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fovtiQix Mntt^mm 
 
 PHILIP AUGUSTUS 
 
KJ 
 
PHILIP AUGUSTUS 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM HOLDEN HUTTOX, B.D. 
 
 FELLOW AND TUTOR OF S. .TOHN's COLLLOR, OXFORD; BIRKBECK LECTURI.K 
 
 IN rci' I.E'^IASTICAL HISTORY, TIUNirV CoLt,i:<;F, CAMBRIDGE; 
 
 EXAMINING CHAPLAIN TO THE LORD LIMKjP OF ELV 
 
 ILonlion 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. 
 
 KEW YORK : MAC:\IILLAX & CO. 
 
 1896 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
HJu(^4.h3-^^v- 
 
 t,_ ^ '7 4- z Mr 
 
 1 ; 
 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Frankish Monarchy in the Twelfth Century 1 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 The Beginnings of Philip's Power 15 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 The Fall of the Axgevins ... 53 
 
 CHAPTER lY 
 Bouvines ... 88 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 The Advance of the Monarchy . 112 
 
 CHAPTER YI 
 Philip and the Papacy . . 159 
 
 CHAPTER YII 
 Last Years . . « . 198 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 THE FRANKXSH MONARCHY IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY 
 
 France at the beginning of the twelfth century was one 
 of the smallest and least important of the European 
 states. The duchy of France — a title borne for three 
 centuries by the house of Robert the Strong — was no 
 domain exactly bounded and compact. Its lands were 
 situated not only in the country between the Seine and 
 the Loire, but lay in small and scattered fragments farther 
 south, in Poitou, and in the north. Peculiar rights 
 belonged to the king in distant towns and cliurches. 
 He was lord in Orleans. He was abbat of S. Martin's 
 at Tours and senior canon of the church of S. Quentin. 
 And step by step within the lands of the great lords of 
 the north, of the great dukes and the great ecclesiastics, 
 he acquired new rights, by intervening to check some 
 injustice or win some privilege on behalf of a lesser lord. 
 The royal domain was the strength of the early 
 Capets. As rich lords they could stand against the 
 barons who hedged them in, and appear, unlike the 
 Karlings, at least the equals of their great vassals. 
 But the territory which they possessed was small, 
 S B 
 
2 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 and their material resources, in comparison with those 
 of other European states, were contemptible. Entering 
 rarely into foreign politics, and then with a conspicuous 
 absence of dignity or success, the royal house of France 
 saw its kingdom surrounded by foes or lukewarm 
 friends, nearly every one of whom was superior to itself 
 in strength. To the north and east the Empire and 
 Lorraine, the great dynasties of Flanders and Burgundy, 
 were each more than an equal combatant for the Frank- 
 ish king. Southwards the kingdom of Aries, sometimes 
 close linked to the Empire, sometimes enjoying a pre- 
 carious independence, stood aloof, with many marches 
 and counties, from the influence of the central realm. 
 The great dukes of Aquitaine and the proud house that 
 ruled in Toulouse scarce in their most friendly moments 
 professed any allegiance to the Capets. And the demon 
 race, sprung, said legends, from the union of an Angevin 
 count with an unearthly bride, which ruled on the banks 
 of the lower Loire and the Maine, the borderland 
 between France, Aquitaine, and Brittany, was gathering 
 its powers in grim concentration of purpose for a wider 
 sweep, which should endanger the throne of the Frankish 
 king. The circle was completed by the great duchy of 
 Normandy, to which was annexed the county of Maine. 
 But small as was its territory and slight its power, 
 the house which ruled from Paris claimed all the pre- 
 rogatives and dignity of the imperial line which it had 
 dispossessed. It clung with sagacious tenacity to the 
 assertion that it was the successor of the line of Charles 
 the Great. Hugh Capet had been elected in 987 by the 
 influence of the Church at a moment when the Karlins: 
 race had dwindled into impotent decadence. He had him- 
 
I THE FRANKISH MONARCPIY 3 
 
 self been a great feudal lord, the greatest and strongest of 
 his peers. He had large possessions, his brother Henry 
 held Burgundy for him, the dukes of Normandy and 
 Aquitaine were his brothers - in - law, the count of 
 Vermandois was of his kin. In the twelfth century his 
 descendants had lost the strength of his position. The 
 great duchies around them were in alien and often 
 hostile hands. But the grandeur of their theoretical 
 claim was not abandoned. They were still far above 
 the feudal hierarchy, as the heirs of the Caesars, sovereigns 
 by divine right, the lawful kings of the West Franks. 
 
 The monarchy of the twelfth century was absolute 
 in principle. It claimed to be the source of all power 
 and authority, to hold in its own hand the control of all 
 local and central government. More than this, it was 
 founded on an alliance with the Church, which, in spite 
 of their persistent moral lapses, the kings had shown the 
 keenest anxiety to keep intact. It had seemed at one 
 time as if the irresistible movement of the feudal 
 theory, which had transmuted all offices into fiefs, 
 and swept all ancient survivals into the net of its 
 universal encroachment, would overwhelm the mon- 
 archy as it had transformed the nobility and invaded 
 the Church. And indeed in his relations with those who 
 held land directly under him the Capetian king had 
 fallen under the domination of the feudal claim. He was 
 a lord like other lords, with vassals whose dues were 
 limited and whose rie^hts were secured. But he never 
 ceased to be sovereign as well as suzerain, and the per- 
 sistence of his assertion of the old monarchical theory, 
 even in the period of his greatest weakness, preserved 
 the idea and prepared the way of the absolute monarchy 
 
4 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 that was to rise in the thirteenth century above the 
 mighty vassals which had surrounded its territories and 
 limited its powers. 
 
 The monarchy of the Capets then was never a feudal 
 monarchy, however closely it might be embedded in 
 feudalism. The king was a real king, not a mere 
 primus inter ])ares. The exercise of his power and the 
 geographical limits of its extension might be restricted, 
 but he still acted as sovereign where he could, and 
 waited for the time Avhen all the authority of his pre- 
 decessors should be exerted without restraint. The 
 sovereign who raised the French monarchy to the 
 height which its most sanguine supporters in the 
 tenth century had scarce dared to predict for it was 
 Philip Augustus, who shares with two very different 
 men — S. Louis and Louis XL — the fame of having 
 created the power which became the arbiter of Europe. 
 But his work, great as it was, was built on foundations 
 which others had laid. It is impossible to understand 
 his reign without a sketch of those of his father and 
 grandfather. 
 
 Louis VL, who came to the throne as sole king in 
 1108, had already proved his prowess by his suppression 
 of the barbarities and disorders of the barons of the 
 domain. He identified the interests of the crown with 
 the assertion of the principles of good government. 
 Engaged throughout his reign in perpetual wars, he 
 yet managed, by diplomacy as well as militar}^ skill, to 
 raise the monarchy far above the position which any 
 of his house had achieved. Centralisation Avas his 
 chief aim, — and the concentration of his power Avithin 
 the royal domain. He ceased to make journeys through 
 
I THE FRANKISH MONARCHY 5 
 
 the distant fiefs. ToAvards them his attitude was almost 
 always hostile. He set himself, by stern repression of 
 disorder, by constant espousal of the interests of the 
 Church and the rising towns, to become master of his 
 own domain and to base his sAvay upon his protection 
 and his justice. Like an eager landlord adding field 
 to field, lie was constantly increasing the royal domain 
 by purchase, confiscation, and escheat. And what he 
 acquired he brought to order and submission. Year 
 by year he went about redressing the wrongs of churches 
 and monasteries, and reducing the barons — a Hugh du 
 Puiset, a Thomas de Marie, men infamous for their 
 devastations and their vices — to subservient ]Deace. Year 
 by year he visited town after town, heard cases, issued 
 establishments, which gave the monarchy new roots in 
 the affection of the people. Against Henry I. of England 
 he was as persistent a foe as his external weakness 
 would allow. Often compelled to give way and tem- 
 porise, he yet really held his own, and the marriage 
 which united the Ano;evin lands to the fiefs of the 
 Norman house in 1128 seemed to be more than counter- 
 balanced by the wedding in 1137 of the heir of France 
 with the heiress of Acjuitaine. 
 
 Almost at the moment of his son's marriage Louis 
 VI. died. He had done much to make his small state 
 firm and compact. By his last diplomatic triumph he 
 seemed to have opened a new era of extension for the 
 monarchy. France * and Aquitaine under one rule 
 should be ever striving to unite ; and the house of 
 Anjou, whose hasty and reckless Count Geoffrey Court- 
 mantel had to fight for his wife's lands as well as his 
 own, might well by a strong attack from north and south 
 
6 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 have been swept away. But the great opportunities 
 needed a statesman and a warrior to use them. "La 
 France attendait un grand homme," says Martin, "mais 
 le grand homme ne parut pas." 
 
 The earlier part of the reign of Louis VIL, while 
 the great Suger, the friend and minister of his father, 
 still watched over his career, was not without strength 
 and vigour. He held his own against pope and barons. 
 He watched the struggle of Geoffrey of Anjou for 
 Normandy with a sagacious abstention from active 
 intervention, and received as reward the castle of 
 Gisors. But the period of prosperity was ended by 
 the call to a crusade. The voice of S. Bernard called 
 kings and peoples to succour the Christians of the East, 
 and Louis VIL sacrificed the prosperity of his country 
 and the strength of his rule to what seemed a still 
 more urgent and imperative demand. The wise rule 
 of Suger, 1147-1150, could do no more, with all its 
 vigour, than avert disaster during the king's absence. 
 
 On his return Louis found himself confronted by new 
 difficulties. The most serious of them was of his own 
 making. On March 18, 1152, an ecclesiastical council 
 at Beaugency, near Orleans, pronounced the nullity of 
 his marriage with Eleanor of Aquitaine. The cause 
 which was considered sufficient was the fact that Hugh 
 Capet, from whom Louis VH. was fifth in descent, had 
 married a sister of the great-great-grandfather of Eleanor. 
 When this was recognised as a sufficient cause, we can 
 scarcely wonder that Philip Augustus should have antici- 
 pated no difficulty in freeing himself from his wife Inge- 
 borgis. Closer personal reasons were the opinion which 
 Louis had formed of his wife's character and the contempt 
 
I THE FRANKISH J\[ONARCHY 7 
 
 which she did nob hesitate to express for his pious and 
 simple hf e. Strong as may have been the personal causes 
 for the dissolution of the alliance, no greater political 
 blunder could have been committed. The duchy of 
 Aquitaine, with the county of Poitou — a district stretch- 
 ing from the Creuse to the Adour, and from Lyons to the 
 Bay of Biscay — had hardly begun to feel it possible that 
 it should be permanently united to the French monarchy 
 when it was ai^'ain severed. Two months later it was 
 
 o 
 
 united to the power which most threatened the growth 
 of the French kingdom. Eleanor, sought of many 
 interested suitors, became, on May 18, 1152, the wife of 
 a boy fourteen years her junior — Henry, the young 
 count of Anjou, the heir to the great possessions of the 
 Norman house from which his mother sprang. A few 
 months more, and before the year 1154 was ended, Louis 
 VII. found himself confronted by a young and vigorous 
 rival, the husband of his former wife, who was king of 
 the English, overlord of Scotland and AYales, duke of 
 Normandy and Aquitaine, count of Poitou, Anjou, 
 Maine, and Touraine. He was opposed at his own 
 doors by what might claim to be called a great con- 
 tinental empire. 
 
 Within the next few years causes of disagreement 
 sprang up on every side. Henry laid claim to the 
 homage of Toulouse, laid hands on Auvergne, pressed 
 his encroachments into Berry, formed a strong alliance 
 with Flanders, and by the marriage of his third son 
 acc|uired control of Brittany. Louis attempted to resist 
 the pressure of this dangerous environment by a policy 
 of Cjuiescence aided by secret diplomacy ; and, on the 
 whole, he succeeded. He took for second wife Con- 
 
8 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 stance, daughter of Alfonso, king of Castile and Leon. 
 He gave his sister in marriage to Eaymond Y., count 
 of Toulouse. Thus he did something to counteract 
 the Angevin influence in the south. He made a marri- 
 age treaty with his great rival, by which his little 
 daughter Margaret and Henry's eldest boy were be- 
 trothed. On his wife's death in 1160 he married Alice 
 of Champagne, daughter of Count Thibault V,, whose 
 four brothers, William, an ecclesiastic ; Henry, count of 
 Champagne and Brie ; Thibault, count of Chartres and 
 Blois ; and Stephen, count of Sancerre, formed the 
 strongest family alliance that could be opposed to the 
 menacing jDower of Henry IL He maintained a firm 
 alliance with the orthodox pope, Alexander HI. He 
 showed himself a constant vindicator of ecclesiastical 
 rights. When his rival's minister, Thomas Becket, the 
 greatest prelate of the age, fled from his dominions, 
 Louis gave him refuge in his own lands, and steadily, 
 in spite of the strongest pressure, maintained his cause 
 against the jealous anger of the English king. Sputters 
 of war broke from time to time across the sky, but 
 Louis, if not strong enough to resist for long, lost little 
 by any of the disturbances. Again and again, half 
 secretl}^, half openly, he stirred up and supported the 
 rebellious sons against their father, notably in the great 
 and dangerous insurrection of 1173. 
 
 By every means Louis strove to extend his influence 
 outside the royal domain, which his father had rendered 
 strong and submissive. With the great ecclesiastics he 
 was in constant and amicable relations. With the risino* 
 liberties of the towns he showed himself to be in 
 sjanpathy by many grants of privilege and charters of 
 
I THE FRANKISH MONARCHY 9 
 
 incorporation. Outside his domain he appeared in arms 
 in the valley of the Rhone, in Auvergne, and in Velay. 
 In Languedoc he was in constant communication with 
 the barons who chafed under the Angevin rule. Bertrand 
 de Born, most gallant of knights and of troubadours, 
 called to him loudly to vindicate the rights of his crown. 
 He was content not to ansAver the appeal, but to neglect 
 no means of confirming his southern alliances. It was 
 a day of small things, and among small measures only 
 could the ruler of the French kingdom take his way. 
 From a military point of view the power of the crown 
 had fallen back, but diplomac}^ gave a different aspect 
 in which to view its position. 
 
 The later years of Louis VII. showed the power of 
 the crown gradually increasing, but still feeble indeed 
 in comparison with the great states by which it was 
 surrounded. The Empire under Frederic L, one of 
 the greatest of medieval monarchs, had triumphed over 
 the Italian cities, and made a concordat with the pope, 
 by which the imperial power, if it had nominally retired 
 from some of its pretensions, was certainly not in reality 
 the weaker. At a critical juncture it had seemed 
 probable that the emperor would even intervene in 
 French politics. He remained a strong power on the 
 eastern frontier, and a source of support to the border 
 bishoprics and great lay fiefs in any quarrel that might 
 arise with the French kins;. In the south too he held a 
 power which threatened that of the French crown. In 
 1178 he was crowned king of Burgundy and Aries, and 
 thus entered into feudal relations with many fiefs over 
 which the French king claimed some authority. But a 
 far more important factor in French politics was the 
 
10 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 widespread and increasing power of the Angevin house 
 under the greatest of its rulers. The dominions of 
 Henry IL stretched from the Somme to the Pyrenees, 
 and included almost the whole of the land between the 
 Creuse and the Lot. Duke of Normandy, with the 
 practical command of Brittany ; duke of Aquitaine, 
 having imprisoned his wife, whose liberty might have 
 been dangerous as an encouragement to the intrigues of 
 the turbulent baronage of the south ; count of Anjau, 
 and Maine, and Touraine, lord of many petty counties 
 which impinged on the French kingdom at every point, 
 Henry H. confirmed, by diplomatic and military alliances, 
 the power which marriage and inheritance had founded. 
 The Lombard cities were his allies, his friends held the 
 passes of the Alps and the Pyrenees. Henry the Lion, 
 duke of Saxony, at one time the greatest territorial lord 
 in Europe, at another the banished possessor of but a 
 few northern cities, was his son-in-law. Alfonso IX., 
 king of Castile, had married another of his daughters, 
 and was eager in seeking his counsel. With all the 
 Spanish kingdoms in turn he had relations, as with the 
 distant lands of Scandinavia, with Sicily, whose king was 
 his son-in-law, with Jerusalem, and the nearer powers of 
 Flanders and Burgundy. Year by year, by purchase 
 or exchange, by treaty or deliberate aggression, his 
 power over the small lordships which surrounded the 
 territory of the French king increased. Yet great as 
 was the external power of the EngHsh king, his position 
 was uneasy in the extreme. So long as his own extra- 
 ordinary physical and mental vigour endured, he was 
 able to suppress his turbulent vassals, to overawe his 
 timid neighbours, and to conquer his rebellious sons. 
 
I THE FRANKISH MONARCHY 11 
 
 But the extent of his possessions was too vast, the 
 peoples submitted to his sway were too heterogeneous, 
 for his power to endure after his death, or even to sur- 
 vive any cessation of his personal activity. In 1179 
 Henry's word was still thrice as powerful in Gaul as 
 that of the king who reigned in Paris, but ten years 
 later it would be seen that the whole current of affairs 
 had set in a new direction. 
 
 Meanwhile the Frankish monarchy was advancing, 
 less by a steady and deliberate policy than by fortunate 
 accidents and a certain fitful sagacity of the monarch. 
 The direct power of the crown extended over but a small 
 part of Gaul, hardly more than the He- de-France, the 
 Orl^anais, and Picardy. But within that limited area the 
 turbulence of the baronage had received severe checks. 
 The chatelains, guardians of royal castles, whose position, 
 originally official, had become a serious menace to the 
 tranquillity of the country, to the joeace of the church, 
 and to the power of the crown, had, by the policy of 
 Louis VI., continued by his successor, been almost 
 extinguished. The smaller barons attended the royal 
 summons with more alacrity, and the barons of the 
 district round Paris, the lords of Beaumont and Mont- 
 morency, of Clermont and Dammartin, were learning 
 to serve the crown as its more intimate servants and 
 responsible officials. A gradual concentration of powers 
 was preparing the monarchy to extend its influence. It 
 was from within that the strength came before any 
 serious attempt was made to use it outside. The great 
 house of Champagne, holding also the county of Blois, 
 hemmed in the royal domain in dangerous proximity. 
 It was a diplomatic triumph to knit the princes of this 
 
12 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 powerful line in close alliance with the croAvn. In 1160, 
 as has been said, Louis married Alice, daughter of the 
 count of Blois and Champagne, whose elder brother was 
 already seneschal, and whose second brother, William of 
 the White Hands, was before long given the highest 
 ecclesiastical dignity in the realm — the archljishopric of 
 Eheims. The alliance was strengthened later by the 
 marriage of one of Louis's daughters to Henry, count 
 of Champagne, and of another to Thibault, count of 
 Blois. 
 
 The extension of the royal influence thus obtained 
 was increased by sevei'al definite steps, some of them 
 proceeding from this alliance. In the north, through 
 William of Rheims, Louis YIL Avon greatly increased 
 authority. He entered into friendly relations with the 
 bishops, and in some cases with the citizens, of Arras, 
 Terouanne, Tournai, and Cambrai, Avhile the bishoprics 
 of Lorraine sought in him a protection from the en- 
 croachments of their duke. Himself, as men said, 
 though not with complete truth, more of a monk than 
 a king, Louis entered readily into friendly association 
 Avith the great ecclesiastical fiefs Avhich depended on the 
 croAvn. In the duchy of Burgundy not only the great 
 abbeys of Cluny and Tournus, but the bishoprics of 
 Langres, Macon, Chalon, and Autun depended directly on 
 the crown, and Louis did not alloAA" the relation to be 
 merely formal. In the political disputes of the Burgundian 
 duchy he no less actiA^ely interA^ened. He encouraged 
 the disagreements betAA^een the Duchess Mary and her 
 son, Hugh III., and secured the submission of their 
 dispute to the decision of his OAvn court. He eA^en 
 intervened in the districts of the kingdom of Burgundy 
 
I THE FRANKISH MONARCHY 13 
 
 which depended feudally on the empire. His sister's 
 son, Alberic of Toulouse, married the daughter of the 
 dauphin of Vienne, from which, as Raymond V. wrote 
 to the king, ''there should be a gate opened for the 
 increase of your realm, though this county of the 
 dauphin belongs to the jurisdiction of the emperor.'' 
 In the kingdom of Burgundy itself he found it impossible 
 to withstand the power of Frederic, the emperor and 
 king, but he succeeded in seciuring the election of his 
 candidate to the archbishopric of Lyons, through whom 
 he expected to receive no slight accession of political 
 influence. 
 
 In central France Louis YII. never ceased to watch 
 for occasions to protect the bishoprics and to grant them 
 privileges for money. Tlie material aid which he gave 
 to the prelates in their struggles with neighbouring 
 barons was more than returned by the moral support 
 which he obtained from the Church. The ecclesiastical 
 side of his policy, congenial to his own inclinations, was 
 in reality no less conducive to the growth of his power. 
 His most effective weapon against Henry 11. was his 
 continued support of Becket, which taught those who, 
 for an}^ reason, were discontented AAqth the Angevin 
 government to look for countenance to the king of the 
 Franks. 
 
 In the south the great house of Toulouse retained 
 much of its ancient power. Geographically, it was allied 
 with Spain ; historically, with the Empire. It has been 
 observed that there is no historical record of a single 
 performance from Toulouse of service at the king's 
 court or in his host during the reign of the first five Capets. 
 The counts of Toulouse in the twelfth century were 
 
14 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap, i 
 
 practically independent sovereigns. Louis's marriage 
 with Eleanor of Aquitaine gave him more direct rela- 
 tions with the southern districts, and though his divorce 
 severed his direct authority, his influence was not alto- 
 gether obliterated. In 1154, by his second marriage 
 with Constance of Castile, he strengthened his associa- 
 tion with the southern states, and he passed through 
 Languedoc on his way to Compostella — a progress which 
 was not without its political effects. By the marriage 
 of his sister Constance in the same year to Eaymond V. 
 he acquired a more direct interest in the affairs of 
 Toulouse, and set up an opposition to the influence of 
 Henry II. in that region, whose claims, four years later, 
 he successfully withstood. With the southern sees he 
 approached an actual feudal connection. Over the barons 
 he began to assume some of the rights of a suzerain. 
 Before his death his name was at least well known 
 in Languedoc, and if his authority was not formally 
 recognised, the frequent appeals for his advice and 
 assistance had prepared the way for that recognition of 
 overlordship which the Albigensian war made inevitable. 
 It has been said by a great French historian that 
 the influence of Louis VII. was that of a moral con- 
 quest which prepared the way for the military successes 
 of his son. It may be added that his Avork, though not 
 striking or impressive, was genuine and durable. Philip 
 had little to inaugurate or to undo : he had chiefly to 
 continue and to accomplish. 
 
CHAPTEE II 
 
 THE BEGINNINGS OE PHILIP'S POWER 
 
 Louis's first two marriages had given him no male heir. 
 AYith his third wedding his hopes were renewed. On 
 August 19, 1165, the exjDectations of the king and his 
 people Avere gratified, and a boy w^as born. 
 
 There is some doubt as to where the heir so earnestly 
 desired first saAV the light. He is frequently by later 
 writers called Philip of Cxonesse, from a royal manor near 
 Pontoise. In the great chronicle of Tours, the land 
 of Gonesse is represented as his especial patrimony. 
 Philip Mouskes, the historian of Tournai, shows that 
 he was brought up there. 
 
 A la Gonnesse fu nouris, 
 S'ot non Felipes de Gonnesse. 
 
 But it is almost certain, from the contemporary poem 
 of Peter Riga, that he was actually born at Paris ; and 
 Giraldus Cambrensis, who was studying in Paris at the 
 time, gives a reminiscence which leaves little doubt on 
 the point. In his delightful book, the De Instrudione 
 PrinrApum^ where he greatly glorifies the French kings 
 at the expense of the English, he suddenly introduces 
 a story of his own youthful experience. He says :— 
 
16 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 " While in his early years, he who wrote this was 
 at Paris, enthusiastically engaged in liberal studies, it 
 chanced that one night at the very beginning of autumn, 
 about the hour of the first sleep, shortly after the dead 
 of night, it was said that by God's grace Philip had 
 been born. This rumour was bruited through the city, 
 and received with inexpressible delight. At once 
 throughout the length and breadth of the city on every 
 side there burst forth such a clamorous pealing of bells, 
 and so great were the waxen lights kindled in every 
 street, that those who kneAv not the cause of the 
 unwonted tumult, the deafening sounds, and the 
 universal illumination, imagined that some conflagration 
 was even then threatening the city. The author of 
 this work, who was at that time living in the city as 
 a youth just completing his twentieth year, sprang from 
 the bed on which he had but now fallen asleep, and 
 hastened to the window. Looking out, he saw in the 
 street tAvo poor and miserable old crones carrying waxen 
 candles before them ; their countenances, their words, 
 their gestures all alike expressed exultation as they 
 hastened along with rapid steps, ever and anon meeting 
 and jostling one another. He inquired of them what 
 might be the cause of all this excitement and delight, 
 whereupon one of them looked back and replied, ' Noav 
 we have a king given us by God, a mighty heir to the 
 kingdom through God's l)ounty ; through him shall fall 
 on your king loss and disgrace, shame and heavy 
 punishment, rich in confusion and distress.' Just as if 
 she had openly said, 'A boy has been given us this 
 night, who certainly by God's grace shall be the hammer 
 of your king, and who also, beyond a doubt, shall 
 
II THE BEGINNINGS OF PHILIP'S POWER 17 
 
 diminish the power and hinds of him and his subjects.' 
 The woman knew that the author and his companions 
 were natives of England, and therefore it was that the 
 crone, as if in a spirit of prophecy, bitterly launched 
 forth against them and their king this sentence, which 
 was afterwards only too truly fulfilled." 
 
 It is a quaint picture of the dark narrow streets, 
 lighted on a sudden by the enthusiastic processions 
 which shouted the joyful news of the birth of the 
 " Godgiven " heir. The young English scholar, aroused 
 from his sleep to listen to the boastful cries of the old 
 women, joined in the gratulations of the people. From 
 every quarter messages of thankfulness reached the 
 king. Even the city of Toulouse, far removed from 
 royal domination, proud in the freedom of its citizen 
 lords, " los baros de Tolosa," sent congratulations to the 
 French king. A messenger brought the joyful news to 
 the abbey of S. Germain des Pres at the moment when 
 the monks sang "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for 
 He hath visited and redeemed His people." Dieu- 
 donne, they cried out, is this new child of France — a 
 gift of God to king and people. 
 
 Scanty records reach us of the childhood of the "god- 
 given child." He was brought up, as has been said, in 
 a county manor of the king. He had a menagerie of 
 wild beasts to amuse him. He was under the care of 
 learned clerks and statesmen. Eobert Clement, who 
 exercised much influence during the first year of his 
 reign, had watched over him for a long time. He was 
 a bright and active child, eager to learn and quick at all 
 manly sports, a hunter from his youth. Pious too he 
 was, said the clerkly chroniclers. In the first year of his 
 
 
 
18 rillLIP AUGUSTUS CHAP. 
 
 reign his pure eyes saAv the miracle of the mass in its 
 reality. At S. Leger in Yveline, as the priest elevated 
 the host, he saw a child of surpassing splendour, whom 
 choirs of angels worshipped, and he adored with tears. 
 
 Soli se regi detexit mystica virtus, 
 Cui soli digne poterat res taiita patere. 
 
 As early as 1177 his father designed a njarriage for 
 him. He asked from Philip of Flanders the hand of his 
 niece, the daughter of Matthew of Boulogne. But the 
 project was abandoned. 
 
 A medieval king had generally but few years of 
 schooling. His training in the work of government 
 began early. It was so with Phih'p Augustus. He was 
 not fourteen years old when, in the spring of 1179, his 
 father was attacked by paralysis. Louis recovered, but, 
 though only fifty-nine, he felt himself already an old man. 
 He determined, after the fashion of his predecessors, to 
 secure the succession bv crownins; his son in his life- 
 time. He had long postponed this customar}^ ceremony. 
 In spite of the urgent advice of the pope and the force 
 of the custom of his fathers, he had declined even 
 nominally to share his power ^^■ith his young son. But 
 ilhiess, and tlie feeling that "his last days" were upon 
 him, induced him to take steps at once for the election 
 and coronation of Philip. Probably towards the end 
 of April the archbishops, bishops, abbats, and barons 
 met in the bishop's palace at Paris and heard the king's 
 will that his son should be crowned. There is no reason 
 to suppose that tlie formal election was omitted. All 
 the prelates and barons, says Rigord, cried out "Fiat, 
 fiat," and the king at once began the preparations for 
 
IT THE BEGINNINGS OF PHILIP'S POWER 19 
 
 the ceremony, which was to take place on the Feast of 
 the Assumption. A proclamation was issued fixing the 
 day. 
 
 During the summer the king visited Compiegne, and 
 from thence the journey to Eheims for the coronation 
 was to be made. The great forest, which still stretches 
 for miles to the south of the ancient city, was the 
 largest hunting-ground of the Frankish kings. Here 
 the young Philip, now fourteen years old, went out 
 one day with companions to hunt. They found a wild 
 boar, says Rigord's ^dvid story, and, uncoupling the 
 hounds, set chase after him with sounding horns through 
 the dark recesses of the woods. Philip's horse bore 
 him more swiftly than his companions, till he had left 
 them far behind. He found himself towards evening 
 quite alone, and in an absolutely secluded part of 
 the forest. " Seeing himself left alone in that vast 
 solitude of wood, he began, not without reason, to be 
 afraid." He looked anxiously from side to side, but saw 
 no signs of any human presence. He crossed himself 
 devoutly and commended himself to God and the Blessed 
 Virgin and S. Denys, the patron and defender of the 
 kings of the Franks. Hardly was his prayer over before 
 he saw a charcoal-burner, grim to behold, with face black 
 ^vith charcoal, carrying a great axe on his shoulder. 
 The lad, when he saw him, feared somewhat, but, 
 recovering his coiu^age, drew near and gi^eeted him. 
 The man, when he knew to whom he was speaking, 
 left his work and brought him back to Compiegne. 
 The excitement and fatigue brought on a dangerous 
 illness, from which it seemed likely that the young 
 prince would not recover. The king was in despair. 
 
20 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 Day and night he wept and prayed, and would not be 
 consoled. At last in vision S. Thomas of Canterbury, 
 whom he had so long protected during his life, appeared 
 to him, and bade him make pilgrimage to his tomb. It 
 was an unheard-of thing that a French king should visit 
 England on such an errand, and Louis did not dare to 
 go without consulting his barons. His counsellors 
 warned him of the dangers of the crossing and of trusting 
 himself to the hands of his most powerful enemy. He 
 replied that he did not fear. Three nights the vision 
 was repeated, and Louis determined that nothing should 
 hold him back. 
 
 The king started at once on his journey, and sailed 
 from Witsand with Philip of Flanders, Baldwin, count 
 of Guisnes, Henry the Warrior, count of Louvain, 
 and William de Mandeville, earl of Essex, who often 
 negotiated between the French and English kings. He 
 was met at Dover on August 22 by Henry H., and 
 welcomed with "great rejoicing and honour." Thence 
 he went to Canterbury, where he remained two days, 
 passing the night before the martyr's tomb. He made 
 rich offerings at the shrine, and to the monks of Christ 
 Church he gave, by special charter, six hogsheads of 
 wine each year, and granted that all they should buy in 
 France should pay no .duty. He was himself admitted 
 as a brother of the house, and it was promised that a 
 mass should be said every day for himself and his family. 
 On August 26 he took ship on his return voyage. He 
 found his son recovered. 
 
 The journey, to which the chroniclers of the age 
 attach so high a religious importance, was unquestion- 
 ably a political event of considerable interest. It was 
 
n THE BEGINNINGS OF PHILIP'S POWER 21 
 
 accepted by English writers as a pledge that the French 
 king would no longer encourage the insurrections which 
 he had hitherto so often fostered against his great rival. 
 It prepared the way for the cordial relations between 
 Henry and the young Philip which marked the beginning 
 of the new reii;j;n. 
 
 Louis returned to Paris. Thence he was on his way 
 to S. Denys to return thanks for his son's recovery when 
 he was seized by a new attack of paralysis, and de- 
 prived of the use of his right side and of speech. The 
 coronation had alread}^ been fixed for All Saints' Day. 
 It was more than ever necessary that it should take 
 place without delay. On October 31 Philip arrived 
 at Rheims. The city was thronged Avith strangers 
 from all countries. Prominent among them was the 
 young Henry of England, himself crowned during his 
 father's lifetime, nine years before. He brought rich 
 gifts from his father, and did homage to the new king 
 for his fiefs. 
 
 On All Saints' Day, in the great cathedral, William, 
 archbishop of Eheims, his uncle, placed the crown upon 
 the young Philip's head. The count of Flanders carried 
 the sword of state, the young Henry of England the 
 crown, winch returned to S. Denys when the ceremony 
 was over. Philip was fourteen years two months and ten 
 days old. His father still lay sick, and could not come to 
 the coronation, and his mother remained by her husband's 
 bed. 
 
 The new king's first acts were to confirm his father's 
 grants to the monks of Canterbury and his gift of 
 freedom to the serfs of Orleans, which had been declared 
 on the coronation day. For nearly a year King Louis 
 
22 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 lingered on. He died on September 18, 1180, and Philip 
 became sole king. From the hour of his coronation 
 three parties contended for the direction of the young 
 sovereign's policy. 
 
 First there was the family of his mother. The house 
 of Champagne, next to the house of Anjou, was at once 
 the nearest and the greatest of the vassal houses of 
 France. Thibault V., count of Blois, was also seneschal 
 of France, and the position still held some of its ancient 
 privileges and powers. His brother Stephen was 
 count of Sancerre, his brother William since 1176 
 archbishop of Rheiras, and the eldest of the brothers, 
 Henry, was count of Champagne. The counts of Blois 
 and Champagne had each married half-sisters of the 
 king, the issue of Louis's first marriage. The family 
 seemed to enclose the king as in a net. 
 
 Secondly, there was the busy brain of Henry H. ever 
 scheming to control, though not to conquer, the power of 
 his suzerain at Paris. It was the aim of this great king 
 to surround the French monarch with a ring of his own 
 states and those of his allies, to confine his action within 
 narrow limits, and to neutralise, if he could not direct, his 
 external relations. But in the house of Champagne there 
 was no man of commanding genius, and Henry had no 
 desire to control the young king in the exercise of his 
 internal goverment. 
 
 A third party centred round a man abler than any of 
 the king's uncles, and of more dangerous personal am- 
 bition than the English king. Philip of Alsace, count of 
 Flanders and Vermandois, had already endeavoured to join 
 forces with the house of Champagne by a double marriage 
 treaty. His nephew, Baldwin of Hainault, son of his 
 
It THE BEGINNINGS OF PHILIP^S POWER 23 
 
 sister Margaret, should marry the daughter of Henry of 
 Champagne, Avhile his niece Isabel, sister of the young 
 Baldwin, should wed Henry, the count of Champagne's 
 heir. He had during the earlier years of Henry H. been 
 constantly his ally, but the alliance w\as as constantly 
 broken as it was periodically renewed, and though it 
 served the purposes of both princes well when it was 
 necessary to combine against the French king, it was not 
 based upon any permanent union of interest or policy. 
 During the later years of Louis VH., Philip of Flanders 
 had become the most prominent personage at the king's 
 court. He had himself taken part in the pilgrimage to 
 Canterbury. He had probably already planned with 
 the king the marriage of the young Philip, w^hich was 
 to take place after his coronation. He was himself one 
 of the greatest of European princes. He claimed 
 descent from Charles the Great, and he w^as a kinsman 
 of the Emperor Frederic I. From his county of 
 Flanders, with his wife's land of Vermandois and the 
 districts of Amiens and Valois which owaied his sway, 
 he aimed at forming, through the lords of Brabant, 
 Namur, and Hainault and the great ecclesiastical states, 
 a netw^ork of alliances on the borders of France and the 
 Empire which should give him something of the position 
 of a middle kingdom, and enable him to exercise a 
 decisive influence on the policy of each great power in 
 turn. He Avas an active and amljitious man, and in 
 ability one of the greatest of the foreigners who 
 reigned in the Middle Ages over the rich and powerful 
 towns wdiich made the strength of the little Flemish 
 state. 
 
 The first decisive event which proved the influence 
 
24 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 that the count of Flanders had acquired in the direction 
 of French policy was the marriage of the young king at 
 Bapaume on April 28, 1180, to Isabel, eldest daughter of 
 the count of Hainault, and niece of Philip himself. The 
 suggested alliance with Champagne gave way before the 
 far more brilliant prospect of a marriage with the king 
 of the Franks. From the French side the match was 
 warmly .supported. Apart from the influence of the 
 Flemish count, there were not wanting shrewd politi- 
 cians to advise the boy - king of the support which it 
 would give him against the too closely encircling power 
 of his mother's family. The chronicle of S. Denys 
 speaks of the " counsel of certain prudent and wise men 
 who were about the king," and Gilbert of Mens, writing 
 from the court of the count of Hainault, repeats the 
 statement. Rigord speaks of one adviser in particular, 
 who has with great probability been identified as 
 Bernard de Bre, a monk of Grandmont, who during all 
 the earlier part of the reign exercised considerable 
 influence over Philip Augustus. 
 
 Isabel was beautiful and young. The marriage, from 
 the French point of view, was probably the best that the 
 king could have made, for the count of Flanders was 
 childless, and he promised that after his death Artois — the 
 ''city of Arras, and S. Omer, and Aire, and Hesdin, that 
 is, the land beyond the great dyke "—should pass to the 
 crown of France. It Avas more than the chronicler of 
 Hainault states — Bapaume Avas included, Euot, Lens, and 
 the overlordship of Bologne, S. Pol, Guisnes, and LiHe. 
 But the count of Hainault was a man of honour. He 
 had long ago promised his daughter to the young Henry 
 of Champagne. It was only by the powerful Avill of the 
 
II THE BEGINNINGS OF PHILIP'S POWER 25 
 
 count of Flanders that the young bride was taken a>A^ay. 
 Baldwin of Hainault, says his chancellor, grieved for the 
 oath that he had sworn. 
 
 The marriage took place on April 28. A month 
 later, on May 29, the young cpieen was crowned at 8. 
 Denys, in the presence of her father and her uncle. For 
 many years the marriage remained childless. Not till 
 September 5, 1187, did she present the king with a son, 
 Louis, who lived to succeed his father on the throne, 
 and whose birth was celebrated, says Eigord, with torch- 
 light processions for a whole week and ceaseless song 
 and dance in the streets, and was communicated to the 
 distant provinces by special messengers announcing 
 the sA'lad news. 
 
 The marriage of Philip Augustus preceded the death 
 of his father only by five months. During that time 
 the influence of the count of Flanders was predominant. 
 He has been someAvhat hastily described as the tutor, 
 guardian, or protector of the king, but though his posi- 
 tion of chief adviser may have given him many of the 
 privileges of guardian, he never formally received such 
 a title. Louis VIL till his death Avas counted the true 
 king. He made no abdication, and his son Philip had 
 been crowned at an age when custom considered him 
 capable of ruling in his own person. Before the corona- 
 tion Louis had charged the count of Flanders to watch 
 over and advise his son, and the great vassal took 
 oath faithfully to protect and to instruct his young 
 lord. 
 
 Philip as joint king had by custom the same poAvers 
 as his father, but they were powers enjoyed only by the 
 favour of the actual sovereign. The heads of father and 
 
26 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 son, with the same legend, appeared on either side of the 
 coinage struck at Laon in the year 1180. The illness of 
 his father suftered much of the real power to pass into 
 Philip's hands, but he spoke of the old king in at least 
 one formal document as his "lord, the king of the 
 Franks." From the very first he was thrust into political 
 entanglements of complexity that might have bafRed a 
 wiser head. We have every reason to suppose that 
 though he took advice, he was almost from the first the 
 guiding spirit in affairs. His powerful mind and strong 
 character were formed by the pressure of affairs. He 
 became a man of business, and a royal man of business 
 was in the Middle Ages made to be a great king. 
 
