having it. She landed in England 1139, and it was the start of 14 years of civil war. A pretty grim time, hellish time for many in the kingdom, but a time for opportunity, for men who were lords of war. And such a man was John Fitzgibbon. He killed, he intimidated, he stole one. Chronicle names him specifically as a scion of hell, the root of all evil. He switched sides from Stephen to Matilda. You can imagine the inducements he was offered, but the opportunism almost cost him his life. After one skirmish, he was left for dead, terribly wounded in a burning building. The lead roof tiles melted and that molten metal splashed on his face. He lost an eye and was terribly scarred. He dragged himself out and staggered the 25 miles back to his home. Such was the grit of the men who rose to the top of the kingdom in this period of uncertainty. That great struggle for the kingdom provided cover for men like him, for the barons to fight a plethora of mini civil wars under its canopy. John took on the powerful Wiltshire grandee Patrick, Earl of Salisbury, in a bitter regional feud, an allegiance to either Matilda or Stephen. Then switching back. It gave them the sort of top cover they needed to burn and steal. They besieged each other's castles. It was a hell of a time. But then they agreed a peace and it was sealed, with Patrick's sister Sybilla being sent across to John's bedchamber, John having quickly ditched his first wife, Adelina. We have no inkling for Sybilla's level of willingness. It's not something that chroniclers thought worthy of recording. This is the world, this is the union that William was born into, but it was a world he would come to dominate. 1146, 1147, we think, is when that birth took place. We're not sure either the date or the location. He was one of seven children. He was a second son, and that's significant. We know nothing of his early years. They were a healthy brood. Unusually, they all survived at childhood. They all grew to adulthood. But he almost didn't survive. And that's not because of disease. He rapidly got a robust schooling in the nature of the world and the part that great men were supposed to play in it. When he was about five years old, King Stephen came knocking. He assaulted John the Marshal's castle at Newbury. But his men were pushed back by determined defenders. John asked for a truce and we assumed that he implied that he needed to think about it before surrendering. And Stephen demanded a hostage. And John sent out his young son, William. The minute the royal army backed off, they had their hostage. John went into a frenzy of activity, prepared for renewed resistance. And Stephen came back. He demanded the castle. He demanded that John surrender. But John spat defiance from the battlements and Stephen dragged out young William, the five year old boy, and he dragged him out and paraded them in front of the castle, reminding John that he had his son hostage. And John simply laughed. To quote from the later biography, John said he didn't care about the child, for he still had the anvils and the hammers to produce even finer sons. King Stephen was enraged and he planned to hurl the boy, young William, into the castle by catapult, or perhaps squash him under a shield, or just hang him in front of the walls. And it was the boy, it was William himself, who seems to have wriggled out these nightmarish ends by apparent winning over his captive. He displayed boyish charm. He complimented a spear there, or he giggled there. You know, that kind of thing. And the frustrated king ordered, he said, take him away. Anyone who could ever allow him to die in such agony would certainly have a very cruel heart. He comes with such engaging, childish remarks. Abandoned by his father, condemned to die by his king. It was a rude education for the five year old boy. He remembered it well. He loved to tell the story. He understood this world. We know nothing of the rest of his childhood, his fawning and yes, we have to give the health warning here. It was written by the family. It is partial, but it is still a remarkable source. But still health warning. His fawning biography said he grew up into a tall and handsome young man. And we're told that his limbs looked like they could have been shaped by a sculptor and, and oddly. But he had a crotch so large that no noble could be his peer. Now, we think that refers to his hips sitting astride a saddle, but it is open to interpretation. But you can have the biggest crotch in the kingdom and it won't help you that much because, well, he was a younger son. His brother was the heir. William was the spare. His older brother would get the land, the money, so the glory of the house of the Marshal could endure. That was uppermost in people's minds. William had to make his own luck. And the first step on that journey came in what we think was around 1160, when he was packed off to a relative in Normandy. This was