History's Toughest Heroes: William Marshal: The Greatest Medieval Knight

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Speaker 6 1216

Speaker 6 england was in crisis a bankrupt country people arguing and divided and a foreign country had invaded prince louis of france across the channel with his armies Then he would claim the throne.

Speaker 6 King John, who everyone hated, hated, had run away to Newark.

Speaker 6 Then he died of dysentery and his forces were in a mess.

Speaker 4 The southeast of England, including London, is held by the French.

Speaker 6 If he wanted to conquer the whole country, Louis needed to take the north. His road to victory led through Lincoln.

Speaker 3 Lincoln had been holding out for two years. They'd taken the town itself.
There was just a castle holding out.

Speaker 6 Lincoln Castle had stayed loyal to the crown.

Speaker 6 But the new king, Henry III,

Speaker 6 was only a boy. He was nine years old.

Speaker 6 More and more of the English were switching to the French side. But one night, William Marshall promised the child king he would fight for him and send Louis Packin back to France.

Speaker 6 But he'd have to beat him at Lincoln first.

Speaker 4 He had about 360 knights and 400 infantry.

Speaker 6 But But that was nothing compared to the numbers of French soldiers garrisoned at Lincoln. But this was all William Marshall could muster.

Speaker 3 William had no money to pay the troops, or very little.

Speaker 3 He was having to melt down the last of the royal treasure to keep the troops in the field.

Speaker 6 After a grueling life as a knight, serving kings and waging wars, William Marshall was now 70 years old, and the stakes couldn't have been higher for his last great battle.

Speaker 6 I'm Ray Winstone

Speaker 6 and for BBC Radio 4, this is history's toughest heroes.

Speaker 6 True stories of adventurers, rebels and survivors who lived life on the edge.

Speaker 6 William Marshall, the greatest knight.

Speaker 6 As a young man, William Marshall was a handsome bloke.

Speaker 3 He looked like a Roman Emperor.

Speaker 6 Elizabeth Chadwick is a historical novelist.

Speaker 6 She spent years researching and writing about William Marshall.

Speaker 3 Strong, quite lean, powerful, very skilled physically, with hand-eye coordination, superb horseman.

Speaker 3 He's even described as having a large crotch, which everybody laughs at today. But what it meant in their terms was that he had a terrific seat in the saddle.

Speaker 6 But being a knight wasn't just about knowing how to handle a horse or a blade.

Speaker 4 He was very much what the Middle Ages called a prudhomme in French, which means an accomplished man, a man who had been educated in the life of the court, who was affable, who was polite, who was deferential, but also who stood up for himself.

Speaker 6 Professor David Crouch is a retired professor of medieval history.

Speaker 4 Medieval masculinity wasn't about being violent. The ideal of a medieval male was a moderate, restrained man

Speaker 4 who did not go looking for trouble.

Speaker 6 William Marshall didn't need to go looking for trouble. He was born into it.
He was the fourth son of a minor noble, John Marshall, and he was born during the Civil War. They called it the anarchy.

Speaker 6 The Empress Matilda and King Stephen were battling for the throne.

Speaker 6 And John Marshall was in the thick of it, fighting for the Empress.

Speaker 6 Then, in 1152, King Stephen's forces laid siege to John Marshall's castle.

Speaker 6 There was a truce, but Stephen took young William as a hostage.

Speaker 6 He was about five.

Speaker 4 In the hopes that, you know, John Marshall would then be able to be intimidated into doing what the king wanted.

Speaker 6 Now, John Marshall used the truce to resupply.

Speaker 4 When the king protested that he would therefore have to kill William Marshall, and indeed brought the boy forward and placed him on a catapult to hurl him into the castle and, of course, kill him, unless John Marshall surrendered, John Marshall gave his answer.

Speaker 4 He said he had the hammers and anvils to make many more sons

Speaker 4 and just fire William Marshall into the castle if he wanted.

Speaker 6 But King Stephen had started to like the boy.

Speaker 3 He asks Stephen to play games with him in his tent and he asks to play with somebody's decorated spear and makes himself such a wonderful little charmer that they just cannot harm him.

Speaker 6 Stephen made William his ward.

Speaker 6 Finally, in 1153, the anarchy ended with a deal. When Henry II became king, William Marshall was sent to France.

Speaker 6 He He didn't have much by the way of money or prospects, but he had potential as a knight.

Speaker 6 He learned how to use the lance and the sword and how to ride a war horse. He was taught loyalty, modesty, and courage.
Once he was schooled, William went to Aquitaine in the southwest of France.

Speaker 3 He'd gone with his uncle Patrick to look after the Aquitaine area where Eleanor of Aquitaine was in residence.