 AVith his young wife and her uncle, with Eobert 
 Clement, Ralph of Clermont, the constable, and the other 
 advisers of the old king by his side, Philip, with care and 
 discretion, surveyed the political engagements in which 
 his kingdom was involved, and prepared to strike out a 
 decisive line of action for himself. At his right hand 
 stood the great warrior and statesman whose niece he 
 had married. But the influence of the count of Flanders 
 was not uncontested. The claims of a queen-mother had 
 always been recognised in French history as considerable. 
 By virtue of unction and coronation, she was a real par- 
 ticipator in the sovereignty. Alice of Champagne Avas 
 by no means ready to surrender her prerogatives. Still 
 less were her brothers willing to see the influence of 
 their house extinguished by the uncle of the new king's 
 wife. Philip of Flanders had been somewhat too hasty 
 in allowing his assumption of power over the young king 
 to be marked by a direct attack on the queen his mother. 
 The king had taken from her her dower lands, unwill- 
 
11 THE BEGIKNINGS OF PHILIP'S POWER 27 
 
 ing, says a chronicler, that she should have in her hands 
 the castles that belonged to the estates. It was an 
 attempt, no doubt, to secure the king against a movement 
 of the house of Champagne. It is asserted that the 
 queen left her sick husband and fled. A few weeks in 
 any case brought forward her wrongs through a power- 
 ful champion. Henry II. determined to throw his weight 
 into the scale against Philip of Flanders. 
 
 Events indeed had marched rapidly under the young 
 king. The English chroniclers already spoke of him 
 as a tyrant who, under the advice of the count of 
 Flanders, had rejected the counsel of his father's friends, 
 and treated them with contempt and hatred. They 
 had appealed, says one of the officials of Henry's court, 
 directly to the English king against the e\dl machi- 
 nations of the Fleming. Henry, the younger, crossed 
 over to England in March to warn his father of the 
 danger that w^as growing in France. They returned to 
 Normandy together, and the French cjueen, with her 
 brother. Count Thibault, sought in jDerson the advice 
 and assistance of the great Angevin. It was a curious 
 reversal of what had often happened in the last twenty 
 years. The French court had often supported Henry's 
 rebellious sons, and had in 1173 offered shelter to his 
 intriguing wife, herself once the ^vife of the French king. 
 Now Henry II. gave support and counsel to Louis's 
 third cjueen against her son. Philip, with all the hot 
 eagerness of youth, brought an army to the Norman 
 frontier. Henry was there before him. The young 
 king's marriage intervened, and a few months later both 
 sovereigns were in more peaceable mood. 
 
 Philip had already shown all a boy's eagerness for 
 
28 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 martial exploits, and he had signalised the beginning of 
 his reign, like his grandfather, by repressing the out- 
 rages of those who maltreated the Church. He was 
 no less prepared to meet attack from his mother and 
 her kin. He obtained three thousand footmen from 
 Baldwin of Hainault. He was prepared for war, but he 
 was too sagacious not to see that peace was more to his 
 interest. The English king was seeking in the spring 
 of 1180 to form an alliance in support of his son-in-law, 
 Henry the Lion of Saxony, who had been disseised of 
 his vast possessions b}^ the Emperor Frederic. On May 
 14 the Saxon duke defeated Bernard of Anhalt, on 
 whom Saxony had been conferred. It seemed probable 
 that he would win back his possessions. His father-in- 
 law prepared to enter into an alliance with the young 
 French king at the expense of the Flemish count, whose 
 support he would otherwise have been anxious to 
 secure. Philip of France, he thought, would give the 
 most important aid to the coalition against the emperor. 
 With his own aims, and the interests of the house of 
 Champagne in view, Henry met the young French king 
 at the famous meeting-place, between Gisors and Trie- 
 Chateau, on the banks of the Epte. 
 
 A great dyke marked the frontier between Normandy 
 and France. It was overlooked by the strong castle of 
 Gisors, part of the dowry which had been given by 
 Louis VIL when his daugliter Margaret married the 
 young Henry of England. On June 28 the two kings met. 
 It was probably the first occasion on which they had 
 stood face to face. It can hardly be that the great 
 English monarch, renowned throughout Europe as a 
 warrior and statesman, could have foreseen that the deli- 
 
II THE BEGINNINGS OF PHILIP'S POWER 29 
 
 cate boy, who less than a year before had seemed likely to 
 die while still a child, would one day beat him at his 
 own weapons of war and craft, and would win back 
 from his sons the mighty heritage of the Norman dukes 
 and the demon race of Anjou. They met now as a hot 
 youth listening with respect to the wise counsel of the 
 greatest of his vassals and one of the most famous of 
 European kings. The old king — for so men already 
 began to call him, though he was but forty-seven — used 
 both fair and bitter words. The boy was perhaps 
 already eager to be rid of the controlling hand of his 
 wife's uncle. Before the end of the clay he had turned 
 from the advice of the count of Flanders and Eobert 
 Clement and promised to be reconciled to his mother 
 and her house. A treaty was draAvn up and confirmed 
 by the oath of both kings, w^hich laid the foundation 
 for a new and peaceable relation between the two 
 kingdoms. 
 
 The treaty began by renewing that of Ivry, concluded 
 between Henry of England and " my lord Louis, the king 
 of the Franks "in 1177. It declared that the two kings 
 were, and would remain, friends, and would protect each 
 other in life and limb and earthly honour against all 
 men. Neither would demand aught of the other's lan«^ 
 from henceforth, save only in the case of Auvergne or 
 the fief of Chateauroux, or in the little fiefs in Berry, 
 matters still in dispute ; and the disputed claims, if the 
 king could not agree on them, should be submitted to 
 the arbitration of three bishops and three barons nomin- 
 ated by each king. Philip at once nominated the 
 bishops of Clermont, Nevers, and Troyes, and his uncles 
 Thibault of Blois, Robert of Dreux, and Pierre of 
 
30 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chaf. 
 
 Courtena}^ ; and any further dispute that should arise 
 was to be submitted to the judgment of the same men. 
 The treaty conduded with the most solemn vows of 
 mutual loyalty. Henry II., warrior though he was, was 
 never eager for war. It is possible that he may have 
 sincerely intended to arrange all future disputes in this 
 strangely modern manner, but he had to reckon with the 
 hot blood of a young king in whose heart burnt relent- 
 less hatred to the Angevins. 
 
 For the time all looked well. Henry wrote a letter to 
 his justiciar, Eanulf Glanville, announcing the happy 
 reconciliation that he had made, Avith some very pious 
 expressions of gratitude for the Christian feeling that 
 had been shown by all. Philip took again into favour 
 the whole house of Champagne, including Duke Henry of 
 Burgundy and Henry, count of Bar-le-Duc, nephews of 
 Queen Alice. He assigned to his mother seven livres 
 parisis a day so long as Louis VII. should live, and after 
 his death he promised her her whole dower, keeping onlj^ 
 the strong castles in his own hand. Philip of Flanders 
 entered into the arrangement. He renewed his former 
 treaties ^vith Henry, and promised to supply him at need 
 with five hundred knights in return for an annual pension 
 of a hundred pounds. The French constable, Ealph of 
 Clermont, did homage to Henry II. It was a kind of 
 final ratification of the peace. Then the kings went 
 their ways. 
 
 The treaty marked the downfall of the predominance 
 of Flanders in the counsels of the French sovereign. It 
 marked a temporary rapp'ochement with England. But 
 its importance may easily be exaggerated. Philip ceased 
 his unseemly quarrel with his mother and her kin, but 
 
II THE BEGINNINGS OF PHILIP'S POWER 31 
 
 he did not give them any real power of control over 
 himself. He took the advice of Henry H., but he 
 showed no sign of assisting his designs in German 3^ 
 
 The young king now turned to the serious c[uestion 
 which had for so long beset every French king at his 
 accession — the ravaging forays of the baronage against 
 unprotected churches and abbeys. In December 1179 
 the churches of Berry had cried out against Hebes VI. 
 of Charenton. He was compelled to submit entirely to 
 the king's will, to give satisfaction to the churches, and 
 promise better conduct in the future. Another expedi- 
 tion followed. Humbert HI. of Beaujeu, William HI., 
 count of Chalon-sur-Saone, Giraud, count of Vienne, 
 and other '' sons of inicjuity " Avere robl)ing and attack- 
 ing the abbey of Cluny, the church of Macon, and the 
 neighbouring churches and monasteries. Philip marched 
 into the district, and repressed the wrongdoers with a 
 firm hand. In September 1180 he was at the castle of 
 Pierre-Perthuis, near V^zelay. He presided at a royal 
 court, in which the grievance of the church of Macon 
 against Count Gerard of Vienne was heard. The judg- 
 ment was wholly against the count. He was allowed no 
 fortified place within the area of the church's privi- 
 lege, and the clergy were allowed to fortify the church 
 and their houses. A little later the coiint of Ghalon 
 came to the young king at Lens and submitted to his 
 decision. The royal army had compelled obedience. 
 The new reign was begun well. " Thus," cries the en- 
 thusiastic Breton clerk whose poem describes the king's 
 progress from the cradle to the grave, " the new king con- 
 secrated devoutly to Christ and His Church the first-fruits 
 of his works and his first fightings : thus, a new knight, 
 
32 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 he loved rather to defend with his arms the patrimony 
 of Christ than to turn himself to the vain sports of 
 chivalry." New knight he was — made, it has been 
 suggested, by Philip of Flanders at the great tournament 
 held at Arras on Whit Sunday 1180. He was now 
 fifteen years old, and had been married four months. 
 On September 19 his father died, and he became sole 
 king in name as well as in reality. 
 
 The last months of Louis Vll. had been spent at the 
 monastery of Barbeaux, at Fontaine-le-Port ; but as he 
 felt his death draw nigh he was moved to Paris. There, 
 with the help of the bishop and the heads of the great 
 abbeys of the diocese, he divided all his money and 
 precious articles among the poor. He called his son to 
 his bed — so says Giraldus, generally very well informed 
 as to French history — and warned him in the very article 
 of death that he should reclaim with all his power the 
 rights of the crown, and, above all, that he should recover 
 Auvergne, concerning which great wrong had been done. 
 This he charged him as he valued his blessing. Thus, 
 with a command which opened again the war with the 
 Angevins that he himself had never had skill or courage 
 to carry to a successful issue, he passed aw\ay. He left 
 directly to his son a heritage of war. 
 
 He was buried at Barbeaux on September 21. The 
 immediate consequences of his death were but sli*^^!^ 
 It was not till eight years later that his son was able to 
 carry out his last wishes by the conc^uest of Auvergne. 
 Now he merely confirmed in a meeting with Henry II. 
 the treaty that he had made three months before. 
 
 At the beginning of the next year, January 1181, he 
 showed that he was still ready to learn from the En2;lish 
 
II THE BEGINNINGS OF PHILIP'S POWER 33 
 
 king, for when Henry issued his assize of arms at Le 
 Mans requiring all Avho had £25 Angevin in chattels 
 to provide themselves with hauberk, lance, and sword, 
 and all others Avith lesser arms — an edict intended to 
 arm the Avhole population — Philip as w^ell as the count 
 of Flanders issued similar ordinances for their own 
 domains. On April 27 the two kings met at Gue S. 
 Eemy, near Nonancourt, in friendly conference, and 
 Henry departed to England with an assurance that his 
 dominions were safe in his absence. 
 
 How far the house of Champagne was yet fully 
 reconciled to the king is doubtful, for the march of 
 Philip across the Loire and his cajDture of the castle of 
 Ghatillon, and subsequent pardon of his uncle, Count 
 Stephen of Sancerre, which the chroniclers attribute to 
 this year, may have taken place before the reconciliation 
 in 1180. In any case the appearance of a French king 
 with a victorious army south of the Loire was a sign 
 that a new era had set in for the monarchy. But his 
 power was not long uncontested, Philip of Flanders, 
 disgusted at finding that his influence over the 3'oung 
 king had entirely ceased, formed an alliance with Hugh 
 of Burgundy, with the house of Champagne itself, and 
 Avith the counts of Namur and Hainault, and invaded 
 France. Philip applied in urgent haste to Henry IL, 
 and to his intrepidity and tact he OAved the preservation 
 of his poAver. At Gisors the English king met young 
 Philip and the count of Flanders, and arranged at 
 length a peace between them. 
 
 Again, at the end of the year, Avar broke out. 
 The count of Flanders attacked his old ally, Ealph, 
 covuit of Clermont, and deA^astated his land. The French 
 
34 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 king received aid from the young Henry of England, 
 and the invasion was checked for a while. "The 
 chief and principal cause of this war," says the English 
 chronicler, with sagacity, " was that Philip, king of 
 France, spurning the counsel of his kinsfolk, adhered to 
 Henry, king of England ; whence it came about that 
 William, archbishop of Eheims, and Count Thibault and 
 Count Stephen, finding that they were despised, strove 
 to rise against their nephew, the king." Stephen of 
 Sancerre had actually done homage to the count of 
 Flanders. The king seized his lands, and, on the advice 
 of the constable, Ralj^h of Clermont, refused to restore 
 them. Thus the influence of the house of Anjou and 
 the advice of Ralph of Clermont were now predominant 
 in the counsels of King Philip. 
 
 A further cause of contest with Flanders soon arose. 
 On March 26, 1183, Isabella, wife of Philip of Flanders, 
 and countess of Vermandois in her own right, died. 
 Philip at once claimed that, as she had no direct male 
 heirs, Vermandois lapsed to the French crown. He 
 claimed also Artois and the district of Amiens, promised 
 to him on his marriage. Again Henry H. mediated 
 when war was actually in progi'ess. Amiens was 
 promised immediately, and the promise of Artois was 
 renewed. But neither promise was kept. In 1184 
 Philip of Flanders married again, and the prospect of a 
 new line to cut him off from the succession to the 
 Flemish fiefs stirred Philip to immediate action. 
 
 He mustered a large army at Compiegne, marched 
 on Amiens, besieged Boves, and carried all before him. 
 Gilbert of Mons, from the side of the vanquisheil, 
 estimated his force, with pardonable exaggeration, at 2000 
 
11 THE BEGINNINGS OF PHILIP'S POAVER 35 
 
 knights and 140,000 men-at-arms, Avhile the count of 
 Flanders, he said, could bring but 400 knights and 
 40,000 foot-men into the field. The course of the war is 
 less questionalde. The young French king had been pre- 
 paring during the whole of his reign for a trial of 
 strength, and his troops proved all that he had exj^ected. 
 To this campaign belongs a curious story Avhich 
 Giraldus tells to illustrate his passionate determination 
 and its effect on his barons. 
 
 "In the early part of his reign,'' he says, "when his 
 blessed father had been some time taken from this 
 world of ours and the 3'outh himself was still of tender 
 years, he assembled the army of France at Amiens to 
 oppose Count Philip of Flanders, who, on the death, 
 without children or heir, of the countess, his ^vife, and 
 heiress to the count of Yermandois, ventured to hold 
 possession of that countship. The forces were gathered 
 together and prepared to meet in hostile conflict, when 
 the barons of France, thinking with the poet that the 
 wise man ought first to try every weapon, with one 
 consent expressed the opinion that a peaceful solution 
 of the difficulty should be sought, for the count, a 
 man of vast resources and great influence, had many 
 enthusiastic supporters Avho had been drawn to his side 
 by his entreaties or bribes, by the claims of affection or 
 kinship. The leading men accordingly met to consider 
 the question, while the king withdrew apart for a time, 
 and sat holding a green hazel wand in his hand or 
 gnawing it with his teeth, at the same time glancing 
 keenly about him. On the barons observing this, and 
 marking with wonder the youth's attitude and gestures, 
 one of them declared that he would bestow a gallant 
 
36 PHILIP AUGUSTUS ohap. 
 
 steed on the man who could disclose the prince's medita- 
 tions. Hearing this, a certain prattling fellow immediately 
 sped to the king with the earnest prayer that by reveal- 
 ing the thoughts of his mind he would confer on him, as 
 if a present from himself, the steed which had been 
 promised on such conditions. The king, to whom the 
 man was not unknown, thereupon unfolded the secrets 
 of his mind. 'I was wondering,' he said, 'whether at 
 some future date God will ever think fit to bestow 
 on me or some other king of the Franks this favour — 
 the restoration of the realm of France to its former 
 position, to the extent and the renown which it once 
 enjoyed in the days of Charles.' When this had been 
 reported to the barons and the steed given according to 
 the promise, with one voice they all instantly burst 
 forth into these words : ' Perish the man who throws 
 any obstacle in the path of such a prince, with a mind 
 so nobly bent on the recovery of his kingdom's rights. 
 By God's aid, neither in these rights nor in any others 
 shall he ever meet Avith failure.' Thus it came about 
 that the splendid countship of Vermandois, after the 
 humiliation of its powerful holder, was, with all its 
 wealthy towns, placed in the hands of King Philip, while 
 still a youth, without difficulty, delay, or any warlike 
 contest." 
 
 Such determination carried all before it. Durinc: a 
 great part of the summer the two armies watched each 
 other along the frontier line. The French king lay 
 for three weeks before Boves, and Rigord records a 
 fantastic miracle, l)y which the fields trodden down by 
 his horsemen bore a double harvest, whereas those 
 where the Flemings had camped remained bare and 
 
II THE BEGINNINGS OF PHILIP'S POWER 37 
 
 barren. Philip of Flanders was obliged hnmbly to 
 submit. Again the intervention of Henry 11. was 
 sought. Peace was concluded at AumTde on November 
 7, 1185, in the presence of the English king and the 
 archbishops of Cologne and Eennes. Vermandois was 
 at once yielded, with the district of Amiens, while 
 Peronne, S. Quentin, and the whole of Artois were to 
 pass to the king after the count's death. 
 
 Philip had won his first signal triumph, his first 
 great accession of territory. His victory had been due 
 to diplomacy as well as force. The count of Flanders 
 had applied for help to the emperor, ready to play one 
 suzerain against the other, and the cjuestion had become 
 complicated Avith the long struggle of Henry the Lion 
 to regain his lands. In the autumn of 1184 the emperor 
 had pardoned Henry, and the peace of Aumale was in 
 one aspect a result of that reconciliation. England, the 
 Empire, Flanders, and France came together again in 
 something like an universal peace. 
 
 Peace with Flanders did not free the young king 
 from active military eftbrt. He turned to redress the 
 wrongs of the Burgundians. Hugh of Vergy called 
 for his aid against the attack of Duke Hugh. Philip, 
 bringing the count of Flanders with him, delivered the 
 castle, which, says one chronicler, had undergone a three 
 years' siege. The deliverance was paid for by a re- 
 cognition on the part of the count that he held his fief 
 directly from the crown. But Hugh of Burgundy was 
 not yet conquered. The churches cried out against his 
 tyranny, and called in the pious French king against 
 their godless duke. Philip thrice solemnly warned him, 
 then marched airainst his castle of Chatillon-sur-Seine, 
 
38 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 took it, and compelled the duke to restore all that he 
 had taken, to redress the wrongs, and be reconciled to 
 the Church. He returned to Paris in triumph. Thus 
 briefly may be sketched the progress of the young con- 
 queror in the north. But these events had not obscured 
 the important changes which had taken place in the 
 relations of the French king with the house of Anjou. 
 
 On the death of Louis, Philip renewed the treaty 
 which he had signed three months before, but it was 
 not long before he allowed his real feelings to apjDear. 
 In January 1181 the two kings had met and promised 
 succour to the Holy Land. Li the summer, Henry had 
 again intervened to make peace between Philip and 
 the count of Flanders, and again after Easter in the 
 next year. The young French king accepted his aid 
 during these years with an easy cynicism, but he never 
 ceased to watch for the opportunity of repudiating all 
 his obligations. The last years of the treacherous young 
 Henry, his repeated struggles with his father and his 
 brother, all told in favour of the French. Philip did 
 not actively intervene, but ^\'hen the wretched father 
 was still mourning over his unhappy son, he came 
 forward to demand the dower and portion of his sister 
 Margaret, who had returned to him some weeks before 
 her husband's death. Gisors, the chief town of the 
 Norman Yexin, the rich plain which was ever a debate- 
 able land between the French king and the Norman 
 duke, was the main object of Philip's demand, and often 
 did he meet Henry at the great oak of conference 
 between Gisors and Troye, " but in nothing could they 
 agree." At the end of the year 1183 Henry did homage 
 in his own person to Philip — an act Avhich he had 
 
II THE BEGINNINGS OF THILirS TOWER Z9 
 
 avoided year after year on many skilful pretexts — for 
 all his lands over sea, and Philip accepted a yearly 
 payment in lieu of Margaret's dower, on the under- 
 standing that Gisors should now be the dowry of his 
 sister Alais, who had l)een promised years before as bride 
 to Eichard, Henry's second son, who still lived under 
 ward at AVinchester, and who was again pledged to one 
 of Henry's sons "whom he will." In 1184 he accepted 
 Henry's mediation with Flanders about Vermandois, 
 and again, a year later, English envoys intervened 
 between them. The year passed by without contest, 
 and early in 1186 the two kings met at Gisors and 
 renewed their promises of peace. All the while he 
 was plotting with one of Henry's treacherous sons. 
 Geoffrey, whose wife Constance was countess of Brittany, 
 was easily led to ally himself with the French king, 
 a remoter suzerain than his father. He went to Paris, 
 and his Avinnins; manners won the hearts of kinff and 
 barons alike. Unanimously, says Giraldus, he \ras 
 chosen seneschal of France ; and the plot against 
 the old king Avas nearly ripe Avhen a fever, following 
 on an accident in a tournament, it would seem, carried 
 him off on August 19, 1186. Philip ordered him to 
 be buried before the altar of Notre Dame, and in the 
 agony of his grief would have flung himself into the 
 grave of his dead friend had not the bystanders held 
 him back. Such Avas the fascination of the young 
 prince Avhom Gerald calls the Ulysses of the Angevins : 
 but Philip's grief did not obscure his ulterior aims. He 
 at once demanded the AA^arclship of his friend's little 
 daughter, Avho was, till the birth of a posthumous son, 
 March 39, 1187, his only child. Henry put off the 
 
40 PHILIP AUGUSTUS cuap. 
 
 demand and avoided a war, which the discover}^ of the 
 building of a castle near Gisors by Philip nearly pro- 
 voked. In the summer of 1187 Philip won over 
 Eichard, who made long sojourn with him, and " whom 
 he so honoured that by day they ate at one table, off 
 one dish, and at night they slept in one bed. And the 
 king of France loved him as his own soul." Whereat, 
 adds the English chronicler, King Henry was greatly 
 alarmed, wondering what it should portend. He was 
 not kept long in doubt. In September Pichard seized 
 the treasure at Chinon, and fled into Poitou to raise 
 an insurrection against his father. Yet again Henry 
 brought him to submit, and to repent that he had 
 followed evil counsellors who would sow discord be- 
 tween them. 
 
 At the beginning of the next year Philip demanded 
 that Alais should marry Picliard, or Gisors be restored 
 to him. The crusade, and the piteous appeals of pope 
 and patriarch, prevented war. The kings solemnly laid 
 aside their feuds and took the cross. The archbishop 
 of Tyre came to them as they met by the tree of con- 
 ference, and turned their hearts, to the great joy of all 
 the host. Crowds ran to take the holy sign : the crusade, 
 it might seem, was begun. 
 
 The next few months were spent in making prepara- 
 tion and ordinances for the expedition. Even then, 
 however, the fiery impetuosity of Eichard could not be 
 restrained. He was using the time of waiting hy pa^^ng 
 off old scores against the count of Toulouse, and Philip 
 complained to Henry, who could neither justify nor 
 control his son. Philip took occasion thereupon to in- 
 vade Berry, Avhich was part of the heritage of Eleanor of 
 
11 THE BEGINNINGS OF PHILIP'S POWER 41 
 
 Aquitaine. Chateauroux opened its gates to liira, and he 
 took all the castles except Loches and those in the royal 
 demesne. Buchard of Vendome, who had already acted 
 with the young Henry against his father, now went over 
 to Philip. Richard too now sent word to his father 
 that all he had done was by Philip's consent. The net 
 was closing round the old king. 
 
 On June 10, 1188, Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury 
 was sent to King Philip to pacify him, but without result. 
 Then Henry sent his youngest and well-beloved son John, 
 and in July he crossed himself to Bartleur. Richard was 
 now turning his arms against Philip, driving his men 
 from Berry and ravaging the lands of the barons who 
 had adhered to him ; and Philip himself was forced to 
 guard his own lands against "the old lion," whom he 
 still feared. His warlike and unclerkly cousin, the Ijishop 
 of Beauvais (Philip, son of Robert, count of Dreux, 
 who held the see from 1180 to 1217), was wasting the 
 Norman frontier. Philip responded to the demands of 
 Henry for reparation by answering that he would not 
 desist till all Berry and all the Norman Vexin were his. 
 Thereupon Henry himself invaded France, and advanced 
 to Mantes, and his Welch troops burnt many castles and 
 villages, and, "sparing no man, slew all whom they 
 found." Philip's offers of peace were now rejected, and 
 in rage he cut down the famous tree of conference, " a 
 certain very beautiful elm between Gisors and Trye." 
 
 Further conferences between the kings were in- 
 effectual. Richard was already turning towards the 
 French king — perhaps had always been in his secrets. 
 At length, on November 18, after another meeting 
 between Soligny and BonsmouHns, when Philijo offered 
 
4'2 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 to restore all he had taken if Alais should be married at 
 once to Richard and the king would recognise Eichard 
 as the heir to all his lands, the quarrel between father 
 and son became irreconcilable, and Richard did homage 
 to Philip for all the continental lands of his house. 
 Papal legates in vain tried to mediate a peace. Short 
 truces were made, but the inevitable conflict could not 
 be long postponed. 
 
 Philip had indeed every reason for his determination 
 that the disputes should be decisively settled. The 
 piteous cries of the Christian kingdom in the East were 
 again and again renewed. But it would have been 
 impossible for him to leave his lands when Henry 
 remained — as he certainly would have done — in Europe. 
 Family honour too imperatively demanded that he 
 should see his sister Alais wedded : dark stories were 
 whispered that Henry could not give her to his son 
 because he had himself done her foul wrong. 
 
 At the end of May 1189 Philip, Henry, and Eichard 
 met, near la Fert6, Bernard, in the presence of John of 
 Anagni, the pope's legate. Philip's demands were the 
 marriage of Alais, the recognition of Eichard as heir, and 
 that John, whom Eichard saw now to be his rival in his 
 father's affection, should go on the crusade. Eichard 
 declared that he would not himself go to Jerusalem 
 unless his brother went with him. 
 
 Still Henry thought himself the greatest king in 
 Christendom, and he would not yield. The legate 
 declared that unless Philip would agree to peace he 
 would lay his land under interdict. But Philip answered, 
 in words which English chroniclers recorded with some- 
 thing of a genuine sympathy, that it did not belong to 
 
II THE BEGINNINOS OF PPIILIP'S TOWER 43 
 
 the Roman Church to lay censures on the realm of 
 France if the king of France avenged his wrongs and the 
 honour of his crown on his rebellious vassals. " And 
 he added that the legate had scented Henry's money." 
 
 The end was now come. Henry summoned aid from 
 England. Philip poured his troops into Maine. On 
 June 12 he surprised Henry in Le Mans. Burning 
 the suburbs, he surrounded the city with a wall of flame. 
 Henry's men tried to break down the bridge, but the 
 French knights rushed upon them as they were at 
 work, and, driving them back, entered the town in con- 
 fused mUce with them. Then Henry fled. The French 
 carried all before them. The citadel of Le Mans surren- 
 dered, and castle after castle followed. On July 3 Tours 
 yielded. Already it was clear that the French king had 
 won a decisive triumph. Henry had scarce resisted : he 
 was lying down to die. The great vassals of the French 
 crown had some pity for the old man in his fall. On 
 July 2 Philip of Flanders, William, archbishop of 
 Rheims, and Hugh HI., duke of Burgund}?', went to him, 
 as he lay at Saumur, to beg him to submit. They went, 
 says the chronicler significantly, by their own will, not 
 Philip's. 
 
 On July 4 (but the date is not certain), at Colombieres 
 near Villandri on the Cher, the two kings met, and there 
 Plenry yielded to all Philip's demands. He did homage, 
 he promised to surrender Alais and to allow her marriage, 
 to make his barons do fealty to Richard, to pay 20,000 
 marks, and to start for the crusade in the middle of the 
 next Lent. It was a complete submission. Two days 
 later the greatest of the Angevins Avas dead. 
 
 Philip had triumphed as none of his race had done 
 
44 PHILIP AUOUSTUS chap. 
 
 before him. The greatest statesman and warrior of 
 Europe had knelt at his feet. He was for the moment 
 the unquestioned lord of his great kingdom. But the 
 victory was greater in appearance than in reality. 
 Philip had no time to use the fruits of his success. It 
 was impossible in common decency any longer to delay 
 the crusade. He had proved his ability. He had not 
 established his power. 
 
 In the great struggle against the English king a 
 pressing claim, which both Henry and Philip had long 
 formally recognised, had been put aside. As early as 
 IlSl Philip had promised succour to the Holy Land. 
 In 1185 Henry had received the keys of Jerusalem from 
 the hands of the patriarch, and had consulted Avith the 
 French king about an immediate crusade. Mutual 
 jealousies had soon disturbed the agreement, and for two 
 years more nothing was done. 
 
 The sharp contentions of the year 1187 Avere inter- 
 rupted hy the news of the Christian disasters in 
 Palestine. Internal dissensions, the feebleness of the 
 monarchs, and the growth of the strong power of 
 Saladin had year l)y year brought nearer the inevitable 
 destruction of the kingdom of Jerusalem. On May 1, 
 1187, the Templars and Hospitallers Avere defeated at 
 Nazareth. On July 3 Saladin took Tiberias, and next 
 day, at the battle of Hattin, the Christian army was 
 surrounded, King Ouy made prisoner, and the true cross 
 taken. Letters from the Templars and from the 
 Genoese, Avho had early intelligence, reached Europe 
 before long. Jerusalem, Ascalon, Tyre, and Bey rout 
 alone held out, and Beyrout fell on August 6. LTrban 
 HI. died of grief, men said. His successor, Gres-ory 
 
II THE BEGINNINGS OF PHILIP'S POWER 45 
 
 VIII. , urged all Christian princes to lay aside their 
 dissensions and unite to save what still remained of 
 the Holy Land. But before his letters Avere written 
 the worst misfortunes had come to pass. Jerusalem 
 itself was besieged on September 20, and on October 3 
 Saladin entered the Holy City in triumph. 
 
 The terrible ncAvs reached Europe before the end of 
 the month, and at last roused the Christian kings. 
 Gregory VHL held the papal throne but two months. 
 At his death Clement III. succeeded, and pressed oil 
 the crusade with all his energy. The archbishop of 
 Tyre (perhaps the famous historian of the kingdom of 
 Jerusalem) preached w^th a fervour which turned the 
 thoughts of multitudes to the East. The impulsive 
 Eichard of Poitou was the first to take the cross. 
 Philip w^as not so soon stayed from his own projects. 
 He renewed his claim to Gisors, and insisted on the long- 
 delayed marriage of his sister. But a conference in 
 January 1188 proved an opportunity which the arch- 
 bishop of Tyre did not neglect, and the French and 
 English kings, " at his preaching and by God's help, on 
 that day were made friends, and took the cross from his 
 hands." The French chose red crosses for their badge, as 
 the English chose white and the Flemings green. Both 
 kings published ordinances for the collection of a tithe of 
 all property, in which movables as well as revenues 
 were taxed. The French ordinance diftered somewhat 
 from the English — mainly in the omission of a provision 
 for the assessment of the value of the goods of those 
 who were believed to have offered too small a sum, by 
 the oath of a jury. The French crusaders were to have 
 two years' respite for payment of their debts. Wherever 
 
46 PHILir AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 a lord had the right of capital jurisdiction he was to 
 have the right to receive all that his men had contributed. 
 The tithe for the Holy War was to take precedence of 
 all debts. Laymen Avere bound by oath to pay it, clergy 
 by threat of excommunication. Landless knights were 
 to pay from their movables to their lord, or if they had 
 no lord, to the lord of the district in which they lived. 
 If a young lord took the cross while his parents did 
 not, he was given the right to exact a tithe from their 
 property. The continental sj^stem of which Philip's 
 ordinance is typical makes the lord enforce the payment. 
 In England the coercive power lies with the public 
 authorities. vSuch were Philip's preparations. 
 
 But it took more than the preparations for a crusade 
 to divert PhiHp from his plan, and it needed but the 
 slight excuse of a chance fray in Toulouse and a cpiarrel 
 between Count Raymond and Richard to embroil him 
 again with the Angevin house. From June 1188, 
 when the war Ijroke out again — in spite of the pope's 
 intervention, and the Emperor Frederic's departure for 
 the East, — till the great King Henry's death, July 6, 
 1189, all thought of crusade was laid aside. Not till 
 Philip found himself at length the conqueror of the 
 house he had so long determined to destroy did he 
 remember his vow to succour the Christians of the East. 
 His interests could not suffer by his absence if he took 
 Richard with him. The Prankish lands were in 
 unwonted peace. Philip had all to gain by a season of 
 quiet in the land. He called then upon the En«dish 
 king and his barons to join him in his journey to the 
 holy fields. 
 
 The crusade was but an episode in the career of 
 
11 THE BEGINNINGS OF nilLIP'S TOWER 47 
 
 Philip Augustus, but it was ^n episode with Avhich he 
 could not dispense. Like the great Elector in Carlyle's 
 description, he had "his reasonable private aim sun- 
 clear to him all the while " ; but he could not aflbrd to 
 despise any of the necessary trappings of a great 
 medieval monarch. Moral greatness was respected at 
 least as highly in the twelfth as it is in the nineteenth 
 centur}^, and Philip eagerly sought the fame of a 
 devoted son of the Church. Nor could he easily have 
 held back when all the great monarchs of Europe caught 
 the enthusiasm of the Holy War. No king was ever 
 more truly a man of his age than he, and the strongest 
 appeal to the imagination and self-devotion of the men 
 of his day was the cry that the sepulchre of the Lord 
 was once more in the hands of the infidels. 
 
 Philip undertook his crusade Avith the same shrewd 
 providence with which he entered upon all his under- 
 takings. He did not neglect the religious or the 
 ceremonial aspects of the call. He went in state to 8. 
 Denys, and received "most devoutly" the pilgrim's 
 scrip and staft' from the hand of the archbishop, William 
 of Rheims, his uncle. He met Eichard at S. Remy, 
 near Nonancourt, on July 4, 1190, and signed a treaty 
 of peace, an alliance with him in which both promised 
 to defend each other's lands as they would their own. 
 Most important of all, he drew up, in the presence of 
 " his household and his friends," his personal testament 
 and his order for the government of the realm. It was 
 a constitutional document of the first importance, and 
 the opportunity of the crusade was happily taken to 
 avoid the disturbances which its articles would under 
 ordinary circumstances inevital)ly have caused. On 
 
48 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 July I, 1190, the two kings met at Vezelai with 
 "innumerable hosts," and the carnal side of their 
 expedition showed itself clearly enough, for they agreed 
 to divide equally all that they should gain in the war 
 — a bargain which led to much of the strife that marred 
 
 their campaign. Then the great armies marched to Lyons 
 together, where they separated, Richard sailing from 
 Marseilles, and Philip from Genoa. The French king, 
 delicate from his youth, had already begun to suffer from 
 the toils of the expedition, and he lay for some days 
 sick at Genoa, where Eicharcl visited him. From the 
 Genoese he was to obtain his transports, and he agreed 
 with them to supply succour in men and arms while 
 he was in Palestine, paying them five thousand eight 
 hundred and sixty marks of silver for the aid. He 
 sailed a few days later, and reached Messina on Septem- 
 ber 16, with one ship, entering the city with no pomp, 
 and being received with open arms by Tancred, the 
 claimant of the Sicilian crown, who was eager for 
 recognition by the Westei^n powers. In the political 
 troubles of the Sicilian kingdom it would perhaps have 
 been wise not to interfere, and indeed Philip took no 
 greater part than he could help. He declined the offer 
 of Tancred's daughter in marriage, but he did enough to 
 arouse the suspicion of the emperor, Henry VI. The 
 crusaders were robbed right and left in the island, the 
 chroniclers say, and l)ecause Philip suffered it while 
 Richard punished, the former was called l)y the Greeks 
 "the Lamb,'' and the latter "the Lion." The Endish 
 writers accused Philip of disloyalty to Richard. He 
 could hardly be expected to take much interest in the 
 claims of the English king to his Avidowed sister's dowry. 
 
II THE BEGINNINGS OF PHILIP'S POWER 49 
 
 but it seems clear that, though he did not take part in 
 the capture of jMessina, his relations with the English 
 remained friendly, and his mediation secured peace 
 between Eichard and Tancred. A slight quarrel there 
 was when Eichard wished to set up his banners on the 
 walls of Messina, October 4 ; but four days later the 
 two kings '^ swore on the relics of the saints to keep 
 good faith to one another, both as regards their own 
 persons and the two armies, during their pilgrimage." 
 
 Christmas they spent together in amity, and from 
 day to day tournaments diverted the knights while the}^ 
 waited for favourable winds. It was then that Eichard's 
 hot temper burst out against William de Earres, the 
 gallant French knight who had been his prisoner two 
 years before, and was afterwards to save Philip's life 
 at Bouvines. The French knight was more than a 
 match for the English king in tilting, and it needed 
 Philip's personal intercession to win forgiveness for his 
 follower's prowess. Tancred, it seemed, was not 
 unwilling to keep the two kings from any close friend- 
 ship, and there was still the question of Eichard's 
 marriage with Alais. This was at last settled before 
 Philip sailed for Acre, and the claims of the unhappy 
 lady to be Cjueen of England were at last abandoned 
 even by her brother. 
 
 It was on Saturday, March 30, 1191, that Philip at 
 length set sail from Messina, and three weeks later he 
 arrived at Acre. The weary knights rejoiced, says 
 William the Breton, to leap upon the sand by the walls 
 of the great city which he calls Acharon. The siege 
 had been in progress for a year and a half, and Cxuy de 
 Lusignan had been joined l;)y many of the crusaders. 
 
 E 
 
50 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 The besieged were hard pressed, Saladin was unable to 
 relieve them, and it seemed as if the coming of Philip 
 would at once restore the city to the Christians. As 
 soon as he arrived he mounted his horse and rode round 
 the Avhole of the works of the besieging force. " It is 
 strange," he said, "with so many warriors here, that the 
 town has been so long in taking." He pitched his tent 
 so near the walls that " the enemies of Christ often shot 
 their quarrels and arrows right up to it, and even 
 beyond," and he at once set his engines to work against 
 the fortifications. 
 
 Richard did not reach Acre till June, and the French 
 chroniclers say that Philip could have taken the town 
 long before, if he had not wished the English to share 
 in the glory of its capture. The forces had increased 
 almost weekly, and " there was no man of great power or 
 fame who did not come sooner or later to the siege of 
 Acre." Still the siege lingered. Philip fell sick of the 
 strange disease with Avhich the crusaders were so often 
 afflicted. He was wasted with fever, lost his hair and 
 his nails, and was long before he could rise again from 
 his bed. It was not until July 12 that the city sur- 
 rendered. Philip took possession of the house of the 
 Templars, and Richard, Avith his young Avife, entered 
 the palace, which had of recent years been a favourite 
 residence of the kings of Jerusalem. The stern Saracens 
 passed out from the town, calm as if they were them- 
 selves the victors, and the Christian knights marvelled 
 at their cheerful looks. 
 
 The capture of Acre ended the hoUoAv amity between 
 the kings which the crusade had begun. It had already 
 been greatly disturbed. The count of Flanders had 
 
II TPIE BEGINNINGS OF PHILIP'S POWER 51 
 
 warned King Philip that Eichard was plotting against 
 him. Now the land was, it seemed, again to be in 
 Christian hands, rival claimants again contended for the 
 throne, and while Richard supported Guy, the widower 
 of Queen Sibylla, Philip favoured the claim of Isabella, 
 her sister, and her new husband, Conrad of Montferrat. 
 Again the quarrel was patched up. Guy was to be 
 king for his life, and Conrad was to succeed him. 
 Philip was heartily sick of the war. His son Louis 
 had been grievously ill in France. He was himself still 
 weak and ailing. He had never been enthusiastic about 
 the cause, though even the English chronicler admits 
 that " he had worked well at the siege, and spent money, 
 and given good help, so that he Avas rightly deemed the 
 most powerful of Christian kings." The death of Philip 
 of Flanders at Acre in June 1191 gave him the chance he 
 had long desired. He determined at once to return and 
 enforce his claim on the lands of his dead wife's father. 
 He wrote from Acre in June to the nobles of the district 
 of Peronne claiming his right of succession to Peronne, 
 and charged the archbishop of Kheims and others to 
 receive the oath of fealty from his new vassals. He 
 had been but four months in the Holy Land. He had 
 taken part in no military operations except those of the 
 siege. Never did a crusading king so lightly perform 
 his vow. But protests were of no avail, and he sailed 
 on July 31. 
 
