What King John, George Washington, and Napoleon have in common

October 19th, 1216 was the date of King John’s death at Newark on Trent. He was not yet fifty years old, had ruled England for seventeen years. His reign was viewed as a failure by his contemporaries and he has not been treated kindly by most historians, but he still remains one of the best known English kings—so sometimes it pays to have a lot of bad press! The genesis of Here Be Dragons was a question: What would it be like for a woman to discover that the father she’d adored since childhood was capable of great cruelty? That was my idea, but Llywelyn had other ideas, and when I moved to Wales to research Dragons, it took him less than a fortnight to high-jack the book right out from under John’s nose. But John’s conflicted relationship with Joanna was still an important element in the book, as I hope the following scene shows, in which his estranged daughter comes to visit his tomb at Worcester a month after his death, and is met by her half-brother, Richard.
Here be Dragons, pages 499-500
* * *
They walked in silence for a while. It had been snowing sporadically throughout the day, began again as they crossed the courtyard. Joanna’s hood fell back; she seemed not to notice as droplets of snow dusted her hair, melted upon her mantle. As they entered the south walkway of the cloisters, she said, “Tell me,” and Richard did, told her all he’d learned of their father’s final days.
“A violent windstorm struck Newark ere he died. That’s not uncommon for the season, but the fool servants took fright. Word spread that the Devil was coming to claim Papa’s soul, and some even fled.” They’d stopped by the church door. He saw the anguished question in her eyes and shook his head. “No, Papa never knew. The abbot who tended him wrote to Isabelle, said that by the time the storm reached its height, Papa was no longer conscious. He died soon after midnight.”
“And did they strip his body of his clothes and rings? Did they take all of value, as they did when his father died at Chinon?”
Her bleak insistence upon knowing the worst troubled Richard, but he did not lie. “Yes. But his soldiers kept faith, the routiers whom men scorned as base mercenaries, paid hirelings. They alone did not forsake him, Joanna, escorted his body to Worcester. Bishop Silvester officiated at the burial, but it was done without much ceremony and in haste. The main concern was with getting Henry crowned as quickly as possible.”
Omission.
The candles encircling John’s tomb wavered, swimming before Joanna’s eyes in a dizzying blur of brightness. She stood very still, listening as Richard’s footsteps faded. And then she moved forward. She knelt in the coffin’s shadow for an endless time, until her knees ached and she trembled from the cold. But she could find no comfort in prayer.
“You’re proving to be a merciless ghost, Papa. I should have expected it, knowing you as I do.” Her tears were coming faster now. “What do you mean to do, Papa? Shall you haunt me for the rest of my days?” Her voice broke; kneeling on the icy tiles before John’s tomb, she wept bitterly.
* * *
It is surprising how often a medieval king was stripped of his rings and royal robes once he’d drawn his last breath; Henry II and John were not the only ones to suffer this fate. Richard I was luckier, probably because his mother, Eleanor, was at his deathbed, as was his fierce mercenary captain, Mercadier.
This next story is not at all medieval, but on October 19th, 1781, the surrender at Yorktown ended the Revolutionary War. The British generals were very poor sports, though, apparently finding it very humiliating to have been defeated by a colonial. Lord Cornwallis refused to even attend the ceremony of surrender, claiming illness, and Brigadier General Charles O’Hara attempted to give his sword to the French commander, the Comte de Rochambeau, who to his credit insisted that it be yielded to General Washington.
And on October 19th, 1812 Napoleon began his retreat from Moscow. We are fortunate that neither Hitler nor his German generals were students of history.