customary for men of good family. You sort of get rid of them in their teenage years and they serve an apprenticeship in a relative's home. And with my children teetering on the verge of teenageness, I think I can understand why we need to remember here a bit of context. Since the Norman Conquest, which began with the Battle of Hastings in 1066, the English elite considered themselves Norman. Their language, their customs were Norman. It was a natural choice to spread your family and your lands and your ambitions across the Channel from Normandy to England. William de Tancarville was a prominent Norman lord, and it was to him that William was sent. It was with him that William would learn how to fight. He was not interested in becoming a priest, which meant there was only really one other option. It was the start of his knight's tale. His new patron was able to pay, thankfully, for the staggeringly expensive equipment that defined a knight. Sword, lance, armor, horse. He was able to provide the room and board while that years of training took place. To become a master of the weapons and the animal, the horse, you needed thousands of hours of work. Someone had to pay for the roof over the head and all that food the young man was going to eat in the meantime. And William was lucky in his patron. This was a time when a warrior ethos was coalescing around an idea of knighthood. Young men were being trained in the martial arts, as they had for generations. But there was also now the genesis of a really interesting culture about how these men should conduct themselves well on, but also off the battlefield. They ought to be brave and they ought to be loyal, decent and straightforward. William was shaped by that ethos. And in time, he would come to be both its most famous exemplar. And he would in turn, therefore define and sharpen this paradigm of knighthood. Not straight away, though it said that initially he ate too much and slept too much. A teenager, give the guy a break. But he also trained. He honed his sword arm until, as his biographer said, he could hammer with the sword like a blacksmith on iron. And it would not be long before he got the chance to hammer his unfortunate adversary in battle. In 1166, Normandy was under attack. Like, well, Yoda and Luke Skywalker, William de Tancarville decided that William Marshal's training was complete and he was knighted. He was given the gift of a cloak. He wasn't tapped on the shoulder. That's tradition. That would come later. Instead, his lord strapped a sword and belt around his waist. He was dubbed a knight. He was ready. Some of the neighboring states next door to Normandy did as they often did. They launched a cross border raid. And in the streets of the town of Neufchatel, William Marshal felt the keen delight of battle for the first time, according to the remember slightly biased source, he cut a swathe through the enemy. A savage melee surged in the streets and the squares of the town. Marshal was almost unhorsed. He took a brutal hit which tore his armor and mortally wounded his precious horse. And that was a big deal, because a good war horse, a destrier, well, it could cost us as much as a thousand sheep. But in return for his wound and the loss of his horse, he won a name for himself that day. He didn't win much else, though. He took no booty, he stripped no enemy corpses, and he took no high status prisoners to ransom. He'd learned, no doubt, several lessons. Tancarville returned to his base, the threat seen off. Then came a thunderbolt. He downsized his retinue. He no longer required the services of William Marshal, nor would he replace his lost horse. William stared utter destitution in the face. He could return to England and beg his big brother for a job. Or he could set out on his own and make his fortune. He could become a free lancer. He chose the latter. He chose wisely. He had to sell his cloak, he bought a knackered old horse, he strapped his gear and weapons to it, and he struck out across 12th century Europe in search of adventure, money and fame. There was a lifeline for William tournaments. Young knights, hungry for action, desperate for cash. They needed an arena where they could earn. The thought went that if they couldn't find an arena like this, then surely they would turn to theft and violence for their wine, their glory, their women and their victuals. So to allow wandering knights a little bit of steam in a controlled environment, a series of tournaments were established. William decided to head to one near Le Mans. In the end, de Tonqueville also decided to bring his knights to the tournament. And so the marshal was allowed to rejoin for the tournament. And it was essentially a small simulated battle spread over a wide area. And the knights just, well, they just fought each other. Might last for hours, the teams might spread out, they might hide in cover or they might hunt as a package. And if