 A beautiful story is told of his homeward voyage. 
 They were off the coast of Pamphylia, and a great 
 storm held them for a day and night. When the 
 knights clustered round the king telling him all was lost, 
 he asked what hour it was. " Midnight," they answered. 
 
52 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap, ii 
 
 ''Fear not then," said Philip, "for at this hour the 
 monks in our land are awake, and pray God for us." 
 He landed at Brindisi, and visited Celestine III. at 
 Eome. Men said that he had begged absolution from 
 his oath not to attack the lands of Richard. An 
 English chronicler has preserved the record of his 
 route. He went by Sutri, Viterbo, Montefiascone, Santa 
 Christina, Acquapendente, Eadicofani, San Quirico, 
 Buonconvento, Sienna, Castel Fiorentino, Lucca, Capriola, 
 San Lionardo, Luna, Sarzana, Villa Franca, Pontremoh. 
 Monte Barduno — ''where Tuscany ends and Italy 
 begins," — thence by Cassio, Fornuovo, San Donnino, 
 Fiorensuola, Piacenza, to Pavia. The emperor lay 
 hard by at Milan. They met, and Philip, having promised 
 to give no support to Tancred, did his best to incense 
 Henry against Eichard. Thence he continued his 
 journey by Mortara, Eobbio, A'^ercelli, and the valley of 
 Maurienne, and so re-entered France. Before the end 
 of the year he was at home. He spent Christmas at 
 Fontevrault, where the tomb of his greatest adversary 
 might well serve to inspire him with new plans of 
 aggression against the Angevin house. 
 
 So the king's crusade ended. He had discharged his 
 vow, and came back with some at least of the honour of 
 a loyal Christian and son of the Church. He had won, too, 
 fresh laurels as a soldier. Even the jealous Englishmen, 
 who always accused him of treachery and avarice, 
 acknowledged that he could fight and that he could lead. 
 And his power had not suffered by his absence. He 
 came back to find himself even stronger than when he 
 went away, and with new fields opening before his 
 energetic ambition. 
 
CHAPTEK III 
 
 THE FALL OF THE ANGEVIN S 
 
 The death of Henry II. had done something to 
 redress the balance Avhich his defeat had cast in 
 favour of the young Frankish king. The conquest of 
 so mighty a monarch as he who had set popes at 
 defiance, resisted the will of the Eoman emperor, sent 
 his daughters in marriage to Saxony, to Sicily, and to 
 Castile, made leagues with Italian cities, with Spanish 
 monarchs, with chiefs of the Goidels and kings of the 
 far north, and been sought out in all Christendom as 
 the one warrior who was worth}^ to hold the keys of the 
 Tower of David and of the Holy Sepulchre, was a glory 
 which set Philip high among the mighty princes of his 
 age. But when Henry was dead the practical results 
 of the victory were seen to be small. The twenty 
 thousand marks Avhich Henry had promised were not 
 paid, the castles which were to be held by Philip and 
 Richard jointly were for the most part already in 
 Eichard's hands, and he succeeded to the hereditary 
 feud. From the moment of Henry's death Eichard took 
 up a new position of hostility to the ally with whose 
 aid he had brought his father to his end. All his 
 
54 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 father's servants Avho had been faithful he retained and 
 rewarded, but those who had aided in his own rebellion 
 he contemned and punished. Such conduct could 
 hardly imply friendliness to the French king. 
 
 There still remained the cjuestion of Alais. Philip 
 insisted that the marriage should take place. Eichard 
 was not yet strong enough to refuse it. On S. Mary 
 Magdalen's Day, within three weeks of the old king*s 
 death, the king of the English met the king of the 
 Franks at Gisors. Philip claimed that town and the 
 fertile plain around it. But peace was not yet broken, 
 liichard pledged himself to ])iiy four thousand marks 
 besides the twenty thousand his father had promised ; 
 the marriage was to take place, and the claim was to 
 lie by. All that Philip had won in fight from Henry 
 was to go back to liichard, save only his gains in Auvergne 
 and Berry. It was little more than a truce, but both 
 princes were SAvorn to the crusade, and all Christendom 
 would have cried out upon them if they had now stayed 
 to fight at home when the holy city was in the hands of 
 the infidel. 
 
 A few weeks passed, the treaties of perpetual friend- 
 ship were renewed, and the kings started on their 
 sacred quest. How they fared and how little the 
 traditional quarrel of the houses was appeased by the 
 progress of the Holy War we have already geen. Philip 
 parted with Richard indeed with the semblance of 
 amity, but he had scarce left Palestine before he began 
 to form a coalition against him. The time, it seemed to 
 him, was ripe. The hot-headed Angevin might never 
 return. His unscrupulous brother was a ready tool. 
 Even when the pope called shame upon him for his 
 
Ill THE FALL OF THE ANGEVINS 55 
 
 desire to be absolved from his oath to jDrotect Richard's 
 dominions he was not checked. It was no time, he felt, 
 for nice consciences. The hour had come when Nor- 
 mandy might be won. 
 
 Philip did not let the grass grow under his feet. A 
 month after his return he went to the old meeting-place 
 at the edge of the gi^eat Norman plain betwen Gisors 
 and Trye, and demanded of the seneschal and barons of 
 the duchy his sister iVlais, then prisoner at Eouen, 
 and the castle of Gisors with the counties of Aumale 
 and Eu. He produced a treaty which he said had been 
 signed at Messina, by which Richard promised the lands ; 
 but the barons stoutly refused to surrender them, and 
 Philip angrily answered that he would take them by 
 force. It Avas an attempt, no doubt, to test the Norman 
 feeling. He now turned to a more hopeful task. He 
 offered John (who was already married) the hand of 
 the wretched Alais, and promised to help to win all his 
 brother's dominions. But Eleanor, the royal mother, 
 who was her absent son's strongest support, with the 
 English justiciars, forbade John to cross to Normandy. 
 He sullenly obeyed, and the French knights at the 
 same time refused to join in Philip's war against the 
 crusader. 
 
 But all was changed by the news of Richard's capture. 
 Before the end of the year Philip knew that his enemy 
 was in the hands of the Austrian duke. John was 
 again tempted, and in February 1193 he eagerly took 
 investiture from Philip of all the foreign lands of his 
 house. 
 
 The terms of their treaty were significant. Philip 
 knew John's weakness, and put forth a claim which for 
 
56 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 audacity was unparalleled since William the Noruian 
 had freed himself from French tutelage. He claimed 
 all Normandy on the right Ijank of the Seine, except 
 Rouen itself, nearly half the land of E\'reux, with the 
 castles of Ivry, Yaudreuil, and Verneuil, and in the 
 Angevin lands, Tours, Azai, Amboise, Loches, Mont- 
 bazon, and Montrichard ; and he added too the demand 
 that the Angevin fiefs in Vendome should be transferred 
 to his uncle, the count of Blois. Such grants would 
 have gone near to make the French king lord of C4aul. 
 Philip could not expect all at once to obtain them. He 
 began therefore, like the Savoyards in later days, to take 
 them as one eats an artichoke. 
 
 He did not at once begin the war. The Norman 
 barons again were loyal to their duke, and the invasion 
 was still postponed. But it Avas not long delayed. On 
 April 12 Gilbert de Wascoil traitorously delivered the 
 castles of Gisors and Ncaufle-Saint-Martin into the 
 French king's hands ; and so all the Norman march 
 became his. He found none to oppose him, says the 
 canon of Newburgh, whose loyal soul scorned the 
 treachery of the men who had eaten the king's bread 
 and now would not raise a hand in his defence ; for the 
 sad fate of their lord had so broken the courai>;e of his 
 servants and weakened their trust that, like sheep 
 having no shepherd, they either willingly yielded or fled 
 from the face of him that pursued. When Aumale, Eu, 
 and many other castles had fallen into his hands he 
 marched with his army to Eouen in May 1193. "With 
 a mighty voice threatening destruction to all who should 
 resist him, he commanded the city to be surrendered. 
 But the earl of Leicester, the king's most faithful 
 
Ill THE FALL OF THE ANC4EVmS 57 
 
 companion in the East, Leing aAvure of his coming, 
 had just before entered the town and encouraged the 
 citizens to fight boldly against the foe." ^'ainly for 
 many days did Philip besiege the city. It had often 
 kept out the French king, since the days when first the 
 Northmen held it, and again the besiegers had to 
 retire. 
 
 Meanwhile Philip corresponded with Pichard in prison, 
 and the king promised to yield all that had been won 
 in Normandy. The treaty, if it had any force, was kept 
 hardly more than a few days, for in the next spring 
 began a new French raid. AVilliam, the Breton chaplain, 
 iflows with enthusiasm when he sintrs of the rich lands 
 that were traversed, of the fine castles, and of the 
 beautiful meadows l)y the banks of the Avre, the Seine, 
 and the Epte, Vaudreuil and Neubourg and the city. of 
 Evreux opened their gates, and the Norman regents 
 were glad to purchase a truce by a large money payment. 
 
 During the winter Philip had used every effort to 
 induce the emj^eror to keep Pichard in prison, but in 
 vain. On March 13, 1104:, the English king landed at 
 Sandwich. Philip now saw that the inevitable conflict 
 must be precipitated. He broke the truce, poured into 
 Normandy, and besieged Verneuil. There he was using 
 all the military arts of the daj^, erecting vast engines, 
 discharging enormous stones, undermining the walls, and 
 keeping a strict blockade upon the besieged, when 
 Pichard apjDroachecl, and on the eve of Whitsunday (May 
 29, 1194) he raised the siege and retreated. "As if to 
 remove the disgrace of a shameful retreat," says his 
 keen English critic, " he destroyed in his perverse fury 
 the city of EvreiLx, which he had before plundered ; nor 
 
58 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 did he even spare the church of S. Taurin, the most 
 renowned in that part of the land, though when he 
 commanded it to be burnt, not one man out of so great 
 an army could be found to execute so wicked a com- 
 mand, so that he himself, as it is said, with some lost 
 souls of those whom men call 'Ribalds,' entered the holy 
 place and set it on fire." The tale, if it be untrue, yet 
 shows the fear which Philip's name inspired. 
 
 William the Breton couples the retreat with a 
 horrible tale. Evreux had been given, as a token of 
 Philip's love, to John to hold. When he heard of his 
 brother's return he began to fear, and secretly bringing 
 in armed English, he slew the unsuspicious French 
 garrison, whom he had bidden to feast with him. Sober 
 history does not know this legend, but Evreux was 
 recovered, and Philip fled. 
 
 Richard, however, was by no means free from danger. 
 In the south, Aquitaine was in revolt, but help came 
 from Navarre. Bertrand de Born again sang the exploits 
 of his king. It was his last chanson. Montmirail, on 
 the borders of Maine, was destroyed by Angevin rebels. 
 But the king was the greatest general of his age. He 
 held out against all attacks, and a new siege of Rouen 
 called him again to the north. On July 4 the two 
 kinj2;s rested at Vendome and at Freteval. In the nie^ht 
 the French camp was hastily evacuated. Philip, some 
 say, had then marched to the destruction of Evreux ; 
 others tell that a night attack of Richard caused a 
 precipitate flight. The English king, it is at least clear, 
 fell upon Philip's train, and captured spoils of great 
 value, horses, plate, and coin, the letters of agreement 
 with the rebels, even the rolls of the treasury and the 
 
Ill THE FALL OF THE ANGEVINS 59 
 
 royal seal itself. To William the Breton it is i>liiin the 
 scene recalls the flight of Benhadad and his Syrians 
 from Jerusalem : but the loss is even more serious, for 
 the clerks have now, he declares, no means of esti- 
 mating the royal dues, new statistics are required, 
 all must be sought out and written anew with painful 
 labour. 
 
 The yeD.Y closed in peace. Eichard was busy in the 
 south, and the Norman regents made truce with Philip. 
 Years of negotiation and intrigue, mingled with fight- 
 ing as fruitless as either, follow. They must be briefly 
 followed, but two points emerge from the study Avhich 
 it is important to observe. Philip never entirely lost 
 his hold on Normandy ; he never ceased to scheme for 
 new acquisitions in it, piece by piece, as war or trickery 
 should give him the chance to take them. And a new 
 line of attack was aff'orded by the family relations 
 of the Angevin house. Kichard was still childless. 
 His brother Geoff*rey's widow, Constance, unequally 
 yoked in marriage with Ranulf, earl of Chester, whom 
 she would not sufter within her sight, held Brittany for 
 her boy Arthur. She was ready, as the Bretons had 
 always been, to prefer the distant overlordship of the 
 French king to the close and masterful suzerainty of 
 the Norman duke. 
 
 In 1196 Constance was entrapped and imprisoned, 
 but the Breton lords placed Arthur under Philip's pro- 
 tection. The Avar which followed was desultory and 
 ineffective, but Eichard found an eff'cctual support in 
 a new alliance with Eaymond VI. of Toulouse, by which 
 the count married the king's sister, Joanna, the widowed 
 queen of Sicily. With the emperor too he began to 
 
60 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 form an alliance, which caused Philip the greatest 
 anxiety. There was every probability of a coalition 
 against France, when Henry VI. died. 
 
 The election of his successor showed how strong was 
 the Angevin house. An English chronicler says that 
 while some voted for King Philip, some voted for Richard 
 himself ; but the result announced to the world was the 
 choice of Otto of Saxony, son of Henry the Lion, and 
 grandson of Henr}^ H., to be emperor and king. Philip 
 of Swabia, the late emperor's brother, put in a claim, and 
 Philip of France supported him, but for a time Otto was 
 uncjuestionably the stronger, and the Angevin house 
 seemed more powerful than ever. When the truce 
 ended the French king was too weak to make any 
 success in war ; but he turned to diplomacy with ready 
 skill. His unhappy sister Alais, whose Avretched fate it 
 had been to be l^andied about between the kings for 
 twenty-five years, at last found a husband. She was 
 sent back by Richard in 1195. In August her marriage 
 with William, count of Ponthieu, was arranged, and the 
 counties of Eu and Arques — no very safe possessions — 
 were given as her dowr}^ In Ponthieu Philip Avould find 
 the most valualjle ally against Flanders and Normandy. 
 But it Avas too late. Flanders, Champagne, Brittany 
 itself, Avith Arthur, returned from the care of the French 
 king, allied with Richard; and in 1198 Philip had to 
 meet the most formidable coalition which had yet 
 assailed him. He offered to surrender all that he had 
 won in Normandy save Gisors, the key of the frontier. 
 The usual Avinter truce folloAved. The acts of Philip 
 shoAV that December and January Avere spent in negotia- 
 tion. In the spring the two kings met on the Seine, 
 
Ill THE FALL OF THE ANGEVINS 61 
 
 some miles below Vernon, cand a second meeting resulted 
 in a peace for five years. 
 
 Richard turned to castle -building. On the great 
 rock of Andely rose the great castle which he called 
 "Gaillard," the greatest protection to his Norman 
 capital. Philip sought protection in new treaties. He 
 won over Baldwin of Flanders to promise to aid him 
 against all foes, and the archl^ishop of Rlieims, with the 
 bishops of Tournai, Arras, and Terouanne, undertook to 
 coerce him, if need be, by ecclesiastical censures to per- 
 form liis promise. Reginald, count of Boulogne, ever 
 tickle, made the same promise, under similar sanction. 
 With Flanders, Ponthieu, and Boulogne his allies, it 
 seemed as if his northern frontiers were safe : but the 
 alliance was of short duration, for Baldwin again turned 
 to Richard, and a treaty between them was signed in the 
 new castle which was building on the rock above Andely. 
 Reginald of Boulogne followed the example, and, cries 
 Rigord indignantly, "by the devil's instigation, spurned 
 his homage, broke all his treaties and oaths, and attacked 
 his liege lord, the king of the Franks." Philip was 
 indeed in unhappy plight, and the chronicler who has 
 long so loyally belauded him now has word of stern 
 condemnation for the expedients to which he was driven. 
 He recalled the Jews, taking a great bribe, and laid 
 heavy hands upon the churches. 
 
 The autumn showed him in still greater straits. 
 Richard marched through Normandy with knights and 
 mercenaries, took Courcelles, and burnt the lands around. 
 Philip made ineffectual resistance. The Vexin w^as 
 harried. The land of Beauvais had before this been 
 entered, and the bishop made captive ; and now, on the 
 
62 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 great rock which looked on Andcly and on the Seine, 
 rose, in spite of a quarrel with the archbishop of Eouen, 
 who laid all Normandy under interdict because his land 
 was taken without his leave, and of a shower of blood 
 which fell on king and workmen at their task, a mighty 
 castle, the greatest of all the military w^orks of the age, 
 which should declare and protect the sovereignty of the 
 Ansrevin over all the border of the little realm of the 
 Frankish king. 
 
 Even in its birth Chateau Gaillard seemed a doubly 
 ominous menace to King Philip. From the jagged rock 
 upon which it rose high above the narrow road that lay 
 between the hill and the Seine, the hot-blooded Eichard 
 had thrown three French prisoners, in revenge for the 
 surprise of a AVelsh contingent hard by. Philip had 
 not been outdone in barbarity ; he had taken a bitter 
 revenge. But the rock thus savagely notorious soon 
 became a deadher menace. "If an angel from heaven 
 tried to make him stay his hand, he would have had no 
 answer but a curse," said Eichard, and by the summer 
 of 1198 the castle on the rock of Andely became the 
 " Chateau Gaillard," which the king called his fair 
 daughter of a year old. 
 
 Philip watched its growtli, and as one day he stood 
 among his barons in sight of its massive strength, which 
 dominates the Seine valley for many miles, he swore that 
 though its walls were of iron, it should not keep him 
 from the sovereignty of Normandy and the Angevin 
 lands — aye, or of Aquitaine too, which one day should 
 be his own. When Eichard heard the saying he cried 
 with a fierce oath that he was able to hohl his castle 
 were its walls of butter and not of iron or stone. 
 
Ill THE FALL OF THE ANGEVINS 63 
 
 At the moment of Philip's lowest fortunes he was 
 delivered. William the Breton breaks forth into a 
 dramatic pasan. The weird sisters would no longer suffer 
 a proud rebel to abuse their mercies, Atropos spoke 
 in solemn ire to Clotho and Lachesis. The thread of his 
 life must be snapped. Philip deserved the Fates' pro- 
 tection. Eichard, greedy of gold and pleasure, should 
 look no more on the sun. On April 6, 1199, he died at 
 Chaluz. When the great limbs were stretched by his 
 father's toml) at Fontevrault, and the lion heart was laid 
 to rest in the great mother church of the Norman duchy, 
 Frenchmen saw that the Angevin house had begun to 
 fall on evil days, and that the time of their king's 
 triumph had come. "God visited the land of France, 
 for King Richard was no more." 
 
 From that moment King Philip's fortune turned. 
 John, of all the Plantagenets the weakest and the worst, 
 was accepted in Normandy and England as his brother's 
 heir, and Philip was able to pose as the chivalrous 
 champion of the orphan Arthur. The turbulent barons 
 of Anjou, Maine, and Touraine flocked to the standard 
 of the child under whose rule they could live un- 
 checked. They unanimously chose him as their lord, 
 and he did homage to Philip. At Tours Constance of 
 Brittany placed her son in the French king's hands. He 
 was sent to Paris to be brought up with the young Louis. 
 Philip took Evreux and overran the Yexin. Eleanor, 
 the aged mother of John, it is true, secured her own 
 duchy of Aquitaine for her only surviving son, and John, 
 in a sudden fit of energy, sacked and l)urnt Le Mans. 
 But the real strength lay now altogether with Philip. 
 His great vassals were still fickle. Otto of Brunswick, 
 
r,l PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 now recognised by the pope as emperor-elect, was able 
 to give John, liis uncle, some assistance. Bat Philip felt 
 strong enough to demand the surrender of the whole of 
 the Vexin to himself, and the hereditary lands of the 
 house of Anjou to Arthur, and on the refusal he set to 
 work to capture the lands for himself. For a time he 
 had a disagreement with the Bretons, and Arthur returned 
 to his uncle ; but by the end of the year he was again 
 in alliance mth Philip, and his mother had made a new 
 marriage with Almeric of Thouars, who would give her 
 son new strength in the Angevin lands. 
 
 Philip, however, had now greater dangers about his 
 path than any that John's hostility could bring. On 
 December 6, 1199, he was excommunicated by the 
 papal legate, Peter of Capua, for his adulterous union 
 with Agnes of Meran, and his land was laid under 
 interdict. A temporary peace seemed to him unavoid- 
 able. The two kings met on the arid plain which lies 
 between Gaillon and the rock whence the glittering 
 tower of Chateau Claillard commands for miles the whole 
 valley of the Seine. A strange alliance was patched up 
 by the diplomacy of the aged Eleanor of Acjuitaine. 
 Louis, Kini:; Philip's son, was to marry Blanche of Castile, 
 daughter of Alfonso YIII. and Eleanor, King John's 
 sister, and to the bride were to be given Evreux and the 
 lands Philip had won in Normandy. 
 
 This treaty was made in January 1200. Four months 
 later it was renewed with stipulations still more favour- 
 able to John. On May 22 Louis and Blanche were 
 married. Arthur did homage to John for Brittany, and 
 John himself was admitted as tenant for all the 
 Angevin lands. The alliance could hardly have been 
 
HI THE FALL OF THE AXGEYINS ef> 
 
 intended to be permanent. Pliilip ^vas already procur- 
 ing support hy treaties with his greater vassals and his 
 lesser neighljours, such as Peter, count of Tonncrre and 
 Auxerre, and the fickle Baldwin, count of Flanders and 
 Hainault, who had not long before taken the town of S. 
 Omer. 
 
 Philip had made peace with the pope : he took back 
 his Avife Ingeborgis. Thus this time, says Rigorcl, he 
 escaped from the hands of the Ilomans. lie now 
 received John in Paris with ostentation, and with every 
 appearance of friendship, in spite of that king's outrage in 
 marrying Isabel of Angouleme, whose angry betrothed, 
 Hugh of la Marche, was soon to throw himself on 
 Philip's side in the struggle. He knew how to treat the 
 idle voluptuary who now held the sceptre of Henry H. 
 John was lodged in the king's own palace, and all the 
 king's wines, saj^s Rigord, were set before him and his 
 men ; precious gifts too, gold, silver, and raiment, 
 Spanish destriers, palfreys, and other rich presents did 
 King Philip freely give to the English monarch, and so 
 he returned well pleased to his own land. 
 
 The peace was of short duration. John Avas goading 
 the barons of Poitou to fury. They appealed to Philip. 
 He was now strong enough to try a fall with the 
 Angevin. Agnes of Meran was dead. Her children 
 had been legitimatised by the pope. Ingeborgis had 
 been taken back. There was peace with Rome, and the 
 barons were beginning to recognise the power of the 
 throne. 
 
 On March 25, 1202, Philip ordered John to give up 
 to Arthur all his French fiefs. The demand was met by 
 a refusal. Then the English king was summoned to 
 
6Q PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 answer the charges against him, and to make satisfaction 
 before his peers. Whether the phrase ''peers of France " 
 had yet assumed anything of its later definite meaning 
 is very doubtful. It is unquestionable that in the 
 twelfth century the French king's court of peers meant 
 no more than the barons who attended the king's court. 
 Much later in Philip's reign the terms peer and baron are 
 found to be interchangeable. Yet already the romances 
 were having great influence on political theory. It is 
 possible that Philip had already, in imitation of the 
 mythical dignity of his ancestor Charlemagne, deter- 
 mined to form out of the large court of barons a court 
 of twelve peers. It is uncjuestionable that already a 
 distinction was recognised between those who were after- 
 wards known as the Twelve Peers of France and the 
 other great vassals, but it is impossible to declare with 
 certainty that it was the " court of peers " which tried 
 John. Had it met, only one of the six lay "peers '^ — the 
 duke of Burgundy — could have been present. Innocent 
 III. later on protested against John's condemnation 
 because he was a king and had not been tried by his 
 peers, who were kings also. It was answered that it 
 was not as king but as count of Anjou and duke of 
 Aquitaine that he was tried. But this leaves the question 
 of the formation of the court still undecided. At least 
 there is no evidence that John was condemned by the 
 court of twelve peers. 
 
 Whatever the court, it is clear that a trial took place. 
 John was summoned in due form to answer the complaints 
 of the Poitevin barons. He pledged, after long haggling, 
 the castles of Boutavant and Tilli6res as surety for his 
 appearance. But he came neither by himself nor by 
 
Ill THE FALL OF THE ANGEVINS 67 
 
 deputy. He saw that it was impossible to postpone 
 a conflict ; and he thought too, it is proljable, that to 
 compromise his dignity was an unwise preparation for a 
 critical struo-ole. 
 
 He was sentenced, in default, to lose all the lands 
 which he held of the French crown. This Avas an 
 event of great importance in the legal history of the 
 French monarchy. On this sentence depended their 
 king's right to the lands which were afterwards seized. 
 Years later, when the murder of Arthur filled the largest 
 space in men's memories of this troubled time, and when 
 Louis was fighting for the English crown, it was asserted 
 that John's forfeiture was due to a sentence of the peers 
 on the murderer of his nephew. But of such a trial 
 there is no trace. It was now, probably on April 28, 1 202, 
 that the decisive sentence went forth from the French 
 kino's court that the disobedient vassal who had wronsred 
 his own men and those of his overlord had forfeited all 
 his lands, and that the supreme lord, King Philip, might 
 by law resume them into his own hands. From this 
 moment, if the judgment of the court could be accepted, 
 John had no legal right to his possessions. The lands of 
 Rollo and of the demon-race of Anjou had come again 
 into the hands of the king of Paris. 
 
 Philip lost no time in executing the sentence of his court. 
 He took first the castles which John had pledged, Bouta- 
 vant and Tilli6res, and then Longchamps, Mortemer, and 
 Lyonsda-Foret. He then besieged Eadepont, whence 
 he was driven by a sudden march of John. Thence he 
 turned to besiege Gournay, which was stoutly defended 
 by its lord. Here Philip showed the military skill for 
 which he was afterwards renowned. The castle was 
 
68 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 defended by a wide and deep moat filled from the Epte, 
 which made attack difficult and capture practically 
 impossible. The French king observed a large stagnant 
 pond which was protected by an embankment from over- 
 flowing into the moat. He broke down the wall, and the 
 flood of lake and river and moat swept away the villages 
 near, and undermined the walls of the castle. The 
 besieged were forced to quit the castle, and fled into the 
 neighbouring forest. 
 
 Arthur was present Avith the king at the siege, and 
 after the capture he was knighted, betrothed to Philip's 
 daughter, Mar}^, and invested with all the lands of the 
 house of Anjou. Normandy Philip retained for himself. 
 
 Arthur was now the unquestioned duke of Brittany. 
 His mother was dead, and the Bretons Avere enthusiastic 
 for their boy lord. Philip may well have looked forward 
 to uniting the Breton heritage with his own lands by 
 the results of the alliance and the marriaoe. But John's 
 forces were still stronger than the Bretons. Fougeres 
 and Dol, so often captured l^y Henry 11. , fell into the 
 hands of his generals, and the country was harried up 
 to the walls of Rennes. 
 
 Arthur now marched with 200 knights to Tours, to 
 unite with the Angevin insurgents in an attack on Poitou. 
 Here he was joined by the Lusignans, hot against John, 
 who had robbed the head of their house of his bride. 
 They brought but a small force, and Arthur, it a2:)pears, 
 led no more than 250 knights in all. Yet he rashly 
 determined, by a sudden march, to capture his grand- 
 mother Eleanor, who was still duchess of Aquitaine in 
 her OA\ai right, and in whose untamed yet diplomatic 
 spirit lay John's chiefest strength. He advanced to 
 
Ill THE FALL OF THE ANGEYINS 69 
 
 Arircl>e;iu, on the frontier of Anjon, and was on the point 
 of captnring the aged queen, when John as suddenly 
 came up, surrounded and slaughtered his men, and took 
 the 3'oung leader prisoner. 
 
 This was on August 1, 1202. A few months later 
 Arthur, who had been first imprisoned at Falaise, was 
 rej^orted to have died, and it was loudly asserted that 
 he had been slain by his uncle's hand. John, so William 
 the Breton told in the Philippid, had taken the boy out 
 with him alone from Eouen and rowed up the Seine, 
 suddenly plunged a sword into his body, and then, 
 rowing on again three miles in the dark night, thrown 
 the body into the river. Be this legend or true record, 
 nothing more Avas ever heard of Arthur. 
 
 The death of John's rival might seem to leave him 
 undisturbed in power. In reality it was one more step 
 towards the triumph of King Philip. The French king 
 had never ceased his small expeditions on the frontier. 
 He now passed from the position of a leader in petty 
 skirmishes to that of the avenger of blood. Lien 
 declared later that the court of peers had found John 
 guilty of mnrder, and sentenced him to death and for- 
 feiture. So Louis, King Philip's son, loudly proclaimed 
 in 121G : but there is no evidence that any legal notice 
 was taken of the crime which all men believed to have 
 been committed. Tt was not vet indeed certain that 
 Arthur was dead. Philip's charters for some time 
 contain provisions for the preservation of his rights. 
 
 John's lands in Gaul were already forfeit. Philip 
 now oidy pressed the more strongly to snatch them 
 from his sway. He marched into Touraine, took Saumur, 
 and then went on to Aquitaine. One by one the great 
 
70 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 barons came over to him and did him homage. Already 
 lords such as Maurice de Craon had sworn fealty to him 
 so long as Arthur was in prison, and now they hastened 
 to become his men without demur. 
 
 Philip now set himself in earnest to the conquest of 
 Normandy. Castle after castle fell into his hands. 
 Vaudreuil, Conches, and the whole of the county of 
 Evreux became his. John remained idly at Rouen. 
 His men sent to him imploring aid. "Philip harries 
 your land, your strongholds he captures, and their sene- 
 schals he ties to the tails of the horses and drags them to 
 prison, and your property he uses as his own." " Let be," 
 was all John's answer, "some day I will win all back." 
 
 But it Avas too late. Day by day came new recruits 
 to Philip's camp. The few ill-organised efforts which 
 John made to relieve besieged castles were easily 
 repulsed. Step by step he won his way to the heart of 
 the Norman lands. At last only Chateau Gaillard stood 
 between him and the capital where John lay in dissolute 
 repose. In September 1203 the siege began, and now 
 for many months Philip's letters and charters are dated 
 " from before the saucy castle." 
 
 The ruins of Chateau Gaillard still stand on the height 
 that overlooks Little Andely at the point where the 
 Seine makes a great bend, surrounding the peninsula of 
 Bernieres. From the keep, still lofty though it has 
 lost one, if not two, of its storeys, the eye looks northward 
 over the wooded heights and follows the white cliffs 
 which run steeply up from the river as it sweeps round 
 to Bernieres. Below lie the narrow streets of Little 
 Andely; north-west, in the valley, the town, in the 
 thirteenth century walled and fortified, of Great Andely. 
 
Ill THE FALL OF THE ANGEYINS 71 
 
 Where the Seine flows swiftly down past many a little 
 island, and fringed by woods, there rises a hill, standing 
 back from its right bank, which overlooks the castle. 
 The castle itself stands upon a sharp rock which rises 
 sheer from within a few yards of the river. A bridge 
 now crosses the Seine to the southward of the castle. 
 Somewhat below it are three islands. Across one of 
 these the bridge passed in the thirteenth century, and a 
 fort on the same island protected the way. 
 
 From the river-bank the castle which King Eichard 
 built is impregnable. A lake or large marsh then 
 separated Great from Little Andely, and protected the 
 fortress from any attack on that side. Only from the 
 near hill, which commanded the foreworks of the castle, 
 could attack be made with any prospect of success. On 
 this side the massiveness and complexity of the work is 
 stupendous. First comes a deep trench, then a strong 
 fort with walls ten feet thick. This was separate from 
 the main fortifications. Here, besides the ditch, which was 
 more than forty feet deep, cut from the solid rock, the 
 walls were protected by the sharp cliffs on which they 
 rose. The enclosure was large, and had not only towers 
 and bastions, which were suitable for dwelling-houses as 
 well as defensive works, but also casemates underground, 
 supported by lofty pillars, and a chapel and cellar added 
 by John in 1202. This vast enclosure, strong though its 
 defences were, had the disadvantage of being commanded 
 by the outer fort, so that if that were taken it would 
 become difficult to hold against a force well provided 
 with military engines. Within its walls, and protected 
 by a deep trench, rose the citadel. It had seventeen 
 semicircular bastions, separated from each other by less 
 
72 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 than a yard of wall. The walls themselves, though from 
 eight to twelve feet thick, have generally only a casing 
 of stone, often bevelled and built with considerable at- 
 tention to effect, and within are of rubble. Towards the 
 river they communicated with some outworks and a tower 
 on the hillside, at a part where the fall was not absolutely 
 perpendicular. Towards the south and south-east was a 
 perpendicular counterscarp. The keep rose magnificently 
 from this innermost enclosure, and towered above all 
 the buildings, save pjerhajDS the tower at the south- 
 western limit of the fortification. Here was the king's 
 own dwelling, and hence a view stretched over the richly 
 cultivated plain of Bernieres, the glorious sweep of the 
 river from Gaillon and towards Eouen, and the sur- 
 rounding hills, thickly timljered and shutting out the 
 country to the north and the south-west. A grand 
 house, thought the French chronicler, for kings' pleasure 
 as well as their protection. 
 
 On the river the castle was defended not only by 
 the bridge and fort, but by a double stockade, which 
 protected the island from a force descending the stream. 
 The Seine is broad and swift at the bend where the 
 fortress stands, and the whole sweep is immeasurably 
 finer than the lower waters where the chalk clitis are 
 left behind as the stream nears Rouen. 
 
 The siege of such a |)lace Avas no militar}^ promenade. 
 It was the most difficult task which Philip had yet 
 undertaken. It differed not merely in degree from the 
 constant castle-taking to which the feudal fighters of 
 the time were habituated, for no castle in all Gaul could 
 compare with C^hateau Gaillard foi- the combination of 
 natural and scientific defences. 
 
HI THE FALL OF THE ANGEVINS 73 
 
 From the first Pliilip prepared for a lung siege. He 
 marched across the plain of Bernieres, having crossed 
 probably at Gaillon, and encamped just below the castle, 
 and opposite to Little Andel}^ The garrison at once 
 destroyed the bridge between the plain and the island. 
 Philip, however, was not to be prevented from reaching 
 the opposite shore. He had brought great numbers of 
 military engines, stores of wood, and barges for transport 
 and to serve as bridges, and skilled arbalists, Jourdain, 
 Paviot, and Penand Tatin, were among his officers. 
 Some gallant French youths cast themselves into the 
 stream and, heedless of the storm of arrows and stones 
 which reached them from the island fort and from the 
 castle itself, cut a way through the stockade large enough 
 for the passage of boats. A flotilla of barges at once 
 passed through and formed a bridge beyond the stockade 
 and the island, which was immediately fortified with 
 towers. Across this Philip led the greater part of his 
 men to attack Little Andely. Thus the three defences— 
 the island fort, the tow^n of Little Andely, and Chateau 
 Gaillard itself — were each cut off from all communications 
 and supplies. Robert de Lacy, constable of Chester, was 
 in command of the castle. It was well stocked with all 
 sorts of provisions and amply j^rovided with water, and 
 the garrison were prepared for a long siege. 
 
 While Philip had been gathering his army and win- 
 ning his first successes John had remained inactive. 
 He now planned one scheme for the relief of his finest 
 fortress. He gave AVilliam the Marshal command of 
 three hundred knights, three thousand horse, and four 
 thousand foot, with some mercenaries led by a southern 
 mercenary named Lupicar, Avho had been infamous for 
 
74 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 thirty years as a leader of those BrabaiK^ons who had so 
 often devastated the fair fields of France. They were 
 to advance along the left bank of the Seine by night. 
 "John from his noted craft begged aid, and dared by 
 night Avhat he dared not by day/^ — so says the poetic 
 chronicler of Philip's history. Meanwhile a flotilla of 
 transports was to ascend the river, stocked with pro- 
 visions and guarded by warships, manned, says the 
 chronicler strangely, by " pirates " and by three thousand 
 Flemings. This force was to break the French bridge 
 of boats, while William the Marshal destroyed the camp 
 on the plain. Philip would thus be caught between the 
 strong fortifications and the marshes, without means of 
 escape, and by sorties from the garrisons his troops could 
 be cut to pieces or driven into the river. It was a 
 skilful scheme. 
 
 Just before dawn the attack burst upon the camp, 
 some while before the flotilla ascending the winding 
 stream was ready to attack the stockade. Ill was guard 
 kept in the camp on the plain. The camp followers and 
 baser men, after copious potations, were killed like sheep 
 as they lay upon the ground ; others, hastily aroused, 
 rushed to the bridge to escape to the right bank ; others 
 swam across. But the panic was stayed by William cle 
 Barres and other knights, whose sharp words recalled the 
 cowards to their posts. Bonfires were hastily lighted, 
 faggots collected and set on fire, and oil poured on the 
 flames, and then the assailants were discerned and 
 attacked. The French emerged victorious from the 
 struggle, but the bridge had been broken by the crowd of 
 fugitives, and it needed to be repaired and strengthened. 
 Hardly had this been done and the French just laid 
 
Ill THE FALL OF THE ANGEVINS 75 
 
 themselves down again to rest, when with the dawn 
 came the Hotilla, and the crews threw themselves against 
 the bridge. The French arbalists manning the wooden 
 towers which defended the bridge rained stones and 
 arrows on the foe, and great beams, iron bars, boiling 
 oil, and pitch were also thrown from the bridge on the 
 boats as they approached ; the banks too were soon lined 
 with archers. The fight was long and bloody. The 
 attacking force pressed on with dauntless courage, boats 
 were upset, men were thrown into the Abater, and, says 
 the French poet, sought burial from Thetis and funeral 
 orations from the chorus of Nereids. As others fell 
 dying on the boats, comrades would run and give 
 them their last kisses. It was a startling sight to the 
 king's chaplain as he watched it from his master's camp 
 when the sun rose on the Seine dyed with blood. 
 
 At last an enormous beam at the end of the bridge 
 of boats fell on two boats of the attacking force and 
 sank them. The rest of the flotilla first paused, then 
 turned to fly. Gaubert of Mantes, a fisherman whom 
 William the Breton had often watched as a boy, with 
 Louis des Galees and others, seized tAvo slight shifts and 
 pursued. They captured two of the boats. Then they 
 turned to attack the fort on the isle of Andely, which 
 the failure of the attempt at relief had now left at their 
 mercy. Gaubert was a fine swimmer, who could go 
 under water a thousand paces. He swam to the island, 
 reached the wall which girt it twice round, and breaking 
 by sheer strength some wood from the outer palisade, 
 set it on fire and threw it upon the wall. The wand 
 was blowing fiercely, and in a few minutes the garrison 
 was surrounded by a girdle of flames. Some were 
 
76 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 choked, some filing themselves into the Seine, the rest 
 suiTendered. 
 