Speaker 6 Eleanor was Duchess of Aquitaine. She was married to King Henry II and Queen of England.

Speaker 3 One day they were given the job of escorting Eleanor of Aquitaine between castles.

Speaker 4 He was probably on horseback, the roads in France being well known for being notoriously bumpy.

Speaker 6 Well, they weren't expecting any trouble. King Henry had recently defeated a rebellious family in the area, the Lucinians.

Speaker 3 They were riding along without their

Speaker 3 armor with them, but it was all in backpannias and things.

Speaker 6 A group of Lucinion warriors suddenly attacked.

Speaker 6 Now William's uncle sent the Queen racing to safety and turned to defend her retreat. William had just enough time to put on some chainmail.

Speaker 3 William's uncle Patrick rushed for his armor but while he was doing that one of the Luzinyans speared him in the spine before William's eyes and he saw his uncle killed right under him in a violent way.

Speaker 6 Normally, knights were captured alive and ransomed. This looked like the murder of an unarmed man.
It broke the knightly code.

Speaker 6 Furious, Marshall threw himself into the fight, attacking like a starving lion.

Speaker 6 After his horse was killed under him, he went to work with his sword.

Speaker 4 He was scattered from the rest of the knights and surrounded, and therefore he put his back against a hedge and started laying about him.

Speaker 6 Marshall made his last stand, striking right and left with the blade.

Speaker 3 He fought back as hard as he could, but unfortunately there were too many of the Lusignon side and somebody stabbed him in the thigh with a with a lance.

Speaker 6 The steel head went clean through his leg. Marshall collapsed, bleeding heavily.
The Queen had escaped. The Lucignon knights took William Marshall captive and strapped him to a donkey.

Speaker 3 He had to beg for bandages to bind his wounds, and in the meantime, he had to use his own leg bindings and

Speaker 3 bits of toe to plug the wounds, which is like old rope.

Speaker 6 William Marshall was dragged along with the Lucinian men from camp to camp. They might not kill him, but they weren't going to help him either.

Speaker 6 On one stop, he persuaded a local woman to smuggle him some clean bandages.

Speaker 4 She did it by hollowing out a loaf, putting the bandages in the loaf, and passing the loaf to him so he could access the rather crummy, I imagine, parcel.

Speaker 6 For weeks, Marshall was in agony. At camp, the Lucignon fighters kept themselves busy by playing games of strength.
Marshall couldn't resist a challenge, even with his injured leg.

Speaker 4 They should pick up heavy weights of stones one after another, and he got some admiration by managing to beat the the other Lucians despite his injury and despite the pain he was in.

Speaker 6 The effort, it reopened the wound. Marshall, well, he was in a lot of pain again and still a captive.
Things, well, they didn't look good.

Speaker 6 Then the Lucian Knights got a surprise offer.

Speaker 4 Queen Eleanor had watched him. fight alongside his uncle and saw him cut down and decided she liked the cut of his jib and made an approach to the Lusignon to ransom him.

Speaker 6 So William Marshall was then taken into the Queen's household. He got proper care, new weapons, horses and cash.
Suddenly he was living in the gold.

Speaker 6 Eleanor had a job in mind. Her husband Henry II had crowned his eldest son as Henry the Young King.

Speaker 6 Marshall was appointed the young king's tutor-in-arms, where they soon became good friends and hit the tournament circuit. Tournaments were a chance for knights to show what they could do.

Speaker 3 Where William became the first captain of the England team.

Speaker 6 William and the young king were both handsome and skilled. They made quite an impression.

Speaker 3 Tourney Circuit is a bit like some of the other sports circuits that we have today, where there are different tournaments in different countries, a bit like the Diamond League, really, and a tournament will be held once a fortnight in various fields over France and Flanders.

Speaker 6 Tournaments included a range of events.

Speaker 3 There would be person-to-person jousts, there'd also be hand-to-hand combats and then there'd be the Grand Melee which was a free-for-all.

Speaker 3 So you imagine a polo match with weapons.

Speaker 6 At the beginning of the melee the knights on each team lined up on their war horses facing each other.

Speaker 4 Two lines would come together and the knights would strike each other and would try to unseat each other from the horses as they went through.

Speaker 6 Now, there were a lot of ways to do this.

Speaker 4 The most obvious way is using their lance and hit them backwards off their horse. And it does actually seem that they did not use blunt lances, that they actually used the sharpened lances.

Speaker 6 The melee spread out and became a free-for-all.

Speaker 6 A knight in full armor was hard to kill. They were the tanks of the medieval battlefield.
But any wound or broken bone could cause a fatal infection. These clashes were still life and death.

