Empress Matilda Makes A Daring Escape

Matilda looked out from the castle walls at the snow-covered town of Oxford. She wasn’t admiring the view. She thought of only one thing: escape.

Empress Matilda (1102-1167) was embroiled in a fight with King Stephen. Matilda’s father, Henry, king of England, made Matilda his heir and made all his nobles swear to support her. But after King Henry I died, his nephew, Stephen of Blois, rushed to London and got himself crowned king instead of supporting his cousin Matilda as queen.

Unlike fights in your family, this family feud was not just blowing up online and on the phone. It was blowing up the entire country of England, which was being torn apart by civil war.

Stephen might have expected Matilda to back down and accept his claim as king, but if he did, he vastly underestimated his cousin. Matilda was a formidable opponent with an iron will to win. She knew she was destined for greatness from a very young age.

At age 8, Matilda was betrothed to marry the Holy Roman Emperor. Her family packed Matilda off to Germany in 1110, but she didn’t actually marry her 28-year-old husband until she was the far more mature age of 12.

The emperor insisted on a top-notch education for his bride because he intended to have her help him rule his vast empire. When Matilda was only 16, the emperor left the teenage empress in charge of Italy while he went off to war.

People really liked her. She is called “The Good Matilda” in the records, which is about as positive as medieval nicknames get. But sadly, her husband died, leaving Matilda a 23-year-old widow. Because they had no children, she wasn’t really the empress anymore.

So she left Germany and headed back home to England. Her brother had drowned back in 1120 along with half the nobility of England, which made Matilda the next in line to the throne. But she was a woman, which, as you might have heard, was often a problem in medieval inheritance laws.

Christmas Court was always a big time for medieval nobility, with at least 12 days of celebrations full of feasts and fools and the Feast of Fools. King Henry I declared Matilda his heir at the Christmas Court in 1126 and everybody cheered. Everybody except his nephew Stephen, who probably just grumbled in the corner.

A few years later in 1135, King Henry I died. Matilda was away at her estates in the north, and Stephen swooped in and grabbed the crown before she even heard that her father died. Matilda wasn’t having it, so she raised an army and started to fight. Stephen fought back. The country burned.

There was a lot of back-and-forth, with each side winning some battles, and the peasants losing everything in the chaos. Matilda captured Stephen at one point but had to let him go because that’s how medieval warfare went.

By December 1142, things were looking bad for Matilda. Stephen began a siege of Oxford in September, and now Matilda and her soldiers were holed up in the castle and running out of food. The nights were getting colder and the days were getting shorter and supplies were running thin. She needed to take action, fast.

One exceptionally cold December night, the river next to Oxford Castle froze solid. Matilda made a daring escape. Dressed all in white to blend in with the snow, Matilda threw a rope over the wall and slid down.

Some sources say she was barefoot, some say she strapped on ice skates, so pick whichever one you think is most badass, and she did that. With just four of her knights, she slipped past the enemy, crossed the river, and escaped to raise reinforcements and fight another day.

The Anarchy went on. War continued to ravage the countryside. A famous monk said that in this time, “Christ and His saints were asleep.”

Eventually everybody got tired of fighting, but neither Matilda nor Stephen would give in. Seeing that she probably wouldn’t win if she stayed the course, Matilda switched tactics. Instead of insisting that she take the throne, Matilda instead supported the claim of her 9-year-old son.

Now everyone who had trouble supporting a woman on the throne suddenly had an out. Here was the grandson of the previous king. This boy could become the heir and there could be peace.

It took a few years, but the barons all wanted the fighting to end, so in 1153, they signed the Treaty of Wallingford which let Stephen stay on the throne, but Matilda’s son would be the next king. Stephen politely died a year later, and the now-grown-up boy ascended the throne as King Henry II, founder of the Plantagenet dynasty.

Matilda was a tough-as-nails medieval queen. She ruled on the continent as a teenager and put her son on the throne of England. All English monarchs from her son King Henry II down to King Charles III today are Matilda’s direct descendants. And it only happened because she wouldn’t take “no” for an answer.

It’s necessary to be determined. It’s good to have an iron will to win. But sometimes, the path you’re on is not the path to victory. If you know the road you’re on won’t get you there, why would you stay on the road?

Matilda was a fighter. She wasn’t afraid of conflict. But when she saw that she couldn’t achieve her goal, she switched tactics and found a path to success.

You gotta know when to switch tactics. Maybe this marketing campaign is a dud. So, scrap it and try something new. Your goal isn’t for this webinar to have a lot of attendees; your goal is to increase sales for the new product.

If the product you’re building isn’t right for the market anymore, then stop building it. Don’t get hung up on all the time and money you’ve spent to get this far. While it stinks that you’ve wasted the past few months building the wrong thing, it would stink even more if you continued to waste more time still building the wrong thing.

When the nights seem their coldest and darkest, find the courage to sneak out across the frozen river and chart a new path to victory.