 The ishind taken, Philip refortified it and rebuilt 
 the portion of the bridge which connected it with the 
 western bank. The village of Little Andely fell at once 
 into his hands. The villagers sought refuge in Chateau 
 Gaillard, and Philip settled new inhabitants in the 
 place with two companies of mercenaries. After this 
 there was a cessation of active hostilities. John made 
 no effort to relieve his great fortress. Philip was 
 content that the garrison, now increased by the fugitives 
 from Little Andel}^, should be starved into surrender, 
 and he turned to besiege and capture Eadepont. A 
 month later he returned to the Andelys, and set about 
 in earnest the task of making the blockade efiectual. 
 Alread}^ all egress was impossible towards the river, 
 Little Andely, or the marsh which separated the two 
 Andelys from each other, Philip now established a 
 camp on the hill overlooking the castle, and dug a deep 
 trench from the marsh to the Seine bank, thus com- 
 pletely surrounding the castle on the only sides from 
 which it had been possible to procure supplies. The 
 trench was overlooked by seven wooden turrets, each 
 surrounded l}y a moat and provided with a drawbridge. 
 The army then settled down to Avintcr in the trenches, 
 and mocked the defenders as young birds who would 
 have to fly with the coming of si)ring. 
 
 The l:)lockade now l^egan in earnest. Day by day 
 the refuii'ees from Little Andely were consumino- the 
 precious provisions, and Poger de Lacy saw starvation 
 before him. He thereupon turned out 500 of the 
 weakest, and a few days later 500 more. They were 
 
Ill THE FALL OF THE ANGEVINS 77 
 
 suffered to pass through tlic besieging lines. Beyond 
 this Philij} would not allow him to go. All that 
 afterwards attempted to issue forth were received with 
 showers of arrows as they approached the French en- 
 trenchments. They rushed back, but found the gates 
 closed, and for three months they Avere left with no 
 food but such herbs as they coidd pick up and the 
 flesh of unclean animals thrown from the walls. Many, 
 says AVilliam the Breton, had nothing for days but water; 
 others found food in the most hideous Avays. For three 
 months the wretches lingered between the fortifications 
 and the trenches, till Philip, who had for a while been 
 absent at Gaillon, returned. As he crossed the bridge 
 the unhappy creatures recognised him from his gallant 
 following, and cried out for pity. Philip was touched. 
 " God forbid," he cried, '' that we should increase their 
 sufferini;'," and he ordered them to be ejiven food and 
 suffered to depart. As his chaplain stood among those 
 who ran to the help of the starving wretches, he saw 
 one who still clutched the dry bone of a dog, and 
 would not give it up till he had actually bread in his 
 mouth. 
 
 Months passed by, Philip was chiefly at Mantes 
 and Vernon. At length, before the beginning of March, 
 he determined to try more active measures. A vigorous 
 attack, prepared by the making of a wooden causeway 
 up to the first fortress, and carried out by miners, who 
 undermined the wall, soon gave the triangidar fort 
 into the hands of the besiegers. This was on February 
 22, 1204. More difficult was the seizure of the next 
 enclosure. The ditch was here so deep, and the rock 
 upon Avhich the walls rose so precipitous, that although 
 
78 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 the enclosm^e was commanded by the fort, of which the 
 French were now in possession, its capture seemed * 
 almost impossible. The skill and daring of one man, 
 however, gave it into Philip's hands. One Ral^^h, 
 whom men called Bogis, or Snub-nose, observed a little 
 Avindow in the new building of John on the south- 
 eastern wall. Taking with him a few companions, he 
 crept down into the ditch, crossed it, and climbed the 
 sharp ascent to the foot of the wall. Then, standing on 
 a comrade's shoulder, he managed to scramble into the 
 window, which was unbarred. His companions followed. 
 They found themselves in the chapel, or — for it is 
 impossible from the statements of the chroniclers exactly 
 to recall the arrangement of the building, which is 
 entirely destroyed — a store -house below it. From this 
 they endeavoured to get into the inner court, but found 
 themselves shut in. The besieged, hearing their cries, 
 set fire to the building. The flames spread, and the 
 gallant Frenchmen escaped from the ruins ; while the 
 garrison, seeing it impossible to hold the burning 
 fortress, retired to the citadel, and Ealph Bogis let down 
 the drawbridge for the French to enter. It was a 
 brilliant and courageous deed, and we do not wonder 
 to read among the king's grants that the gallant Bogis 
 was given a knight's fee " for the service which he has 
 rendered us.'' 
 
 There remained now only the citadel with its towering 
 keep, which looked far along the valley of the Seine. 
 Gaze as he might, Eoger de Lacy saw no help coming. 
 John had deserted him, and left the chief fortress of 
 Normandy to its fate. Only 180 Avarriors remained to 
 guard the " saucy child " of Eichard. Brief Avas the 
 
Ill THE FALL OF THE ANGEVINS 79 
 
 last attack. A small causeway gave approach to the 
 main entrance. Across this a military engine was led, 
 under cover of which the wall was undermined. A 
 countermine only served to increase the danger. An- 
 other engine hurled massive stones against the wall. 
 It fell in, and the besiegers poured through the breach. 
 None of the defenders would yield, but they were 
 overpowered. It is a curious illustration of the char- 
 acter of medieval warfare that only four knights seem 
 to have been killed during the whole siege. 
 
 It was on March 6, 1204, that Chateau Gaillard fell 
 into Philip's hands. Its capture was the greatest 
 triumjDh he had yet obtained, and it marked his com- 
 plete victory over the house of Anjou, as the battle of 
 Bouvines marked his victory over all other foreign foes. 
 From that time there was no real resistance in Normandy. 
 Philip offered liberal terms to all the towns which 
 Avould yield, and they readily agreed to a year's truce. 
 
 John tried to negotiate, but it was too late. Philip 
 answered that Arthur must be freed before any negotia- 
 tion could begin. Town after town yielded, when the 
 truce was over, at the first approach of Philip. Even 
 the strong keep of Falaise, the conqueror's birthplace, 
 surrendered after a week's siege. Rouen made a truce 
 for thirty days, but before the month was over it was 
 clear that John woidd not help, and on S. John 
 Baptist's Day 1 204 it opened its gates. 
 
 The submission of the Norman capital was not 
 obtained solely by military force. Peter de Preaux, 
 who was in command of the city, had received no obscure 
 hints that it would be worth his while to make terms 
 for himself with Philip. Thus on June 1, 1204, Peter 
 
80 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 signed the capitulation with the other knights, Robert 
 the mayor and the representatives of the commune ; 
 and the same month when the surrender had been 
 made saw considerable grants by the French king to 
 Peter's kindred. Philip took similar measures to con- 
 ciliate other opponents. He rewarded the mayors of 
 each town that he captured, proved ready to confirm 
 all charters, and even to grant new privileges. And he 
 was ever ready to buy new adherents. Thus he made 
 large grants to win over Guerin de Glapion, whom John 
 had made seneschal of Normandy ; and his capture of 
 Falaise was marked by considerable grants of land to 
 the mayor, Andre Propensee, by grants of freedom to 
 the ])urghers, and by the grant of a week's fair to the 
 lepers of the town on the feast of the exaltation of the 
 Holy Cross. 
 
 With Rouen's surrender Normandy was practically 
 won. Verneuil and Arques were the last to submit to 
 the French king. In the meantime Philip's forces had 
 spread over Anjou and Touraine. His mother's heritage 
 alone remained to John Lackland. 
 
 On April 1, 1204, <Jueen Eleanor, that '^admirable 
 lady of beauty and astuteness," passed away, and 
 Aquitaine became forfeit like the rest of John's posses- 
 sions. Philip immediately marched into Poitou. By 
 Easter, 1205, only Loches, Chinon, Niort, and La Rochelle 
 held out. A year more of indecision, rashness, hasty 
 attack and more rapid retreat, left John deprived of 
 Poitou as well as the lands of his father. Philip had 
 won the Poitevins by l^ribes as well as by the sword. 
 Geoffrey Martel in ]\Iay 1204 made his submission, and 
 promised to win over the barons of Anjou and Poitou 
 
Ill THE FALL OF THE ANGEVINS 81 
 
 in considertition of the king's concession; and in 1205 
 similar negotiations were made with the count of Eu. 
 
 Philip indeed knew how to secure as well as how to 
 capture territory. He confiscated the lands of all those 
 who would not abandon their former master. He 
 introduced new settlers : he gave the government to 
 his own men. He bound the barons together by 
 mutual obligations as to each other's fidelity ; and he 
 never forgot to propitiate the communes and the 
 Church. He had now truly become master of France. 
 
 John had made some efforts, not altogether successful, 
 to recover his hold of the southern lands, but his diffi- 
 culties at home, his want of money, and his quarrel with 
 the pope made him eager for peace. Innocent, during 
 the last year's war, had intervened in vain endeavour to 
 check Philip's too rapid triumph and to induce both 
 kings to enter upon a crusade. But two legates who 
 appeared before the French monarch during the siege of 
 Chateau Gaillard had been sent about their business in 
 a manner characteristic of Philip's attitude towards 
 Eome when he had nothing to fear from papal 
 animositj^ Now Innocent had a serious English quarrel 
 on his hands, and the truce which was sisjned at Thouars 
 on October 26, 1206, was not of his making. It was to 
 last for two years. The time was spent by Philip in 
 consolidating his conquests and securing his position 
 in Europe. He took securities for the fidelity of the 
 constable of Normandy. He made arrangements for 
 the safe custody of the chief towns on the Loire with 
 the seneschal of Anjou. He made terms with the 
 irritable and vigorous archbishop of Rouen, and he 
 confirmed the privileges of the city itself, which under 
 
 G 
 
82 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 the Norman dukes had always been considerable. He 
 rewarded his faithful servants, such as the arbalist 
 Paviot, who had done yeoman service at Chateau 
 Gaillard, and his marshal Henry Clement, to whom he 
 gave the castle of Argentan. He took minute interest 
 in the affairs of Norman churches and communes. He 
 made frequent visits to his new possessions, and stayed 
 at Chateau Gaillard, at Gisors, and Evreux, and the 
 people began to be accustomed to the sight of their 
 sovereign. He strove too to become more closely con- 
 cerned with the affairs of the outlying states, such as 
 Ponthieu and Boulogne. In September 1208 he ratified 
 a marriage alliance between those two states, and three 
 months later he intervened in a dispute between the 
 count of Ponthieu and the bishop of Amiens. The 
 charters of these years show a continued process of 
 absorption and consolidation of the new lands. 
 
 When the truce expired neither party was anxious to 
 resume the Avar. Philip had enough on his hands at 
 home, and the Albigensian crusade, Avhich he watched 
 with such astute prudence, promised a more favourable 
 and less costly opportunity fur enlarging his dominions 
 than any that a war with the I^nglish king could afford. 
 John meanwhile was getting deeper and deeper into the 
 mire, and all to the profit of the French king. His 
 tyranny was causing many of the barons to seek refuge 
 under Philip's protection. Innocent in P212 began 
 to a})peal to the king Avhom Ik^ had so long banned, 
 to take arms against tlie tjaunt A\dio Avas now under his 
 anathema. When at length the sentence of deposition 
 was pronounced against the English king, it was to France 
 that the pope looked fur the executiun of the sentence. 
 
Ill THE FALL OF THE ANGEVINS 83 
 
 The pope's legate and the English bishops published the 
 sentence in France. Already half the great men of 
 England lay under special sentence. " An index excom- 
 municatorum,'' said the late Mr. Pearson of this time, 
 ''would be very like a peerage." English malcontents 
 were eager to throw themselves into the arms of France. 
 Llewelyn, the prince of North Wales, allied himself 
 with the French king. Then King Phili[), says Matthew 
 Paris, understanding and welcoming what he had so 
 long desired, girded himself to the battle, and called 
 all the men of his realm to meet at Eouen for the 
 invasion of the English lands. He gathered too a 
 fleet and enormous stores of provisions. He held a 
 great council at Soissons, at which his barons (save 
 Ferrand of Flanders, who was already in secret alli- 
 ance with John) enthusiastically greeted the project 
 of an invasion of England under the pope's blessing. 
 But John was not without other help among Philip's 
 vassals. Eeginald of Boulogne, who had turned from 
 side to side since Henry H. was the English king, but 
 who in later years had been Philip's trusted counsellor, 
 and had aided hira in the conquest of Normandy in 1204, 
 now threw himself with Flanders, and the imperial 
 claimant Otto, on the side of the coalition against France. 
 He had long been engaged in a bitter quarrel with the 
 bishoj) of Beauvais, he had strongly fortified and pro- 
 visioned the castle of jMortain, and only yielded to a 
 sudden march and imperious summons of the king. 
 On the principle that like Avill have like, the French 
 chroniclers readily explain Eeginald's desertion. His 
 little daughter Avas pledged in marriage to Philip 
 Hurepel, King Philip's son ; the contract had been signed 
 
84 PHILir AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 in November 1209. His wife was a very noble lady, 
 and from her came the comity that he held. But he 
 was forgetful of all moral ties, a persecutor of communes, 
 of churches, of the poor, and a man of the most profligate 
 life. Excommunicate himself, he turned natiurally to 
 the excommunicate emperor and the excommunicate king. 
 As early as 1211 Philip had discovered his treachery, 
 He offered him pardon, but told him he must come to 
 Pont de I'Aixhe to obtain it, under threat of the imme- 
 diate seizure of Mortain, the castle given to him in 1204 
 in exchange for Mortemer, and the chief fortress he 
 possessed in lower Normandy. Eeginald had shuffled 
 and promised and disobeyed, and in May 1212 he had 
 done homage to King John. 
 
 In the early summer of 1213 Philip determined to 
 deal with the foes on his northern border. On May 10 
 he arrived at Boulogne, whence he passed to Gravelines, 
 where he had demanded the presence of Ferrand. He 
 had already taken pledges from all the neighbouring 
 cities and churches for their support against the coalition. 
 Ferrand did not come, but there appeared a less agree- 
 able visitor. Pandulph, legate of the pope, crossed from 
 England to announce the formal submission of John to the 
 Holy See, and the order of Innocent to the French king 
 to cease from his expedition. Thus at the moment when 
 he might have felt most sure of success, a certain victory 
 was snatched from his hands. He paused in his designs 
 against England, but he did not delay to avenge himself 
 on Flanders. He marched thither and took Cassel, 
 Ypres, Bruges, and Ghent. He was successful on land, 
 but a terrible disaster befell his ships. His fleet, anchored 
 at Swinemiinde or Dam, the port of Bruges, was attacked 
 
Ill THE FALL OF THE ANGEVINS 85 
 
 by a fleet of 500 ships, under William Longsword, 
 eaii of Salisbiuy, and Avitli the aid of the count of 
 Boulogne was almost entirely destroyed. Philip was 
 compelled to return to France ; and the tide of invasion 
 turned against him. 
 
 In July 1213 John prepared to go to Poitou, where 
 the barons were as ready to rise against Philip as they 
 had been to harass his Angevin predecessors. He was 
 delayed by new troubles at home, but when at length a 
 temporary peace was made he sent money to William of 
 Salisbury and the troops in Flanders, and on February 2, 
 1214, himself crossed to Poitou and landed at La Rochelle, 
 where the barons did homage and vowed their easy 
 fealty. With the strange change of fortune which is so 
 characteristic of these wars, he at first carried all before 
 him. He stormed the castle of Miravent, and brought 
 Geofi'rey of Lezinan to sore straits. He won over even 
 the count of Marche whom he had so deeply wronged. 
 He crossed the Loire, won a battle near Nantes, took 
 Angers, and besieged La Koche-aux-moines. Philip, 
 already occupied in Flanders, could not himself meet 
 this new attack. He sent his son Louis, a young 
 warrior with all a young warrior's energy. At the news 
 of his coming the fickle Poitevins declared that they 
 could not dare a pitched battle, and John was obliged to 
 retreat. Louis had himself been unwilling to engage, 
 though he had an army of 2000 horse and 7000 foot, 
 but when he heard of the retreat he turned to pursue. 
 No decisive action, however, seems to have taken place, 
 though William the Breton (who was with Philip in 
 Flanders at the time) declares that Louis drove John 
 back in disorder across the Loire. 
 
86 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 John's idle procrastination and the fickleness of his 
 barons deprived the sonthern war of all real interest. 
 In the north the battle of Bonvines, July 27, liil4, made 
 the EngHsh King thankful to agree to a cessation of 
 hostilities. On September 18, 1214, at Chinon the two 
 kings agreed on a truce till Easter 1220. The posses- 
 sions of each were to remain as they were at the signing 
 of the truce. John returned to England on October 
 19. From that day all hope of regaining the Angevin 
 dominions in France was abandoned, and the triumph 
 of Philip was complete. 
 
 In nothing does the great king's genins appear more 
 clearl}^ than in the methods he adopted for securing 
 the heritage he had acquired. The policy of support- 
 ing the under tenants against their lord, of Avhich the 
 most striking instance was the trial and condemnation 
 of John for his ill-treatment of his Poitevin vassals, was 
 consistently followed throughout the struggle which 
 ended in the acquisition of the Angevin dominions by 
 France. The Norman barons, the mayors of Norman 
 towns, received rich rewards for their desertion of their 
 duke. In Anjou Geoffrey Martel made submission 
 May 1204, and promised to win over the barons of that 
 land. A year later the count of Eu received the grant 
 of the ro^^al domain in Poitou for five years, with an 
 income of 4000 livres, and the service of 100 knii^^hts 
 and 1000 men-at-arms, that he might Avin Poitou for the 
 crown. The churches were propitiated by special grants 
 of protection, and AVilliam the Breton records with de- 
 light that freedom of election was given to all the Norman 
 sees. The barons who could not be relied npon received 
 exchane'es of their fiefs for lands Ivinii; near Paris. 
 
ITT THE FALL OF THE ANOEVIXS 87 
 
 Coiifiseatod lands, of wbicli there were many when the 
 Xormaii barons had to choose l^etween their English and 
 foreign estates, were added to the domain of the crown 
 or distributed among loyal barons, both small and great. 
 The acts of the four years 1203 to 1207 contain more 
 than fifty such grants. While the power of the oLl 
 nobility of the newly-conquered lands was weakened, 
 every opportunity was taken to raise up the towns l)y 
 grants of immunity and commercial privilege. Philip 
 knew not only how to win but how to hold. 
 
 The fall of the Angevius had been largely the result 
 of their own suicidal dissensions and of John's vicious 
 incapacity. But Philip had shown his greatness by his 
 patience and his prudence. It was the slow indomitable 
 pursuit of an end steadily set before him from the first— 
 the persistent unceasing blows at the mighty edifice of 
 the great King Henry — that had at last accomplished 
 the task of the French king, and made possi])le the 
 creation of an united France. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 BOUVINKS 
 
 The long struggle with the Angevin house did not 
 occupy the whole of Philip's energies. His father had 
 avoided, when he could, direct relations with the Empire, 
 but by extending his influence over the ecclesiastical 
 states on his frontiers had endeavoured to Avin support 
 against the possible aggression of a strong emperor. 
 Philip was more ambitious. Not content with secur- 
 ing his own safety from attack, he aspired to interfere 
 in the internal politics of the Em2)ire. The relations 
 of France with Germany entered upon a new phase. 
 But Philip was nothing if not cautious. At the begin- 
 ning of his reign he was urged on the one hand by 
 Henry H., to whose wise advice he owed so much, to 
 support the cause of Henry the Lion of Saxony against 
 the Emperor ; on the other he was warned b}^ his uncle 
 the count of Champagne to avoid any active interven- 
 tion. He prudently kept peace with Frederic. He had 
 enough to do, indeed, to defend his own claims of 
 suzerainty. When his war with Philip of Flanders was 
 in progress, the count, who was vassal also of the 
 emperor, had sought his aid. Frederic declared that 
 
CHAP. IV ROUVINES 89 
 
 he would protect his vassal, and the French king found 
 his suzerainty over Flanders merely nominal when a 
 stronger suzerain supported his vassal. In 1184, and 
 again in 1185, the succours of the German kingdom 
 were promised to the Flemish count against his French 
 lord. It had seemed as if the full strength of the 
 German kingdom would be joined to that of Philip's 
 own great vassals against the young khig; but he 
 A\^as preserved not only by his own skill but by the 
 wisdom of the Emperor Frederic. Italy and the 
 pope Avere enough to employ Frederic's thoughts and 
 his power : he forbade his son to meddle with the 
 Flemish cjuarrel. In the next year, with equal sagacit}^, 
 he declined to support the duke of Burgundy, who was 
 also his vassal, against the French king. He did not 
 intend, he declared, to extend the boundaries of the 
 Empire. He had begun in fact to perceive that Philip's 
 hostility was dangerous. The archbishop of Koln 
 was in alliance with him : the archbishop of Trier, 
 banished from his see, found refuge within the French 
 dominions. France, it seemed, would throw her weight 
 in favour of the pope against the Empire. The emperor, 
 however, was still too strong for the French king, and he 
 now had Henry 11. of England at his back. Philip's op- 
 position wavered and broke down. The crusade came to 
 distract Frederic's attention; and from 1188 the French 
 royal house was in alliance with the Hohenstaufen. 
 Even the friendship of Philip with Tancred, the usurper 
 of the emperor's rights over Sicily, did not long alienate 
 the Emperor Henry VI. from the French king. For 
 Philip's sake he held Richard captive, and when he had 
 released him he was still anxious by a personal interview 
 
90 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 to make a firm alliance with France. Henry was himself 
 in danger ; the princes of the Empire, it seemed, needed 
 only French aid to make their rebellion successful. His 
 meeting with Philip did not take place : only three times 
 in the twelfth century did a Roman emperor speak face 
 to face with a king of the Franks. But the alliance was 
 made, and Philip endeavoured to confirm it by a marriage 
 proposal. He had repudiated Ingeborgis : he sought now 
 the daughter of the Count Palatine for wife. The lady 
 proved an unexpected obstacle to the international 
 arrangement ; she was already pledged to Henry of 
 Brunswick, the son of the Lion of Saxony, and she con- 
 trived to marry him in spite of her father and the 
 French king, and the Holy Roman Emperor. The 
 marriage, instead of leading to war, brought about recon- 
 ciliation between the Emperor and the house of Brunswick, 
 and Philip found himself before long opposed by a 
 coalition of which the Emperor with Richard, his new 
 vassal, were the prominent members. Philip strained 
 every nerve to induce Henry to retain his rival in captivity, 
 but the emperor showed his proposals to Richard, and 
 thus definitely espoused his cause against the French 
 king. But Philip was again preserved from any direct 
 attack of the imperial forces. Henry's Sicilian conquests, 
 his constitutional projects and dynastic difiiculties, kept 
 him fully employed, and when he died in 1198 Philip 
 no longer feared German intervention, but was able him- 
 self to take part in the cpiarrels of the princes of the 
 Empire. He threw himself at once upon the side of 
 the late emperor's brother, in enmity to the Brunswick 
 house. On June 29, 1198, he made a treaty with Philip 
 of Swabia, and he persistently endeavoured to induce 
 
iv BOUYINES 91 
 
 Innocent ITL to discard Otto. But he was a shifty ally. 
 Before many months were over the pope had won him 
 round. He gave no support to Philip of Swabia : he 
 thought only of his struggle with the Angevins, and he 
 was pleased with the distractions of the German kingdom. 
 So negotiations lingered on till the murder of the Swabian 
 in 1208. Two months later the French king agreed 
 to support the new claimant, Henr}- of Brabant, against 
 Otto. Three years before, in February 1205, the French 
 king had bound the duke of Lorraine to his interest 
 by bestowing on him a pension of 200 marks of silver, 
 w^hen the duke did homage against all others sa^dng 
 his duty to Philip of Swabia, king of the Romans. 
 In Auf;'ust 1208 kins: and duke met at Soissons. A 
 mutual alliance was promised against John and Otto. 
 If the count of Boulogne should oppose them, Philip 
 promised to make one of Henry's sons count in his stead. 
 Philip supplied the new candidate with 3000 marks of 
 silver to forward his election to the Empire. It was 
 agreed that if Henry should become emperor the alliance 
 should be formally reneAved, and that any disputes be- 
 tween the Empire and the kingdom should be submitted 
 to arbitei-s — two from each realm, with a fifth impartial 
 person added in case of need — Avho should meet on safe 
 ground between Cambrai and Peronne. The alliance 
 bore no permanent fruit. The opposition l>roke down, 
 Philip's money was throAvn away, and there followed 
 two years of wearisome intrigue. Some thought that 
 the French king himself wished to become Caesar and 
 Augustus, but if he held the idea he soon abandoned 
 it. In 1212 he warmly espoused the cause of the 
 young Frederic, the heir of the Hohenstaufcn. At 
 
92 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 Vaucouleiirs in November his son Louis met Frederic 
 and concluded an alliance. Philip threw himself with 
 some energy into the contest. He sent special agents 
 to influence certain of the electors, and did not forget 
 to place at the new candidate's disposal a sum of 20,000 
 marks, which we have evidence was spent. 
 
 Thus Philip had actively intervened in the internal 
 affairs of Germany. He asserted a position Avhich 
 Eichelieu and Louis XIV. and Napoleon were to follow 
 up. He formed a coalition which placed Frederic on 
 the throne, and prepared to defend him. Otto, half 
 despairing, tried to meet his foes by joining with England 
 and Flanders in a desperate attack upon the French 
 dominions. This was the situation in the summer of 
 1214. It was the culminating point in the relations 
 between France and Germany during the century ; a 
 supreme moment in the strife of Welf and Wiblingen, 
 as well as in the reign of the great French king. 
 
 But the forces of Otto were not the most dans-erous 
 foes with whom Philip had to contend in the summer 
 of 1214. Far more important was the struggle with 
 Flanders. To understand this it is necessary to retrace 
 our steps to the time when Philip of Flanders, the friend 
 and adviser of Philip's youth, the "most honest and 
 powerful " man whom Gilbert of Hainault commemorates, 
 died at Acre. 
 
 Philip Augustus had lost no time in claiming the 
 Flanders heritage for his son Louis. The lad's mother 
 was daughter of Baldwin V. of Hainault and his wife 
 Margaret, sister of the dead count of Flanders. The 
 claim was vigorously asserted by AVilliam of Eheims 
 and the regents, who disputed with Baldwin of Hain- 
 
IV BOUVINES 93 
 
 aiilt the allegiance of the thriving towns over which 
 the French king had so long sought to rule — Bruges, 
 Ypres, Courtrai, Alost, Oudenarde. Ghent remained for 
 a while in the hands of the widowed Countess Matilda. 
 When King Philip came home he found his regents 
 successful, but Baldwin still uncrushed, and he wisely 
 contented himself with a division of the country such as 
 he declared had been promised when he wedded Count 
 Philip's niece in 1180. Bapaume, Arras, Aire, S. Omer, 
 the stronc; castles of the counts of Flanders at Euhout 
 near Arques, Hesdin, Lens, Avith the homage of Boulogne, 
 >S. Pol, Gisnes, and Lille — this contented him, and he 
 left to Baldwin of Hainault the title of count of Flanders, 
 with all the northern part of the Flemish lands, as well 
 as the march of Namur which he had recently assumed. 
 The division was not made till Baldwin had -himself 
 visited Paris and " found no equity or kindness in the 
 French king," and had returned hastily, being warned 
 by men of the king's household that Philip intended to 
 keep him prisoner. Then Philip changed his former ill 
 counsel, for he saw that the Flemish towns were eager 
 in support of Baldwin, and met the count of Hainault 
 at Peronne in February 1192. There the concord was 
 made and the land divided. Baldwin did homage for 
 the part of Flanders which he held of France. 
 
 For a time the settlement seemed satisfactory. 
 Baldwin of Flanders joined the French king in his 
 Norman campaign of 1193. But any signs of the 
 superiority of the Angevin house were eagerly accepted as 
 encourairements to desert the French interest. Baldwin 
 died in 1194, and the new count had no love for his dead 
 sisters husband. The great rising of 1197-98 gave an 
 
94 THILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 opportunity which Baldwin VI. eagerly accei:)ted ; much 
 of Artois was recaptured, and when Philip, rashly ventur- 
 ing, as the chronicler thought, where his forefathers had 
 not dared, attacked FLandevs, he narrowly escaped cap- 
 ture near Ypres. When the fourth crusade started the 
 romantic young count of Flanders eagerly joined it. 
 The foundation of the Latin Empire of the East, and 
 his own accession to the throne, diverted Baldwin from 
 all the interests of Western Europe, and did much to 
 save Philip at a critical epoch of his life. 
 
 The struggle with the house of Anjou was more than 
 enough to occupy the French king in the years that 
 folloAved, and when Baldwin died and his little daughter 
 Jeanne was given in marriage to her kinsman Fcrrand 
 of Portugal, the overlord did not interfere. He even 
 abandoned the pretensions of his son Louis to the rest 
 of Flanders on the cession of S. Omer and Aire by the 
 new count. Ferrand soon proved at least as active an 
 antagonist as his predecessors. He alone at Soissons, on 
 April 8, 1213, refused to aid Philip against John; and he 
 threAV himself heartily into the coalition airainst France. 
 For some time he kept his definite alliance with John 
 and Otto ; twice he failed to keep tryst when his French 
 overlord summoned him. At length Philip saw that he 
 was too dangerous an enemy to be left on his flank while 
 he attacked the English king, and determined to make 
 a decisive attack on Flanders. He was not without 
 encouragement. Some of the towns, always ready to 
 intrigue against their rulers near at home, seemed read}^ 
 to cast off Ferrand. Tournai, both as a municipality 
 and as a bishopric, was for Philip. A sketch of their 
 past relations will throw light on the position in 1:^13. 
 
IV BOUVINES 95 
 
 The city of Tournai, which was to become an 
 extremely important factor in the relations between the 
 Flemish counts and the French king, occupied an unique 
 position on the borderland. It Avas subject neither to 
 Flanders nor to Hainault. Its bishop, who since 1 1 46 
 had ceased to combine with that see the bishopric of 
 Noyon, was the lord of the district, under the suzer- 
 ainty of the French king, to whom he owed the service 
 of ten knights. Ecclesiastically the bishop's authority 
 extended over all Flanders. If he were a partisan of 
 the Flemish counts he could do much to nullify all 
 influence of France in the land. If he were a nominee 
 of France he might be of the greatest service to the 
 aims of the French kings. But the prelate's political 
 influence was little felt within the walls of his city : the 
 citizens paid little heed to the lordship of their bishop. 
 They went their own way, and were their own masters. 
 Earl}^ in his reign Philip saw both the strategical and 
 the political importance of the city, and in 1187 he 
 determined to visit it in person. He acted upon the 
 advice of his father-in-law, Baldwin of Hainault, who was 
 now eager to secure the alliance of France, to procure 
 for his wife, on her brother's death, the succession to 
 the Flemish fief. It seems also that a baron of Flanders 
 holding the ticle of Castellan of Tournai — Everard 
 K<ilph III. — jealous of the position of the bishop, now 
 that he was no longer occu^^ied with, the affairs of 
 Noyon, was endeavouring to turn his honorary office 
 into a real lordship, and to throw the power of the 
 district on the side of Philij) of Flanders. Local and 
 family reasons appear to have made the bishop, Stephen 
 of Avcsnes, ready to welcome Philip as a deliverer 
 
96 PHILIP AUGUSTUS cuap. 
 
 from the difficulties of his position. This was Philip's 
 opportunity. He asked, says Philip Mouskes (pro- 
 bably a contemporary witness), of whom the bishop 
 held the city. " Of Our Lady and of God," said 
 the bishop, ''and of you and the kings your sires." 
 But the citizens were unruly vassals, and he would 
 AWllingly surrender all his rights into the king's 
 own hands. Let Philip himself be the direct lord. 
 The king eagerly accepted the offer and departed well 
 pleased. But he had still to reckon with the citizens, 
 and he reckoned royally. He confirmed all their 
 previous privileges, and he granted to them exceptional 
 rights which freed them from the castellan as well as 
 the bishop, and gave them a constitution on lines of the 
 completest self-government existing at that age. In 
 return, they became pledged to send three hundred 
 men-at-arms at his call to Avar. They loyally discharged 
 their obligations. In 1197 they refused entrance to 
 Baldwin, then count of Flanders and at war Avith 
 France. They suffered for their loyalty to their new 
 lord, and had to pay a fine of 4000 marks. Again in 
 1213 they suffered the horrors of a siege. But their 
 union with France was a political fact of the highest 
 importance. The district Avhich became French Avas of 
 the first value to the French croAvn. In the crisis of 
 1213, both as a municipality and as a bishopric, it sided 
 Avith the French king. Its bishop, Avhose see Avas subject 
 to Eheims, excommunicated Philip's foes. At length 
 a force set out from Paris to chastise the too darins: 
 vassals of the north. But Ferrand Avith his allies Avas 
 still more than a match for the king. AVhen the 
 French fleet attacked Dam it Avas utterly destroyed. 
 
IV BOUVINES 97 
 
 William Loiigsword and Eeginald of Boulogne, with 
 Ferrand, besot it by sea and land, and a great number of 
 ships were burnt. The invasion of Flanders by sea 
 was thus decisively checked. On land Ferrand took 
 Tournai and Lille, but was driven from both. The 
 towns now sent him powerful aid, and it was with a 
 strong army that he joined Otto at Valenciennes early 
 in July 1214. Philip had been long watching the 
 Flemish frontiers, and while his son Louis was meeting 
 John in Anjou, he was preparing for n decisive contest 
 with his northern foes. 
 
 The frontiers of Flanders were defended by the 
 Somme and the Scheldt, and the marshes which sur- 
 rounded them. BetAveen the two rivers it was the 
 constant aim of the invading French armies to force a 
 way ; and a bridge at Bouvines across the marsh by 
 a little stream, the Marccj, gave a passage which the 
 leaders naturally sought on the way to Tournai, a town, 
 sympathetic to France, which held the passage of the 
 Scheldt and the entry into Flemish territory. 
 
 Otto's army moved, between July 25 and July 27, 
 from Valenciennes to Tournai along the left bank of the 
 Scheldt. As it marched, it had on its right the swamps 
 round that river, on its left the great ForH cJiarbon- 
 nibr, which in earlier times had stretched from Lille to 
 south of Cambrai, but which now had been separated 
 by small monastic settlements into several distinct 
 woods. Through the forests (or between marsh and 
 wood) there la}'-, to the west of the modern road, a fine 
 paved Eoman way, which crossed the little rivulet 
 called the Barge before entering Tournai. Philip 
 approached this forest from the south-west, burning 
 
 H 
 
98 PHILIP AUGUSTUS ohap. 
 
 as he went to the right and left of his march, and 
 " royally devastating." He passed by P(^ronne to 
 Boulant-riez at the south of the open ground which led 
 to Tournai. On July 25 he was at Bouvines, on the 
 26th he entered the fine city which his father had always 
 sought to befriend. Tournai to-day, with its Vauban 
 citadel and its magnificent earthwoiks, is very difterent 
 from the little city of the thirteenth centuiy, — more 
 difi'erent still from the Oivitas Tornacensium of earlier 
 days. But parts of its old walls may still be discerned, its 
 two famous towers stand on the bridge that guards the 
 Scheldt, and it is still a city of clerks and churches, as 
 when the Flemings who had seized it in the previous 
 year and had wrung from its burghers the profits of 
 their trade deserted it at the coming of Gerard La Truie 
 "with 300 knights. On July 25 King Philip entered the 
 gates. Otto meanwhile was advancing northwards. He 
 was at Mortagne on the 20th, and b}" his spies knew all 
 that passed in the French camp. He hoped to blockade 
 the French army within the walls of Tournai, and by 
 the numbers of his men to force them to surrender. 
 
 In Philip's camp the gravity of the situation was 
 fully apprehended. While the king pondered, accusa- 
 tions of treacherj^ were freely bandied about among the 
 barons. The count of S. Pol, whom men suspected 
 because King John a month before had in a special pro- 
 clamation reserved his lands from all ravage, answered 
 Guerin the warrior-priest with a scornful laugh, "A 
 good traitor will you find in me." Long the council 
 lasted. The French knights cried out that by a feigned 
 retreat Otto might be lured from the marshes into the 
 open. It had been Philip's aim from the beginning of 
 
IV BOUVINES 99 
 
 the campaign, and the idea was eagerly accepted. On 
 the 27th he marched from Tournai, intending, says 
 William the Breton, to lie the next night in the fortress 
 of Lille. His road along the old Eoman street lay 
 considerabl}^ to the south of the modern way between 
 the two great frontier towns, and led across the plateau 
 of Bouvines which he had crossed two days before. 
 
 To the emperor the evacuation of Tournai seemed 
 clearly to be a retreat. Only Eeginald of Boulogne, 
 who had been Philip's favourite counsellor, declared 
 that it was not the fashion of the French to fly. His 
 protests were unheeded. It was unanimously decided to 
 pursue and fall on the French at the passage of the 
 Marccj. Hugh of Boves, leader of the Braban^on 
 mercenaries, cried out upon Eeginald as a traitor and a 
 coward. " The battlefield to-day," answered the count 
 of Boulogne, " will prove you a traitor and me a true 
 man.'' Within a few hours of when Otto's spies told 
 him of the French king's determination — which had 
 been publicly announced in Tournai for the sake of 
 deceiving the enemy — the allied forces were on the 
 march. If Otto succeeded in intercepting the French 
 retreat it must be before Philip crossed the Marcq — that 
 is, the armies must meet on the plateau of Bouvines. The 
 neighbourhood has undergone considerable changes since 
 the thirteenth century. Marshes have been drained 
 and forests thinned, and new roads and bridges have 
 been made. But the careful examination of French 
 archaeologists and military historians, with a personal 
 inspection of the ground, makes it easy to discover the 
 site and recall the incidents as they happened. 
 
 Bouvines itself is a little village within a few miles 
 
100 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 of the French frontier, and within 9 miles of Lille as the 
 crow flies, but considerably farther by road. The village 
 stands on the edge of a highly-cultivated tableland just 
 where it slopes down to the little stream of the Marcq. 
 To the north of the village and of the plateau where the 
 battle took place are some low-lying fields on to which 
 in a rainy season the waters of the little stream overflow. 
 North-east lies the road to Tournai, and south-east of 
 it the prosperous village of Cysoing. South there flows 
 the Marcq among water-meadows and woods. It is a 
 site that seems formed by nature for a battle-ground. 
 In the centre of the open space there is a dip in the 
 ground, and near it goes the old Roman road from 
 Tournai, now little better than a track across the fields. 
 The soil is chalky, and modern draining has still left 
 swamps by the river bed. Southward are copses among 
 which flows the Marcq, and on the north, both by the 
 stream and by the little village of Gruson, the ground 
 falls and is thickly wooded. 
 
 Early on Sunday morning July 27, when they had 
 heard mass, the French moved out from Tournai. 
 Guerin rode south Avards to reconnoitre. A professed 
 brother of the Hospitallers he had been, and long the 
 trusted councillor of the king. Strong in repressing the 
 immoral disciples of Amaury of Ghartres, he was at 
 heart more of a knight than an ecclesiastic. To him 
 Philip had already in this war given important military 
 commissions, and he was now to be as much the chief 
 general as the king himself. As he rode southwards he 
 soon saw the advancing force of the allies, the infantry 
 in front as prepared for battle after the fashion of the 
 time, emerging from the marshes and cutting across to 
 
IV BOUVINES 101 
 
 the east of Tournai to fall upon the line of the French 
 retreat. The scheme then had succeeded, and the 
 gallant clerk rode hastily back to tell the king. He 
 found him ready to cross the bridge of Bou^^nes. 
 Philip at once halted and took counsel. It was decided 
 to place the baggage in safety on the other side of the 
 Marcq, and the bridge was hastily Avidened so that 
 twelve men abreast could pass over it. The king mean- 
 while lay dovm to rest under the shadow of an ash on 
 the high ground by the Church of S. Peter, from which 
 he could see the enemy as they advanced on to the 
 plain of Bouvines. The new church stands on the site of 
 the old one long since destroyed, and the present bridge 
 is said locally to be in the same place as its predecessor, 
 though probably it is somewhat more to the north. 
 When he had rested and taken some food he called his 
 household guard around him and embraced them as his 
 brothers -in -arms, William des Barres, Matthew de 
 Montmorency, Michael de Harncs, Gerard la Truie, 
 Pierre Malvoisin- — their names were long famous in 
 French song. Later legend makes the king call to his 
 barons that the worthiest might wear his crown, for each 
 was as much king as he. Philip was far too Avise thus 
 to compromise his pretensions. Then he went back to 
 the little church and, kneeling down before the altar, 
 said a short prayer. The words that Mouskes, the clerk 
 of Tournai, puts in his mouth are too characteristic to 
 be altogether fabulous. "Lord, I am but a man, but I 
 am king. Thine it is to guard the king. Thou wilt 
 lose nothing thereby. Wherever Thou wonkiest go I 
 will follow Thee." 
 
