[1]Geoffrey was born September 23, 1158, and died August 19, 1186. He married Constance of Brittany.
[2]Henry II was the first king of England of the house of Plantagenet. Outside of England he possessed Normandy and the suzerainty of Brittany, which he inherited from the Norman kings; Anjou and Maine from his father, and by marriage with Eleanor, Poitou, Guienne, and Gascony.
[3]This is one version of the manner in which Geoffrey came to his death. The generally accepted historical version is that he was killed at a tournament in Paris.
[4]Duke Arthur of Brittany was born at Nantes, France, March 29, 1187, and was killed at Rouen, April 3, 1203. According to the author of this story, he was murdered on shipboard by King John, his uncle, because he refused to waive his lawful claim to the throne of England. History fails to make an authoritative statement of the manner of the young hero’s death, but it is unanimously conceded that John procured his assassination, if he did not commit the deed himself.
[5]Rennes, capital of Ille-et-Vilaine, France, was the capital of ancient Brittany.
[6]Philip Augustus, King of France, was born in 1165, and died in 1223. He was the son of Louis VII, and was noted for his banishment of the Jews, his participation in the Third Crusade with Richard the Lion-hearted, and the crusade against the Albigenses.
[7]“The King left only two legitimate sons,—Richard, who succeeded him, and John, who inherited no territory, though his father had often intended to leave him a part of his extensive dominion. He was thence commonly denominated ‘Lackland.’”—Hume.
[8]Henry the Second, King of England, died July 6, 1189. In the last year of his reign he was confronted with the rebellion of his sons Richard and John, in which they were assisted by Philip Augustus of France.
[9]Geoffrey, the father of Arthur, had been concerned in a previous rebellion against his father, instigated, like that of Richard and John, by Queen Eleanor.
[10]This was the Third Crusade (1189-92), which was led by Frederick Barbarossa of Germany (see the volume “Barbarossa” in this series), Richard the Lion-hearted of England, and Philip Augustus of France. They failed to recover Jerusalem, which had been recaptured by the Mussulmans in 1187.
[11]Richard the First, surnamed the Lion-hearted, was born September 8, 1157, and was the third son of Henry the Second. He was killed in a war with Philip Augustus of France, John’s ally.
[12]The author’s chronology is at fault in this connection. Godfrey of Bouillon was a leader in the First Crusade, and died at Jerusalem in 1100, before the period of this story.
[13]Acre, in Palestine, was captured by the Crusaders in 1191, and Ascalon in 1153. The latter city was the birthplace of Herod the First.
[14]Henry the Sixth, born in 1165, was the son of Barbarossa, whom he succeeded as King of Germany in 1190.
[15]Trifels was an imperial fortress in the Rhine Palatinate, near Annweiler, which was the resort of mediÆval emperors. Only its ruins remain.
[16]The Louvre, now one of the world’s famous art museums, was a castle of the kings of France from the thirteenth century, and the chief royal palace until Versailles was built by Louis the Fourteenth. Most of the interior has been occupied as a museum since 1793.
[17]Marie of France was the daughter of Philip Augustus.
[18]Montjoie is the name of a hill near Paris where Saint Denis was murdered. In tournaments “Montjoie” was the cry of the French heralds; and “Montjoie St. Denis” was the French battle-cry.
[19]CompiÈgne is a town in the Department of Oise, France, and is famous for the royal palace rebuilt by Louis the Fifteenth. Napoleon the First greatly enriched its interior.
[20]Blondel was a trouvÈre, or minstrel, who accompanied Richard the Lion-hearted, and is said to have discovered him when he was imprisoned by singing a song under the King’s tower, to which Richard responded.
[21]Hume accepts the following account of the murder as the most reliable: “John first removed him to the castle of Rouen; and coming in a boat, during the night time, to that place, commanded Arthur to be brought forth to him. The young prince, aware of his danger, and now more subdued by the continuance of his misfortunes and by the approach of death, threw himself on his knees before his uncle and begged for mercy; but the barbarous tyrant, making no reply, stabbed him with his own hands, and, fastening a stone to the dead body, threw it into the Seine.”
[22]Magna Charta, the charter of English liberties, signed by John and his barons at Runnymede, June 15, 1215.
[23]Hume says of John: “Cowardice, inactivity, folly, levity, licentiousness, ingratitude, treachery, tyranny, and cruelty,—all these qualities appear too evidently in the several incidents of his life to give us room to suspect that the disagreeable picture has been anywise overcharged by the prejudices of the ancient historians.”
