Richard I of England

"We, however, place the love of God and His honour above our own and above the acquisition of many regions."

"If it had not been for his malice, forcing me to return, I would have been able to recover the whole of Outremer. Then, when I was in prison he conspired to keep me there so that he could steal my lands."

"Stick to your own grammar, my lord, for it is much better."

"“Sire, I say with pride That my lord is the finest knight On earth, and the most skilled to fight. Noble is he and generous. I count not sins we have in us, But if one had your qualities United and conjoined with his, We say that there could not be found In all the world that stretches round Any two princes to outvie Your every valiant quality.” The sultan heard the bishop through, And answered: “Well I know ’tis true That brave and noble is the king, But with what rashness doth he fling Himself! Howe’er great prince I be, I should prefer to have in me Reason and measure and largesse Than courage carried to excess."

"The king of England, though inferior in dignity, surpassed his rival Philip II of France] in wealth and military renown; and if heroism be confined to brutal and ferocious valour, Richard Plantagenet will stand high among the heroes of the age. The memory of Cœur de Lion, of the lion-hearted prince, was long dear and glorious to his English subjects; and, at the distance of sixty years, it was celebrated in proverbial sayings by the grandsons of the Turks and Saracens, against whom he had fought."

"A notable example to all princes that have the conquest over their enimies."

"The most shining part of this prince's character are his military talents. No man, even in that romantic age, carried personal courage and intrepidity to a greater height, and this quality gained him the appellation of the lion-hearted, 'Coeur de Lion.' He passionately loved glory, chiefly military glory; and as his conduct in the field was not inferior to his valour, he seems to have possessed every talent necessary for acquiring it. His resentments also were high, his pride unconquerable, and his subjects as well as his neighbours, had therefore reason to apprehend, from the continuance of his reign, a perpetual scene of blood and violence. Of an impetuous and vehement spirit, he was distinguished by all the good as well as the bad qualities incident to that character; he was open, frank, generous, sincere, and brave; he was revengeful, domineering, ambitious, haughty, and cruel; and was thus better calculated to dazzle men by the splendour of his enterprises, than either to promote their happiness or his own grandeur by a sound and well regulated policy."

"Despite the feats and achievements of his astonishing reign, Henry II is one of the lesser-known Plantagenet kings. Not so his third son, Richard I, 'the Lionheart' who inherited the Plantagenet empire in 1189, during the white heat of Europe's most enthusiastic crusading years. Richard – who spent a surprisingly small amount of time in England given the heroic status he achieved there within decades of his death – devoted his life to expanding the horizons of Plantagenet power. This led him to conquests as far afield of Sicily, Cyprus and the kingdom of Jerusalem during the Third Crusade, before he returned, via an expensive imprisonment in Germany, to fight for his inheritance against the French king Philip II 'Augustus.'"

"Religion, and it can merge into nationalism as orthodoxy does with the Serbs and the Russians, offers both a cause worth dying for and the promise of eternal life. The crusaders did not leave their homes all over Europe and make the long and dangerous journey to the Holy Land just to acquire loot and land. There was more and better to be had much closer to home. They were driven by what they thought was a divine mission, to retrieve the land where Christ had once lived for Christendom. Many crusaders – kings such as Richard I of England, the Lionheart, and Philip II of France and great landed magnates – left behind properties, position and families and many never returned. Egged on by religious leaders such as Pope Gregory VII, who reminded the faithful of the passage from the Book of Jeremiah ‘Cursed be he that keepeth back his sword from blood’, they killed indiscriminately those they thought of as infidels. In the massacres in Jerusalem in 1099 the streets were said to have run with blood, in some places up to the knees of the crusaders’ horses. ‘None of them were left alive; neither women nor children were spared,’ said a contemporary account."

"Richard's achievements on the crusade made him one of the outstanding leaders of his age. After King Philip's precipitate return to France in July 1191, Richard was the single most important contingent leader operating in the east. Well before his arrival in the Holy Land, he had shown his mettle as a commander. On his crossing of the Mediterranean from Sicily, he had conquered Cyprus in the space of a few months... On his arrival at the port of Acre in Palestine, he brought to a conclusion, in under four weeks, a siege which had been dragging on for nearly two years, amply justifying his reputation as a master of siege warfare. On campaign in the Holy Land, he showed himself to be more than a match for Saladin... When, after two years, he and Saladin had fought themselves to a standstill, he negotiated a peace which guaranteed free access to the Holy Places and stabilised the crusader kingdoms for another century."

"[T]his triumphal and bright shining Starre of Chevalrie."

"Richard conceived of himself not just as a king, but also as a knight: as a warrior-general who could not only lead men in battle, but also wield sword, lance and crossbow with his own hands to deadly effect. In this, he was the product (and perhaps the epitome) of his age, for Richard was born into a culture newly obsessed with the notion of chivalry—one in which prowess was esteemed and honour craved; where a man’s value might be gauged by his reputation and measured by the admiration of his peers."

"One startling fact looms over Richard I’s career: though among the most renowned of all England’s monarchs, the Lionheart spent barely six months on English soil."

"For all of Richard’s successes and accomplishments, strengths and abilities, in the end he could be accused of having worked, first and foremost, not for the betterment of his realm, protection of his kin or defence of Christendom, but for himself. His eyes seem to have been fixed on the creation of a legend, rather than the foundation of a legacy. Arguably, the quest for this hollow prize placed the Angevin realm on the path to destruction, for in neglecting the issue of succession, Richard I paved the way for his younger brother’s rise to power. And it would be King John who brought England to its knees and squandered all the Lionheart’s hard-won gains."

"For the authors of chivalric literature, and even some of the more inventive historians writing in the thirteenth century, the Lionheart developed into an ideal protagonist—a heroic figure drawn from the near-past who could emulate the likes of Arthur and his knights."