 The rear-guard was already seen to be engaged with 
 
102 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 the enemy. A moment later the king put on his 
 armour, and with glad face "no less than if he had been 
 bidden to a wedding" leapt upon his horse. "A tall 
 man upon a great steed " he rode along his ranks, and 
 thus he spoke : " Let us hasten to succour our companions. 
 God will not be wroth with us that we fight on His 
 holy day, for no fault was it counted to the Maccabees 
 that they repelled their enemies on the Sabbath. Yea 
 rather does the day befit us, the friends of Him to 
 Whom ever on this day the whole Church makes supplica- 
 tion." Then he rode forward to the front rank, " where 
 no man stood between him and the foe." The advance- 
 guard of the enemy were driven back, and the French 
 troops formed up across the Roman road, their left 
 resting on the woody slope that protected Bouvines to 
 the north. Above them on slightly rising ground lay the 
 allied forces facing almost due south, their right nearest 
 the Marcq. They had marched in three divisions, and 
 so they formed themselves in battle array. To their 
 right was William Longsword with his men. Next 
 came the men of Ouclenarde, Hugh of Boves and his 
 mercenaries, and Reginald of Boulogne with his knights 
 and footmen. In the centre were ranged the infantry 
 of the Flemish towns, with behind them the horse and 
 foot of Brabant, and Otto with his German knights. To 
 the left was Ferrand with the chivalry of Flanders. 
 
 The French right was also all cavalry. Soissons sent 
 its contingent and the counts of Champagne, Mont- 
 morency, S. Pol, Beaumont, Melun, were there, and the 
 knights of Burgundy with duke Otto at their head. In 
 the midst was the infantry of the French communes 
 with the king's household guards ; at the left men-at- 
 
IV BOUVINES 103 
 
 arms and knights of the great vassals and the tenants- 
 in-chief. There was little more than liOO yards betAveen 
 the armies, and a dead silence fell on all as Philip sur- 
 veyed his foes. Opposite could be seen Otto in the 
 midst of a strong phalanx, with his golden eagle borne 
 erect on a dragon's back, in a car like the carroccio which 
 the Italian cities took with them to the field. Then 
 King Philip spoke to his soldiers. " Oiu: whole trust is 
 in God. King Otto and his army are excommunicate by 
 the Lord Pope, because they are foes and destroyers of 
 holy Church, and the money Avhich is their hire is won 
 from the tears of the poor and the robbing of the 
 churches and the clerks. But we are Christians and 
 enjoy the communion and the peace of the Church, and, 
 although we be sinners, yet submit we to the Church of 
 God and defend with all our strength the liberties of 
 the clergy. Wherefore we ought faithfully to trust 
 that God will be merciful to us sinners and give us the 
 victory over our enemies." Then the knights begged 
 their lord's blessing, and Phflip with uplifted hand 
 prayed God's benediction on his men. Straightway the 
 trumpets sounded and the French threw themselves on 
 their foes. 
 
 From the right it was intended that the chief blow 
 should be struck. There Guerin, the bishop elect, as 
 mighty a warrior as that Don Hieronimo who fought 
 with the Cid, had placed his knights, and he directed 
 his Soissons skirmishers at once against the Flemings. 
 For the moment the scheme was unsuccessful, for Ferrand 
 of Flanders and Eeginald of Boulogne moved upon 
 the flanks of the infantry of the French communes. 
 They were checked by charges of French knights, 
 
104 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 and the count of S. Pol, like Eupert at Edgehill, drove 
 back the right of his foes, scattering them in flight 
 till he was surrounded, and only with much hazard 
 could draw himself off and return. Then the Flemish 
 infantry penetrated the French centre till they reached 
 Philip himself. For a time the two kings stood face 
 to face, though they did not fight hand to hand. 
 Philip himself fought with all the impetuosity of a 
 young knight. He flung himself into the fray and 
 endeavoured to reach Otto. Beset on every side by the 
 enemies' foot, who tried to unhorse him with their long 
 pikes, he cleared a way through them, cutting down foes 
 to right and left, till a man-at-arms bolder than the rest 
 pierced the joints of his harness between the chest and 
 the head. The point of the pike remained fixed in the 
 triple thickness of the collar, and the king's efforts to 
 disengage himself served only to unhorse him and throw 
 him to the ground. He was in great risk of being 
 trodden to death, and the pike still remained fixed in 
 his armour. It was a moment of extreme danger. Galo 
 of Montigny lowered the royal banner of the fleurs-de- 
 lys and cried aloud for help. The French knights, led 
 by William des Barres, forced their way to his side and 
 protected him, and Peter Tristan leapt from his horse 
 and placed the king upon it. Philip remounted, laid 
 about him with a will, and, saj^s his chaplain quaintly, 
 " those who had belaboured him learnt, by a like 
 chastisement, how imprudent it is to touch with pro- 
 fane hands the sacred person of a king." 
 
 On charged the knights of the king's household, and 
 Otto, who had come close to Philip when he was unhorsed, 
 found himself in the midst of his foes. Peter Malvoisin 
 
IV BOUVINES 105 
 
 seized the reins of his horse and endeavoured to drag 
 him from the field. Gerard la Truie with his dagger 
 struck him a sharp blow on the chest, but the armour 
 did not jdeld. Otto's gallant steed, rearing at a second 
 blow, received a mortal wound, but tore in its agony the 
 reins from Gerard's hand, and then forcing its way 
 through the enemy for a few paces, fell dead, rolling over 
 with its rider in the dust. In a moment Gerard of 
 Horstmar was at his sovereign's side, and springing 
 from his horse, placed his master thereon. For a 
 moment the pursuit Avas checked by the devotion of the 
 gallant knight, but William des Barres, pressing onwards, 
 seized Otto from behind, j^lacing his hand between his 
 helmet and his neck and trying to drag him from his 
 horse. Again the German knights closed round — Gerard 
 and Otto of Tecklemburg and Conrad of Dortmund and 
 a troop of Saxon knights — and plunged their swords 
 into William's horse. It fell dead, and Otto was free 
 and galloped from the field. On pressed the French 
 knights in hot pursuit. The charge of William des 
 Barres scattered all before it, and when Otto fled the 
 carroccio was overturned and the imperial standard was 
 taken. 
 
 So after three hours' hard fighting Wilham the Breton, 
 who had stood behind the king singing psalms of battle 
 in a voice choked with sobs, could look up from his 
 psalter and think the victory won. 
 
 On the left Salisbury and the mercenaries of Boves 
 had forced back the French and threatened the bridge. 
 Such a blow in the flank might have given certain 
 victory to the allies, but the bishop of Beauvais led a 
 gallant charge which retrieved the ds^y. As the English 
 
106 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 and the mercenaries fled Reginald of Boulogne stood 
 sullenly aloof. From this point the fight became a series 
 of scattered cavalry charges, and of brilliant deeds by 
 individual knights. The allied attacks once repulsed, 
 the French horsemen had free space to charge, and on 
 centre and left and right again and again they hurled 
 themselves on their foes, breaking them more and more 
 into confusion, till at length the knights of Champagne 
 and Burgundy and S. Pol forced the imperial left back on 
 their centre, cutting them off from Tournai, and leaving 
 them only the woods and marshes of Willems on which to 
 fall back. Cramped and unable to manoeuvi^e with freedom, 
 harassed by repeated cavalry charges, deserted by their 
 leader and disunited among themselves, the allied forces 
 at last began to retreat. Plrst went the Flemish infantry, 
 then the mercenaries and the English — Salisbury had 
 been captured — while the German knights without their 
 lord still gallantly covered the retiring host. Eeginald 
 of Boulogne stood stubbornly on the field. A traitor 
 before to Philip, he had seemed a traitor to his new allies. 
 He now fought stoutly to the last. His square of 
 infantry could not be taken. He extricated himself 
 from a crowd of Franks to throw himself against Philip 
 in person. His horse was killed under him, and at last 
 he gave up his sword to Guerin, the bishop elect of 
 Senlis. With his suii^ender the battle ceased. It was 
 nightfall, and the victorious army was not strong enough 
 to pursue. The day ended with the completest victory 
 which ever befell the arms of Philip the Conqueroi'. 
 Many gallant foes had fallen into French hands, and 
 among them the three chiefs who had led most men to 
 the field, Reginald, count of Boulogne, Fcrrand of 
 
IV BOUYINES 107 
 
 Portugal, count of Flanders, and William Longs word, 
 earl of Salisbury. It was indeed a great victory. 
 
 The battle of Bouvines was perhaps the most import- 
 ant engagement ever fought on French soil. Certainly 
 till the time of Napoleon no great French "victory struck 
 with more startling emphasis upon the politics of 
 Euro23e. From the first the far-reaching consequences 
 of the encounter were recognised. The chroniclers of 
 the conqueror delighted to detail its incidents and 
 enlarge upon the triumph. William the Breton indeed 
 devotes more than three books of his poem to the 
 campaign and its consequences. Matthew Paris, too, 
 shows no desire to blink the importance of the English 
 defeat ; and the battle of Bouvines thus becomes almost 
 the sole defeat of English troops of which an adequate 
 conception can be formed from the works of an English 
 writer. On the other hand, the Flemish and German 
 chroniclers are significantly meagre. If Bouvines could 
 not be minimised, perhaps it might be forgotten. 
 
 On no battle in medieval history has more diligent 
 investigation been expended by modern writers, and 
 we are able as a result to form a clear conception 
 of its chief features, if we are still uncertain as to a 
 few of the details. Of the amount of troops* engaged it 
 is not difficult to judge. The French writers, notably 
 William the Breton, have a natural tendency to magnify 
 the odds against which their Idug had to contend, but 
 we have too many sources to be in much doubt when 
 we attempt to form a correct estimate. It has been 
 thought that over 6000 mounted troops were under the 
 earl of Salisbury's command, and that the footmen were 
 near 25,000, but the estimate is certainly greatly ex- 
 
108 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 aggerated. The Flemish contingent was lai^ger. It 
 seems barely possil^le that Ferrancl led as many as 
 45,500 men to the field, of whom 40,000 were foot- 
 men, but most probable that his forces did not exceed 
 25,000. Otto's force was much less powerful. He had 
 but little command over Germany. His quarrel with 
 Innocent III. and the skilful negotiations of the French 
 king with the German princes had left him few sup- 
 porters. The Brabanters and three of the Ehenish 
 princes gave him aid, but it was neither sincere nor 
 large. He had at the utmost 11,000 men in his force. 
 This is a French estimate, and it is a very large one. 
 
 Philip's numbers were far inferior. He was unable 
 to throw his whole strength into the campaign in the 
 north. Already he had sent the greater part of his 
 knights to join his son in Poitou, and for himself no 
 more than 500 remained. With the squires and the 
 mounted vassals there were probably 5000 cavalry. 
 The communes, royal and baronial, mustered bravel}^ 
 and some light-armed foot-men came with their feudal 
 lords. Yet allo^Wug for the tendency of the chroniclers 
 to under-estimate the conquering force, it seems unlikely 
 that the king had on the whole more than 25,000 men 
 under his command, though at least one modern writer 
 estimates the infantry at 50,000. The numerical ad- 
 vantage was unquestionably enormously in favour of 
 the allies, but they can hardly have been tlu'ce times as 
 many as the French. The physical features of the 
 battlefield forbid the supposition. Natural olfstacles 
 limited the ground in the thirteenth century as they 
 do to-day. It is difficult to think that 100,000 men 
 could meet on the fields between Cysoing and the IMarcq. 
 
IV BOUVINES 109 
 
 The causes of the French victory are not far to 
 seek. Philip's army was compact, homogeneous, united. 
 Guerin was a born general, and the king himself could 
 inspire enthusiasm. Fighting in the open the French 
 cavalry had free play, and the masterly tactics of Gu<^rin 
 on the right were almost inevitably successful. The 
 allies owned no one leader, they susj^ected treachery, 
 and they suffered from their very numbers. It was a 
 great ^actorj^, and one which the skill and courage of the 
 victors fully deserved. 
 
 Philip slept the night at Bouvines ; next day he 
 rested at Douai, and thence he began a triumphal march 
 to Paris. The way was one continued triumph. 
 Churches rang bells and sang Te Deum : citizens 
 decorated their houses and thronged the streets : rustics 
 left the harvest-fields to see King Philip ride by with 
 Count Ferrand in chains. At Paris the whole city and 
 the scholars of the university turned out, and the clergy 
 welcomed the conquerors with hymns and canticles. 
 For seven nights the city was illuminated with innumer- 
 able lights, there was high feasting and revelry, and 
 the scholars most of all were unwearied in their mirth. 
 
 From that moment Philip's power in Gaul was 
 uncontested. Otto retired into obscurity. The eagle 
 which he had borne was carried from the field by the 
 victors, and sent by Philip to Frederic of Hohen- 
 staufcn, who was henceforth undisputed emperor. 
 Ferrand and Eeginald were held long in prison. John 
 gave up the contest. The Poitevins submitted ; and 
 the English claims from that time ceased to trouble the 
 French king. The Church, the l.^arons, even the young 
 comnuuics in their weakness, had rallied round the 
 
110 PHILIP AUGUSTUS ohap. 
 
 oriflamme of S. Denys and the banner of the fleurs- 
 de-lys. It was the great day of Philip's life, the climax 
 of his reign of struggle and intrigue. Flanders lay at 
 his feet, and he was master of Normandy, Touraine, 
 Anjou, Maine, and Poitou. 
 
 Philip used his \dctory mercifully. Of him, as of 
 the great king Henry whom he had overthrown, the 
 chroniclers loved to say that he knew how 
 
 Par cere subjectis et debeliare superbos. 
 
 He took no life, as he might well have done, for the 
 treachery which had brought him into such great 
 danger. Ferrand he would have released, but the 
 independent Flemish cities would not consent to terms 
 which would have made the French king safe against 
 their attacks. Valenciennes would not yield, and Fer- 
 rand remained a prisoner. Reginald of Boulogne was 
 too confirmed a traitor to l)e let loose. But Philip 
 showed a clemency rare among his contemporaries and 
 rarer still among his successors. 
 
 He regarded the victory over so great a force as a 
 special mercy of God, and a new-founded abbey, richl}^ 
 endowed, rose to mark his gratitude and the greatness 
 of his triumph. On the edge of the forest which 
 lay to the south of Senlis, scarcely two miles from the 
 great walls behind whose solid Roman masonry the 
 Prankish kings had often sought refuge, and which had 
 in Philip's own day successfully resisted the Flemish 
 attack Avhen the whole country around had Ijeen harried, 
 rose the great abbey of Notre Dame de la Victoire. 
 The gentle stream of the Nonette flowed past its walls, 
 and southwards it was sheltered by the forest of 
 
IV BOUVINES 111 
 
 Ermcnonville, through which narrow bridle paths led to 
 Paris. The magnificeut arches of the nave still stand, 
 overgrown with creepers, in the beautiful garden of a 
 country house. One tower rises above the broken walls. 
 From it the eye wanders over long tracks of woodland. 
 To the north the great forest of Hallate, to the south 
 and west Ermenonville and Chantilly, and eastwards 
 the rising gi^ound which leads to the distant forest of 
 Compiegne. But most prominent in the landscape are 
 the two towers of the great cathedral of Senlis, the grace- 
 ful pierced spire of the one over-topping its incomplete 
 fellow, but both standing vast and commanding against 
 the sky on the hill which the great Eoman walls pro- 
 tected. When Philip vowed to build his new abbey in 
 honour of his victory the great cathedral had been 
 completed but thirty years, and the castle of the old 
 Frankish kings, built upon the Eoman walls, stood to 
 overawe the town. The castle has passed away, and 
 the abbaye de la Victoire is a ruin, but the cathedral 
 endures majestic amid the fragments of lesser churches ; 
 and in the Avork of William the Breton, the canon 
 whose stall was in its choir, remains the imperishable 
 record of the day of Bouvines. 
 
CHAPTEE y 
 
 THE ADVANCE OF THE MONARCHY 
 
 While Philip was winning the title of Conqueror by 
 the success of his arms, he was achieving still more perma- 
 nent victories for the monarchy by his steady and per- 
 sistent attitude towards the constitutional forces by which 
 it was surrounded. During his reign the monarchy of 
 the Prankish kings consolidated its powers, strengthened 
 its foundations, and looked round as a sovereign rather 
 than as an equal upon the feudalism which had so long 
 been dominant. 
 
 Philip Augustus and his successors were no longer 
 the slaves of the Church, the unequal combatants of 
 the baronial hierarchy or the vacillating oppressors of 
 popular freedom. Philip set himself the aim of being 
 master in his own land, and thereby the ruler of 
 the wider Gaul. The hereditary alliance of his house 
 with the Church was not forgotten. To that estate 
 the Capets owed their croAvn, and the traditional amity 
 implied protection of the weak, Avhich was re[)aid by 
 the sanctions of ecclesiastical discipline and censure, as 
 important to the Crown as was the Crown's material 
 asi?istance to the Church. The kin>2;s had lonu' shielded 
 
CHAP. V THE ADVANCE OF THE MONARCHY 11 
 
 o 
 
 the cliiirches, where they could, against the wild luids of 
 freebootiDg barons. The Church had thrown over the 
 Crown the protection of holy guardianship. Philip 
 would be the last man to break such an alliance. He 
 saw its value, and he himself experienced its benefits. 
 But he was claiming, more clearly than his predecessors 
 had done, to be master in his own realm. He could 
 stand for years in a long defiance, if not with ultimate 
 success, against the spiritual ruler of Europe. He was 
 not likely to be content with an attitude less firm 
 towards the French bishops. 
 
 The protection which his predecessors extended to- 
 wards Church lands, dwelt on lovingly by the chroniclers 
 as discharged to the full by Philip, was drawn in his 
 time into a real and direct overlordship. In his hand 
 the regale, the right to the revenues of vacant sees, was 
 exercised ^vithout restraint through nearly the whole 
 of northern and central Gaul, and in the lands he 
 conquered from the house of Anjou. Some of the 
 greater vassals had disputed with their sovereigns this 
 valuable privilege. Philip would not suffer such en- 
 croachments. His court solemnly held inquest on the 
 claim of the vidame of Chalons to hold the see on the 
 death of its bishop and declared against him, thus 
 interfering outside the immediate royal domain in a 
 manner significant of future policy. So in elections to 
 vacant sees Philip's word was law. His most useful 
 clerks became bishops at his will. He could, like his 
 Englivsh contemporaries, reward state services with 
 ecclesiastical preferment. The Church remained to 
 him, as she had been to his fathers, the strongest 
 supporter. From her coffers he drew gold wheneA^er 
 
 X 
 
114 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 be had need. Even her courts did not stand outside 
 his rule. No dispute such as rent England under 
 Henry 11. ever disturbed the kingdom of Philip 
 Augustus, but an Ordinance or Establishment, issued 
 about 1220, is not an unfit parallel to the Constitutions 
 of Clarendon. King and barons, it is declared, drew 
 up the ordinance for the treatment of clerks. The 
 Church agreed that her tribunals, permitted by agree- 
 ment of king and barons to deal with charges of perjury, 
 should abstain from all interference with feudal matters. 
 The jurisdiction over questions of morals remained to 
 the Church courts, but the lord retained his control 
 over the fiefs. The French clergy had claimed that 
 degradation should be the sole punishment of a crimin- 
 ous clerk. To this Phihp replied in the ordinance, that 
 the ecclesiastical jurisdiction should not be obliged to 
 deliver to the civil courts the offender whom the Church 
 courts degraded, but that if he should be released by 
 the Church the king might seize him. Detention in 
 Church prisons was more common, it would appear, on 
 the Continent than in England. From judicial matters'- 
 the ordinance passed to cjuestions of land tenure. No /^j 
 burgher or villein may give to his son, being a clerk, 
 more than half his land ; and for all he receives the 
 clerk must do service to his lord, and in like manner 
 must he serve if he should buy land. The property 
 given to him he may not bec[ueath ; it reverts on his 
 death to the nearest kin, the clerk being allowed only 
 a life interest. Thus a clerk holding land is made 
 to hold it as a layman holds. On the other hand, 
 clerks were not liable to tallage in towns unless they 
 engaged in trade — a reasonable recognition of the 
 
Y THE ADVANCE OF THE MONARCHY 115 
 
 purely spiritual work among the citizens which might 
 be supported from the private property of the clergy. In 
 disputes concerning land between a clerk and a layman 
 the French ordinance decided after the manner of the 
 Constitutions of Clarendon, that first decision should 
 be given as to the tenure by which the land was held, 
 and then the suit as to the possession should be heard 
 in clerical or lay court accordins; to the nature of the 
 fief. A third subject is that of excommunications. 
 Similar to the English constitutions are the de- 
 clarations that no man is to be excommunicate through 
 a fault of his servant, or his land laid under interdict 
 unless his lord agrees, nor is one cited before a Church 
 court to be compelled by the judge to stand to its 
 judgment. Most striking of all, as a proof of the power 
 of the French king and the almost subservient attitude 
 of the Pope, is the order that no man shall be ex- 
 communicated unless the lord of the fee has been asked 
 for his consent and has agreed. An instance of Philip's 
 appreciation of the importance of commercial interests 
 is the order that prelates are not to impose on the 
 burghers the oath against usury. It is an early recogni- 
 tion of the necessity of a class of money-lenders among 
 Christians ; and a further clause forbidding the excom- 
 munication of those who trade on Sundays or with the 
 Jews looks the same way. 
 
 The document is of great importance. It is a 
 veritable concordat between Pope, king, and barons. 
 It illustrates the very difi'erent development of the 
 law of Church and State in En2;land and in France. 
 It shows, by a marked and significant example, the 
 varying nature of the Pope's relations with European 
 
116 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 sovereigns. What was banned in England was per- 
 mitted in Gaul, and more indeed was conceded to Philip 
 Augustus than Henry the Angevin had ever thought 
 to ask. Popes, it is true, had changed, and the times 
 had changed too. But the explanation is more reason- 
 ably to be found in the difference between the kings. 
 Very different from Henry H. in 1164, in 1220 Philip 
 Augustus was at peace with the Papacy, and bore the 
 renown of a conqueror and the character of a pious 
 supporter of the Church. During his long reign his 
 unsparing exercise of the power of the regale, and his 
 insistence on his sanction to the election of many 
 bishops and abbats, had raised around him a clerical 
 hierarchy that was subservient to his will. Year hy 
 year bishops had been chosen at his nomination. Year 
 by year abbeys had sought licence to elect, and had 
 received with the permission an intimation of the royal 
 will. In these last years of his reign this power was 
 exercised to the full. Bishops, especially those on the 
 outskirts of his domain, eagerly placed themselves under 
 his protection. The bishop of Limoges did homage in 
 1204, and his see was received into the king's direct 
 domain. In 1211 the bishop of Cahors was admitted 
 to the same protection. And the bishop of Clermont 
 in Auvergne received several grants to attach him to 
 Philip's interests as a political ally. 
 
 All through his reign, following the policy so steadily 
 pursued by his grandfather, Philip had intervened to 
 protect the churches from the depredations of the 
 barons. Rigord recounts again and again with pious 
 gratitude the acts of valour by which the Church was 
 protected and the nobles Avcre crushed. He]>o VI. of 
 
V THE ADVANCE OF THE MONARCHY 117 
 
 Charenton "began to play the tyrant" against the 
 clergy of the diocese of Bourges in 1180: the king 
 heard their cries, and laying waste his land with fire and 
 sword, compelled him to swear to give full satisfaction. 
 It was Philip's first war. He was only fifteen years old, 
 but it was soon followed by another of a like aim. 
 Humbert HI. of Beaujeu, William H., count of Chalon, 
 Gerald, count of Vienne, who had plundered the great 
 house of Cluny and the church of Macon, were sup- 
 pressed with a strong arm. North and south, against 
 great vassals and petty lords, he moved swiftly and with 
 success. What was begun by warlike measures was 
 confirmed by legal arrangements. Philip made it his 
 aim to place monastic houses in all parts of Gaul under 
 his immediate rule, by grants of special protection, which 
 substituted the Crown for the lay advocates who had 
 protected the great houses so largely to their own 
 profit. The consistent policy of many years reached 
 its climax in 1221, when the king took under his special 
 charge all the religious houses of the Cistercians, from 
 Pontigny and Clairvaux down to the smallest of the 
 cells which depended on them. 
 
 The policy thus pressed in all practical ways was 
 enforced, wherever it was possible, by the rules of 
 military and civil law. The feudal service of knights 
 was exacted from the bishops, and the persistent cfibrts 
 of the rising body of legists were directed to reduce 
 the area of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. It was by means 
 such as these, by protection and by encroachment, by 
 open assertion of authority and by diplomatic exten- 
 sion of claims, that Philip, in spite of his long warfare 
 with a great Pope, had for the most part the French 
 
118 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 Gliurcli at his feet. The estate which had raised Hugh 
 Capet to the throne was now almost a slave in the 
 hands of the greatest of his successors. 
 
 Opposed in every aspect to the Church stood the 
 incoherent but dangerous mass of the feudal baronage. 
 With the lesser lords around Paris, and with the semi- 
 independent barons on the frontiers of the voyol domain, 
 the last century of the French monarchy had seen a per- 
 petual conflict. Philip, it might be thought, after the 
 work of his mighty grandfather and the persistent 
 diplomacy of his father, would be at his accession 
 master within his own domains. Outside it, in regard 
 to the great fiefs, in the relations of king and vassals, 
 there was chaos but little relieved by almost con- 
 tinuous war. Again and again the great vassals turned 
 against him. At every crisis of his reign he found foes 
 among his chief feudatories as well as in his own 
 household. We have already traced the changes in 
 his relations with the great Flemish fief. With Bur- 
 gundy he gradual}}^ succeeded in forming a firm alli- 
 ance, for the relations between a suzerain and so great 
 a fief resembled far more those of two sovereigns than 
 the mutual obligations of feudal tenant and lord. Hugh 
 ni., the great Burgundian duke, began by feeling the 
 hand of the young king when he oppressed the churches. 
 The rich Burgundian land, of whose fine castles and 
 whose mighty river William the Breton speaks ^vith awe, 
 while he does not forget the glory of its rich vines, soon 
 saw the invading force of the overlord. Philip struck 
 right at the centre of the resistance which duke Hugh 
 was planning, marched towards his new castle of 
 Ghatillon-sur- Seine, and after a three weeks' sieire 
 
V THE ADVANCE OF THE iMONARCHY 119 
 
 captured it and reduced the duke to submission. He 
 restored all that he had robbed from the churches, and 
 from that moment Ijccame the king's lo3^al friend. Two 
 years later he took the cross. He was \\dth the king at 
 iMessina, and when Philip returned from the war he left 
 to the great duke the charge of the French troops. At 
 Acre he died in July 1192. His son Odo, who had been 
 taken prisoner at Chatillon in 1186, remained through 
 life the loyal friend of his overlord. In 1208 he took 
 service against the Albigenses. In 1213 he took part in 
 the great council at Soissons, when Philip prepared to 
 fight his foes when he had finally distinguished the 
 traitors from the friends. In the campaign that followed 
 he played a prominent part. At Dam he was a leader 
 in the pursuit, at Bouvines he fought in the thickest of 
 the fray, and had a horse killed under him. In 1218 
 he died. He is commemorated, with a long list of his 
 lands and honours, in the tenth book of the Philippid. 
 While danger pressed from the Angevins, or when the 
 Pope threatened the very foundation of the monarchy, 
 the Burgundian dukes could always be relied upon to 
 support their king. 
 
 AYith Champagne the king's alliance was primarily 
 dynastic. His mother, Alice of Champagne, could call 
 to his aid her brothers, Henry, count of Champagne, 
 Thibault, count of Blois and Chartres, Stephen, count of 
 Sancerre, and William, archbishop of Rheims. In the 
 earlier part of the reign, it is true, he found them but 
 fickle allies ; but from the death of Count Henry 
 he was able to rely on the support of the house. 
 Thibault had entered into a new and special alliance 
 Avith his suzerain, which continued till his death in 1201. 
 
120 PHILIP AUGUSTUS ohap. 
 
 His widow Blanche was guardian for the posthumous 
 son, Thibault lY., and did homage for his fief, remain- 
 ing under Philip's especial protection. The daughters 
 of the late Count Henry (whose mother's marriage was 
 bigamous, being contracted after a divorce Avhich was un- 
 recognised by the Papacy and without dispensation) laid 
 claim to Champagne, and the minority of Thibault lY. 
 gave a douJ^le unsettlement. Philip was always allied 
 with Blanche, and when at length the claim was brought 
 to a legal decision the barons established her right and 
 that of her son. The minority was an occasion for 
 the exercise of enlarged powers on the part of the 
 sovereign ; but Champagne was by no means yet fully 
 subject to the French overlord. 
 
 Of the other great fiefs the house of Anjou held two, 
 till Philip tore them from their grasp, and Toulouse, 
 without Philip's active intervention, gradually broke 
 up under the long struggle between North and South 
 which was called the crusade against the Albigenses. 
 Yermandois and Artois were kept largely under direct 
 royal control. Brittany, when the king obtained sway 
 over it, was given to Pierre Mauclerc, son of Eobert 
 of Dreux and Alice, the half sister of Arthur, and 
 daughter of Constance, the heiress of the old line. 
 The fealty due to Philip was expressly reserved when 
 the new Breton duke took oath from his vassals. 
 Thus, gradually, by good fortune as well as by policy, 
 Philip drew the great feudatories in alliance round his 
 throne. 
 
 The great king's policy towards the lesser barons 
 was elaborate and systematic. His own direct tenants 
 ho controlled by force and craft in turns, and above all 
 
V THE ADVANCE OF THE MONARCHY 121 
 
 by the increasing influence of his judicial jDower. The 
 tenants of other lords he endeavoured in every possible 
 way to lure into alliance, by supporting them against 
 their overlords, by granting them special pri^dleges, and 
 by claiming to hear their suits against their lords in his 
 curia as a court of appeal. Thus during all his contests 
 with the Angevin house Philip had allies among their 
 vassals. At the very beginning of the struggle his 
 success had come from the support of the barons of 
 Anjou and the southern lands, who were eager to break 
 from the control of Henry 11. He never began a new 
 campaign without forming alliances that might support 
 him at each step into his enemies' country. The barons 
 of the Yexin were ever ready to pledge their friendship 
 with the French kins; a2;ainst the Norman duke ; and on 
 the north, towards Flanders, and even in the far distant 
 Aquitaine, there were barons eager to call themselves 
 allies or vassals of the lord of Paris. Instances have 
 been collected from Philip's acts that show how far- 
 reaching and systematic was this provision. In the 
 autumn of 1211 the vidame of Pecquigny, Thomas of S. 
 Valery, and Reginald of Amiens, pledged themselves his 
 friends against John, Otto, and Eeginald of Boulogne. 
 All along the border, treaties were made by which castles 
 were held at the king's will, under pledges of the nobles 
 of the districts, to be returned to him at his demand. 
 Ivry, Avrilly, Beausart, Montresoi', Argenton, Cours, 
 Guarplic, Palluau, Marcheville, Lavardiu, Chniitoc6, 
 Sulli, Chantecocq, S. Remi-des- plains, Fresna}-^, Mont- 
 richard, Beaumont, S. Suzanne, Aigremont, Dreux — 
 there are many instances. Agreements were made by 
 which the nobles of a district were bound together in 
 
122 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 support of the king : thus greater and lesser vassals 
 restrained each other in the king's service. 
 
 Side by side with these politic engagements in found- 
 ing the wide power of the Frank monarchy were the 
 silent encroachments of the local administration of the 
 Crown. Philip's predecessors, in face of the development 
 of feudalism, had been obliged to reconstruct the ad- 
 ministration from the foundation. The old local officials 
 of the Kar lings, w^ho are seen still to sur^dve under 
 Hugh Capet, are replaced at the beginning of the 
 eleventh century by one sole officer, the 'prdvot. 
 
 The prdvois were the local representatives of the 
 monarchy throughout the royal domain, within or with- 
 out the compact territory which surrounded Paris, and 
 in the towns whose constitutions were due to royal grant. 
 They united in their own person all the powers of the 
 judge, the financial official, and the political administrator. 
 Under them were the viguiers (vicars) and bedells, and in 
 towns the mayors also acted at times as ro3''al officers. 
 As in England the sheriffs, so in France the local officials, 
 endowed with vast powers to be used in the royal ser- 
 vice, first enforced their authority and that of the Crow^n 
 over the owners of the soil, and then, grown great by 
 the sway they had wielded, came into conflict with the 
 Crown itself. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the 
 kings had to call to their assistance a central administra- 
 tion to repress the independence of their local agents. 
 PrSvfjts, vicars, and chdtelains (those placed in charge of 
 strong castles belonging to the king), and the vicamics, 
 formerly the deputies of the counts, but now mostly 
 hereditary officials themselves, bore the royal authority 
 in different degrees, and exercised it on occasion for 
 
V THE ADVANCE OF THE MONARCHY 123 
 
 their own advancement. The prdvots^ in the feudal- 
 ising process which had brought the other officials 
 within the hierarchy of fiefs, remained, as we have 
 said, practically the only officials on whom the Crown 
 could rely. The system of administration was constantly 
 extended through their action, and by the time of 
 Philip Augustus a conflict had ensued between the 
 local lords, and especially the abbats and bishops, and 
 the local administration. Under these circumstances it 
 was clear that the system needed revision, and thus 
 before his departure on crusade, Philip instituted the 
 bailliSy superiors in rank to the prdvots^ and charged with 
 the duty of holding assizes every month to dispense 
 justice in the king's name, and of reporting at Paris con- 
 cerning the prdvots^ and presenting the sums collected 
 by them for the royal treasury. The baillis were to be 
 assisted during the king's absence by four good men of 
 each district, by whose advice and consent they were 
 to act. With their agreement the baillis might remove 
 the pr4v6ts for any gross crime, such as murder or 
 treason ; on lesser offences the king's will should be 
 taken. This important revision of the local administra- 
 tion was decided upon in the king's Council, and its 
 authoritative promulgation formed part of the ordinance 
 l)y which the regency of queen Alice and archbishop 
 William was created and its powers defined. It was a 
 further step towards the growing centralisation which 
 marked the advance of the French monarchy towards 
 absolute power. 
 
 In France, as in England, the closest link between 
 local and central administration was found in the 
 king's financial necessities and claims. The first duty 
 
124 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 of the prdvofs was to collect the royal revenue, the first 
 duty of the baillis to see that it was honestly collected. 
 Here, as so universally in medieval times, the local 
 officials had become tax-farmers. The sums due from 
 mills, presses, bakers' ovens, market dues, trades pay- 
 ments, and the actual pi^oduce or rent of land and water 
 belonging to the Crown ; for these the p'dvots paid a 
 lump sum, from which Avere deducted the expenses of 
 repair, of fortifications and bridges, and the necessary 
 payment for castle guard. Deductions were also made 
 for Church endowments, for the salaries of chaplains, 
 and for alms to churches and lepers, and for the royal 
 huntsmen and wolf-slayers. From 1190 the jjrSvots paid 
 little, if anything, of which they were obliged to furnish 
 direct account; the dues which were not farmed 
 passed through the hands of the baillis. To them 
 came all payments in kind, tallages, feudal dues, town 
 payments in consideration of charters, the profits of 
 licences for coining money, dues from Jews, and the fines 
 of the courts of justice. Thrice a year the accounts were 
 presented at the treasury, and thus the central adminis- 
 tration had ultimate control even of the ffreat barons 
 whom the king had made his bailiffs. 
 
 Side by side with the financial duties of the local 
 administration, and intimately connected with them, 
 were their judicial powers. Criminal cases came before 
 them, and all suits concerning breach of contract, debts 
 of Jews, and the like. Here, whatever might be the 
 barbarous punishments in some criminal trials, the fines 
 and profits were what chiefly concerned the king and 
 his officials. Crime could be generally, if not always, 
 atoned for by money payment ; the king was not eager, 
 
V THE ADVANCE OF THE MONARCHY 125 
 
 when he judged an offender, merety, in the quaint 
 phrase of the English law, "to betake himself to his 
 limbs." The acts of Philip contain a number of proofs 
 of the wide judicial competence of the baillis, and not a 
 few are concerned with suits that have a financial 
 aspect. Nor were the cases simply civil suits ; ecclesi- 
 astical cases were frequently brought ])efore the baillis. 
 
 In the south seneschals performed the duties dis- 
 charged in the north by the haiJlis. As the lands of the 
 Angevins fell into Philip's hands he appointed a 
 seneschal of Poitou, making the office hereditary in the 
 ancient family of Thouars, and a seneschal of Anjou, 
 William des Poches, Avho served him well for the 
 eighteen years following 1204; and in Normandy for 
 a time he adopted a similar plan. Here he was 
 reversing the policy which he had carried out in his 
 own domain. He was giving to great local lords 
 authority to exercise in his name, while th.Q prdcots and 
 haillis were men more under his own control. But so 
 long as an astute sovereign sat on the throne, both forms 
 of administration proved successful. The lands that 
 Philip had won he held in 2:)cace ; and the revenues 
 of the crown Avere nearly doubled during his reign. In 
 his local organisation Philip found one of the gi^eatest 
 material supports of his power. As Philip revised the 
 local, so he strengthened the central administration. 
 Under his ancestors, those who served the king in his 
 household had been entrusted with the exercise of political 
 power. Under Philip these officers became more and 
 more official ministers of the crown and less its personal 
 servants. Thus the central administration was in the 
 hands of the chancellor, seneschal, butler, chamberlain, 
 
126 PHILIP AUGUSTUS ohap. 
 
 and constable. These officials acted often without n:iuch 
 distinction of function. The seneschal and chamberlain 
 alike had commanded armies, and within the household 
 there was not much to distinguish the duties of the 
 butler from those of the seneschal or dapifer. But so 
 far as their work may be sejDarated, it may be said that 
 the seneschal was the most important. His powers 
 were perhaps inherited from those of the Merwing 
 mayor of the palace. He was leader of the king's 
 household guard, and comnuinded the royal armies 
 when the king himself was not present. He had mde 
 judicial powers and a number of special privileges in 
 regard to jDarticular communes and rural districts. It 
 was asserted later that the counts of Anjou were 
 hereditary seneschals, and the statement was accepted 
 by many English writers, and has been repeated by 
 recent historians. It is, however, without foundation. 
 The seneschalship, like other great offices, tended to 
 become a hejeditary fief. Louis YII. had struggled, 
 at length successfull}', against the arrogant family of 
 Garlande. He had then appointed a great vassal, 
 Rudolf of Vermandois, and Philip Augustus at his 
 coronation found the office held by his uncle, Thibault 
 v., count of Blois. Till his death in 1191 Thibault 
 held the post — Thibault the "pious and merciful 
 seneschal," Eigord calls him. He had taken an active 
 part in politics for nearly forty years when his young 
 nephew became king. A politician, a warrior, a 
 crusader, and the holder of a vast fief, his personal 
 power made his official position dangerous to the cro^vn, 
 and Philip never filled up the post after his death. 
 The recurrence of the phrase dcvpifero nidlo in the 
 
V THE ADVANCE OF THF :\[ONARCHY 127 
 
 charters of the rest of the reign seems to imply that 
 the office was not definitely suppressed ; but there was 
 never again a seneschal till the fourteenth century. 
 
 Next to the seneschal stands the butler. His duties 
 had become more and more formal. He was adminis- 
 trator of the vineyards in the royal domain, but, strange 
 to say, William the Breton says nothing of Guy of 
 Senlis who held the office in his days. The same 
 family had enjoyed the post for nearly a century. In 
 1179 Guy, the third of the name, held the office. In 
 1187 it was transferred to Guy the fourth, who remained 
 butler till his death in 1221. For the last years of the 
 reign the office was vacant. Like the butler, the 
 chamberlain steadily declined in importance. He Avas 
 treasurer and keeper of the archives, as under the 
 Merwings. Reginald, the holder of the office when 
 Philip became king, seems to have had no important 
 work to do. A year later Matthew, count of Beau- 
 mont sur Oise, was appointed. The post had now 
 become little more than honorary — the duties of personal 
 attendance being discharged largely by deputies, of 
 whom we know the names of Walter de Capella, and his 
 sons Urso and Walter. When Matthew of Beaumont 
 died in 1208, he was succeeded by one of Philip's special 
 servants and friends, Bartholomew de Roie, who had 
 served the king in the closest association for many 
 years, and had been prominent in the negotiations with 
 the Angevins and the Flemish lords. Pie stood by the 
 king's side at Bouvines; "a prudent man," says the 
 Breton, "and one specially watching for his master's 
 safety." The office was now, no doubt, rather a dignity 
 than a definite employment. The sub-chamberlains 
 
128 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 were men of importance, and were employed in the 
 most delicate and serious business of the reign. 
 
