Page:The Queens of England.djvu/86

 70 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. coast of Istria, whence, by a strange and unexplained fatality, he rushed forward in disguise into the very territory, and into the actual vicinity of the capital, of his incensed foe, the Arch- duke of Austria. Here he was seized and confined, first in the castle of Diirrenstein, on the Danube, and then in that of Trifels, in the Vosges, as the prisoner of the emperor, to whom he had been sold by Leopold, and from whence he was ran- somed, as already related in the life of his mother. At Rome, Berengaria first heard of this treacherous cap- tivity ; but history does not record that she made any efforts to emancipate him. Probably her gentleness may have verged upon inertness : if she had been active and impassioned, as was the aged Queen Eleanor, the voice of her supplications must have been heard throughout the European world. Nev- ertheless, she seems not to have been entirely supine with regard to her own position ; for, being detained at Rome through fear of the emperor, her continuous and urgent solicitations induced the Pope to grant her an escort to convey her and Joanna, by way of Pisa and Genoa, to Marseilles. Here she found a protector in her kinsman, the King of Arragon, who was her safeguard through his own dominion of Provence, and then dispatched her onward under the guidance of Raimond de St. Gilles. This noble knight performed the part of guardian so zealously and dexterously, that he won the heart of the fair Queen Joanna, to whom, on their arrival in Poitou, he was united in marriage. He was evidently a marvelously insin- uating man, for he had already had three wives, and contrived to have a fifth before he died. This union healed the long breach which had existed between the House of Aquitaine and the Counts of Toulouse, Queen Eleanor giving up her rights to her daughter Joanna, now the wife of the famous Raimond the Sixth, Count de Toulouse, the supporter of the Albigeois, and the foe of the equally celebrated Simon de Montfort. Richard did not arrive in England till after an absence of more than four years. Here he was received with rapturous delight, and was now crowned a second time, at Winchester, but without his queen, Berengaria, from whom he still con- tinued estranged. During Richard's imprisonment Berengaria had lost her father, Sancho the Wise ; and her brother, Sancho the Strong, was now sovereign of Navarre ; and it was at the earnest entreaty of Berengaria that this monarch had been induced to rescue Richard's duchy of Normandv, which had