Wilhelm II (Béthune)

William II , called the Red (French: Guillaume le Roux de Béthune , † April 1214 ) was a lord of Béthune , Richebourg and Varneston , as well as hereditary advocatus of the church and abbey of Saint-Vaast of Arras .

The old coat of arms of the House of Béthune.

He came from the influential noble family Béthune from the Artois , who had their ancestral home in Béthune . He was the second son of Sire Robert V of Béthune (also called the Red ) and the Adelheid of Saint-Pol. His brothers were:

• the elder Robert VI. († 1193)
• the knight Baudouin († 1212)
• the famous trouvère and crusader Conon († 1219/20)
• as well as Jean III. , Bishop of Cambrai († 1219)

With his older brother Robert VI. Wilhelm accompanied his father in the entourage of Count Philip of Flanders in 1177 on an armed pilgrimage to the Kingdom of Jerusalem . There the brothers were supposed to be married to the sisters of King Baldwin IV , Sibylle and Isabella , which, however, was rejected by the Haute Cour of the kingdom. The Béthune family, now including the brothers Baudouin and Conon, also accompanied the count on the third crusade in 1191 , where the father and the count died. In 1193 Robert VI also died. whereupon Wilhelm took over the inheritance of his family.

Wilhelm was married to the heiress of Dendermonde , Mathilde, with whom he had several sons. In the conflict between Count Balduin IX. of Flanders and King Philip II August for the feudal lordship in the Artois, the Béthune positioned themselves on both sides. Wilhelm and his eldest son Daniel stood by the French king, while his brothers and younger son Robert VII sided with the count. On February 23, 1200, Wilhelm and Conon, together with the Count of Flanders, took the cross for the fourth crusade . In contrast to his younger brother, Wilhelm did not excel at this crusade, but participated in the conquest of Constantinople (April 1204), after which the Count of Flanders was elected the first emperor of the newly founded Latin Empire . After the disastrous battle of Adrianople (April 1205), in which Wilhelm did not take part, he started the journey home with seven thousand crusaders. His brother Conon and Cardinal Peter von Capua tried in vain and, according to Villehardouin , with tears to persuade them to stay. Conon stayed in Constantinople and died there several years later. Wilhelm himself died in April 1214 a few months before the battle of Bouvines .

literature

• Charles Emmanuel Joseph Poplimont: La Belgique héraldique: recueil historique, chronologique, généalogique et biographique complet de toutes les maisons nobles, reconnues de la Belgique , Volume 1 (1863)
• E. Warlop: The Flemish Nobility before 1300 (Kortrijk, 1975-1976)
• Pierre Bruyelle, Alain Derville: Histoire de Béthune et de Beuvry (1985)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Scott R. Rezer: The Leper King (2009), p 88; William of Tire , Book XXI
2. ↑ Geoffrey de Villehardouin: Memoirs Or Chronicle of the Fourth Crusade and the Conquest of Constantinople (Echo Library, 2010), p. 75