Speaker 4 I wouldn't try and kill him. Sometimes it happens, and when it did, it was thought to be sort of

Speaker 4 rather regrettable, but it did happen.

Speaker 6 The aim of the game was to take rival knights captive. Marshall's brilliant horsemanship meant he could sometimes pull this off without even using a lance.

Speaker 4 Instead of trying to hit somebody off a horse, he would duck down and ride his horse past the rival knight, grab his reins as he went past him, and then haul him away completely helpless because he had no way of controlling his horse and had to go where William Marshall tugged it.

Speaker 6 It was the medieval version of a trick shop. Daring, high risk, and, if it worked, a real showstopper.

Speaker 6 Once Marshall had the reins, the other guy had no control over his horse.

Speaker 6 He was forced to surrender.

Speaker 4 That would mean that his equipment and his horse would all belong to William Marshall and would have to be bought back. And thus William Marshall made his fortune.

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Speaker 3 Getting there starts here with State Street Investment Management.

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Read it carefully.

Speaker 5 DIA is subject to risks similar to those of stocks. All ETFs are subject to risk, including possible loss of principal.
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Speaker 6 Marshall and the Young King became legends.

Speaker 4 At the time, the fans of the tournament tended to construct league tables of knights and rank them in order. And

Speaker 4 amongst the knights of the King of England, he was always reckoned as Numo Uno, you know, the national champion, if you like.

Speaker 6 For almost 10 years, Marshall and the Young king ruled the circuit.

Speaker 4 Everybody who was anybody in northern Europe between 1176 and 1183 and indeed after that knew William Marshall. He was literally famous in his world.

Speaker 6 People got jealous. They said Marshall thought he was better than the young king.
He was even accused of having an affair with the young king's wife.

Speaker 6 Now the young king began to grow suspicious, so William Marshall left his service. Young Henry had just lost one of his closest friends at a dangerous time.

Speaker 3 The young king felt that he ought to have lands of his own.

Speaker 3 He was successful on the tourney circuits. He got all the money he wanted, but he wanted more than that.

Speaker 6 The young king rebelled against his father, King Henry II.

Speaker 3 The young king ran out of money because his father wasn't bankrolling him anymore for obvious reasons and

Speaker 3 had to take to robbing shrines to pay his men.

Speaker 6 He needed William Marshall back. He sent messengers looking for him.
Even though things were looking dire, Marshall came back.

Speaker 6 Around the same time, the young king and his mercenaries robbed a shrine at Rocomador in France.

Speaker 3 And the young king shortly after that became very ill with dysentery. Everyone thought that robbing the shrine of St.
Mary's at Rocmadour had caused God's wrath, if you like.

Speaker 6 Once a hero, celebrated for his looks and bravery, the young king died a squalid death. William Marshall was at his side.

Speaker 6 The young king asked one last thing of his old friend, to take his cloak to Jerusalem. Now, he could have ignored the request and looked for a new lord to serve, but it wasn't his way.

Speaker 6 He went to Leoli Land.

Speaker 3 I think William suddenly realised, what have I been doing with my life?

Speaker 3 And it was a wake-up call. You know, the midlife crisis, if you like, because by now William was

Speaker 3 in his 30s and something had to change.

Speaker 6 After two years, he returned to Europe to offer his service to the old king, Henry II, still ruling England.

Speaker 4 William Marshall is now getting on a bit. He is still a famous warrior and

Speaker 4 not so much on the tournament field anymore.

Speaker 6 But the death of the young king hadn't put an end to the squabbling. Another of Henry's sons, Richard, rose up against his father

Speaker 4 over his father's intentions as to what's going to happen to the crown after the king dies.

Speaker 6 Richard joined forces with the king of France, Philip II.

Speaker 6 Once again, William Marshall was on the weaker side.

Speaker 4 King Henry II's army collapses and he's trapped in the city of Le Mans, south of the Norman boundary, with Richard and King Philip of France closing in on him.

Speaker 6 Henry had to escape.

Speaker 3 Henry was not a well man. He was suffering from infected fistulas

Speaker 3 and hadn't got that long to live. And Henry realised he had to flee.

Speaker 6 They'd gone a couple of miles when they realised they were being pursued. Marshall and his knights turned their horses, ready to fight, and give the king more time to run.

Speaker 6 Then they saw the horseman bearing down on them was Richard himself.

Speaker 3 Richard was in hot pursuit. Richard had only put on light armour.
He was that determined to get his father that he just

Speaker 3 was wearing next to no armour, just sort of galloping after him to grab him.