 The constable, the old master of the horse, was an 
 official- whose powers fluctuated Avith those of the 
 seneschal. In 1179 Ralph, count of Clermont in the 
 Beauvaisis, was constable. He died in 1101 during the 
 siege of Acre. For two years the office was vacant. 
 Then Drogo de Mello became constable, a knight of 
 fame, who also served on the crusade. In 1218 he 
 was succeeded by Matthew of Montmorency, who held 
 land in the immediate neighbourhood of Paris, and 
 survived till the days of S. Louis. Like the chamber- 
 lain, the constable was not called upon for the discharge 
 of very active or constant duty. He was assisted in 
 his military authority by se^'eral marshals, some of 
 whom Avere prominent men and intimately associated 
 with the sovereign. Last of all, but by no means 
 least important, among the official signatories of the 
 charters we find the chancellor. As in England, the 
 chancelL^r was chief of the I'oyal clerks, who served 
 tlie royal chapel, conducted the king's correspondence, 
 and issued his charters. As in England, the chancellor 
 stood sccimdus loost rcf/em in regno, the seneschal in 
 France being in many w^ys, the counterpart of the 
 English justiciar. Just before the coronation of Philip, 
 Hugh de Puiset, son of the great bishop and earl- 
 palatine of Durham, whose name figures so prominently 
 in northern history during the reigns of Henry II. and 
 his sons, was made chancellor. A second Hugh, not a 
 kinsman, seems to have succeeded him and died in 1185. 
 From that date the ofiice remained unfilled, the j^hrase 
 racante ranccllaria frequently occurring in the charters. 
 
V THE ADVANCE OF THE MONARCHY 129 
 
 The work of the clerks seems now to have been directed 
 by two prominent men, AValter of Nemours and the 
 famous brother Gu^rin. The former was son of Walter, 
 the under chamberlain, and fought by the king in the 
 thick of the fray at Bouvines. He, when the French rolls 
 were lost in the flight from Freteval in 1194, was charged 
 with the difficult task of replacing the lost records. By 
 natural skill and sound sense, says William the Breton, 
 he accomplished the task without difficulty. Even more 
 important was the great hero and churchman, brother 
 Guerin. A brother of the Hospital, he became from a 
 clerk of the chancery the chief counsellor of the king. 
 During all the great campaign against the allies, it was 
 his military genius almost beyond cjuestion that gave 
 success to the French king. The " prudence and incom- 
 parable ^dgour of his counsel," which William the Breton 
 commemorates, made him the king's most intimate friend 
 {I'egis specialis amicus). He was rewarded in 1213 
 with the bishopjric of Senlis, whose great cathedral 
 watches over the wooded plains where the king was often 
 a-hunting and where he planted the beautiful Abbey of 
 Victory beside the gentle streams of the Nouette. 
 Chancellor in name he never became till Louis VHI. 
 held his father's sceptre, but all through the later years 
 he was at Philip's right hand, and secundus a rege is 
 the title which William of Breton gives him, using 
 the Avell-known designation of the chancellor. That 
 one so greatly trusted and loved should never have held 
 the formal title shows how clear was the policy of his 
 master to suppress the two great offices of chancellor 
 and seneschal, whose official prerogatives seemed to 
 threaten the sovereignty of the crown itself. 
 
 K 
 
130 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 By his treatment of the five great offices Philip 
 advanced another step towards the absolutism of his 
 grandson. Eecognising that the great officials in the 
 household, after being made the chiefs of the central 
 administration and holding their j^osts as hereditary 
 fiefs, had become a double danger to the monarchy, he 
 used his power, the alliance of some of the greater 
 vassals and the weakness of the others, to accomplish 
 the process begun by his grandfather of dislodging 
 from their administrative authority the holders of the 
 five traditional posts. Three he reduced to insignifi- 
 cance by conferring the posts on barons of lesser degree : 
 two he practically abolished. He made himself a sove- 
 reign uncontrolled by a traditional hierarchy of officialism, 
 and called to his side such personal friends as his own 
 inclination or sagacity might select. He used their 
 advice, but he conferred on them no office which by its 
 constitutional position should give them any right of 
 practical control. Thus Philip of Flanders, Henry H., 
 his uncle, William of Eheims, were, in turn, the advisers 
 of his youth ; and in his manhood he called to his side 
 his faithful friend, brother Gu^rin, wise bishop and 
 gallant knight. 
 
 But if Philip chose to permanently employ no great 
 official who might become his rival, he surrounded 
 himself with a crowd of amic% familiares, counsellors, 
 who did his business, ran his errands, advised him, 
 judged for him, and were his soldiers and diplomatists. 
 These were men, as a rule, chosen from the clergy and 
 the lesser nobility, novi homines^ who owed all to their 
 master and could be trusted to stand loyally by his 
 side. Chaplains some of them were, some men em- 
 
V THE ADVANCE OF THE MONARCHY 131 
 
 ployed in household offices, men whom the king had 
 come to kno^y, whose capacity he had tested and whose 
 errors he could easily punish. By such agents the 
 chief work of the reign was done. But Philip did not 
 altogether neglect the traditional methods of govern- 
 ment. The ancient court of barons (curia, coUoquia, 
 concilium), called together by personal writs of summons, 
 met on OTeat occasions to advise the kine; in the exercise 
 of all his sovereign acts. Such a writ was imperative. 
 Barons, however mighty, who refused to attend, placed 
 themselves outside the law and declared themselves 
 the king's enemies. Thus the Council of Soissons 
 in the hour of Philip's greatest danger showed on 
 whom he could rely, and which of his men were gone 
 over to his foes. The great councils were military 
 gatherings as well as mere "parliaments." The vassals 
 came with armed knights, and the assemblies were 
 often largely of the nature of definite preparations for 
 immediate war. Questions of war and peace Avere 
 debated there, no less than marriage alliances and 
 matters of feudal law and custom. 
 
 But the assemblies, however important their delibera- 
 tions, had clearly no constitutional rights which they 
 could enforce against the sovereign. Their sessions were 
 not regular, fixed, periodical. The barons came only in 
 virtue of the king's summons, and they were summoned 
 when the king's necessities required. Need — the need 
 of moral or material support — not constitutional law, 
 determined the sessions of the great council. The real 
 power belonged to the king and the inner body of his 
 friends and servants, who carried out the acts to which 
 the larger assembly gave assent. Sometimes opposition 
 
132 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 in the great council, as in 1188 (and perhaps 1209, 
 when sub-infeudation was forbidden, as in England by 
 Edward I.'s Quia Emptores), was successful, and the king 
 withdrew his proposition or exempted certain districts 
 from its operations ; but the council rather deliberated 
 than decreed. Still Philip could hardly have dispensed 
 with the great gathering of his barons. By them he 
 was able to gauge the opinion of the feudal and ecclesi- 
 astical estates, without whose support it was in the long 
 run impossible for him to act. Strong king he was, but 
 he was strong in spite not in consequence of the assist- 
 ance of his vassals. 
 
 As great council, the most important work of the 
 magnates lay in judicial business. They sat also in the 
 aiiria regis, a smaller body, to w^hich men learned in the 
 law, with no definite feudal qualification, were added. 
 As sovereign the king was supreme judge over his 
 subjects, as suzerain over his vassals, but in each case he 
 was advised by persons feudally or personally related to 
 himself. The court was thus attended by barons, but 
 it was the king's court, not theirs. It sat where he was. 
 It met when he ordered. Of its procedure an excellent 
 example may be found in a writ assigning the castle of 
 Vertaizon to the bishop of Clermont. 
 
 "Be it kno^vn, etc. That on account of the plaint 
 which our beloved and faithful Robert, bishop of 
 Clermont, lays before us concerning Pontius de Chapteuil 
 and Jarentona his wife, with our own lips we summoned 
 them to Senlis, and appointed a day on which he and 
 his wife should appear in our presence to give an 
 adequate answer to the plaint of the bishop. On this 
 day they neither came nor sent representatives. A 
 
V THE ADVANCE OF THE MONARCHY 133 
 
 second time, when we were at Chateauroux, we 
 had them summoned, and appointed a day on account 
 of the aforesaid plaint, on which day the aforesaid 
 Pontius came not ; his wife came, but came not as she 
 ought. A third time we summoned the wife by word 
 of mouth, and had Pontius her husband summoned by 
 a trusty messenger, and fixed a certain day on Avhich 
 they were to come to make answer before Hugh de la 
 Chapelle, our bailiff. On this day they neither came nor 
 sent representatives, but informed us by letter that 
 they would make answer on that ^Dlaint before the king 
 of Aragon. The bishop, however, appeared in his own 
 person on each of the aforementioned days, prepared to 
 show that Pontius the bishop's liege man and Jarentona 
 his wife had in the castle of Yertaizon, which they held 
 on oath from him, treacherously and deceitfully received 
 by night the bishop's notorious enemies with a view to 
 seizing his person and destroying his followers. For 
 this reason, after taking counsel with our barons, we 
 have assigned the castle with all that appertains thereto 
 to the bishop and church of Clermont, to hold from us 
 and our heirs in perpetual tenure in the same way as 
 our other crown lands, demesne as demesne, fief as fief. 
 Of the castle and its adjoining land we have publicly 
 seized the bishop, of demesne as demesne, of fief as fief." 
 The writ is dated at Paris in January 1205. It 
 shows the personal character still retained in theory by 
 the royal jurisdiction. A personal complaint to the 
 king is personally investigated. And the claim of the 
 court is wide. The king's power is more than that of a 
 mere feudal overlord. There is a distinct reminiscence 
 of the imperial claims of the Karlings. 
 
134 PHILIP AUGUSTUS ohap. 
 
 The court claimed jurisdiction over certain ecclesias- 
 tical suits, over cases which concerned the towns and 
 the new communes, and over causes in which the lay 
 feudatories were especially engaged. The larger part 
 of the suits judged by the curia were complaints of 
 robbery against barons by ecclesiastics, and individual 
 barons, whenever they were strong enough, refused to 
 recognise its authority and fought against it. They put 
 forward too the courts of their immediate superior as 
 challenging the exclusive claim of the court of the 
 suzerain, and introduced as a last resort tribunals of 
 arbitration, to which during the last half of the twelfth 
 century many disputes concerning succession and 
 territorial rights were submitted. 
 
 The composition of the curia, when it was engaged 
 in judicial business, shows that it was merely the great 
 council in another aspect. In principle there were no 
 judges properly so called. The king was supreme judge ; 
 his vassals assisted him with their advice. The common 
 formula of decision states that cases had been adjudged 
 ^'in the presence of the king and the magnates of the 
 kingdom." Barons, bishops, abbats, sat as they sat in 
 the great council, to assist in judgment as they sat to 
 assist in deliberation. Sometimes Philip would call for 
 the especial assistance of certain bishops, if the suit were 
 ecclesiastical. More often he would be advised by the 
 officials of the household or the clerks whom Innocent 
 III. himself recognised as learned in both civil and 
 canon law. During the last years of Louis VII. the 
 presence of the king's personal attendants, familiareSj 
 palatini, had become much more constant ; and the 
 names of the chancellor and treasurer, and certain 
 
V THE ADVANCE OF THE MONARCHY 135 
 
 counsellors or clerks, constantly recur in the signatures 
 to the judgments. Further, the king would commit to 
 them authority to judge in his name and in his absence. 
 Thus there grew up a class of recognised legal oflScials, 
 and from that time the phrase judices nostri con- 
 stantly occurs in royal acts. The members of the court 
 who were cjualified by personal knowledge and legal 
 training became sharply distinguished from those whose 
 qualification was merely feudal. The curia was gradu- 
 ally turning from a feudal body into something 
 resembling a modern law-court. Its procedure at the 
 same time, and by the same process, underwent an 
 important alteration. The judicial combat was gradually 
 discouraged. In town charters it was frecj[uently, at 
 least in trivial matters, definitely forbidden ; and the 
 introduction of written evidence, with the presence of 
 educated men skilled in the sifting of testimony, tended 
 to still further minimise the importance of the feudal 
 element in law and among its administrators. Philip 
 himself did his utmost to discourage both the ordeal 
 and the wager of battle, and to gradually substitute the 
 more civilised methods of inquest and declaration on 
 oath. While the real importance of the curia regis as a 
 judicial body was thus coming to consist in its practical 
 elimination of the feudal element from among its members, 
 it might seem that in a different manner Philip was 
 giving to the judicial powers of the great vassals an im- 
 portance which they had not previously possessed. The 
 reign of Philip Augustus is the first period at which Ave 
 can distinctly say that the court of peers assumes a 
 definite position in French constitutional history. 
 
 In one sense, it is true, the curia regis must always 
 
136 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 have been a court of peers. The barons who attended 
 were the peers of each other, and by custom at least 
 each of them claimed that he could only be judged by 
 his equals. Cases of this claim are frequent enough in 
 the earlier reigns. Suits between barons were tried in 
 the king's courts before the barons who were their 
 peers. In 1153 Louis VII. judged between the duke 
 of Burgundy and the bishop of Langres, to whom he had 
 refused to perform his feudal obligations. He judged 
 in the presence of the archbishops, bishops, and barons 
 who formed the royal court. Yet none of those present, 
 as it happens, save the parties to the suit, were peers of 
 France in the sense in which the term was used later. 
 The recognised right of a baron to be judged by his 
 peers meant in practice a trial in the curia regis. But 
 before long a restricted meaning came to he attached to 
 the term peer when it was qualified by the addition of 
 France. As early as 1171 Peter Bernard, prior of 
 Grandniont, is found writing to Henry II. and speaking 
 of Henry, duke and archl)ishop of Rheims, |?<?^r of 
 France. Practical politics and legendary sentiment had 
 created before the death of Philip Augustus the famous 
 court of the twelve peers of France. At what date this 
 occurred it is impossible precisely to say. Louis VIII. 
 in his invasion of England in 1216 declared that John 
 was condemned in 1202 by his peers for the murder of 
 Arthur. The statement itself was untrue, and the 
 court by which John was condemned on the charges 
 made against him by his Poitevin vassals was the ordin- 
 ary court of the suzerain, the curia regis at which the 
 barons attended, peers of John in his capacity as Philip's 
 vassal The "twelve peers of France" certainly could 
 
V THE ADVANCE OF THE MONARCHY 137 
 
 not have appeared on the occasion. The six ecclesias- 
 tical peers could not join in a question of blood. Of the 
 lay peers John himself was both duke of Normandy 
 and duke of Aquitaine, the count of Toulouse was his 
 friend, the count of Flanders was abroad, the count of 
 Champagne an infant : only the duke of Burgundy re- 
 mained. But if, as would appear, John was not con- 
 demned to death, the ecclesiastical peers could have 
 attended, and some of the ecclesiastical peers of France 
 were as a matter of fact present. His condemnation, 
 however, as is clear from the objection taken to it by 
 Innocent III., was pronounced by the French king's barons 
 — not by a small and special court. In July 1216 Philip 
 is found judging the claim of Blanche of Navarre and 
 her son Thibault to the county of Navarre, and in the 
 judgment appear the names of "peers of our realm, 
 the prelates of Eheims, Langres, Chalons, Beauvais, 
 Noyon, and the duke of Burgundy" — all those of the 
 "twelve peers'' who could have been present. From 
 that date the court of peers of France ma}^ be regarded 
 as having been established. There are later instances 
 within a few years, and at the end of the thirteenth 
 century there is demonstrative proof of its constitution. 
 The twelve peers were the dukes of Normandy, Aqui- 
 taine, Burgundy, the counts of Flanders, Champagne, 
 Toulouse, the archbishop of Eheims, and the bishops of 
 Langres, Laon, Beauvais, Noyon, Chalons, who were 
 counts or dukes as well as prelates. The political im- 
 portance of these great personages naturally placed them 
 above the ordinary attendants of the cnria regis, while 
 their distance from the centre of the French king's 
 power, and their position as the direct vassals, for large 
 
138 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 tracts of territory, of the crown, marked them out as 
 standing in an exceptional relation to the monarchy. 
 Practical differences were accentuated and stereotyped 
 by the influence of literary sentiment. It was the 
 delight of the literary men who formed part of the 
 court of Philip the Conqueror to compare him with 
 Charles the Great. No analogies were too fanciful, no 
 legends too precarious, to be used in the process which 
 surrounded the thirteenth-century Augustus with the 
 romantic environment of the reviver of the Empire. 
 The song of Eoland and the pilgrimage of Charlemagne 
 were read side by side with the verses in which court 
 poets were striving to immortalise their sovereign and 
 themselves. No legend of Charlemagne was more 
 famous than that which surrounded him with twelve 
 peers, the great vassals of the Empire and the heroic 
 companions of his doughty deeds. Should not the new 
 Augustus too have his twelve peers of France ? They 
 were naturally marked out among the great feudatories, 
 six great churchmen and six great barons. They were 
 each other's peers, and the medieval theory, so persistent 
 in its influence on every side of life, that a man could 
 only be judged by his equals, gave to them a sort of 
 natural and exclusive right to be each other's judges 
 under the presidency of the sovereign. Thus by Philip's 
 death the French kings were surrounded by their twelve 
 peers, who stood with romantic but mostly intangible 
 privileges separating them from the lesser vassals outside 
 the royal domain. The dignity of the monarchy was 
 enhanced, and its practical power was indirectly in- 
 creased by the creation of the court, and still more by 
 the sentiment so largely responsible for its creation. 
 
V THE ADVANCE OF TPIE MONARCHY 139 
 
 Thus stood the monarchy of Phihp Augustus in 
 relation to church and barons. An advance even more 
 significant is to be seen in the king's connection with 
 the commercial classes. 
 
 The relations between the Capetian kings and the 
 trading and popular classes may best be observed in 
 general by a study of their attitude towards the growth 
 of the new urban constitution, the commune, and in 
 particular by observation of their intimate association 
 with their own chief city Paris. The ancient liberties 
 of the south, surviving at least in sentiment from 
 Eoman times the privileges granted b}^ the house 
 of Anjou to the towns in their territories, represent 
 two ditferent types of municipal organisation with 
 which Philip during the earlier part of his reign was 
 not concerned. The part of Gaul over which he had 
 influence was the north and the centre : and here we 
 must examine the work of his predecessors as a prepara- 
 tion for his own. A clear distinction is to be observed 
 between the attitude of the Capetian kings towards the 
 growth of municipal liberties within, and outside, their 
 own 'domain. In the first case the kings were concerned 
 primarily as direct lords, in the second primarily as 
 suzerains. As lords, the kings behaved as did other feudal 
 superiors. An extension of liberties seemed necessarily 
 to imply an encroachment on their own powers. They 
 were therefore almost always opposed to the growth 
 of communes. 
 
 The twelfth century saw a large development in 
 action of the principle of association. Commerce, police, 
 politics, all took advantage of it. Trade guilds, 
 associations of merchants, created the great routes and 
 
140 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 founded international commerce. The obligations of 
 law were brought home to the people by systems of 
 close local assurance. The Peace of God, proclaimed by 
 the great society of the Church, was enforced by courts 
 whose sanction was almost solely that of mutual assent 
 and forbearance. Even in 1182 there was founded in 
 Velai the confraternity of the Encajntchonm^s, joined by 
 "many bishops and magnates, nobles, and men of lower 
 degree." The associations for the preservation of the 
 peace did not die out indeed before the end of the 
 thirteenth century, and in the more directly political 
 sphere they have a parallel in the associations formed 
 between barons for the enforcement of their rights in 
 relation to their suzerain, and the system of mutual 
 sureties Avhich the kings Avere eager to institute among 
 their vassals. In France, as in Spain, the spirit which 
 founded and animated the Juntas was prominent. In 
 local organisation the spirit manifested itself in the 
 growth of united bodies within the toAvns of the north 
 and centre which opposed an united front to their lords, 
 lay or clerk, and obtained from them the concession of 
 a charter which recognised the town as a commune, a 
 self-governing unit, entering as one body into the feudal 
 hierarchy and dealing as one with all outside powers. 
 The grant of the communal privileges was the recogni- 
 tion of the complete unity of the town in internal 
 government. It freed the citizens from the arbitrary 
 treatment of the lords, and placed them in possession of 
 definite privileges and rights which law could recognise 
 and perhaps enforce. 
 
 From the point of view of the kings, the growth of 
 communes outside their own lands was of direct 
 
V THE ADVANCE OF THE MONARCHY 141 
 
 advantage to the royal authority. It limited the 
 power of the feudal hierarchy, and it created a new 
 class with whom direct relations could be held. Thus 
 in the case of a vacancy in a bishopric or great abbey 
 the kings used their privileges — of regale or other- 
 Avise — to encourage the growth of urban liberties ; 
 and they interfered constantly in behalf of privileges 
 which the prelates contested and endeavoured to limit. 
 Towards lay fiefs, and especially those of the great 
 feudatories, a strong and consistent policy was difficult. 
 The power of the suzerain could but rarely be used, but 
 there were occasions when the king might justly claim 
 to interfere against an oppressive lord, and these 
 occasions were not neglected. The growth of legal 
 science too, and the delight in definitions which spread 
 from the philosophy of the day into practical life, 
 encouraged the kings to assert the right of confirming 
 the creation of all new communes, and even to declare 
 that all towns in which a commune was instituted 
 became i]_?so facto royal towns. 
 
 But while kings watched the growth of urban 
 privileges with mingled feelings, the father of Philij) 
 Augustus had begun the policy of creating new towns as 
 a counterpoise to the power of the local lords. During 
 the last thirty years of his reign he multiplied villes 
 neaves^ endowing them with liberal privileges to be 
 enjoyed under his sole protection, stipulating for the 
 payment of dues, and making free men of all villeins 
 who should take refuge within their bounds. Ville- 
 neuve-le-roi in the Senonais received, in 1163, the 
 charter of Lorris. Many others followed. The policy 
 was one which Philip developed. As the twelfth century 
 
142 PHILIP AUGUSTUS obap. 
 
 drew on, the kings became more able to assert their 
 independence of the feudal classes, and more com- 
 petent to carry out the policy which they had already 
 planned. At this stage of affairs Philip succeeded 
 his father, and the monarchy passed, in regard to the 
 communes, from a period of hesitating support to one 
 of definite alliance. An illustration may be found in 
 the famous history of the commune of the Laonnais. 
 Side by side with the urban communes rural organisa- 
 tions were springing up which claimed, and won, the 
 same privileges. Of these the commune of the Laonnais 
 is a typical example. In the domains of the bishop 
 which surrounded the ancient city of the Karling kings 
 were seventeen villages which attached themselves to 
 the little town of Anizi-le-Chateau as a centre. The 
 villagers were serfs of the bishops, and villeins of more or 
 less free condition. During the vacancy of the bishopric, 
 1174-1175, the peasants, now for the time under the 
 direct rule of the crown, applied to Louis VII. for a 
 charter similar to that which the burgesses of the city 
 of Laon enjoyed, and which had already been won by 
 other rural associations. The king, paid, there is no 
 doubt, for his compliance, granted a charter which 
 incorporated the villages, and gave them, in consideration 
 of a small yearly rent from each household, definite 
 rights against the bishop, their lord. No sooner was a 
 new bishop in possession of the see than he repudiated 
 with indignation the encroachment on his rights and the 
 rights of the Church of Laon. He demanded the with- 
 drawal of a charter which the king had no right to grant. 
 He appealed to the Pope. He took up arms to destroy 
 the commune. Before the summer of 1177 was over the 
 
V THE ADVANCE OF THE MONARCHY 143 
 
 commune of the Laoiinais had ceased to exist. Weak as 
 he was, Louis VII . could not tamely submit to such an 
 insult. He marched into the district, compelled the 
 bishop to submit and to fly. But this was by no means 
 the end. The count of Hainault, kinsman of the dis- 
 possessed bishop of Laon, intervened, and the quarrel 
 merged in the great political struggle in which Louis 
 VII. was engaged. The king accepted the bishop's 
 submission, but the bishop was already accused of 
 murder in the course of his suppression of the commune, 
 and it was a year before he was freed from the charge. 
 Then suddenly, by the marriage of Philip Augustus 
 with the count of Hainault's daughter, the bishop was 
 admitted again into the king's favour. The commune 
 was dissolved, the villeins were sacrificed, Louis VII. 
 himself was humiliated, by a political necessity. In 
 1180 the bishop of Laon married 3^oung Philip to his 
 kinswoman Elizabeth, and for five years no more is 
 heard of the villeins of the Laonnais. In 1185 the 
 exactions of the restored bishop had become insup- 
 portable. Philip himself was compelled — or was, it 
 may be, eager — to intervene. He fixed the tallage 
 which the men of the Laonnais should pay to the 
 bishop, and their dues to the vidame and the bishop, 
 and he placed over them twelve officers chosen from 
 among themselves, who should judge of all differences 
 that might arise between them and the bishop. This 
 was a step towards the re-establishment of the commune. 
 Five years later we find the commune in existence. 
 Philip at Paris, in June 1190, promises to settle the 
 matter of the commune of the Laonnais if requested by 
 the bishop or the Church of Laon within a year of his 
 
144 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 return from the East. If he dies during his absence the 
 commune is to be destroyed. A few months later, at 
 Messina, he definitely abolished it — a curious com- 
 mentary on the strength of the influence of the Church 
 on those engaged in crusade. Philip, whose sympathies, 
 as well as his interests, had clearly gone with rural 
 liberties outside his domain, was compelled to give way 
 to a force too strong to resist. The young Capetian king 
 bowed to the power which had raised his ancestor to 
 the throne. The later history of the Laonnais runs on 
 difi^erent lines. For ten years more the peasants bore the 
 oppression of the bishop. In 1204 a number of fugitives 
 were gladly received Avithin the territory of Enguerran 
 III. of Couci ; but the bishop protested against this in- 
 vasion of his feudal rights, and the unhappy villeins had 
 to return. Two years later a quarrel between the bishop 
 and his chapter gave new hope to the peasants. The 
 canons already at feud Avith their prelate accused him 
 of ill-treating his serfs. The metropolitan chapter of 
 Rheims judged as arbiter between them, and compelled 
 the bishop to restore to the peasants their fixity of 
 tallage (recognised in 1185), and to submit all disputes 
 to the judgment of his chapter. Here, as far as the 
 reign of Philip is concerned, our information ends. 
 The case is typical of the difficulties with which the 
 kings had to contend in their dealings with the move- 
 ment towards refranchisement. Themselves willing to 
 do anything to increase privileges which should ally 
 new associations to themselves, they were often overcome 
 by the strength of the feudal organisation which they 
 would have gladly depressed. 
 
 An examination of Philip's legal acts shows how 
 
V THE ADVANCE OF THE MONARCHY 145 
 
 constantly he was concerned in this contest between 
 fendalism and extra-feudal association. Twenty cases 
 of intervention between the years 1182 and 1220 may 
 thus be summarised. In 1182 Philip confirmed the 
 charter which he had granted to the townsmen of 
 Corl>ie, and which the abbat had endeavoured to revoke. 
 In 1190 he intervened in a dispute between commune 
 and abbat, and promised a final settlement on his return 
 from the crusade. At Messina, a few months later, as 
 in the case of the Laonnais, he gave a new decision — this 
 time that the commune should remain as it was in his 
 father's day, annidling all innovations prejudicial to the 
 abbey. In 1183 he confirmed a decision of his grand- 
 father to repress the unjust pretentions of the commune 
 of Soissons. In 1184 he suppressed the commune of 
 Chateauneuf de Tours, just then fallen into his hands. 
 In 1187, probably, he first guaranteed large liberties to 
 his citizens of Orleans " to take away the burden of the 
 city." These gave considerable powers to the burghers 
 both against his own prev6t and against their serfs. In 
 February 1192 he granted a commune to Hesdin, in 
 Artois, and accepted a composition for his annual dues 
 from the commune of Noyon. He intervened later, in 
 1196 and 1223, between the bishop and the commune of 
 this city ; and he also issued an ordinance, undated, 
 which is of extreme importance in the history of the 
 judicial power of the airia regis. He ordered that if the 
 bishop should have a complaint against the commune or 
 an}^ member of it, it should be adjudicated by freemen 
 of the bishop, and if the judgment should be accepted 
 by the commune it should stand firm ; if not, appeal 
 should lie to the king, and the curia should issue a final 
 
146 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 judgment. In 1193 he intervened to define the rights 
 of the abbat of S. Pierre-le-Vif and the commune of 
 Sens. In 1194 he declared the rights and customs of 
 the citizens of Arras, and in the next year he warned 
 the mayor, ^chevins, and jur^s of that city to make no 
 encroachment on the rights of the Church. In the 
 same year he is found recognising the existence of the 
 commune of fitampes, which he suppressed in 1199. In 
 1200 he made an order regarding the collection of 
 tallages in Bapaume by the mayor, echevins, and jures. 
 In 1201 he confirmed all the hansas (guilds) of Mantes, and 
 granted the pr^votship to the mayor and commune at 
 a rent of 1100 Hatcs parisis. In 1202 he banished from 
 his realm certain offenders against the commune of 
 Laon, and forgave to the commune any grievances he 
 might have against it. Thirteen years later he con- 
 firmed an agreement between the same commune and 
 the chapter. In 1204 he granted a commune to the 
 inhabitants of Andel}^, which he had just taken, but 
 the privileges given to win their loyalty were not con- 
 tinued when there was no further danger of an attack 
 on Normandy. In 1204 he gave to the commune of 
 Poitiers the statutes of the Eouen commune, a type the 
 least free of any that were granted, and one which the 
 French kings readily followed when they had acquired 
 the Norman capital. Filli^vre received a commune in 
 1205, and in the same year the commune of Chaumont, 
 near Beauvais, won the lease of the prdvotship. Cappi, 
 near Peronne, about the same time received a commune 
 on the northern model, and a similar one was granted 
 to Athies in 1211. In 1209 the kins: confirmed the 
 
 o 
 
 agreement between the count and the commune of 
 
V THE ADVANCE OF THE MONARCHY 147 
 
 Montreuil. In 1209 he confirmed his father's charter 
 to Compi^gne, and he frequently intervened to recognise 
 settlements between the abbat and the commune. In 
 1214, 1217, 1218, he recognised the privileges of 
 Peronne. In 1220 he leased his windmills at Crepi to 
 the commune. 
 
 Many other instances might be given. It might be 
 shown how ready Avas Philip to confirm existing charters, 
 and license them in the royal registers, as when he con- 
 firmed the charter of Amiens in 1185; how gladly he 
 gave the right of association, taking care to base it on 
 principles the most favom^able to his own position as 
 lord, as when in 1204 he sent to the inhabitants of 
 Niort, in Poitou (whom King John had already recog- 
 nised as ha\dng a commune), the etablissements of Eouen 
 as a model for their communal organisation ; how he 
 made it a practice from the beginning of his reign to 
 grant privileges to all towns which he added to his 
 dominions, as to Tournai in 1187; how carefully he 
 considered local circumstances before he issued each 
 particular grant, as in the case of the modifications of 
 the charter of Mantes when its privileges were bestowed 
 on Chaumont and on Pontoise. But enough has been 
 said to enable us to reach some conclusions with regard 
 to the nature of the urban and rural constitutions which 
 were obtained during the reign of Philip Augustus and 
 to the character of the privileges which they involved, 
 and to estimate the personal relation of the king to 
 the movement towards enfranchisement. 
 
 From the charters granted or confirmed by Philip 
 Augustus at least three types emerge. Of the south, 
 since Philip had practically no relations with its towns, 
 
148 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 we need not speak. First, in the north, where all trace 
 of Eoman municipal organisation had perished, and 
 where the inhabitants of the towns were exposed to the 
 opposition of a strong baronage and a powerful array 
 of great prelates, the victory of the citizens was won 
 through the progress of commerce and the development 
 of industrial forces. Along the great trade route from 
 Italy through Germany and Flanders there grew up in 
 the cities associations of merchants and craftsmen, who 
 became rich through commerce, and united through 
 common interest, and who sealed their commercial success 
 by winning political power. From city to city spread 
 the ideas which guilds and trades' unions fostered, and 
 the northern French cities took example from their 
 neighbours under the emperor or the count of Flanders. 
 The townsmen banded together to "swear the commune." 
 The charters won from baron or bishop natm^ally show 
 traces of the importance of commercial considerations, 
 but they bear witness also to the wide scope of the 
 movement and the strength of the cities of the north. 
 The great town halls that in northern France, as in 
 Flanders, still testify to the dignity of the mercantile 
 corporations, fitly represent the pride and power of the 
 bourgeois in the new constitutions. Every inhabitant 
 in the town was obliged to swear to the commune. 
 Only those were fully citizens who had a house Avithin 
 the town. As a unit the commune stood side by side 
 with baron and bishop in the feudal hierarchy. It had 
 right of justice, right of making war, ^^dth its own 
 army, its own fortifications, and city -chest. The com- 
 mune generally, if not always, implies a mayor. He 
 was assisted by a number of echevins or of jures, the 
 
V THE ADVANCE OF THE MONARCHY 149 
 
 successors of the Karling scahlni, or the presumed 
 representatives of those who had first sworn to the 
 constitution. 
 
 The greater part of this northern region lay outside 
 the direct domain of the French king, and his attitude 
 towards particular efforts for emancipation was affected 
 by circumstances, as in the case of the commune of the 
 Laonnais. In the centre of Gaul, and within the 
 domains of the French king, a different type of con- 
 stitution was obtained. The citizens were not strong 
 enough to win their rights at the point of the sword, 
 or to enforce them by the power of their commercial 
 supremacy. The type of the urban charters of this 
 district has been found in the charter gr^-nted by Louis 
 VII. to the little town of Lorris. Here the villeins 
 become the king's burghers. Their dues to the crown 
 are defined, their liability to taxation, purveyance, 
 custom-dues, and the like, strictly limited. While they 
 have no such complete self-government as the communes 
 of the north, they are under none of the dangers Avhich 
 the right to make peace and war, the power to make 
 alliances with great potentates, involve. The charter 
 of Lorris proved popular among both barons and villeins. 
 It was largely copied. Paris itself was the supreme 
 example of its use. 
 
 In the west, in Normandy, Poitou, Saintonge, and the 
 more northern lands of the house of Henry II. the type 
 is that of the etablissements given by that great king 
 in Rouen. Here the liberties granted were more 
 restricted than in north or centre. A hundred peers 
 chose every year twenty -four jur^s, twelve of whom 
 were echevins and twelve counsellors, to administer 
 
150 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 justice. From three candidates presented by the peers 
 the king chose a mayor : and within the town the king 
 maintained his own officers. To the king alone did the 
 " haute justice " belong, and by him alone could the 
 militia be called out. 
 
 Such were the general types of urban constitution 
 with which Phihp had to deal. His attitude towards 
 them determined in no small degree the future of the 
 French monarchy. Where his father and grandfather 
 had never been more than half favourable he became 
 definitely friendly, and thus he prepared for his grand- 
 son the period of subjugation, by which the towns 
 became the absolute property of the sovereign. The 
 most significant expression of the general aims which 
 directed Philip's policy towards the communes is to be 
 obtained, perhaps, from two special methods which he 
 adopted. Following the example of his father he 
 frequently associated himself with a local lord in the 
 possession of his domain by contracts of pariage, wherein 
 rights were shared. This gave many opportunities of 
 interference to the crown and tended to place the barons 
 more and more under the king's control. In a similar 
 way letters of jrrotecMon were issued, which placed a 
 particular town under the direct political authority of 
 the crown. Then without in either case granting 
 charters the king came to share rights and to exercise 
 authority — a position of which he knew well how to 
 avail himself, and which his successors extended into 
 still more definite domination. In Philip's action a 
 definite policy may be traced. He continued communal 
 organisation in Corbie, Soissons, Noyon, Compit'gne, 
 Laon, S. Riquier, Senlis, Beauvais, and many other 
 
V THE ADVANCE OF THE MONAKCHY 151 
 
 towns, taking part with the citizens against local lords 
 and prelates. Thus he raised up against the nobles a 
 new estate pledged to alliance with the crown. Within 
 the lands which he added to his domain, or of which 
 he obtained influence, he confirmed the charters which 
 had been already granted, — in Vermandois, Artois, and 
 Flanders the widest municipal lil)erties, and in the lands 
 won from the Ange\an house the lesser privileges which 
 the Norman dukes and counts of Anjou had conferred. 
 He did more. Not only did he confirm old grants : 
 he constantly founded new communes, and that, con- 
 trary to the custom of his father, within his own 
 domain. 
 
 For this new policy three reasons have been assigned. 
 First, the military importance of the communes must be 
 observed. Their troops, it is true, were by no means of 
 first-rate capacity. At Bouvines, though the militia of 
 many northern communes, not least the men of Arras, 
 Beauvais, Amiens, and Compiegne, stood in front of the 
 king, exposed to the charge of the German knights, 
 they stood there simply to be beaten. But if they were 
 no more than '' food for powder " — if the anachronism 
 be allowed — in the field, they at least served to guard 
 fortresses, to man their own w^alls, and oppose a stout 
 resistance to the march of an invading army. A 
 second reason, probably still more powerful, may be 
 found in the king's pecuniary needs. Every concession 
 meant a gain in hard cash. Philip's treasury under- 
 went an extraordinary strain. The long struggle 
 with the Plantagenets, the policy of diplomacy and 
 aggression, the negotiations and quarrels with Rome, 
 all meant a large demand ; and chief among the sources 
 
152 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 to which he could turn to replenish his coffers were the 
 towns. If they won their liberties, they paid for them. 
 The third reason has already been touched upon in 
 passing. In the new communes the crown found a new 
 political ally against great prelates and great barons. 
 With the growth of feudal privilege, and the tendency 
 towards the feudalisation of every office, the relations 
 between the great estates and the crown had undergone 
 a perilous change. Philip called a new estate into 
 existence to redress the balance of the old. 
 
 But it would be greatly to underrate the con- 
 queror's ability to restrict his reasons to such as 
 these. His foresight and his grasp of principle were 
 rare among medieval sovereigns. He saw, there can 
 be no doubt, with a true statesman's eye, into the 
 future. He had some conception of what liberty meant, 
 and what equality. He was more than a feudal 
 monarch. While he was founding absolutism he was 
 destroying hundreds of petty tyrannies. Though he 
 was a feudal sovereign, he has some claims to be 
 considered a king of the people. With his astuteness 
 and craft were mingled many popular gifts. If he was 
 "well-beloved," he certainly, after his own fashion, 
 loved his people, and among the glories of his reign his 
 relations with the urban communities was perhaps the 
 greatest and the most lasting. 
 
 If Philip was a king with a purpose in regard to all 
 the towns, most especially had he a purpose in regard 
 to Paris. Paris, the home of the Capetian kings, had 
 not escaped the influence of the great movement of the 
 age. There the ancient corporation of nautcB Farisienses 
 had survived from Eoman times, and was still, under 
 
V THE ADVANCE OF THE MONARCHY 153 
 
 the title of ■inarduinds dc Veau, mercaim'es aqi(a% at the 
 head of the commercial life of the city. It was to this 
 body that the kings granted charters with privileges for 
 the city. In 1121 Louis VI, in 1170 Louis VII., gave 
 special rights and special statutes. The privileges 
 recognised were declared to descend from ancient times. 
 They placed the whole trade of the city under the 
 direction of the ancient corporation. The guild system 
 in its fullest development was represented in Paris 
 by the triumph of the marchands de Veau. On the 
 corporation thus recognised, the kings relied in all their 
 subsequent difficulties, and Philip followed up the 
 policy of his predecessors by special favours and 
 special grants. He first took in hand the Avork of 
 making Paris a great city. He first paved the streets 
 and surrounded the city with fortified walls. "It 
 happened that after certain days King Philip, semper 
 Augustus, making some stay in Paris, was pondering on 
 the business of his realm as he walked in his palace, 
 and coming to a window whence he would often for 
 pleasure look upon the Seine, he observed how the 
 carriages passing through the mire stirred up the mud, 
 whence issued a horrible stench. Determined not to 
 endure this, he thought out an arduous but necessary 
 work, which none of his predecessors, whether from its 
 great difficulty or its cost, had dared to undertake. 
 He called together the burghers with the prevot of the 
 city, and ordered by royal authority that all the streets 
 and ways of the whole city of Paris should be paved 
 with hard and strong stones." So Pigord tells the tale, 
 and he adds in the true medieval spirit that the city 
 which had been called Lutea (Lutetia) from the stench 
 
154 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 of its mud, was now named Paris after Priam's son, 
 the ancestor of the Prankish kings. 
 
