Charlie Fenton’s Reviews > Richard I: The Crusader King > Status Update

‘A lone crossbowman, perched on the battlements, spotted the figures and loosed a bolt in their direction. As luck would have it, the quarrel found its mark, striking the Lionheart in his left shoulder. The wound seems to have been mistreated by the attendant surgeon, who struggled to remove the bolt, and the injury soon turned gangrenous.’

‘Château Gaillard’ or the ‘Castle of Impudence’, was a masterpiece of military design. Constructed with the finest limestone, it made use of the most advanced castle technology of the day, including concentric walls and machicolations that allowed defenders to drop the likes of rocks or burning pitch straight down on to attackers’ head. Gaillard was nothing short of a cathedral to war and cost a staggering £12,000‘

‘It is perhaps worth pausing to note that Richard’s visit to Nottingham did not presage an encounter with Robin Hood; nor did the king find himself battling against Count John’s evil sheriff in 1194. In fact, the idea that the career of the legendary outlaw intersected with that of the Lionheart did not begin to circulate until the sixteenth century.’

‘When King Richard left the Near East in early October 1192, he most likely expected to be back in England by the start of the New Year. Had the journey home passed smoothly, the Lionheart would have found his realm all but untouched by his absence... As it was, Richard did not return for close to eighteen months - and in that time, terrible, near-fatal damage was done to the Angevin realm.’

‘20 August 1191, the Lionheart marched out on to the plains of Acre, leading some 2,700 prisoners - the bulk of the city’s Muslim garrison - all bound in ropes. There, beneath the waning summer sun, he ordered his troops to butcher them to a man in cold blood, and then returned to the port, leaving the ground littered with mutilated corpses. Of all Richard’s deeds, this massacre is perhaps the most controversial’

‘One startling fact looms over Richard I’s career: though among the most renowned of all England’s monarchs, the Lionheart spent barely six months on English soil. With such a small proportion of his decade-long reign seemingly dedicated to the care of the realm, it is perhaps little wonder that some sought to criticise Richard’s conduct.’

‘Richard was not raised to become King of England, nor was he expected to inherit the vast Angevin realm. Indeed, for the first twenty-five years of his life, he was eclipsed by his elder brother, the glamorous Henry the Young King (crowned as co-ruler of England alongside his father in 1179). Richard’s own formative years were spent not in England, but in Anjou and Aquitaine.’