Speaker 4 As Richard rides up, William Marshall bursts out of concealment with a party of his own knights and bears down on Richard. heading straight for him, lance couched at the shield.

Speaker 6 Richard knew that without armor, a blow from a lance would be fatal.

Speaker 4 And basically screams out, you wouldn't kill me. I'm Richard, it would be wrong.

Speaker 6 Marshall was faced with a tough choice.

Speaker 3 And William Marshall charged him and killed his horse under him.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 then turned round and he said, I won't kill you, but let the devil have you.

Speaker 4 and rode off after the very sick Henry II, leaving Richard grovelling in the earth behind him and feeling rather embarrassed, apparently.

Speaker 6 Henry II survived that day, but died soon after.

Speaker 6 Now, Richard, the man Marshall had sent flying into the dust, was the King of England, Richard the Lionheart.

Speaker 3 Richard came to see his father's body at Pontebreux Abbey, and Richard said to William, you tried to kill me back then at Le Mans.

Speaker 3 And William just gave him a scornful look and said, if I wanted to kill you, I could have done. I'm not so weak that I haven't got the strength to know where to put a lance.

Speaker 6 King Richard accepted Marshall's service.

Speaker 6 He also let him marry one of the great heiresses of the time, Isabelle de Clare.

Speaker 6 William Marshall had come a long way. He'd gone from being a young son of a minor noble to one of the most important men in the country.

Speaker 6 But the wars within the royal family were still over.

Speaker 6 Richard was away again on a crusade. At home, his younger brother John plotted.
Then, when Richard was killed by a crossbow, John took the throne.

Speaker 6 He was already hated by many of the nobles in England. The barons of England forced John to sign Magna Carta in 1215, limiting royal power.

Speaker 6 But the ink was hardly dry before both sides broke the deal. England was hit by civil war.
The rebel English nobles invited Prince Louis of France to take the throne.

Speaker 6 As his army arrived on the south coast, King John ran away.

Speaker 4 In 1216, John went the same way as his elder brother, Henry the Young King, caught dysentery and died rather horribly at Newark.

Speaker 6 By right, King John's son Henry became the new king, King Henry III.

Speaker 6 He was just nine years old.

Speaker 4 The situation then was how to save the throne for this nine-year-old boy and it was given to William Marshall, or rather he took the responsibility for the protectorship of England while the boy was fighting for his political life.

Speaker 6 Once again, William Marshall had to put his body between his monarch and his enemies. Once again, he was on the weaker side.

Speaker 4 William Marshall at this point is around 70. He's certainly a strong and stalwart man still.
He can ride a horse in full armour.

Speaker 6 The odds were against him but Louis split his forces.

Speaker 4 Some of them stayed based on London but a very large contingent of French under Count Thomas of Perche were sent to reinforce the siege of Lincoln and break into the castle.

Speaker 6 Marshall had the advantage. He knew the country.

Speaker 4 If you know Lincoln, Lincoln, you'll know that it's one big long hill. It's got these twisty little streets which steeply go down.

Speaker 4 The castle and the cathedral, however, are right on the top of the hill.

Speaker 6 The constable in Lincoln was a woman called Nicola De Lahay.

Speaker 6 She was still holding out in the castle which stood within the city walls.

Speaker 4 Now William Marshall knew that if he took the main road to Lincoln, he would end up having to fight his way through the city before he could get to the castle and leave it.

Speaker 4 So instead, he did a rather more daring thing and took to the country roads to Newark and from Newark to Torxey

Speaker 4 and to come down on Lincoln not from the south and climb up that god-awful hill, but from the north.

Speaker 6 As dawn broke, William Marshall and his forces rode towards Lincoln. When the French heard they were coming, they came out to assess the threat.

Speaker 3 They didn't think that William's army was actually capable of taking Lincoln itself.

Speaker 6 They were sure that Marshall's small tired force would be driven off. The French went back behind the city walls, but Marshall lent his knights some of his own fighting spirit.

Speaker 4 Hear me, you noble, loyal knights. Keep faith with the king.
In God's name, hear me now, for your attention to what I say is most necessary.

Speaker 6 His whole life had been about loyalty and courage. He fired up that knightly spirit in his men.

Speaker 4 We shall be a lily-livered lily-livered lot if we do not now take revenge on those who have come from France to take for themselves the lands of our men.

Speaker 4 Thinking to inherit the same, they seek our total destruction.

Speaker 6 The sun glinted on their blades, lance tips and helmets. War horses chomped at the bits.

Speaker 6 They came on strong.

Speaker 6 Now the French were caught in the city between the castle and Marshal's men outside the walls.