you captured an enemy, they had to pay a ransom and you might get their armour or their horse. And that day, William captured two knights. One of them was the opposing team's commander, Philip of Valois, who apparently is very handsome too. And William grabbed his bridle right up by the mouth of the horse and just dragged horse and rider off, dragging them into his captivity. And so he went into that tournament a penniless freelancer. He came out with booty and money and the start of a reputation, and he nurtured that reputation in tournament after tournament. He didn't always win. He was badly beaten by a group of knights at one melee who wanted to cut him down to size. He was captured. Another one, he had to cough up a horse. But word of this tall, athletic, competitive knight spread through France. By the late 1160s, he made a bit of money in his pocket and he decided to ride his reputation and his luck and head back to England. Perhaps it was only now that he could afford the passage home aboard ship. His mother and father were now dead. And interestingly, he makes no effort to see his big brother. Instead, he went straight to his powerful uncle, the Earl of Salisbury, and tried to join his crew. It worked. He was invited to become one of the Earl's household knights. And that immediately paid off because Salisbury took William along on the military campaign in 1168. He'd been summoned by on that campaign by the King of England, the Duke of Normandy, the Lord of Aquitaine, Maine the Vex, in Anjou, lord of the mighty Angevin Empire, ruler of more than France, as I mentioned, than the King of France, Henry ii. It was time for William the Marshal to meet and charm his second king. They were headed for Aquitaine. It was a vast territory extending through a great swathe of western and central France, from the borders of Brittany down the coast through Bordeaux to the Pyrenees, across the Limoges, really all the way up to the Alps. They spoke a different language here. Occitan. They drank the best wine. They basked in sunshine. The nobles here, well, they cared little for their grim Norman overlords in the rain lashed north. Aquitaine was always a pain. It was always restive. William arrived with his uncle and was astonished to find that the writ of the Plantagenet kings was challenged. As soon as you passed outside the walls of its capital, Poitiers, local nobles built castles. They fought each other. They didn't think that much about Caen or Angers or certainly London or Winchester. The Lusignan family, for example, their little castle only 15 miles away from Poitiers. And they acted as though they were kings of their own domain. They raided and looted as they please. But King Henry ii, he was not one of Europe's greatest medieval monarchs for nothing. He ruled with his ass in his saddle and his sword in his hand. He moved across his empire like a wolf moves through the forest, from Scotland to the Pyrenees, soon through Ireland and then back to central France. William Marshal now got an opportunity to watch a masterclass in kingship at first hand. It was time for the House of Lusignan to be brought to heel and their peers reminded of their obligations. William saw real big war for the first time. And it was war that was waged on the poor, because Henry's force battered its way through the lands of the Lusignans. He burned, he murdered, he stole. When farmers cannot pay taxes to their lords, when they cannot contribute agricultural goods, then those lords run out of money, they run out of steam. And that was Henry's plan. It was violence and hardship inflicted on those who could not escape or dodge in order to undermine their overlords. And it worked. This was no chivalric wrestle on the tournament field. This was pulling down barns and torching crops in fields. It was dragging teenage daughters out of haylofts and piling up next year's seeds into wagons that lumbered back into Poitiers. It was grim, but it worked. The Lusignan's begged to be allowed to repent. Within weeks, Henry, ever the whirlwind, marched north to meet the King of France. He left his wife, Eleanor, whose family had ruled over Aquitaine for generations, to govern the region. At her side, Patrick, Earl of Salisbury, and in his retinue, William Marshal. And so it was that on a spring day in 1168, Queen Eleanor was returning from a loyal progress through the recently pacified lands of Poitiers, home of the Lusignan family. It was warm. There was peace. Her escorts, the Earl of Salisbury and his men, while they were not in armour, they were not expecting trouble. But they found trouble, or it found them. Out of nowhere, the Lusignan brothers launched an ambush. Patrick of Salisbury sent the Queen ahead for the safety of her castle. You can imagine him slapping the rump of her horse and roaring her to flee with a small escort. He then rallied the bulk of his men to bar the road and sell their lives for