Who hasn't heard of Richard the Lionheart...soldier, poet and beloved English king of the Robin Hood legends, plotted against by foul Prince John? During his lifetime, he truly cast a larger-than-life shadow. So fierce a Crusader was England's Richard I, that he became the Middle East's equivalent of the "bogey man." Syrian mothers warned naughty children to bed lest King Richard come and get them.

     Richard's popularity with the Saxons and peasantry in England, however, probably rested less on his fairness and more on the fact that he was hardly ever there. During his 10-year reign, it is estimated that he spent but 6 months in England. In fact, it is doubtful he ever spoke a word of English. Richard was a Norman, reared in the sunny climes of the French Aquitaine, which he obviously preferred to the mists of England. And don't forget, when he went on the Crusades, he took a great many of England's none-too-popular Norman overlords with him...most of whom never returned. His lifelong, on-again, off-again relationship with Philip II of France has long a favorite subject of historical revisionists.

     If Richard didn't live so nobly, at least he died so. In search of treasure at Chalus, France, he was mortally wounded by an arrow shot by Bertrand de Goudon-the castle's lone defender. Castle and archer were duly captured, but there was no treasure. His wound festering, Richard had Bertrand brought before him.

Acknowledgments: 3, 4, 29

© Russ Brown, 1998