Every good comic book fan will have read some of the adventures of Corto Maltese and, if so, will remember that one of the characters that the protagonist has to deal with in that first and germinal story that was The ballad of the salty sea he is the Monk, the chief of the pirates of the South Seas; a mysterious individual, who lives on his own island and whose identity is unknown because he is always shown hooded. In the end it is revealed who it is, but what interests us here is that this character is inspired by a real one, who lived in the Middle Ages dedicated to the Corsican despite his noble origin and whose thousand adventures inspired the legendary figure of Robin Hood:Eustace the Monk .
His name was actually Eustache Busket, born around 1170 in Courset, in the French county of Boulogne, a territory born of the pagus Bononiensis, dependent on the civitas de Morins (a pagus it was the equivalent of a tribe, a Roman administrative unit below the civitas , this being a community formed by several pagus ), which from the end of the 9th century came under the control of the County of Flanders.
There lived Baudoin Busket, feudal lord and father of Eustache. This was his youngest son, so, according to the custom of the time, he was destined for a religious profession while the firstborn would inherit the fief.
Indeed, Eustaquio entered the Benedictine order, joining the community of monks at the Abbey of Saint-Wulmer de Samer, also known as Saint-Vilmer, a monastery founded in the 7th century in Pas-de-Calais that used to be the traditional burial place of the Counts of Boulogne. He did not last long there because he left the monastic life in 1190 to try to avenge the death of his father. At least that is what can be deduced from the demand for justice that he made to Renaud de Dammartin, Count of Boulogne, for whom he had entered the service as bailiff (name given in northern France to the seneschal or butler). In between, he would have traveled to Toledo for a while to study magic, according to some biographical sources such as the Histoire des Ducs de Normandie et des Rois d' Angleterre or Le roman d’Eustache le moin e.
The fact is that it was not the best time to go to the count with demands, since he was immersed in a complex political dispute:he had just repudiated his wife, Marie de Châtillon, cousin of the Gallic king Felipe II the Augustus , to marry again Ide de Lorraine, daughter of another previous Count of Boulogne, and thus free himself from the vassalage he owed to Flanders; Because of this, Renaud de Dammartin earned the animosity of the monarch, with whom friction often began despite being childhood friends and who had already forgiven him once for supporting the Plantagenets against the Capetians. In 1204, in the middle of this mess, Eustaquio's paladin in the ordeal on his case lost and he fell into disgrace, accused of embezzlement, seeing his lands and titles confiscated, and becoming an outcast.
He retaliated by setting fire to two of the Count's mills, stealing his horses, ambushing pursuing guards, stealing under multiple disguises, and hiding in the Boulogne and Hardelot forests. All this, enriched with fantastic contributions from romances such as Le roman de Renart (also known as Reynard the Fox ), originated a legend that, according to some researchers, seems to have influenced the contemporary of Robin Hood; there are common ingredients, such as the mocking character, the noble origin, the costumes, the forest hideout, the seized paternal inheritance, the parallelism between the Count of Boulogne and the Sheriff of Nottingham...
The truth is that many of these elements were typical of the literature of the time (Hereward the Wake; Fouke le Fitz Waryn; The Downfall of Robert, Earle of Huntington; Gamelin ), so mutual influences would be likely. After all, almost the western half of present-day France belonged to the Plantagenets, and the stories were heard on both sides of the English Channel; furthermore, the Anglo-Norman community in England was bilingual, so such stories could be easily translated.
What was clear is that Eustaquio and his family could not continue in that precarious situation and chose to take the definitive step towards a life outside the law. In this way, he and his brothers became pirates and that was when he began to be nicknamed Monk, obviously due to his monastic past. Now then, the bulk of his escapades at sea were not on his own but at the service of gentlemen; at least once the first stage has been passed.
Thus, he was hired by John I of England (the famous John Landless , brother of Ricardo Lionheart ), who between 1205 and 1212 repeatedly sent him as a corsair, commanding a fleet of thirty ships, against French interests. The coast of Normandy and the English Channel in general suffered the fearsome attacks from him, spreading the rumor that he could make himself invisible to appear by surprise. The reality was more prosaic:Eustaquio's ships had managed to seize some islands in the channel, such as those of Sark or Guernsey, which they used as a base of operations for their withering coups.
But in 1212 the tables turned. Renaud de Dammartin paid vassalage to John landless and the seneschal-turned-privateer had to abandon his English patron to seek a new lord; the chosen one was Felipe II of France, for whom that same year he directed an incursion against Folkestone (a city in the English county of Kent). Obviously, this earned him the condemnation of the King of England, who sent a squad to evict him from the Channel Islands. However, things were going to turn against the monarch, since in February 1214, making pincers with an attack from the east by Emperor Otto IV, his offensive to conquer Paris failed before the fortress of La Roche-aux- Moines without even putting up a fight.
That same 1214 he suffered a heavy defeat at Bouvines. The coalition that brought together Philip II, Count Robert II of Dreux and Braine, Duke Eudes III of Burgundy and Count William II of Ponthieu prevailed over the one formed by Juan sin Tierra and his allies, Renaud de Dammartin, Emperor Otto IV, Ferdinand of Flanders (Count of Flanders and Infante of Portugal), Duke Theobald I of Lorraine, Henry I (landgrave of Brabant), Count William I of Holland, Duke William I of Normandy, and another Philip II (the margrave of Namur). The victory of the former put an end to the war and consolidated the Capetians in France.