that of their queen. Men scrambled to strap on armour. Patrick Salisbury didn't bother. He charged his horse straight into the enemy. And it seems that he then returned to rally his men once more, at which point his body was pierced by a lance held by a galloping enemy knight. It passed through his unarmored back and crashed out through his sternum. William's uncle, his lord, was dead, but the Lusignans had just made a terrible mistake. Had he been fully armoured, he'd have been knocked down. And then he'd been captured, treated with respect and hopefully ransomed for lots of cash. But he'd been killed. This was against the code. The Lusignans later swore that it had been a terrible and unfortunate accident. They regretted it. In retrospect, they also seem to regret it at the time. Because nephew William. William Marshal, went berserk. It was said he was like a starving lion tearing into prey. He set about those Lusignan knights with the rage of a man who's seen his lord struck down in dishonorable fashion. We can't be certain, but remember, this had been his uncle, but also his conduit to royalty, his ticket out of here. His life was now in the balance in more ways than one. He fought against terrible odds. At last, he was surrounded like a boar by a pack of hounds. Apparently, no one would come near him, though he was only felled when someone sneaked round the hedge behind him and jabbed a spear through his thigh. He collapsed onto the ground, slaked with his own and his opponent's blood. William Marshal, patronless defeated now, terribly wounded, penniless, was strapped across the back of a donkey. And the Lusignans made their escape. In Hollywood terms, I believe this is what we call the nadir of the narrative arc. William the Marshal, well, he was close to death. He had to tear strips of his own clothing into bandages. He lost vast amounts of blood. He was treated roughly. It really is astonishing. He didn't get infected for months, though he made a slow recovery as a prisoner, often on the move. His future looked grim. But then, astonishing news. The Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. She knew how to pay her debts. News arrived that he would be ransomed, probably because of his valiant, hopeless battle against the Lusignans. But on top of that, he would be rewarded. He would be given a place in her own retinue. William Marshal was back. He served his new mistress well. He fought the endless fight to pacify Aquitaine. He never caught the Lusignan brothers, but he helped bring their lands back into the royal fold. Over months, he seemed to establish himself as one of her most valuable. Brave, strong and smart knights. Which is why she took him with her north to an important gathering. In June 1170, Henry II decided to have his oldest son, also called Henry, crowned king. It was unusual in England, but it was quite normal elsewhere. The succession in England since the conquest, in fact, since Aethelred the Unready, had been a bit of a shambles. Every single king coming to the throne had been contested. William the Conqueror's sons had fought their dad and each other. And the anarchy, the civil war between Stephen and Matilda, was still fresh in the memory. Henry was attempting to solve this conundrum. He had his handsome, red haired, tall, athletic son crowned King of England. His other sons, Richard and Geoffrey, would get Aquitaine and Brittany respectively. They would all rule as one great happy family. What could possibly go wrong? Henry II wanted to ensure, obviously, that his son was surrounded by wise counselors. And he also needed a man of action, a tutor in arms, someone who could teach his son how to fight. Someone of his son's generation, maybe a smidge older, with experience and scars to show for it. And Henry II selected William Marshal. At 23, he was eight years older than the young king, but he had all the qualities needed. William had now really arrived at the heart of of the Plantagenet imperial project. Predictably enough, though, Henry the young king, soon became impatient. He was a king in name only. His dad kept all the real power to himself, all the land, all the patronage and retainers around. Young Henry started to whisper that perhaps he should be more forceful. He should attempt to rule over some or all of the kingdom in more than just name. We don't know if William Marshal was among those counselors, but it all came to a head in February 1173. There was another family meeting. All four sons were present. Henry and his dad had a stand up row. Now, that happens in all families. We've all been there. But when it happens in the Plantagenet family, well, men march. Castles lay in supplies for sieges. Arrowheads are forged on the blacksmith's anvil young Henry stole out of the royal fortress. He left the family meeting in the dead of night. William Marshal went with him. Young Henry headed north to meet the King of France, Henry