 The city then was ruled by a royal prevot, the 
 officer who guarded the royal rights in the king's 
 domains. By his side stood the great corporation by 
 which so much of the work that Philip ordered was 
 carried out. In recognition of their labours on the 
 streets and the walls, they received in 1192 enlarged 
 privileges, by which their monopoly of the traffic of the 
 Seine was rendered more stringent. Further privileges 
 were also granted to the marcJiands de Veau. In 1213 
 they received the right to exact dues from every boat 
 which touched at the great bridge of Paris. The 
 weights and measures were also placed under their 
 direction, with the right of jurisdiction over all cases 
 which arose in connection with it. For the constitution 
 of the city itself Philij) had made an important pro- 
 vision in the directions before his departure for the 
 crusade. While in other places he set up a council 
 of four "prudent, lawful, and well- esteemed men" 
 to advise the prev6t, in Paris he put six, and these 
 members, it would appear, of his own council. Thus 
 Paris never received the full privileges of self-govern- 
 ment. It was never a commune : it remained under 
 the royal prevot. But the council of six burghers, 
 without whose advice the prevot could not act, both 
 conferred considerable powers upon the citizens, and 
 prepared the way for the final establishment of a 
 permanent municipality under S. Louis. 
 
 How far the pr6v6tship had become under Philip a 
 saleable office it is impossible to say. It is probable 
 that the king took large gifts from the men he 
 
V THE ADVANCE OF THE MONARCHY 155 
 
 appointed, and that he chose as his representatives 
 persons well acquainted with the trade of the city^ 
 but it is unlikely that the post was actually put up for 
 sale among the citizens as Joinville declares it was 
 before the reforms of S. Louis. 
 
 Philip may claim then to be the founder of the 
 medieval Paris. Not only did he begin the paving of 
 the principal streets, but he founded the great markets, 
 and gave the city protection through the fortified wall and 
 the erection of the " grand " and " petit " chatelets. Like 
 many of the monarchs of his time he was a great builder. 
 Many a city owes its wall, its castles, its chief churches 
 to his inspiration — many a little village has a church 
 endowed or built by his hand. He took in hand the 
 beautifying of towns : under him town life was to 
 become pleasant, luxurious, as well as secure. And in 
 Paris, while the military knights erected the Temple, 
 and the bishop began the matchless church of Notre 
 Dame, Philip set up outside the city the Louvre which 
 should have so famous a history. An enthusiastic bio- 
 grapher, not altogether without foundation, might call 
 Paris the creation of Philip the Conqueror. If Philip 
 was thus careful of his chief city, he was no less the 
 patron of the great University that was springing up 
 in its midst. It was Philip who gave to the masters 
 and scholars their first charter of privilege. After 
 the tumult of 1200, when several of the students were 
 slain by citizens, Philip took stern vengeance. He 
 ordered that any person found ill-treating a student 
 should be arrested by the first passer-by and delivered 
 to instant justice, and from such ofi'enders he took away 
 the right of recourse to the ordeal or to wager of battle. 
 
156 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 All scholars he admitted to privilege of clergy, thus 
 placing them under the judgment of ecclesiastical 
 tribunals alone. In the universities, as he saw, were 
 rising up strong and firm supports of the monarchic 
 claims. The contests of the schoolmen, the passionate 
 pursuit of reality through the shifting mirage of 
 intangil^le phenomena, were training thinkers who 
 should find moral bases for the assertions of royal power. 
 Theologians were debating theories which gave tradi- 
 tional and scriptural support to the assumptions of the 
 crown, and lawyers were elaborating a science which 
 should confirm the sovereign as the source and centre of 
 all authority. 
 
 This survey of the different estates and classes with 
 which the crown was brought into relation, and of 
 Philip's policy towards them, aids us in estimating the 
 difiiculties, as well as the strength, of the monarchy in 
 the early thirteenth century. But no picture of the 
 social order would be complete which did not take 
 account of the general spirit of lawlessness which accom- 
 panied the gradual decay of the feudal system. France, 
 even more than other nations, was year by year in 
 different districts the prey of wandering bands of dis- 
 banded soldiers, mercenaries discharged after a short 
 campaign, and petty knights who had little to lose by 
 almost avowedly assuming the life of freebooters. The 
 constant wars between small feudal lords, merging into 
 or shooting off from the great racial or dynastic hostili- 
 ties, covered the country with reckless warriors, whose 
 whole work was fighting, and whose hand was against 
 every man. Soon every man's hand was against them. 
 From Eome and in many a local synod the Church put 
 
V THE ADVANCE OF THE MONARCHY 157 
 
 forth anathemas. The kings crushed, whenever they 
 had the chance, with heavy hand. Voluntary associa- 
 tions sprang up to enforce the Peace and the Truce of 
 God, the pathetic fictions by which the eleventh century 
 had endeavoured, if not to heal its wounds, at least to 
 prevent their spreading into a general disease. After 
 the Lateran council of 1179 had formally excommuni- 
 cated the Braban^ons, Bragmanni, Cotteraiix, or by what- 
 ever malicious or barbarous name they should be called, 
 a new zest was given to the war of God in which the 
 blood-stained brigands were put down without mercy by 
 the sword. At Notre Dame de Puy en Velai, a famous 
 centre of pilgrimage, a carpenter named Durand had a 
 vision which bade him raise a new society to check the 
 outrages and bring back the peace of God. Bishops 
 and clerks, barons and their vassals, listened to him 
 with amazement and conviction. The Society of the 
 Brothers of God's Peace, or White Hoods, sprang up, 
 which first set itself to make peace in Southern Gaul, 
 and then to suppress at the sword's point the bands of 
 murderers from whom every district had suffered. As 
 patron of such societies, as general champion of the poor 
 clerks and the oppressed peasants, the king had a great 
 opportunity, and Philip took advantage of it to the full. 
 A survey of the position of the monarchy during the 
 years 1180 to 1223 shows that it advanced not merely 
 by conquest and political intrigue, but by the natural 
 growth of institutions, by the influence of a philosophy 
 which sought for a representative of abstract unity, and 
 by the progress of commerce which looked to the crown 
 for support and privilege. Philip called himself the 
 Protector of the Church and of the People, as well as 
 
158 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap, v 
 
 Conqueror and Augustus. The strength of his power 
 lay in the growing sense of the protection which it 
 afforded, and in the msdom with which he carried into 
 action the principles which were to command the 
 future. 
 
CHAPTER YI 
 
 PHILIP AND THE PAPACY 
 
 Beset on all sides by dangers within and without, it 
 would have been well if Philip could have relied upon 
 strong moral forces to support him. A virtuous king of 
 the Franks, aggressive and masterful in his own am- 
 bitions, yet a Crusader and a traditional guardian of 
 the churches, might have relied on the assistance which 
 the spiritual power at the centre of European politics 
 could give in many and important ways. But Philip's 
 character did not run after the fashion which popes 
 would approve. A man of hot passion and in\dncible 
 obstinacy, he was determined to have and to hold what- 
 ever his fancy desired. And it was his fortune to meet 
 as an antagonist on a cpiestion of simplest Christian 
 morals one of the greatest men who ever sat in the chair 
 of S. Peter. 
 
 Philip's first wife, Elizabeth, died on March 15, 
 1190, leaving him the son who was to be Louis VIII. 
 The crusade gave short time for his regrets. Three 
 months after she had been laid to rest in Notre Dame, 
 Philip was taking his standard from S. Denys. On his 
 return he was deep in plots and treaties against Richard 
 
160 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 of England. His first wife had given him a politic 
 alliance. Why should he not seek a new sui3port with a 
 second spouse *? France and Denmark had already close 
 intercourse. Shakespeare, when he sent Laertes to Paris, 
 was rightly representing the custom of the twelfth 
 century. Many a Dansker had studied in learning or 
 in war or the arts of polite life at the capital of the 
 Frankish king : a Danish college received the young 
 sojourners from the north. Denmark itself was winning 
 back some of the fame in Europe which the great Cnut 
 had given it. Alliances with Germany were constant, 
 and with England the Danish king had now a family 
 connexion. Cnut YI. married the daughter of Henry the 
 Lion of Saxony. He was thus by marriage the nephew 
 of Richard L His father Waldemar had left several 
 daughters. Of these the second, Ligeborgis, was "beautiful 
 in face, more beautiful in soul," and not, it would seem, 
 more than eighteen years old. For her hand Philip in 
 the spring of 1193 sent an embassage to ask, — Stephen, 
 bishop of Noyon at its head, the son of that Walter the 
 sub -chamberlain, who stood for so many years at the 
 king's right hand. Cnut received the ambassadors with 
 barbaric splendour and their request with undissembled 
 delight. "What,'' said he, "will your master ask as 
 dower ?" " The right of Denmark to England, and for a 
 year the fleet and army of the Danes." The medieval 
 passion for concrete rights stood out in the request, as it 
 did in the fantastic claim which Louis VIII. made later 
 to the Endish throne. Such rights were as readilv 
 granted as they were easily asked, but to give troops, 
 with the Wends at his gates, was more than Cnut could 
 do. Philip might land in England from a Danisli fleet. 
 
VI PHILIP AND THE PAPACY 161 
 
 but the Danish king could not part with his protection, 
 and was not ready to 1)6 embroiled wdth King Eichard. 
 Ten thousand marks, demanded instead, were given. 
 The poor king of the North would strain his resources, 
 he said, to show his sense of the honour of alliance wdth 
 the great Philip. No fear need he noAv have, replied the 
 French envoy, of the hatred of the Emperor's men, the 
 Germans, Avho proudly took for their own the name of 
 Rome. Thus viewed, the marriage is seen to be part of 
 Philip's general European policy, as well as an illustration 
 of his hostility to the Angevins. 
 
 In the summer Ingeborgis sailed from Denmark 
 under charge of Peter, bishop of Eoskilde, who had 
 himself studied in France, and with a gallant train. 
 Philip met her at Amiens, with a great escort of 
 bishops and barons. He bestow^ed on her, as dowser, 
 the dependencies of the prevotships of Orleans, Ch6ci, 
 Chateauneuf, and Neuville. On the Vigil of the 
 Assumption, August 14, they were wedded in the great 
 cathedral. On the next day the young bride w^as 
 crowned by the king's uncle, William of Rheims the 
 "white-handed," with the bishops, Peter of Arras, John 
 of Cambray, Thibault of Amiens, Lambert of T^rouanne, 
 and Stephen of Tournai. Young, timid, utterly ignorant 
 of the language of her new country, Ingeborgis found 
 herself, the first day of her married life, the possessor of 
 the great powers which custom had allowed to the wives 
 of the Prankish kings : but the happiness of her wedding, 
 the glory of her coronation, were short-lived. On the 
 very day she was crowned queen, her husband cast her 
 off. Even while the crowning was being solemnised, he 
 was seen to tremble and turn pale, and hardly could he 
 
 M 
 
162 PHILIP AUGUSTUS onAP. 
 
 endure till the ceremony was at an end. Chroniclers 
 sought in vain for a reason. Unsavoury details appeared 
 in the letters which the controversy soon produced. 
 Ingeborgis said he was her husband, and she knew not 
 why he hated her. Philip felt some physical loathing, 
 and vowed never to have her for wife. 
 
 He may well have thought that to be unwed was as 
 easy as to be wed. It was an age of papal diplomacy, 
 and the mass of Canon Law, so soon as it had time to be 
 investigaterl by skilled students, was found capable of 
 a thousand interpretations, and yet often so rigid and 
 severe as to demand of necessity a power of dispensa- 
 tion. The Canon Law tied knots so hard that some man 
 sometimes must cut them. The central tribunal of inter- 
 national law, the supreme court of ecclesiastical appeal, 
 was at Eome, and it was not slow to exercise the power 
 which necessity imposed upon it. The Church must have 
 its equity : and it must be administered by a court of 
 trained lawyers. The popes and their curia must inter- 
 pret and overrule what Gratian and his school had 
 codified. So soon as it was recognised that the rules for- 
 bidding marriage within remote degrees of kindred and 
 affinity covered an enormous field of natural and artificial 
 relationship, a power of dispensation became essential, 
 and not less necessary a power Avhich should decree in the 
 last resort how far the rules extended. Philip was im- 
 patient of delay. Once again, it is said, he visited the 
 queen as she lay in the house of the abbey of 8. Maur- 
 des- Fosses, near Paris. It was indeed an amazing 
 marriage, and concerning its strange incidents, those 
 were wisest who held their tongues. 
 
 The king would have sent the unhappy girl home 
 
VI PHILIP AND THE PAPACY 163 
 
 again, but she would not return. He determined then 
 to })roceed in a formal manner for the dissolution of the 
 marriage. But he did not at once appeal to the Roman 
 court. He preferred to win from his own timid prelates 
 what the popes might deny. On November 4, 1193, a 
 council of bishops met at Compitjgne. Men were ready 
 to swear that the marriage was void on account of the 
 near kindred of the parties. Their fathers were of kin, 
 for Philip I., great-grandfather of the bridegroom was 
 brother to a Danish princess, ancestress of Ingeborgis. 
 >She was akin, too, to Philip's first wife in at least 
 two ways, and elaborate pedigrees were prepared — or 
 concocted. The bishops declared a divorce without 
 hesitation. 
 
 Ingeborgis had in vain appealed for aid to the arch- 
 bishop of Eheims. She could not speak the tongue of 
 her persecutors. The sentence reached her only through 
 interpreters. Her one word was, " Mala Francia, mala 
 Francia : Eoma, Roma." She was sent to the convent 
 of Beaurepaire, a cell of the house of Cysoing (the scene, 
 years later, of Philip's greatest victory), and there Avaited 
 with prayer and vigil for the judge that should do her 
 right. Cnut was not slow to plead his injured sister's 
 cause before Celestine III. She herself appealed, and 
 the bishop of Tournai endeavoured to arouse some sym- 
 pathy in the breasts of the French bishops. If Philip 
 had thought, like so many of his contemporaries, that 
 everything could be bought at Rome, or if he had relied 
 upon the ingenuity of the canonists, whom his influence 
 could reach, he soon found his error. The scandal was 
 too gross ; and the popes were the champions of injured 
 women. The Danish envoys easily proved the genea- 
 
164 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 logies to be mere fables. Celestine sent a legate to 
 Philip. The king was obdurate. Then the pope, " as 
 the common father of all Christians, and the guardian 
 of the divine rule upon earth, in virtue of the fulness of 
 the papal power, and with the assent of his brethren, 
 declared the sentence of divorce to be null and void, 
 illegal, pronounced against a woman ignorant of the 
 language of the country and without defence.'' 
 
 Philip showed no sign of submission. He imprisoned 
 the Danish envoys : he turned a deaf ear to the protests 
 of pope and bishops : he set about to find a new wife. 
 Several damsels were suggested. The daughter of Conrad, 
 count Palatine, refused to marry one who had ill-treated 
 a noble girl. But another German alliance was found. 
 Agnes, daughter of the Duke of Meran, niece of the 
 Margrave of Meissen, in June 1196 became Philip's wife. 
 Three years passed by in threats and negotiations. New 
 legates, new gatherings of bishops, new letters from the 
 aged pope, attempted to deal with this new scandal. 
 And meantime Ingeborgis remained practically a 
 prisoner, patiently waiting for justice. She was forced, 
 it is said, to sell her jewels, her very clothes, to seek 
 alms. " The king,'' she wrote to the Holy Father, " can 
 allege no fault against me, yet he scorns the letters of 
 your holiness and the mandates of the cardinals. I die 
 if your pity does not come to my aid." The bishop 
 of Tournai renewed his appeals on her behalf : even the 
 white-handed metropolitan of Pheims was touched. But 
 soon the unhappy queen was to have a stronger defender. 
 
 On January S, 1198, Innocent HI., the greatest of 
 medieval popes, ascended the papal throne. One of his 
 first acts was to write a formal letter to Philip, announc- 
 
VI THILIP AND THE PAPACY 165 
 
 ing his accession, and significantly promising his aid in 
 all things ^vhich belong to God. Immediately after- 
 wards, he wrote with no uncertain sound to the bishop 
 of Paris : " Whom God hath joined together, let not 
 man put asunder. We write not this to instruct yon, 
 of whose knowledge in the divine law we are well 
 informed, but that we should make clear the force of 
 our intention. By so much as we love our dear son in 
 Christ, Philip, king of the Franks, and intend to 
 honour him with our special favour, by so much the 
 more are we grieved that he should have striven so far 
 as in him lay to put away our dearest daughter in 
 Christ, his c[ueen. Wherefore shall you warn him, and 
 enjoin for the pardon of his sins that he straightway take 
 to him again the said queen, lest he incur the divine 
 wrath, and infamy among men, and thereby suffer 
 irreparable loss." He was not long in writing with 
 equal directness to Philip himself. He had already 
 intervened to confirm peace between him and the count 
 of Flanders. With the charity of a Christian prelate 
 and the dignity of a sovereign. Innocent spoke of the 
 glories of France, and the papal affection towards his 
 dynasty. Then passing swiftly to the scandal of which 
 all men talked, "I command you," he said, "that you 
 judge your own acts so that you be not condemned of 
 others. Recall your lawful wife, and then we will hear 
 all that you may lawfully urge. If this you do not, no 
 power shall turn us to right or left till justice be done." 
 This was the tenor of the letter. It was followed by the 
 arrival of a legate, Peter of Capua, who was instructed 
 to insist, under pain of interdict, on the immediate 
 repudiation of Agnes. 
 
166 PHILir AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 But even popes at the end of the twelfth century 
 could not turn politics as they would, or disentangle 
 moral questions wholly from difficulties of statesman- 
 ship. Philip did not yield. Innocent might have 
 immediately excommunicated him. Certainl}^, but 
 not without involving in a far worse confusion and 
 bloodshed the already dangerous contest between the 
 claimants of the empire, and adding new difficulties in 
 the way of the peace between France and England, 
 which it was the aim of the same legation to produce 
 with a view to the great purpose of Innocent's heart, 
 — a united and successful crusade. Surrounded on 
 every side by war and rumour of war, called to inter- 
 vene in Germany, Norway, England, Leon, Hungary, 
 Portugal, Innocent was compelled to wait before he 
 took extreme measures against the king of the Franks. 
 Early in 1199 Philip was corresponding with him, 
 pointing out how dangerous would be the election of 
 Otto to the empire, and seeking his support for Philip 
 of Swaljia. In sight of the great principles which were 
 involved in the relations between the pajmcy and the 
 empire, it might seem for the moment as if Innocent 
 forgot the wrongs of Ingeborgis. In any case the legate 
 made no impression upon the French king. For ten 
 months he pursued the affair too tepidly, saj^s a chroni- 
 cler. And meanwhile Eichard of England died, John 
 succeeded, and the cry of the Christians in the East 
 still sounded in the ears of the pope. 
 
 At length in October 1199 Innocent wrote a long, 
 clear, and stern appeal to "the archbishops, bishops, 
 abbats, priors, and all the clergy in the realm of France." 
 He declared how illegal had been the di^•orce, how 
 
VI PHILIP AND TPIE PAPACY 167 
 
 great a scandal was Philip's conduct. He adjured the 
 clergy to use all means to convince the king of his sin. 
 He announced that the legate should once more warn him, 
 but if he resisted he should straightway pronounce the 
 interdict. And this done, the pope ordered all clerks, 
 under pain of deprivation, to cease from the performance 
 of ever}^ ecclesiastical function. On December 6, 1199, 
 a council summoned by the legate met at Dijon. The 
 archbishop of E-heims himself was present, and with 
 him were the archbishops of Lyons, Besan^on, and 
 Vienne, and many bishops and abbats. Messengers to 
 the king were refused admission, and he declared that 
 he had appealed to Rome. But at Eome the question 
 had already been decided, and the pope's word left no 
 excuse for delay. 
 
 For seven days the council sat. At length, at mid- 
 night on the 13th, a solemn procession passed through 
 the dark and deserted streets to the great cathedral. 
 For the last time they sang Litany and Miserere ; relics 
 were hidden away, the reserved Host was consumed, 
 the altars were stripped, the crucifix covered, the church 
 wrapped in gloom. Then the legate pronounced an 
 interdict on all the lands of the Frankish king so long 
 as his adulterous union with Agnes should continue. 
 For thirteen days after Christmas should the sentence 
 remain unpublished, to allow a last hour of repentance. 
 With groans and tears the dread order was received. 
 Then there was silence in the cathedral as there should 
 soon be in every church where the praises of God had 
 been sung. A few weeks later the sentence was pro- 
 nounced at Vienne, in the ancient kingdom of Burgundy. 
 Philip had fallen under the extreme sentence of the 
 
168 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 Church. Robert I. and Bertha, PhiHp I. and Bertrada, 
 had each incurred the Pope's condemnation. To their 
 successor came a still greater punishment, for a greater 
 crime. 
 
 On February 5, 1200, the interdict was put in force. 
 Some clergy, through terror of the king, or love of 
 their flocks, or striving to be at peace Avith all men, 
 would not publish it. Innocent would brook no resist- 
 ance. On March 11 he wrote again: "The remedy 
 is harsh in truth, but strong diseases are not cured by 
 gentle treatment." Some bishops still held out, and 
 chiefly Hugh of Auxerre, who looked, it Avas said, for 
 the archbishopric of Sens. Philip's rage burst out 
 against those who opposed him. "You bishops, you 
 care for nought; so long as you can eat your fat 
 benefices you care not what becomes of the poor folk. 
 But have a care, I will spill your wine -cup. Rather 
 would I lose half my lands than separate from Agnes 
 my wife." The bishop of Paris was robbed of all his 
 goods, and the bishop of Senlis barely escaped with 
 his life. Philip had learnt from Henry H. how to 
 treat a recalcitrant priesthood. He himself remained 
 in Paris or within its diocese, in his new Norman 
 conquests, or in the diocese of Sens. It may be that 
 where he was not the dread sentence might be re- 
 laxed. He was himself not excommunicate. That 
 last terror the pope still held over his head ; and 
 his uncle of Rheims still stood by him. In September 
 he wrote to complain of the severity of the legate, 
 and he summoned the clergy and barons to consult 
 with him. Agnes appeared before them to excite their 
 compassion, but with one accord they told him that 
 
VI PHILIP AND THE PAPACY 169 
 
 he must put her away. ''Is it true," said Philip to 
 his uncle, the metropolitan, "that the pope has de- 
 clared your sentence of divorce to he but a farce ? " 
 The archbishop was silent. "Then you are a fool 
 and madman to have pronounced it," cried the king. 
 Again he appealed to Rome, and Agnes pleaded for 
 her youth, her children, her innocent intent. At last 
 it seemed that the long strife might end. Every 
 one had turned against the king, and when the pope 
 sent, with another legate, cardinal Octavian of Ostia, a 
 kinsman of the king, it was seen that all that was 
 possible would be done to smooth the way for submission. 
 The king met the legates with respect. Their in- 
 structions were clear that he must abandon the wife he 
 had illegally taken, restore those he had dispossessed, 
 make reparation, receive back Ingeborgis. If this were 
 done, then might the question of divorce be thoroughly 
 sifted, in the presence of envoys of the Danish king 
 and with all legal forms. On September 7, 1200, a 
 great assembly met at the castle of S. Leger, near 
 Hambouillet. Ingeborgis herself lay there. An immense 
 crowd assembled, and watched, with keenest anxiety, 
 for the news of what was happening within. For a 
 time Philip held out ; then with the two legates he 
 went to his injured wife, for the first time since the 
 hasty visit in the convent. "The pope does me violence," 
 he said. She replied quietly, "No, he wills only that 
 justice should triumph." Then they led her before 
 the council, and Philip promised before all again to 
 take her to him. The bells pealed out, and the interdict 
 was at an end. 
 
 Even yet Philip had not fully yielded. He would 
 
170 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 not let Ingeborgis live with him. He declared that 
 she was his kinswoman, and he looked for the council 
 that had been promised to grant him a formal divorce. 
 Agnes was put away, and she bore him, a few weeks 
 later, a child whom Philip named after himself. Six 
 months, six weeks, six days, and a council met at 
 Soissons to decide the question. Meanwhile Inge- 
 borgis received, so the legate informed Innocent, all 
 the honours of a queen, but she was strictly confined 
 to the castle of Etampes, and no one w^as allowed to 
 see her without the king's special jDermission. Philip 
 left no stone unturned to influence the Roman Curia 
 in favour of a divorce. It was then that the supple 
 chaplain, William the Breton, j^aid so many visits to 
 Eome that his friend, Giles of Paris, the poet, said, 
 " These are not journeys that you take : you live at 
 Rome." In the register of Philip Augustus there 
 exists a curious list of the cardinals, with notes of those 
 who support the king, drawn up, it may be, at a later 
 date, but showing how carefully Philip's agents worked 
 in the Lateran. Octavian, it seemed, had been won 
 over by his kinsman, the king. The queen herself 
 complained of his attitude. Innocent, however, re- 
 mained firm. He wrote letters consoling Ingeborgis, 
 and pointing out how much had already been won, and 
 he advised the Danish king of the coming council. To 
 Octavian he wrote with decision. It was his duty to 
 urge the king to take back Ingeborgis as his wife. To 
 Philip he wrote, "There is no question of violence in 
 this submission, but only of right and of the salutary 
 treatment of the soul. We w^mdd exhort yon in fricndl}^ 
 fashion to take again the queen. No one is more higiily 
 
VI PHILIP AND THE PAPACY 171 
 
 placed by birth ; she is not only pure but even a saint, 
 by general confession. It is always your duty to fulfil 
 the commands that the Apostolic Sec has for a long- 
 time laid upon you, for they are serious. If these 
 commands are not fulfilled, you will give to the other 
 side a pretext to refuse an answer on the question of 
 right." 
 
 This was not all. The bishops who had not obeyed 
 the interdict had been suspended b}^ the legate, and 
 were now summoned to Rome. There they were 
 treated with severity, but eventually absolved. Hugh 
 of Auxerre was not allowed to receive the archbishopric 
 of Sens, the "wages of his iniquity." "My lord of 
 Auxerre shall sing true, henceforth," said a wit, "yet 
 shall he not gain so much as he lost by singing false." 
 It is indeed amazing to count the threads which Innocent 
 held in his hands in the autumn of 1201. Almost 
 every European sovereign was in direct relations on 
 some important matter with the Lateran, the difficulties 
 between France and England were in a critical con- 
 dition, and still the pope was pressing on a crusade 
 with all the ardour of an unquenchable enthusiasm. 
 
 On March 2, 1201, the council met at Soissons. 
 King and queen were both present. The Danish 
 envoys, with the archbishop of Lund himself, urged 
 the cause of their king's unhappy sister. Philip was 
 surrounded by a host of lawyers. The training which 
 provided him Avith diplomatists and administrators 
 should serve him now in a matter which he had so near 
 at heart. He claimed the dissolution of the marriage 
 on the ground of kinship. The Danish envoys replied 
 by urging that Philip had taken solemn oath to wed 
 
172 rillLIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 the lady : they declared that he was false and perjui'ed, 
 that Octavian, his kinsman, was no fair judge, that at 
 Kome alone should the cause be heard, and, refusing to 
 make farther plaint, they returned to their own land before 
 the legate John, cardinal of S. Paul, to whom also the 
 hearing of the suit was assigned, had arrived at Soissons. 
 
 Nevertheless, on the second legate's appearance the 
 council proceeded. For a fortnight the discussion con- 
 tinued. The English chronicler who tells of the council 
 relates that an unknown priest of marvellous elocjuence, 
 learning, and modesty, pleaded the cause of Ingeborgis, 
 and when he had done left the hall never to be seen 
 again. Marvellous though the incidents of the trial 
 may have been, more marvellous was its close. Philip 
 suddenly "wearied," says Pigord, "by the long delay, 
 leaving the cardinals and bishops without even saluta- 
 tion, early in the morn departed with Ingeborgis, his 
 wife, inf<jrming the court through his messengers that 
 he took away his wife with him as his own and would 
 not l)e separated from her.'' And he rode from the 
 town with his wife behind him on the saddle. Well 
 might Innocent have called the end of this amazing 
 marriage question, as he had called the divorce, " ludiljiii 
 fabula." 
 
 The council broke up. There was no cause before it. 
 Octavian remained in France. John returned to Italy. 
 No sentence had been pronounced, and Philip could, 
 if he would, cast the whole matter again into contest. 
 That this was his intention he made clear l)y a letter 
 which he at once sent to the pope. In this he recorded 
 the opening of the council, the departure of the Danish 
 envoys, the prolongation of the cause from day to day. 
 
VI PHILIP AND THE PAPACY 173 
 
 " Wc, therefore, seeing the vain delays and our manifest 
 })rcjudicc which should come through the sentence of 
 your legates, departed thence, seeing only that they 
 in no wise intended to end our suit." That the suit 
 should be heard again and brought to prompt conclusion 
 without the intervention of witnesses whom Ingeborgis 
 demanded, he now claimed. If this should be, then 
 ho would again appear. If not, he would no longer 
 try the suit. He ended l)y asking fur the legitimation 
 of the children whom Agnes had borne. 
 
 A few months later Agnes herself died — on July 19, 
 or 20, IHOI — at the Castle of Poissy. Her lover 
 buried her at Mantes in the Church of S. Corentin, 
 whore he founded later a Benedictine nunnery. At 
 the end of the year Innocent issued letters legitimising 
 her children. The son was declared ca})al)le of succeed- 
 ing to the throne. It was an act, as it seemed, of justice. 
 The second marriage itself was annulled. It was illegal 
 and contrary to the moral principles of the Church. 
 But a sentence of imllity of the first marriage, invalid 
 though it was, had l)een pronounced by the French 
 bishops, and on the faith of it Agnes, and even Philip, 
 might huvfully have wedded. The pope condemned sin, 
 he did not punish the innocent. Early in 1202 the 
 legitimation was pul^licly declared by all the French 
 bishops. Already a marriage had been arranged for 
 the little Philip with the baby daughter of Reginald 
 of Boulogne. The first act of Philip's tragic wedding 
 had ended. 
 
 The Prankish king could now turn again to his 
 German and English negotiations. Again he besought 
 Innocent to condemn Otto's cause and to support the 
 
174 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 new candidate ; aij;ain he drew closer the bonds that 
 b'nked him with Eome against the Angevins. In the 
 north Cnut VI. had warmly espoused the cause of Otto. 
 He had married his sister to William, Otto's brother, 
 whom some had thought of as heir to the English crown. 
 The cause of the Saxon Emperor seemed bright. 
 
 The marriage with Ingeborgis did not long remain 
 in the background. Philip, it seems, had never really 
 taken her back as his wife. When he had won his 
 way as to the legitimation of his children he again 
 besieired the ears of Innocent with cries for the dissolu- 
 tion of his marriage. Louis his father, the Emperor 
 Frederic, John of England himself within the last 
 few years, had had their causes tried by bishops of 
 their own. Why should he not have the same course 
 open 1 Innocent replied with dignity that in the case 
 of tlie emperor a legate had been present, that in the 
 two other cases the suit was unopposed. He declared 
 that he would hear the case himself, with all fit wit- 
 nesses and documents that might be presented. The 
 delays, he repeated, were of Philip's making. Had he 
 from the first acted honestly the suit would have been 
 ended long ago. Let him learn how much was lost by 
 too much haste. By letter after letter he insisted on the 
 proper treatment of Ingeborgis. She lived a solitary life 
 under the strictest guard. It was said that no priest 
 was ever allowed to approach her, and that she could 
 rarely hear mass. She was left almost without clothes, 
 quite without the common decencies of life. Her 
 piteous letters ]mt rarely reached the Lateran, and 
 when Innocent was aware of her condition he could do 
 no more than appeal to the king's honour, and finally 
 
VI PHILIP AND THE PAPACY 175 
 
 instruct the abbat of Casamari, his new legate, to 
 enforce the redress of her wrongs. For years the 
 political difficulties prevented any settlement. Inge- 
 borgis suffered : Innocent entreated and threatened : 
 but Philip remained obstinate, and gradually the French 
 barons formed a strong party around him to resist the 
 aggression of the Holy See. Philip in 1205 tried a 
 new plea. He declared that he was bewitched — that 
 he could not approach his wife. Sorcery was at work ; 
 only the dissolution of the marriage could save him. 
 Grotesquely this strange tale runs through the negotia- 
 tions between papal legates and the French and 
 English kings. Innocent was compelled to give it, 
 contemptuously, some attention. But he utterly failed 
 to bring the whole matter any nearer to a final conclu- 
 sion. Philip would have nothing to say to Ingeborgis, 
 and in other directions he was solacing himself by less 
 legitimate unions, which continued for some years. Of 
 one of these was born the young " Karlotides/' whom 
 the author of the Philippid eulogises. 
 
 Philip indeed felt himself at ease and his throne 
 secure. He had two sons recognised as legitimate. 
 He had many means of keeping the pope at arm's length. 
 In 1207 Innocent besought him to live with Ingeborgis 
 as his wife, or if that were impossible at least to allow 
 her the state and dignity of cpieeu. Philip sent the 
 abbat of S. Genevieve to Pome to press on the business 
 of the divorce, and to urge that his reunion with his 
 wife should not be regarded as a barrier to it. " Far 
 from it : " wrote Innocent, " if you desire to break the 
 charm you should approach reunion with your wife 
 with prayer, alms, the offering of the Holy Sacrifice, 
 
176 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 with fear of God and with faith." Still the stories of 
 sorcery grew. A priest declared that he had seen the 
 devil sitting on the queen's knees. Women added 
 curious details to the scandal. Every one talked of the 
 king's business, and Philip was sardonically immovable 
 and content. 
 
 He was indeed now able to put off the too-pressing 
 solicitations of the pope by changing the su])ject to one 
 which seemed even more near to the interests of the 
 Church. Already the crimes and heresies of Southern 
 Gaul cried urgently for the intervention of Rome. In 
 the early summer of 1208 Innocent sent the cardinal 
 deacon Guala to France, a man " learned in the law and 
 ornate with good manners,'' to urge the king to under- 
 take a crusade against the Albigenses. He was charged 
 at the same time to investigate the question of sorcery, 
 and if there should prove to be such an impediment 
 to pronounce the dissokition of the marriage. PhiKp 
 was not even yet put to his last shift. He induced 
 Ingeborgis to retire to a convent, and he now declared 
 that the marriage must be dissolved because she had 
 taken monastic vows. Innocent again repeated the 
 occasions under which a divorce by canon law might 
 be possible, but absolutely refused to pronounce a 
 dissolution of the marriage without a full investigation. 
 "Meanwhile," he declared, "you must give freedom to 
 the queen, so that she may be free to consult with her 
 kin, may have no violence to fear, and may prepare 
 herself as she thinks fit for the trial." The king 
 himself should be instructed by men learned in the law 
 that the pope decreed nothing anew, but was acting 
 entirely in accordance with the rules of canon law. No 
 
VI PHILIP AND THE PAPACY 177 
 
 sooner was power given to Guala to hold inquest in the 
 matter than Philip declared that the delay was intoler- 
 able. A brief letter which he sent to the legate at the 
 beginning of 1209 is worth cjuotation in full. 
 
 "Philip, by the grace of God, King of the Franks, 
 to his beloved Guala, cardinal deacon of S. Mary in 
 Porticu and legate of the apostolic see, salutation and 
 sincere goodwill. Your goodwill is aware that our clerk 
 whom we sent to the apostolic see is returned. The 
 lord pope puts so many matters and so many delays in 
 our business, that, as it seems to us, he does not will to 
 liberate us, as we need, at once. Wherefore, since it is 
 evident to us that he will not liberate us as it is 
 expedient for us, we command that, concerning that 
 matter, unless you have anything that may be done, you 
 shall make no further stay in this land." 
 
 So the affair dragged on. Innocent wrote to Philip 
 that the glory of his great conquests was dimmed hy his 
 conduct to his queen. To Ingeborgis he wrote of the 
 consolations of religion. " As by marriage you are called 
 to rule over others, be you also mistress of yourself, in 
 that strife whereby God would prove your virtue. 
 Support yourself in all your suffering with a contrite 
 spirit, not only with submission but with glad acceptance 
 of the Divine Will. Your Father would prove you as 
 fathers of this world prove their children, who bring 
 them up not in pleasures but in hardness." 
 
 Philip meanwhile was knitting closer his political 
 alliance with the Holy See. He was at least friendly 
 to the Albigensian war. He was summoning his 
 bishops to send men to aid the pope in his struggle 
 with Otto. He was still discussing unsavoury details 
 
 N 
 
178 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 with the pope and his envoys. He was still crying out 
 for a dissolution of his unhappy marriage. He was 
 still keeping Ingeborgis in strict seclusion. But he was 
 preparing none the less surely to submit to a reunion if 
 it should confirm by a stroncr alliance the basis of his 
 political power in Europe. In November 1210 he 
 promised to marry the daughter of Hermann, landgrave 
 of Thiiringia, if he could make the pope pronounce a 
 divorce. But in 1213, on the point of the invasion of 
 England, when he was trying to gather round him 
 every possible ally to ward off the danger of the great 
 coalition that was ready to press on him suddenly — 
 very likely by the advice of Guerin, his near friend and 
 chief counsellor, the famous warrior-statesman and clerk 
 — he took again his banished queen, " from whom," says 
 William the Breton (discreetly silent year by year as 
 to the earlier troubles) "he had separated now for 
 sixteen years and more,"^^aid:^ere was greaTt Jdy-fcrmrng 
 the people. 
 
 This act, in spite of elaborate historical investigations 
 of French and German students, remains little easier to 
 explain than Philip's long stubbornness or his first disgust. 
 The alliance of Denmark and its fleet, the blessing of 
 Innocent, the re-habilitation of his character in the eyes 
 of the French church and the people, these had suddenly 
 assumed a new worth in Philip's eyes. He may well 
 have wished to provide himself with a new ally at 
 the moment when John (13th May 1213) made peace 
 with the pope, and to win the pope's protection at a 
 time when he seemed to be likely to throw all his 
 weight on to the side of the coalition against France. 
 And in the results of his act he was not disappointed. 
 
VI PHILIP AND THE PAPACY 179 
 
 From that day, though dangers closed around him, he 
 rode triumphantly through. The victory of Bouvines 
 men took to be the Divine reward for the restoration of 
 the injiu-ed queen. From this time Ingeborgis resumed 
 her constitutional rights as Frankish queen. Charters 
 record her sanction, and the king himself confirms her 
 will in 1218 and promises benefactions in her melnory. 
 She outlived him, still exercising royal dignities, and 
 died at last in July 1236. The long struggle cannot 
 be said to mark any striking triumph of either king or 
 pope. The dogged obstinacy which lay behind Philip's 
 hot passions comes out in his persistent and determined 
 resistance to the voice of authority propounding the 
 law of Christian morals. His ingenuity and cunning 
 are no less evident, and equally so the width of his in- 
 terests and his grasp of political combinations over a 
 wide field. It is difficult in a short survey to give 
 any idea of the complications of European policy with 
 which the marriage question was involved. The effects 
 of political changes on the action of Philip on the one 
 hand and of Innocent on the other may, it is true, be 
 easily exaggerated. The changes cannot l}e traced with 
 anything like the same certainty as can those which the 
 successes or reverses of Frederic I. caused in the atti- 
 tude of Alexander III. to Henry 11. and Becket. 
 Innocent was a very different man from Alexander. 
 His letters can be read without the detection of any 
 weakness or enforced change of policy. He Avas per- 
 fectly clear all through in his willingness to investigate, 
 in a lawful manner, any reason that might be alleged 
 for the dissolution of the marriage, equally clear in his 
 assertion of the moral claims of the wife and the moral 
 
180 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 duties of the husband. So far as it was possible to 
 succeed he succeeded. He enforced the ^vithdrawal of 
 the illegal and dishonest divorce. He compelled Philip 
 to put away Agnes. He compelled him again to recog- 
 nise Ingeborgis as his lawful wife. But not even a pope 
 could compel a man to live with his wife or to give her 
 more l^han the necessaries of life. He could remonstrate 
 and even threaten, but there was a point at which the 
 legal sanction of the church definitely ceased. Innocent 
 went as far as he was justified in going, but not an inch 
 beyond. Philip for a long time set decency and good 
 feeling at defiance, but Innocent by his persistence, his 
 moderation, and the moral earnestness of his denuncia- 
 tions, turned against the French king the whole feeling 
 of his people and of Europe, and in the end won by 
 patience far more than he would have been able to 
 secure by anathema. 
 
