Richard was also making great strides in his diplomatic struggle, as well. He had forged a lasting peace with his old enemy in the south, Raymond, Count of Toulouse, whose father and grandfather, encouraged by the French, had plagued the House of Aquitaine in their most southerly dominions. In July, we had the honour at Château-Gaillard of a visit from Baldwin, Count of Flanders. He was a handsome man; tall, fair of face, with a soldier’s carriage and a straight, honest gaze. In the presence of Count Robert of Meulan, William of Caïeux and Hugh of Gournay, all of whom had recently abandoned the French King and come over to Richard’s side, the Count of Flanders signed a formal treaty with our King stating that neither would make peace with Philip without the other’s consent. In exchange, the Count received a ‘gift’ from King Richard of five thousand marks.
The French King now faced enemies to his north and west, and it was not long before Baldwin of Flanders made good his pledges to Richard and invaded Artois, besieging the French-held castle of Arras. Philip’s vigorous response surprised almost everybody. The French King replied with massive force, first striking west, retaking Dangu, and pushing back Richard’s forces in Normandy, then surging north to relieve Arras. We had all perhaps been too confident of victory – Richard was in the south in the county of Berry with the bulk of the army when Philip struck and one hot morning in August I found myself looking east from the battlements of Château-Gaillard to see a huge French army below me – hundreds of knights, thousands of men; I could even see a fleur-de-lys fluttering from a knot of horsemen to the rear of the force.
However, Philip had no intention of besieging the saucy castle; he was just trying, once again, to intimidate us, to keep us penned in Château-Gaillard while he planned his attack against Baldwin. And he succeeded: with Richard and Mercadier in the south, we had not the man-power to engage his army, and Robin, who was Constable of the castle in the King’s absence, ordered us to stay put behind its walls. ‘You do not exchange a position of strength for one of weakness,’ he told me one night over a cup of wine in his chamber at the top of the north tower in the inner bailey. ‘Philip cannot stay outside our walls for long, and we cannot sally out and attack him without courting disaster. Besides, our orders are to hold this castle. Richard is storming through Berry and the Auvergne – I’ve had word that half a dozen castles in the south have fallen to him. And Baldwin is at Arras, in the north, which will fall to him soon enough, if it is not relieved. Philip cannot stay here.’
So we did nothing. As Robin had predicted, Philip soon departed and, in a series of swift marches, covered the hundred or so miles north-east to Arras, relieved the beleaguered garrison and pushed Baldwin’s troops back almost as far as Flanders. But in his blind fury, and driven by an ardent wish to punish Baldwin for his disloyalty, Philip fell into the Flemish trap. The French advanced, but Baldwin’s troops retreated ahead of him, burning the crops, driving livestock before them, and destroying the bridges after they had been crossed – and behind Philip’s army, too. It was no doubt a cunning manoeuvre on Baldwin’s part, but I could not but remember the destruction at Clermont-sur-Andelle and wonder what the ruined peasants of Flanders would eat this coming winter with their crops and livestock gone. Still, it was no business of mine, and Philip’s men, deprived of food and forced to forage from a barren landscape, began slowly to starve. The French king was being humiliated, and we rejoiced at the news.
Now facing disaster, Philip tried to make a separate truce with Baldwin, which would have allowed him to extricate his men from Flanders and unleash them on Normandy, but that steadfast prince of the Lowlands showed his rectitude: the noble lord remained true to his agreement with Richard and resolutely refused to parley with the French heralds.
It was a summer of war, a summer of victory, but like all good things it had to come to an end. Richard’s men had been covering themselves with glory in Berry, and Baldwin’s had fought the French to a standstill in Flanders, but when the King of England and that honest Flemish Count met in Rouen in September, it was to discuss the terms of the truce they would jointly make with Philip. The war was not over; Philip had merely been hemmed in, his borders shrunk in the north, the west and the south, but it was the time of year for all combatants to take a breath, and rest their limbs in the cold months of autumn and winter.
‘Next year,’ said Richard jovially, ‘next year, Blondel, we shall take Gisors, and once that is back in our hands, the whole of the Vexin shall be mine. Next year, God willing, I shall regain my entire patrimony from that French thief.’