II's most passionate adversary. Young Henry gave his household the choice, stay with him or return to his father, King Henry. William stayed, which is why Henry ii, enraged by his son's treachery, published a list of enemies of the state, as he called them, diabolical traitors. William Marshal was on that list. A family squabble quickly escalated because the French can always be relied on to inflict maximum pain on their English rivals. When the French king welcomed young Henry, he provided a very sympathetic audience. He gave him a shoulder to cry on. He recognized him immediately as the rightful king. But then, shockingly, Henry II's other sons joined them in Paris. And then another conspirator came over. Henry II's wife. In a flash, the entire edifice of this mighty Angevin empire came crashing down. The specter of civil war was back. Young Henry made a lot of promises. He promised the King of Scotland more lands and privileges if he invaded northern England. There were rebellions across the realm. Henry's sons, alongside the French and the Count of Flanders, invaded Normandy. Towns were burned, castles were stormed. Screams pierced the night. The great lords had quarrelled and normal people bore the brunt. We don't know much about William in this great rebellion, except that he stayed by young Henry's side. In fact, the course of the war went poorly. The French king proved inept. The Count of Boulogne was killed. His brother, the Count of Flanders, retired from the fighting. He was heartbroken. The King of Scotland led a great attack before the walls of Alnwick Castle and was quickly unhorsed and captured. It proved hard, as the saying went at the time, to wrestle the club from the hand of heracles. So in September 1174, there was a peace congress, another family meeting. Henry forgave his sons and their advisors. The only person Henry didn't forgive interestingly, was was his wife Eleanor, who spent the next decade imprisoned in England. Young Henry back in the royal fold, but still a king without a kingdom pivoted. Perhaps guided by William, they turned their back on the real battlefield and they turned their full attention to the fake battlefield. The world of tournaments. William Marshal was 30. He was on peak form. He was experienced and now he was well financed. These next years of tournaments transformed him into a celebrity knight with a Europe wide reputation. It was said that he captured 500 knights in these tournament years. Young King Henry grew into a dashing, charismatic warrior by his side. They obviously loved the life they were living. Fighting, winning, growing rich, building reputation. William was declared mvp most valuable player at a tournament with many of Europe's finest knights. There in the late 1170s, he made vast amounts of money. Young Henry and his retinue were the chivalric stars of Western Europe. Soft power won with a steel tip. Men admired young Henry and his glamorous entourage. Lords welcomed them to their tables. Boys wanted to be them. They had the first choice of armor and the finest mounts. William Marshal was first among the servants of young Henry, now a knight banneret. So that's a knight permitted to carry his own banner. He chose a red line rampant against a green and gold background. And these were indeed golden years for the lion like William Marshal. In 1179, the young French Prince Philip was to be crowned. There was a huge tournament planned with every powerful lord west of the Rhine present. Henry II decided that the young Henry, young King Henry, would go and represent the Angevin Empire. His presence was intended to put on such a show that would stamp the greatness of the Angevins of the Plantagenet family on the minds of the assembled masses. And it would serve to convince young Prince Philip of France that young Henry was a person to emulate. A star to follow, an ally to cultivate at vast expense. Young Henry made his way across France where he was the star of the coronation. He bore the royal sword as Philip progressed into Reims Cathedral. After the religious element had been got out the way, they moved to a tournament ground outside Paris. Now, interestingly, the site of Disneyland Paris. It was the greatest tournament anyone could remember. 