Speaker 3 They had to keep attacking the castle, which could actually hit them in the rear where they didn't keep up that pressure.

Speaker 3 But at the same time, they got the army of William Marshall outside their walls, so they were like a French sandwich between two lots of English.

Speaker 6 William Marshall's men could get into the castle, but they needed a way into the city itself.

Speaker 6 Marshall's scouts found a gate in the city walls blocked up with rubble. If the French could be distracted while it was cleared, his men could use it to get in.

Speaker 6 Once they were finally in, Marshall sent his crossbowmen into the castle. They shot volleys of deadly bolts down from the castle tower into the French and rebel troops.

Speaker 6 At the same time, one of Marshall's knights led an attack on the north gate.

Speaker 6 That distracted the French all right.

Speaker 6 By midday, the blocked path was clear. Marshall led the main attack himself.

Speaker 3 He was so eager and had to be reminded by a young lad who said, Sire, you've left, you haven't got your helmet.

Speaker 3 And he went, Oh dear, that would have been thank you for that. Thanked the young lad and said, More or less, I was so eager I forgot.

Speaker 6 They charged.

Speaker 3 Driving in his spurs, he charged three lance lengths into the opposing ranks. These are the people besieging the castle.
And he disrupted their formation.

Speaker 6 The streets were narrow. The battle broke up.
Now it was man versus man.

Speaker 6 Night versus night. Still on steel.
Thomas of Persche, the French leader, rallied his troops outside the cathedral. Marshal rode up.

Speaker 4 There, he finds the French lined up, ready to repulse him, but at this point, bless him, the old fella, he leads his knights forward in a charge against the French and

Speaker 4 pierces with his wedge of knights through the French ranks, kills the French commander, and the French, disheartened by the attack from the walls and the assault from outside the city, break.

Speaker 6 With their commander gone, the French troops tried to flee.

Speaker 4 As you have to do in Lincoln, down a very steep hill, rallying on the way or trying to rally on the way, but failing, because

Speaker 4 the loyalists and William Marshall and his men are riding downhill into them, which gives them all the momentum they need.

Speaker 6 I mean, it was a crushing defeat. Marshall's forces had shattered the French army and killed its leaders or taken them captive.
Lincoln was saved. But William would not stop to rest or eat.

Speaker 6 He had to deliver the news of the victory to the nine-year-old king.

Speaker 3 He then rode 36 miles back to Nottingham. So his morning started at dawn, included a big battle and then arriving at Nottingham about 11 o'clock at night and he'd been up since four in the morning.

Speaker 6 After his defeat Louis gave up his claims and returned to France.

Speaker 6 William Marshall had achieved the impossible and secured Henry III's throne.

Speaker 6 He performed his final great act of service for an English king. Henry III

Speaker 6 would sit on the throne for over 50 years, and his royal house would rule England until the Tudors.

Speaker 6 But William Marshall's days were running out.

Speaker 6 Two years after the Battle of Lincoln, he fell ill.

Speaker 3 He went to his home at Caversham, from London. He decided that if he was going to die, he'd die in his own surroundings, surrounded by his family.

Speaker 6 Now, three of his knights stayed with him in his chambers at all times. Priests prayed for his soul.
His youngest daughter, she sang to him.

Speaker 4 His son lay on the bed next to him, supporting his head, trying to get him to eat something.

Speaker 4 He called his daughters and wife in to say farewell to them and give him a last kiss. And

Speaker 4 early in the morning, the window open, he gave up the struggle and died.

Speaker 6 History's Toughest Heroes is a BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds. It's narrated by me, Ray Winstone.
The series producer is Suniti Samaya. Production from Michael Lapointe.

Speaker 6 Georgina Leslie is the development producer. Additional production from Lorna Reader.
The series is written by Imogen Robinson. Additional script editing by Alex von Tunselmann.

Speaker 6 Danita McIntyre is the production apprentice. The executive producer and editor is Paul Smith.
Fact-checking by Amy Bracken. A theme music is composed by Jeremy Walmsley.

Speaker 6 The mix engineer is Arlie Adlinton. James Murray is the voiceover engineer.
Joe Carl is the production manager. Shan Pillay is the production coordinator and Ian Tate is the production executive.

Speaker 6 Rights negotiation by Alex Curran and Talent Rights by Alistair Murray. The Commissioner of BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds is Rhiann Roberts.
Abigail Willer is the Assistant Commissioner.

Speaker 6 Thanks to Sarah Nelson, Thomas Curry, Philip Sellers, Juliette Martin, Ellis Squire, Greg Steiger, Lucy Doyle and Joe Tagler-LaVorde.

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