In fact, it still had a couple more effects. On the one hand, Otto IV lost the crown of the Holy Roman Empire to Frederick II Hohenstaufen, whom Philip II had supported. This one, when obtaining the victory, considered that he had won a kind of judgment from God and, taking advantage of the good progress of things, he planned the invasion of England; he did not carry it out because Pope Innocent III, who had initially given him his blessing as he was at odds with Juan sin Tierra , finally ingratiated himself with the English and the Gallic king had to cancel the departure of his fleet, which was already assembled in Boulogne for that purpose. According to another version, he was defeated at sea and Eustache, who was part of the expedition, lost a ship with a large fantail called Nef de Boulogne.
However, the fact that Philip seized most of the European territories he owned (Normandy, Maine, Anjou, Touraine and Brittany) from John led to a position of strength by the barons of the country, who in 1215 demanded the promulgation of the Magna Carta, a card granted that reduced the absolute royal power that was at that time. As the king refused, they rose up in arms led by Robert Fitzwalter and offering the throne to Prince Luis, son of Felipe II. Thus began two years of civil war, traditionally known as the First Barons War (i.e. First Barons' War).
This allowed France to resume the invasion project and, in March 1216, Eustace moved an army commanded by Louis himself across the channel, landing it in Kent and then marching on London, forcing John to withdraw to Winchester. Since he met little resistance, Louis was proclaimed king. However, his father was not satisfied; perhaps anticipating a counterattack, he thought it important to seize Dover Castle, the key to the English gate. Luis accepted the idea, but when he laid siege to it, it had already been adequately fortified and provisioned, so he failed in his conquest.
The bad thing was that he not only had to wear down his forces in the encirclement, but archers related to Juan dedicated themselves to harassing his rearguard in uncomfortable guerrilla actions. On the other hand, also the castles of Windsor and Rochester resisted, while winter approached and the French troops were in danger of finding themselves in a strange land without food. Eustaquio was entrusted with the mission of solving this problem, carrying out liaison and supply tasks; also, he built a kind of floating fortress equipped with trebuchets and other siege weapons to try to take Dover at once.
Dysentery killed Juan without Land in October 1216 and was succeeded by his son Henry, whose young age (nine years) did not seem to augur much for his future, especially if one takes into account that Eleanor of Brittany, daughter of Godfrey, John's older brother, was also a candidate for the throne and above legitimate by the principle of primogeniture. In any case, she had been imprisoned for almost a decade and a half and the barons chose not to release her from her, upon verifying that the crowned Henry III agreed to sign the Magna Carta. That meant that the country remained divided between those who admitted the new king and those who supported Louis.
He continued to champion his cause, even as he began to see how his former allies were slowly abandoning him. As Louis feared, his army was severely deprived, cut off from France as his fleet outmatched by the enemy and bent on taking Dover with a second siege, giving the enemy troops freedom of movement. Needing reinforcements and supplies as soon as possible, he charged Eustace with organizing a supply convoy from Calais. The corsair fulfilled his mission and with the help of Luis's wife, Blanca de Castilla, he assembled seventy cargo ships that would be protected by an escort of ten warships.
The fleet set sail on August 24 under the command of Robert de Courtenay, assisted by Ralph de la Tourniele and William des Barres and Eustace himself, who was sailing aboard the Great Ship of Bayonne . With them traveled a hundred and a half knights and men-at-arms with their mounts; a catapult and numerous provisions were also embarked. But the English knew about it and they met them with a squadron of about forty ships led by Philippe d'Aubigné, Governor of Jersey, and Hubert de Bourg, Governor of Dover.
They were on the windward side, so their tactic consisted of feigning retreat to provoke the French into pursuing them, separating one from the other, and then turning around and attacking with the wind in their favor. Eustaquio realized the trap and recommended his superior to keep the formation, but he was not listened to, so the plan worked out perfectly for the English, who were able to maneuver more agilely than the adversary as he carried his holds overloaded. Bows rammed hulls and archers rained down a deluge of arrows and pots of quicklime at the Gauls, blinding sailors, setting sails on fire, riddled soldiers.
That confrontation, which has gone down in history as the Battle of Sandwich (or Dover), ended with Robert de Courtenay falling prisoner along with many of his knights, for whom a hefty ransom would be demanded. The simple crew members did not have the same luck, since those who survived were thrown into the water, which meant death for most of them at a time when it was not common to know how to swim. The entire French fleet was captured except fifteen units, which managed to flee while the English looted the cargo ships; A part of the loot was used to pay for the construction of the San Bartolomé Hospital in Sandwich.
Eustaquio, who had to face half a dozen enemy ships, fought fiercely on the bridge together with another thirty knights; in the heat of combat he lost his weapon and replaced it with an oar, but outmatched everywhere he hid in the bilge with the idea of escaping at the first opportunity. He could not and ended up captive as well, offering ten thousand ducats for his freedom; but, having been a corsair, they did not listen to him and his head ended up rolling down the woodwork without judgment or expectation. It was then nailed to a pike and displayed in England. It should be noted that other sources are not so explicit in his ending and say that he was offered to choose the way to die.
As an epilogue, let's say that the loss of the convoy marked the end of any hope of resistance for Luis. His forces were further depleted with new desertions and in September 1217 he agreed to sign the Treaty of Lambeth, by which the dispute was put to an end, allowing him to return to France (where he would reign as Louis VIII) in exchange for renouncing the throne. English and receiving a symbolic indemnity as compensation. Another clause forced him to put an end to the raids of Eustaquio's brothers, who for a time continued to operate in the English Channel without him. He did so and the Monk became a mere memory; glossed, yes, in a few literary works.