3,000 knights went at each other. It was chaos. Young Henry was almost captured. But the Marshal wrenched control of his horse from his enemies. It was a great success for young Henry and William Marshal. And there was fighting to be had off the tournament field too. Young Henry fought a brief, successful campaign against the Duke of burgundy in the 1180s. He had thoroughly established himself as heir to the mighty Henry II of England. But he was impatient. He wanted to be more than just the heir. Young Henry grew restive. He was still frustrated his father's refusal to hand over at least control of Normandy. He began to plot once again against his father. But then a thunderbolt threatened to tear his household apart. His wife, the Queen, had apparently betrayed him. She had entered another man's bed. And that man was William Marshal. Now, if there's one thing I've learned from the present, let alone from the distance of 800 years, it's that it can be tricky to work out who is, well, kissing who. And on this occasion, William Marshall was ferocious in his denials. His later biographer, again take with a pinch of salt, stated that it was an evil rumor put about by members of young Henry's entourage. Why? Because, as your mum always says about bullies, they were jealous. Perhaps William had got too close to the young king. Perhaps he'd got too big for his boots on the tournament circuit. Others wanted to bring him down. Courtly intrigue, eh? Wouldn't be the first time. Who would be in a medieval royal entourage? Well, apart from them, the wealth, the women, the food, the wine, the soft furnishings, the proximity to power. Apart from that. It so often ends badly. It ended badly. For example, in 1172, Count Philip of Flanders reacted to rumours that one of his knights was sleeping with his wife, had him beaten nearly to death with cudgels, then stripped and strung over a latrine by his feet, his head in or very close to the urine feces, until he died of suffocation. Henry, thankfully, did not do this to William Marshal. And we need to state at this point that we have not one shred of evidence that William was having an affair with the Queen. It's interesting, isn't it, how courtly fiction and real life, well, they merged here. This was a world obsessed with stories of Arthur's Queen Guinevere betraying him with Lancelot, his greatest knight. This was a world obviously alive to these possibilities. It was aware of the possibility of relationships blossoming in these royal settings. Henry, though, didn't react with fury. So perhaps he didn't believe the rumors. Perhaps he was already getting jealous of William Marshal. Perhaps the rumours were the final straw. Either way, they parted ways. William went into exile. He had plenty of bidders for his service. He was offered money by the Duke of Burgundy, by the Count of Flanders. We don't know exactly what he did, but what we do know is that in the spring of 1183, a breathless messenger scoured northern France looking for William Marshal. Imagine how cool that is. Just go from place to place saying, where's William Marshal? And people know because you've heard of him. And that envoy found him and delivered a message. Young King Henry had decided to dismiss all accusations against him. He was to return at once, because once again, young King Henry was at war. And in war, you need the Marshal by your side. The Plantagenet family had fallen out again. Henry II had tried to keep the peace, but young Henry had announced that his brother Richard, little brother Richard the Lionheart, was so disliked in Aquitaine, he was ruling over Aquitaine. He was so disliked down there that young Henry was answering the desperate calls of local barons to help them remove his little brother. And by early 1183, he was in Limoges summoning an army. Now, royal brothers squabbling is not unusual. We've seen examples of it quite recently. But poor young King Henry had really picked one here. He had quite the baby brother. Richard had not been showing off at tournaments. He'd been actually doing the work. He'd been ruling Aquitaine. This was the man that you sent to ungovernable neighborhoods to lock them down. This was the man who'd won the name Lionheart. Good luck, young Henry. You're going to need it. No wonder he called on William the Marshal. The Lionheart moved fast. He smashed a force sent from Brittany by his brother Geoffrey, who was also campaigning against him. Prisoners were murdered. He then made an astonishing 48 hour, 75 mile march to surprise a force of young Henry's men outside Limoges. They were put to the sword, blinded, drowned in. You get the idea. You've heard me say this on the podcast before, but really, the art of winning can be boiled down. It can be distilled. You get there first with the most. And Richard Lionheart had just given a masterclass. Henry ii, the poor father, arrived in February to try and sort it out. As he arrived at young Henry's camp, arrows were shot at him. One hit his horse in the head. So he galloped off to Richard's camp. He threw his lot in with his younger son. Father and son now moved to besiege young Henry. It looked pretty hopeless. And that is when he called on William the Marshal. And it would not be the last time that a monarch in extremis would call upon William to save his cause. Marshal joined and surprise, surprise, things started going better. Young Henry slipped out of the siege and was roaming around, looting monasteries to try and pay his men. But he did manage to notch up some wins. I think we can see Marshal's advice and help at play here. But although