Arthur I (Brittany)

Arthur I , (born April 13, 1187 ; † April 3, 1203 ) was the posthumous (born after the death of his father) son of Gottfried II , Duke of Brittany , and Constance of Brittany , and the designated heir of the English Throne as the successor to Richard the Lionheart .

Life

When Richard was on the Third Crusade , Konstanze ruled for her son, whom she had proclaimed Duke in 1194, with greater independence. After Richard claimed the guardianship of Arthur for himself and intervened in Brittany in April 1196, Konstanze handed her two children over to the court of King Philip II of France , who acted as their protector. In Paris Arthur was brought up together with Prince Louis VIII , who from then on were friends with each other.

When Richard died in 1199 and his brother Johann Ohneland claimed the successor for himself, a large part of the French nobility refused to recognize him. They attached greater importance to Arthur's inheritance law, since his father was an older brother of Johann. After the conflict between John and Philip II broke out again in 1202 , the latter enfeoffed Arthur not only with Brittany but also with the Anjou , Maine and Poitou . Arthur then marched into Poitou in order to enforce the enfeoff also militarily, and took up the siege of Mirebeau , into which his grandmother Eleanor of Aquitaine had fled. Here, however, Arthur was surprised by King John during the siege on July 31, 1202, captured and imprisoned in Falaise under the supervision of Hubert de Burgh . In the following year he was transferred by William de Braose to Rouen , where he disappeared in April of that year under unknown circumstances.

The story of his disappearance gave rise to different stories. One was that Arthur's guards were afraid to kill him, so King John did it himself and then threw his body into the Seine . The Margam Annals, however, provide the following account of Arthur's death:

After King John Arthur captured and kept alive in prison for some time, eventually in the castle of Rouen, he slew him after dinner on the Thursday before Easter when he was drunk and possessed by the devil (ebrius et daemonio plenus), with his own hand, tied the body to a heavy stone and threw it into the Seine. He was found in his net by a fisherman, dragged onto a sandbank and recognized, and for fear of the tyrant he was brought to the secret burial in the Notre-Dame-des-Prés priory of Le Bec Abbey .

William de Braose rose so much in Johann's favor after Arthur's disappearance that he was suspected of complicity, and indeed, many years later and after a dispute with the King , William's wife Maud de Braose indicted King John for the murder of Arthur, whereupon Maud and her eldest Son were thrown in jail where, according to a contemporary source, they starved to death. William fled to France, where he presumably wrote a paper on Arthur's death, but no copy was found.

With Arthur's death, his claim to the Plantagenet throne passed to his older sister Eleonore ("Fair Maid of Brittany"). This was to be her undoing, as Eleanor was also captured by Johann at Mirebeau, who had her locked up in Corfe Castle . There she remained under the rule of her cousin Heinrich III. , since he also had to see their rights as a threat to his own claims, and died there in 1241. Instead, Arthur and Eleonore's half-sister, Alix von Thouars, succeeded him in Brittany .

Arthur in literature

Arthur's death is a central part of Shakespeare's play King John , in which Arthur is portrayed as a child, whose innocence prevents Hubert de Burgh from murdering him on John's behalf. Arthur dies a little later on the run.

Furthermore:

• Auguste Brizeux : La chasse du Prince Arthur (19th century)
• Frederick Rolfe ('Baron Corvo'): Hubert's Arthur , published by AJA Symons in 1935
• Gertrud von le Fort : The court of the sea , (story, 1943)

Arthur in music

• Joseph-Guy Ropartz : La Chasse du Prince Arthur , symphonic poem (1912) after Brizeux
• The Breton folk rock band Tri Yann wrote a song about Arthur, the text can be read here: Antiwar Songs (AWS) - Arthur Plantagenest (the text is in Middle French and seems to come from an anonymous manuscript from around 1400).

literature

• Judith Everard, Michael Jones (Eds.): The charters of Duchess Constance of Brittany and her family, 1171-1221. Boydell Press, Woodbridge et al. a. 1999, ISBN 0-85115-751-3 .
• M. Dominica Legge: William the Marshal and Arthur of Brittany. In: Historical Research. Vol. 55, No. 131, 1982, pp. 18-24, doi: 10.1111 / j.1468-2281.1982.tb01141.x .
• Frederick M. Powicke : King John and Arthur of Brittany . In: The English Historical Review. Vol. 24, No. 96, 1909, pp. 659-674, doi: 10.1093 / ehr / XXIV.XCVI.659 .

Web links

• Arthur Plantagenet, Earl of Richmond, on thepeerage.com , accessed July 26, 2015.
• Collection of materials at medieval-genealogie.de

Individual evidence

1. ^ Léopold Delisle : Catalog des actes de Philippe-Auguste. Avec une introduction sur les sources, les caractères et l'importance historique de ces documents. Durand, Paris 1856, p. 168, no.732 . Arthur paid homage to Philip II August in Gournai in July 1202 as "Duke of Brittany and Aquitaine, as Count of Anjou and Maine".
2. ↑ Histoire des ducs de Normandie et des rois d'Angleterre , ed. by Francisque Michel, Paris 1840, p. 114.
3. ↑ Arthur Plantagenet at tudorplace.com.ar

predecessor	Office	successor
Constance	Duke of Brittany 1196–1203	Alix von Thouars (with Guido ) (with Peter I. )