he was an extraordinary warrior, he wasn't a miracle worker. And that's what young Henry would very soon need. On 26 May, young Henry fell ill. It seems to have been dysentery, a disease which attended medieval war. Like a handmaid. It would take the lives of some of the finest warriors in his family over the centuries to come. Well, and one of the worst, his brother John. But we're getting ahead of ourselves here. On June 7, his fate was certain. He prepared himself for death. He sent to his father, asking for forgiveness. He turned to what he called his most intimate friend, William Marshal, and asked him to take his cloak, on which he had the cross of Crusade and carried the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. Minutes later, Henry, the young king, died. Aged 28, William Marshal was now in his mid-30s, again without a patron. He discharged his final obligation to his dead lord. With Henry II's blessing, William Marshal headed east. He headed to the Holy Land. It was a deeply religious decision, but there were also chances of advancement. There are also inducements as well. A warrior could rise there, after all. Guy of Lusignan, the man who'd attempted to snatch Queen Eleanor all those years ago. He'd escaped Aquitaine. He'd headed to the east, made a name for himself, married a princess, and was now fancied for the throne of Jerusalem himself. It was a place where power was a little more fluid. Very little is known about William Marshal's time in the Holy Land. He arrived. He went to Jerusalem. He deposited the cloak of Henry, the young King in the church, the Holy Sepulcher, the spot where Jesus had died and was resurrected. He came across the order of warrior monks, the Templars. He visited their headquarters on Temple Mount, now part of the Al Aqsa Mosque complex. He was there at an odd time. A Muslim warlord, Saladin, was threatening Christian kingdoms in the East. But for this time two year period, as it happened, Saladin was mostly preoccupied with bringing what is today Iraq, Syria and Egypt under his control. He was campaigning in the Iraqi city of Mosul, for example. So it was a time, a curious time, of, well, relative peace. There was a bit of shadow boxing, move and counter move, but no major combat operations. It was a lull before the storm or before the regular hurricanes that swept across that benighted region. And William Marshal may have chafed at this. You know, if you're on Crusade, you want to win some immortal glory on the battlefield. But there was not much of this on offer at that point. There was also, though, a deeper sense that the Christian kingdoms in the Holy Land were doomed. There was infighting, there was lack of money and critically, there was lack of night, lack of men at arms to take on a giant coalescing military power in the East. The outlook was bad. In fact, while William Marshal was there, an embassy was sent to London. The head of the Latin Church, the Holy Land, he brought Henry II the key to Jerusalem and the keys of the Holy Sepulcher. And he laid them in front of Europe's greatest king, Henry ii, in token submission to him. The message was clear. All this could be his if he would come out to the east and save Outremer, save the kingdoms of the Holy Land. But Henry would not. He could not leave his sprawling kingdom vulnerable to the King of France and go and campaign in the Holy Land. Henry II was wise. His son, Richard the Lionheart, would have done well to follow his example. With not much action on offer, William Marshal returned to Europe. By later the spring of 1186, as he left, the deluge fell upon the Christian states which we will come back to. William would miss all that. He was headed back to the west and he presented himself to Henry II. Henry must have looked at him. Here's a 40 year old warrior who's rebelled against him twice, but you realize he has an extraordinary reputation for martial valor. He has shown great loyalty to your son, to your family on two occasions. And Henry II hadn't got where he was by being a bad judge of men and their sword arms. Henry knew a man of ability when he saw one. And Henry II gave him a job. He brought him into the tent. And that reminds me of a story. I think it was Genghis Khan. He killed rebel leaders, but then he promoted their subordinates, saying that they showed admirable loyalty to their immediate superior. The Marshal, in the same way, was now given the opportunity to show that he could demonstrate the same loyalty to Henry II as he had offered to his son. Finally, William Marshal's opportunity had come to turn himself into a great lord of the realm. The time for playing at tournaments with the fake king, mock battles and Arthurian court life based on on a lie was over. Now William Marshall was at the very center, the very pinnacle of Western Europe's most important empire. William Marshall had arrived. More coming up after this. Don't go anywhere.