 While Innocent was drawn in one direction by his 
 moral objections to Philip, he was drawn the opposite 
 way by the necessities of the church in Southern Gaul. 
 There the reconquest of the people by the church tended 
 inevitably to become the conquest of the land by the 
 French crown. 
 
 The end of the twelfth century and the beginning of 
 the thirteenth, a period of great intellectual activity 
 over a somewhat narrow field of investigation, was of 
 necessity a period of widespread intellectual revolt 
 against the doctrinal system of the church. Philosophy 
 studied in distortion, and theology apprehended in a 
 mist of words, naturally produced heresy, and heresy 
 produced rebellion. The history of the early church 
 repeated itself in the Gaul of the i\Iiddle Ages. Indi- 
 
VI PHILIP A^^D THE PAPACY 181 
 
 viduals, inspired l>y a genuine desire to repress abuses 
 and to restore a " primitive " or '' pure " Christian faith, 
 put their theories into practice, found them exaggerated 
 by disciples, and eventually were carried away by the 
 excesses of mobs who made any relaxation of the old 
 discipline an opportunity for the wildest moral diver- 
 gence. The age of Philip Augustus was an age of 
 Sectarianism in France. 
 
 As a rule throughout Europe the only opposition 
 which the Christian faith had met for centuries 
 was that presented b}^ the rigid and from time to 
 time aecaressive attitude of Judaism. Towards the 
 ancient people Philip's relations were changeable, selfish, 
 and treacherous. He found them in possession of a 
 reasonable security, with synagogues, liberties, and State 
 recognition. One of his first acts Avas to reverse the 
 toleration of his father. On a Sabbath in March 1180, 
 says Kigord, " all the Jews throughout France were taken 
 in their synagogues and then spoiled of their gold and 
 silver and raiment, as the Jews themselves spoiled the 
 Egyptians at the Exodus.'' Not content with this Philip 
 carried out a further "spoiling" a few months later. 
 He declared all debts to the Jews null and void, taking 
 to himself a fifth part of each debt which he released his 
 subjects from paying. This honest proceeding did not 
 satisfy either king or people. In April 1182 Philip 
 issued an edict that all Jews should depart from the 
 realm before midsummer day. They were allowed to 
 sell their property — a marvellous generosity, thinks 
 Kigord ; and by the end of July they had left the land. 
 To pass in 1182 over the borders of France into the 
 dominions of Henry II. was a hardship which we might 
 
182 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 easily exaggerate ] and it is clear from later evidence 
 that the expulsion was not complete. In 1192 Philip 
 himself burnt eighty of them at Brie-Comte-Kobert on 
 suspicion of the murder of a Christian, a barbarity such 
 as he delighted in. In 1197 he gave license to Jews to 
 return to his lands, and the edicts of the later years of 
 his reign contain many instances of regulations con- 
 cerning them. In 1204 we find several lists of Jews 
 suffered to remain in the land, with the amount of their 
 pledges. The names show that they had dwelt in 
 different parts of the country, from Normandy to 
 Orleans, Etampes, Senlis, and Bourges, He entered also 
 into the negotiations by which his great vassals suffered 
 Jews to dwell in their lands, and in 1219 he issued a 
 special etaJjlissement defining their rights and securing 
 their position, which may be compared with the Statute 
 de Judaismo of Edward I. 
 
 Till the end of the thirteenth century it might seem 
 to readers of the French chronicles as if the Jews were 
 the only dissenters with whom the king and the church 
 had to reckon. A little further investigation shows how 
 deceptive would be such an impression. Already old 
 sects were revived, new sects originated, all over Gaul, 
 and, in the south, organised bodies had sprung into 
 vigorous life and threatened the dominance and even 
 the very existence of the church. It is easy to throw 
 the blame for the subsequent excesses upon the sloth of 
 the church and the luxury of the clergy, and to find in 
 the Troubadours' songs ample evidence of the urgent need 
 for reform. "The cupidit}^, dissimulation, and baseness 
 of the clergy,'' says Sismondi, " had rendered them odious 
 to the nobles and the people/' "The black monks are 
 
VI THILir AND THE PAPACY 183 
 
 unrivalled in their eating and their loves ; the white 
 monks in their lies ; the knights of Temple and HosjDital 
 in their pride, and the canons in usury," sang a minstrel 
 of the south. " They love the fair lady and the red 
 wine," said another. It is ill to seek evidence against 
 any class from popukxr songs or dramas, but there is 
 not wanting proof to substantiate, with some modifica- 
 tions, the charges which the Troubadours bring against 
 the church for its corruptions. The higher clergy, the 
 great prelates, lived, there can be no doubt, lives of 
 ease and luxury. They were gentlemen and politicians 
 before they were priests and preachers. And the clergy 
 were, at the least, not equal to dealing with the intel- 
 lectual and moral difficulties which led to the recru- 
 descence of old heresies. 
 
 At the close of the twelfth century individual heretics 
 and freethinkers, the founders of new schools and the 
 knight-errants of unpopular opinions, Berengar of Tours, 
 Aljailard, Arnold of Brescia, had given way to organised 
 bodies whose origin or founder it is not easy to trace, 
 whose tenets were of every shade of divergence, but 
 who all agreed in opposition to the church. Comparing 
 this ej)och with the days of the early church it has been 
 pointed out that the different sects fall into three classes, 
 which follow the old lines of the Montanists, Pantheists, 
 and Manicheans. 
 
 To the first class belong the followers of Peter of 
 Biuys, who at the beginning of the century had in the 
 south of France opposed baptism, celibacy, and the 
 church's doctrines of the ministry, the Keal Presence and 
 the Sacrifice in the mass. He ^vas himself burnt in 
 1124 : of his followers some were converted b}^ a mission 
 
184 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 of S. Bernard, some lingered till 1184, when they united 
 with the Waldenses or followers of Peter Waldo (or 
 Valdez). This man had given himself to the task of 
 evangelising the south by the same methods of poverty 
 and penance. It is difficult to recover his actual teach- 
 ing, but it would ajDpear to have included a rejection of 
 all the sacraments save the Eucharist, and of the ministry. 
 His society, which continued after the founder's excom- 
 munication in 1184, is represented — though not by an 
 exact succession — to this day in Dauphiny and Piedmont. 
 Its influence in the thirteenth century was not great. 
 
 Amaury, a logician of Paris, gave an impetus at 
 the end of the twelfth century to the Pantheism 
 which has always remained on the fringe of Christian 
 teaching, by proclaiming the incarnation of the Holy 
 Spirit in every Christian. From this he proceeded to 
 the deduction that sacraments were useless, and that the 
 sole qualification for a holy life was the knowledge of 
 the presence of God. His opinions, condemned by 
 Innocent III. and retracted by himself, had much weight 
 for some time. The chroniclers record several con 
 demnations and several executions of the Amauricians, 
 as his followers were called, but the body remained rather 
 intellectually than numerically a danger to the church. 
 
 The fascinating Manicheism which all through the 
 Middle Ages cast its glamour over many races of 
 Southern Europe sprang into new life in the twelfth 
 century. The heretics of Southern Gaul, Albigenses 
 as they came to be called, were almost entirely i\Ianichean. 
 Kathari, Paulicians, Bulgarians, many different names 
 the chroniclers find for them, but their teachinc:, it is 
 clear, is similar to that of the Manicheism which died 
 
VI PHILIP AND THE PAPACY 185 
 
 so hard in its struggle with the early church. The 
 leading principle was dualism, and a declaration of the 
 eternity of the evil and the good in perpetual antagonism. 
 The church historians of the age delight to dwell upon 
 the extraordinary beliefs which they discovered in those 
 they questioned — the contrast between the true God, the 
 author of the New Testament, and Jehovah the evil 
 spirit, the author of the Old Testament, whose son 
 Lucifer had led astray a number of the angels and 
 imprisoned them in earthly bodies, whom Christ, 
 another angel, had descended from heaven to redeem. 
 In some of its tenets that Catharism of the south 
 resembled the bitter Calvinism which was later to 
 represent another reaction against the teaching of the 
 church in France. It distinguished men into two 
 classes, of which one only could come to salvation. 
 Just as these ideas struck at the root of all morality, 
 being, like C^alvinism, not accidentally but essentially 
 immoral, so the repudiation by the Cathari of all church 
 order, of marriage, and of property struck at all the 
 foundations of society as well as the bases of the church. 
 The system of the Albigenses in fact was " not only 
 a religious but also a social heresy, and this explains 
 in part the severity with Avhich it was suppressed." 
 Appearing in different places in the eleventh century, in 
 the twelfth the new teaching spread itself over Southern 
 Gaul. It met the stream of Vaudois or Waldensian 
 influence but formed no union with it. The two systems 
 agreed only in opposition to the church. By the end 
 of the twelfth century the Cathari had taken the 
 district of Albi for their centre, whence came the name 
 of Albigenses which was soon applied to them, and 
 
186 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 had acquired the support and protection of a large 
 number of the nobles of the district, chief of whom was 
 the head of the great house of Toulouse, Eaymond YI. 
 of S. Gilles. 
 
 The south, open to every subtle influence of disin- 
 tegration which the Italian disturbances of the age so 
 readily furnished, full of wild superstition, wild luxury, 
 wilder enthusiasms and licence than Northern France 
 could foster, eagerly accepted the growth of secret 
 societies, which the lords encouraged as a counterjooise to 
 the riches and the power of the church. Provence, the 
 region between the Haute Garonne, the Cevennes, the 
 Isere, the Alps and the sea, became almost wholly given 
 over to the All)igensian teaching. The extreme licence 
 of manners which had long marked the South welcomed 
 the new theories of religion, which in reality gave a 
 basis for a new morality. Jews and Mussalmans had 
 already accustomed the people to revolt from the church 
 system. An intoxication, as from new wine, overs23read 
 the land." "Le midi," says Michelet in his picturesque 
 way, "delirait k la veille de sa ruine." Raymond V. had 
 called in the French and English kings to supj^ress 
 heresy. When Raymond VI. threw himself heartily into 
 the revolution, Toulouse became the capital of the 
 heretical kingdom. Southern Gaul was trying to cut 
 itself off from the church and from the Frankish 
 suzerainty. It was an attempt at a political and 
 religious revolution after the fashion of that which the 
 sixteenth century was to see carried to a successful 
 conclusion. 
 
 So little did the north know of the south, so common 
 were attacks upon ecclesiastical property, and so familiar 
 
VI PHILIP AND THE PAPACY 187 
 
 the excesses of freebooting barons, that it was long 
 before the news spread, or was understood, that in 
 Provence bishops were being driven from their sees, 
 abbats from their monasteries, priests from their livings. 
 The wandering bands of discharged soldiers and trucu- 
 lent knights who plundered the north, joined hands 
 in the south with the heretics, and the whole country 
 was given over to licence and confusion. The church 
 gradually awoke to the danger. Alexander III. and the 
 Third Lateran Council condemned the new teachers and 
 ordered drastic measures for their suppression. More 
 strongly Lucius III. at Verona in 118^ laid under 
 perpetual anathema "the Cathari and Paterines, those 
 who call themselves poor men of liyons (the followers 
 of Peter Waldo), the Passagines, Josephines, and 
 Arnaldists." Bishops were ordered to send com- 
 missions of inquest into the districts where heresy 
 existed, and to deliver the city to the secular power. 
 Innocent III. took up the work in earnest. In 1198 
 he sent two Cistercians to preach in the south, with 
 commission from him as his legates. He added later 
 Pierre of Castelnau, archdeacon of Maguelonne, Cardinal 
 Raoul and the abbat of Citeaux, Arnauld Amaury. 
 The last was a great preacher, and he was joined by a 
 greater, the mighty S. Dominic himself. For ten years 
 the Spanish saint walked over the whole land, heedless 
 of the tumult and war which surrounded him. His 
 efforts at the time seemed to have met with only the 
 very smallest success. Arnauld's preaching had no 
 better result. " This holy man," says the Troubadour, 
 " went out with others over the land of the heretics, 
 preaching to them that they should lu.; converted, but 
 
188 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 the more he besou2;ht them the more thev scoffed 
 at him and held him for a fool." For four years 
 Peter of Castelnau held on his way. Negligent and 
 worldly bishops were deposed, immoral clerks de- 
 graded, reformation was taken in hand sternly and 
 without respect of persons. But reformation did not 
 check the disorder which it was to the interest of the 
 great lords to foster. In 1207 Peter determined to 
 compel the mighty count of Toulouse to restore the 
 churches which he had seized. Raymond refused and 
 was excomi)iunicated. Filled with rage he vowed 
 vengeance on the insolent clerk. One of his knights 
 pursued the legate, and at S. Gilles, near Aries, in 
 January 1208 he stabbed him to the heart. 
 
 The murder of Peter of Castelnau was the signal 
 for the outbreak of war. Innocent, who had watched 
 the beginnings of the strife with calm restraint, now 
 stretched out his hand like an avenging angel. The 
 whirlwind and the storm passed over the unhappy land 
 of Languedoc, and it was the pope who rode triumphant, 
 directing the thunder where to strike. He immediately 
 excommunicated the count of Toulouse, released his 
 subjects from their fealty, placed his lands under 
 interdict, and offered them to the first who should 
 seize them from the heretic's hand. He sent Guala to 
 Philip to implore his aid, and he wrote to the king and 
 all the chief lords of the land, "commanding and 
 directing that as catholic and faithful servants of Jesus 
 Christ they should invade Avith a mighty army the 
 lands of Toulouse and Albi, of Quercy and Narbonne 
 and Beziers, and should utterly destroy all the heretics 
 who possessed those lands.'' 
 
VI PHILIP AND THE PAPACY 189 
 
 With this declaration, and the pope's promise of 
 absohition to those who died in the war, Eigord's 
 chronicle concludes. The conclusion comes fitly at the 
 beginning of a new epoch in the history of Southern 
 Gaul. It AYas a new Crusade which Innocent preached. 
 Its execution involved an entire reconstructioix of the 
 political S3^stem of the south. Beginning by fighting 
 for their lawlessness of opinion and of life, for their 
 liljerty to kill and devour one another after the fashion 
 of unchecked feudal independence, the people of 
 Languedoc came gradually to fight for their local 
 customs, laws, and language, for their historical sever- 
 ance from the north, for their autonomy against the 
 advancing sovereignty of the Frankish king. Innocent 
 began the work of conversion to the Church. The 
 process which he inaugurated ended by giving to the 
 Capets the sovereignty of an united France. The 
 Albigensian crusade went far to complete what the 
 fall of the Angevins had begun. 
 
 In a few months a mighty army assembled in 
 answer to the pope's appeal. Barons of the north and 
 centre, some great lords and bishops even of the south, 
 swelled the ranks of the army of the Church. The duke 
 of Burgundy, the counts of Nevers and Auxerre, Gaucher 
 de Chfitillon, count of S. Pol, who was so greatly to 
 distinguish himself at Bouvines, and Simon de Mont- 
 fort, count of Evreux, were among the great leaders who 
 brought their forces to the war. Innocent expressly 
 reserved the rights of the suzerain when he directed 
 this overpowering force upon the lands of the here- 
 tical and profligate count of Toulouse. He foresaw, 
 there can be no doubt, the end of the great crusade. 
 
190 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 Philip himself was invited to take command of the 
 host. "Rise," cried Innocent, "rise, most Christian 
 king. Hear the cry of blood. Help to take on the 
 sinners the vengeance of blood." Bat Philip was far too 
 much occupied with danger more near at hand — with 
 Otto and John, with the treachery of his own border 
 vassals, Avith fears of a wider attack. He had at his 
 sides two gi^eat and terrible lions, he said. He was quite 
 ready to see his work dolie l3y the army of the crusade. 
 Simon de Montfort took command of the host. 
 Raymond, adulterer, wrapped in luxury, and long the 
 supporter of heretics because they laid no severe restraints 
 on his way of living, awoke to find destruction at his 
 doors. He appealed to Philip, who refused to interfere. 
 He appealed to the Emperor Otto, of whom he held 
 Provence. Lastly, he appealed to Innocent himself, and 
 at length made a complete submission. On June 18, 
 1209, having vowed to extirpate heresy, and to restore 
 the wronged, having given up seven castles as security 
 and submitted to open penance, Raymond himself took 
 the cross. But his submission did not check the cam- 
 paign. His nephew and vassal, Raymond Roger, 
 viscount of Carcassonne and Beziers, stood out against 
 every threat. The army of Simon de Montfort carried 
 all before it ; Beziers was stormed, Carcassonne fell, the 
 viscount was cast into a dungeon, and died, men said 
 of poison, on November 10. The lands that had been 
 conquered were offered to the duke of Burgundy, to the 
 count of S. Pol, and the count of Nevers. They 
 refused the dangerous honour, and Simon de Montfort 
 was invested with the forfeited districts. The establish- 
 ment of a northern baron in the southern fief turned 
 
VI PHILI? AND THE PAPACY 191 
 
 the war of religion into a war of persons and of race. 
 He had fought for the faith, men said, but he had 
 conquered for himself. The people rose against him 
 as the crusaders retired to their own estates, and, in 
 1210, of all the castles he had won Simon de Montfort 
 held but eight. The war began afresh : the crusade 
 was over. Eaymond of Toulouse found the conditions 
 to which he had a^-reed to be irksome in the extreme. 
 
 o 
 
 The legates excommunicated him anew. Again he 
 appealed to Philip, who remained silent. He apj)ealed 
 to the pope, who referred him to a council which should 
 assemble at S. Gilles. He obtained some delay. In 
 February 1211 he appeared before the legates at Aries, 
 where the terms offered him Avere such as he would not 
 accept. He determined on a last stand. He threw him- 
 self into Toulouse, and his people promised to stand by 
 him to the death. A new crusade began with his resist- 
 ance. He had definitely, on w^hatever provocation, thrown 
 his weight against the Church and the army of the north. 
 He was now to feel their overwhelming superiority. A 
 real conquest of the south began. As town by town 
 was taken, heresy was searched for and stamped out. 
 Each fief won was given to knights of the northern 
 land, and Church possessions as well as baronies were 
 conferred on members of the crusading force. The 
 abbat of Citeaux became archbishop of Narbonne and 
 took the title of duke. Folquet, to whom the legates 
 had years before given the see of Toulouse, himself a 
 Marseillais and a Troubadour, who appears in the third 
 heaven of the Paradiso among the blessed spirits who 
 had resigned an earthly for a heavenly love, welcomed 
 the northern forces with open arms. 
 
192 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 The crusade for a time appeared to be checked, when 
 Pedro II. of Aragon, the gallant champion of his own 
 land against the infidel, interceded for the unhappy land 
 of Languedoc, and obtained from Innocent, Avho had 
 certainly no motives but the highest in his aims for the 
 reformation of the south, a temporary suspension of 
 operations. But the legates were not to finish their 
 work, and Simon de Montfort saw in the war the 
 opportunity of bringing a larger district under his sway. 
 The council of Lavaur (1213), it was hoped, might 
 bring peace, but Eaymond's attitude as a supporter of 
 heresy was so clear that it ended only in his renewed 
 excommunication. As the crusaders won inch by inch 
 from the great count of Toulouse, Pedro of Aragon saw a 
 new reason for intervention. The southern border 
 lands, over which he had exercised a semi-suzerainty, 
 and which had stood as a protection between himself 
 and the aggressive powers of the north, were slowly 
 being absorbed into the great kingdom of the Capets. 
 He determined to make a stand for their independence. 
 He marched troops into the county of Toulouse. On 
 September 12, 1213, was fought the great battle of 
 Muret, one of the most decisive events in the history of 
 Southern Gaul. The king of Aragon was killed, and 
 his army was totally routed. The victory, in which the 
 French king was in no way concerned, was almost as 
 important a step in the establishment of his power as 
 the battle of Bou\dnes or his triumphs over Henry II. 
 and John. It decided once for all that Languedoc 
 should pass under the control of the north ; and the 
 power of the north meant inevitably, and at no long 
 distance of time, the power of the Capetian house. 
 
VI PHILIP AND THE PAPACY 193 
 
 Raymond VL submitted immediately after the battle. 
 The consuls of Toulouse handed over their city to the 
 crusaders. At a council held at Montpellier, January 8, 
 1215, Simon de Montfort was chosen lord of the whole 
 land. Thus the ancient house of Toulouse, Avhich, in 
 spite of its nominal vassalage, had long treated on equal 
 terms with the French kings, was completely crushed. 
 Every new power that came into existence in the thir- 
 teenth century was compelled to recognise from the 
 first the position which the Frank monarchy had won. 
 Simon de Montfort became count of Toulouse, duke of 
 Narbonne, viscount of Carcassonne. Raymond VIL, 
 son of the unhappy count who had lost all, received the 
 marquisate of Provence. 
 
 The crusade was over, but a dynastic war remained. 
 The young Raymond, himself a Catholic and favoured 
 by the pope, determined to win back the heritage of 
 his fathers. Battle after battle again desolated the 
 country. Raymond VI. appeared from his hiding, 
 captured Foix, and held it against his foes. The 
 death of Simon de Montfort, June 25, 1218, seemed 
 to throw success once more into the hands of the 
 men of the south, and a desultory warfare did little 
 to establish the claims of Amaury, the son of the great 
 crusader. 
 
 Now, at length, Philip thought that the time had 
 come to secure for himself the fruits that had been 
 won for him by others. Yet still he would not 
 listen to the urgent appeals of Honorius III. to inter- 
 vene in person. The chroniclers at this j^oii^t are 
 almost silent. A crusade, the last Avork of the greatest 
 of medieval popes, was diverting the energies of many 
 
 O 
 
194 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 in France. The king was feeling at length secure 
 upon his throne. Yet even now he would not risk an 
 insurrection by absence from the centre of his power. 
 His son, the young Louis, had already tried a knight- 
 errant scheme of winning England for the French. In 
 the south he was more likely to achieve success. On 
 Ascension Day 1219, ''sent by his father," as William 
 the Breton assures us, Louis, with Peter Mauclerc the 
 Breton duke, the bishops of ISToyon, Senlis, and Tournai, 
 one at least of whom had shown his valour in the field, 
 and a host of other bishops, earls, and barons, and a 
 vast multitude of knights and foot-men, set forward to 
 the conquest of the south. The expedition, ending 
 with a long siege of Toulouse, was a complete failure. 
 Amaury de Montfort endeavoured to induce Philip to 
 take up the cause himself, and to receive as his own 
 all that the Church had given to Simon ; and Conrad of 
 Porto, the pope's legate, and four of the southern 
 bishops strongly urged him to accept the offer. In 
 nothing did the great king show his wisdom more clearly 
 than by his refusal. He had not lost by the failure of 
 the expedition : he was not going by precipitation to 
 mar the work that time would inevitably do for his 
 house. 
 
 His sagacity had rightly foreseen the end of the 
 strife. He died himself before Languedoc became an 
 actual part of the French king's direct domain. But in 
 1224 Amaury de Montfort ceded his rights to the 
 French king, and in 1229 Blanche of Castile, widow of 
 Louis VIIL, made the treaty of Meaux, by which the 
 crown received immediate possession of the territory 
 between the Ehone and Narbonne, and was promised 
 
VI PHILIP AND THE PAPACY 195 
 
 after the death of Eaymond VII. the whole county of 
 Toulouse. 
 
 Long before the southern fiefs were actually united 
 to the French king's domains, northern influence had 
 permeated the land, the national literature had sunk 
 into decay, the langue d^oc had yielded to the tongue 
 of the north, and the Church had re-established her sway. 
 A bloody war, a long and patient mission of preaching 
 friars, a slow growth of northern influence, had made 
 Southern Gaul recognise that it was one land with the 
 kingdom which had held the emperor at bay and 
 triumphed over the great house of Anjou. 
 
 Philip's attitude during the whole duration of the 
 war is worthy of careful attention. His policy, as in 
 the difficulties of his marriage, was one of masterly 
 inactivity. Within his own domain he would sternly 
 suppress heretical teaching. He was a bitter foe to 
 heretics. William the Breton records with pride how 
 in 1183 he purged his land of "Popelicani" (publicani, 
 a Manichean sect which had appeared in France in 
 1175), by condemning them to the flames; and the 
 Couteraux, of whom he is said to have slain seven 
 thousand in Berry in the same year, fell also under 
 the condemnation of the Church. In December 1207 
 he gave formal answer through the bishop of Paris 
 to the demands of Innocent III. for help. He stated 
 that John was already laying siege to the castle of 
 Belleville, belonging to his vassal de Maul^on, and that 
 it was necessary for him to go to its aid. He could 
 not have two armies in the field at once, one to fight 
 the Albigenses, one to protect his own territories. But 
 if the pope would make a truce between John and 
 
196 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 himself, then he would willingly assist the crusaders. 
 It is a typical document. Equally characteristic is the 
 letter addressed at the end of 1218 to Thibault, count 
 of Champagne, warning him that his intervention in 
 Toulouse must not prejudice his duty to serve the king 
 in his wars with England. Carlyle might have said of 
 him, as he said of the great Elector, that, if he '' advanced 
 in circles," he had "his reasonable private aim sun 
 clear all the time." 
 
 Philip's greatness is seen in nothing more clearly 
 than in his patience, and this characteristic is revealed 
 in the clearest light by his conduct towards the 
 Albigensian crusade. It might have seemed that by 
 active intervention he would have secured the pope's 
 favour, and. added, without the cost of many men or 
 much money, a vast province to the direct dominions 
 of the crown. But he saw clearly that the complica- 
 tion of religious and political ends in the crusade would 
 have been to his own prospects not a strength but a 
 weakness. He saw that the Church must conquer, and 
 that her conquest meant the victory of the north. He 
 knew that, when the spoils came to be divided, no 
 power could step in to claim against the Frankish king 
 the lion's share. 
 
 Philip's relations with the papacy illustrate his extra- 
 ordinary acuteness of vision and his indomitable obstinacy 
 and patience. He carried through legislation, such as 
 had well-nigh cost the greatest of the Angevins his 
 crown, and such as Henry 11. had been compelled with 
 the most humiliating submission to withdraw. He 
 held out against the head of the Catholic world on 
 a moral question with a diplomacy which kept the 
 
VI PHILir AND THE PAPACY 197 
 
 papal curia itself at bay. And, Avithout taking part in 
 a crusade which lay near to the heart of the great 
 ruler of the Church, he manao;ed not to incur his 
 censure, and eventually reaped all the rewards of the 
 expedition. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 LAST YEAP.S 
 
 The victory of Bouvines was the culminating point of 
 the great king's reign. In his later years, still vigilant 
 and attent, he had chiefly to retain what he had 
 already won. 
 
 At home he was able to rest upon his laurels. In 
 1215 he founded the abbey of Notre Dame de la 
 Victoire, and he watched the preaching of a crusade 
 on which Innocent III. had set his heart with cool 
 indifference. "Robert de Corcon, the pope's legate," 
 says William the Breton, " and many with him, preached 
 publicly throughout all the realm in French, and gave 
 the cross without distinction to many — children, old men, 
 women, lame, blind, deaf, lepers ; wherefore many rich 
 men abhorred to take up the cross, because this confusion 
 seemed like rather to hinder the crusade than to succour 
 the Holy Land. But in their preachings, in which they 
 seemed to wish to please the people more than is needful, 
 they defamed the clergy, speaking and inventing base 
 things before the people concerning their living, and so 
 sowed matter of scandal and schism between clergy and 
 people." Philip, it would seem, was himself at last 
 
CHAP. VII LAST YEARS 199 
 
 aroused. " For this cause, and for certain other 
 grievances, the king and the whole clergy appealed to 
 the apostolic see against the legate." 
 
 Philip, now that his own business at Eome was over, 
 was not sorry, it may be, to have other cause of com- 
 plaint. From such diversions, however, he was recalled 
 to more serious matters by the events which were 
 happening in England. John had offered — William the 
 Breton thinks — to ]3uy back for an immense sum some 
 part of the lands he had lost. Philip had ansswered, 
 the story runs, with a bitter taunt. It was incredible 
 that one vowed to a crusade should have wished to buy 
 earthly possessions, or should have money to buy with. 
 For himself, he was rich, and ready to buy rather than 
 to sell lands. And to none would he jDart with, and 
 with none share, the territory he had received from his 
 fathers, or won with his sword. The story is incredible. 
 John was in no mood to make such an offer. He was 
 already tottering to his fall. 
 
 The events which followed John's repudiation of the 
 great Charter and his absolution by the pope turned 
 the eyes of Philip towards England, as well as those of 
 the English barons towards France. Philip was far 
 too astute to embroil himself in the affairs of England. 
 He could not, indeed, at this juncture enter into open 
 opposition to the pope. But the English barons were 
 not without hope of foreign aid. They found them- 
 selves, says Matthew Paris, placed in a most difhcult 
 position, knowing that the}^ could not trust John's 
 promises if they should make terms with him, and 
 having now both the pope and the king for their foes. But 
 taking counsel, they chose Louis, the eldest son of Philip 
 
200 THILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 the king of the Franks, to be their king, which when 
 they announced both to the father and the son, King- 
 Philip asked of them hostages and written pledges. 
 The barons, having no other refuge, gave what he 
 asked. No sooner was this known than Cluala was sent 
 as legate from the pope to France that he might stay 
 the going of Louis by the authority of the apostolic 
 see. To Philip he brought letters of command that he 
 should not allow his son to go to England, or in any way 
 to vex the king of England, the vassal of the holy see. 
 Then, says the sturdy Englishman, King Philip straight- 
 way answered, '^The kingdom of England never was 
 the patrimony of S. Peter, nor is, nor Avill be. No 
 king or prince can give away his realm, which is a 
 commonAvealth, without the assent of his barons, who 
 are bound to defend the realm. And if the pope shall 
 have commanded this error he will set a pernicious 
 example to all kings and kingdoms. I do not love, 
 I do not regard John, king of the English, my rival, 
 yet still I grieve at his kingdom's servitude, when the 
 ruler of great provinces is laid under tribute. Alas ! 
 how greatly will the state of all kings suffer through 
 this. So, by some trick, may the pope, in time to come, 
 rob my heir of France." Then raising his hands to 
 heaven he cried, *' which may God, may God, may God 
 avert." Tears flowed from his eyes as he spoke ; and 
 his barons cried out that never should their land pass 
 by the mere will of king or prince into the power of 
 any pope or bishop or priest. And Louis spoke out 
 l)oldly. To his father and the legate he cried, " I beg 
 that you will not stay my will, for I will contend for 
 my heritage as long as my heart beats in my breast. 
 
viT LAST YEARS 201 
 
 Base and brutish were it indeed to desert the l^arons of 
 England, who fight for the freedom of their land and 
 have chosen me to be their lord." And so in anjier he 
 departed, and King Philip declared that he would 
 neither support nor hinder his going. On March 26, 
 Louis threw himself at his father's feet and implored 
 hi^ permission to go, and his blessing on the expedi- 
 tion. Philip secretly gave him leave and blessed him. 
 It must have been clear to all Europe that he approved 
 the expedition, but he took no steps to support it. 
 He watched the campaign with keen interest, but 
 stood rigidly aloof. This did not satisfy Innocent 
 III. He was now pledged to assist John as his own 
 vassal. His threats induced Philip, if we may believe 
 William the Breton, to declare all the lands of his 
 son and the barons who had accompanied him for- 
 feit to the crown. But in spite of this. Innocent sent 
 letters threatening, if not actually pronouncing, the 
 excommunication of the French king. Still Philip 
 persevered in his neutral attitude. There is no sign of 
 his interference till after John's death and Louis's defeat 
 and the desertion of the barons, when an urgent appeal 
 reached him for aid. "Is William the Marshal still 
 alive?" he asked. And when he heard that he still 
 lived, " Then is my son safe," he said ; for he knew not 
 that the Marshal had now gone over to the young 
 Henry. He would not himself send aid, but left it to 
 Blanche, his son's vigorous and devoted wife, to procure 
 assistance. The utter defeat of the succours, and the 
 capture and death of Eustace the Monk, made Louis's 
 cause hopeless. Philip must have smiled grimly when 
 he learnt that his son had pledged himself by treaty to 
 
202 PHILIP AUGUSTUS ohap. 
 
 urge the surrender to Henry of his rights oversea, and 
 promised to restore them when he became king. If he 
 had gained nothing by Louis's rash expedition, he had 
 lost nothing in his own land. 
 
 With the war in the south he had little more concern. 
 He invested Simon de Montfort with the county of 
 Toulouse in 1216, but he would not actively intervei;ie 
 in the contest. His fighting days were over. He was 
 reconciled to the Empire and the Papacy. England had 
 sunk out of count in the affairs of Europe. 
 
 At home he saw the extinction of the old house of 
 Chartres in 1218, and the division of Chartres and Blois 
 between the counts of Beaumont and S. Pol, husbands 
 of the last count's sisters. In Brittany, Peter Mauclerc, 
 regent for his son, was engaged in many contests with 
 the neighbouring lords, cleric and lay. In the next few 
 years the whole interest of the country was engrossed 
 in the Albigensian war, reopened by the young Eay- 
 mond VII. Philip still held aloof. But in 1221, says 
 a fragmentary continuation of one of the chroniclers, 
 he sent two hundred knights to aid Amaury de Montfort. 
 Year by year, at the pope's request, he renewed his 
 truce with England. He had sheathed his sword. He 
 felt that his work was done. 
 
 Here, before his eventful history ends, we may pause 
 to see what was the place that he had won in his own 
 land and among his contemporaries, and what manner 
 of man was he whom his people called Augustus and 
 Conqueror. 
 
 That Philip was ever greatly beloved, it would be 
 difficult to prove. In his youth, at any rate, he was a 
 stern man, in little sympathy with the coarse licentious- 
 
VII LAST YEARS 203 
 
 ness and blasphemy of the times. "He loved justice," 
 
 says Kigord, " as his own mother ; he strove to exact 
 
 mercy above judgment; he was ever a follower of the 
 
 truth ; he surpassed all other kings in conjugal chastity 
 
 in his own house." In his court he would allow no 
 
 profane oath. Even the oaths that men playing games 
 
 of hazard or in taverns so often use, says the same worthy 
 
 chronicler, he greatly abhorred ; so that often, if a man 
 
 by chance rapped out an oath, he would find himself of 
 
 a sudden, by the royal order, thrown into the nearest 
 
 river or pond, that he might cool his temper. 
 
 But as years went on, the king's virtues were not so 
 
 apparent. His will so long uncontrolled would burst 
 
 out into fury. He was relentless and cruel, yet there 
 
 was a human touch about him that his father lacked. 
 
 He rose to a great occasion. At Bouvines he appeared 
 
 a real hero. And he won something of the popularity 
 
 that always comes to a great conqueror. Some of the 
 
 best lines in the twelve books of the PhilijJj^id are 
 
 those when the poet, towards the close of his hero's 
 
 life, speaks of the mutual affection of king and people. 
 
 Pax erat in toto populis gi'atissima regno, 
 Rexque gubernabat regnum populumque paterno 
 Ajffectu, cunctos et amans et amatus ab illis, 
 Nulli damnosus, nulli gravis, omnibus fequus, 
 Omni pvsecipue cleri protector ab hoste ; 
 Sicqne benignus erat, quod, amico pacis amicos 
 Corde fovens, malefactores puniret acerbe. 
 Unde vocabatur omni reverenter ab ore 
 Cleri rex, patrise pater, ecclesitEque columna. 
 Nee sciri poterat mage diligat an populum rex, 
 An regem populus ; et erat contentio dulcis 
 Inter eos super his, uter utri carior esset, 
 Quern penes alterui vis esset major amoris, 
 Tam puro nexu dilectio colligat ambos I 
 
204 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 But William the Breton had some of the genius and 
 all the vivid imagination of his race. To estimate the 
 value of the praises of the great king, it is necessary to 
 consider by whom they Avere sung. 
 
 What Philip really was, and what place he filled in 
 the Europe of his day, is best seen when we observe the 
 position of those who wrote of him. At home the 
 great abbey of S. Denys, which had for so long trained 
 statesmen and ecclesiastics, taught men to write as well 
 as to rule. Here Suger himself had learnt to govern. 
 His laxity had merited the stern rebukes of S. Bernard ; 
 he had taken the warning to heart and had reduced to 
 order first his own monks and then the turbulent barons 
 of the Frankish kingdom. He had told too the tale of 
 the deeds of his schoolfellow and friend the great King 
 Louis, deeds in the most famous of which he was him- 
 self a sharer. S. Denys was full of noble memories. 
 Thither the kings came at all solemn times to pray, to 
 sing Te Deum, to seek a sacred sanction for their wars 
 or a pardon for their sins, to stand impressed and sobered 
 by the sepulchres of the monarchs of their race. At 
 S. Denys the monks watched eagerly, and carefully 
 noted, what manner of men were those great kings who 
 came among them so often. Courtiers coming and going 
 told them the intrigues of the palace, statesmen and 
 bishops spoke of the troubles of the time, monks bewailed 
 the forays of greedy barons, and papal legates bore 
 witness, sometimes to the avarice of the Roman court, 
 sometimes to the far-sighted vigilance of the servant of 
 the servants of God. There was little done in the land 
 of the Franks that the monks of S. Denys did not hear 
 of ; and they had ahvays a scribe ready to record, and 
 
VII LAST YEARS 205 
 
 copyists eager to spread abroad the history he had 
 penned. Their chronicler was rarely a mere recluse : at 
 the beginning of the thirteenth century he was a man 
 who had seen not a little of the world. 
 
 Higout or Rigord came from Languedoc, and called 
 himself by the proud old name of Cloth. Born probably 
 in the neighbourhood of Alais and Uz^s, he watched in 
 his youth the terrible excesses of the chaj)erons bkmcs, and 
 set them down in later years with grim distinctness and 
 sober truth. He became a physician by profession, and 
 at length found a home in the great abbey, where, under 
 the good abbat Hugh Foucaud, he could study to his 
 heart's content. For ten years he was busy with the 
 history of King Philip, even before he was admitted to 
 S. Denys. It was at the urgent request of the abbat 
 that he did not modestly destroy the book when he had 
 Avritten it. The monks knew his powers better than he 
 knew them himself. They set him to write a chronicle 
 of the past kings as well as a record of the deeds of the 
 mighty Philip, and they bade him dedicate to the young 
 Louis the life of his father. In the last decade of the 
 twelfth century and for ten years more he studied 
 as a monk of S. Denys, travelling sometimes abroad, 
 ministering no doubt to the sick in the infirmary, and 
 taking part in the solemn ceremonials with which from 
 time to time the king was received when he came to 
 deposit relics or to redeem vows. Monk, scholar, and 
 physician, he never took upon him the priestly oaths. 
 He gave himself, it would seem, in his later life to the 
 study of Holy Writ and of the lives of the saints, but he 
 knew something too of the old classics. As a historian 
 he was a keen critic, and a severe judge. Though he 
 
206 PHILIP AUGUSTUS ohap. 
 
 dedicated his book to the king's son, and published it 
 while the king was still on the throne, he was stern in his 
 condemnation of the cruelty with which Ingeborgis was 
 treated. But though he did not hesitate to condemn 
 the king's crimes, he was among the first to recognise 
 the vastness of the services which he rendered to France. 
 It was he who called Philip by the great name of 
 Augustus, *' because he enlarged the boundaries of the 
 state." The English chronicles show us that men did 
 not fear to speak their minds in the thirteenth century, 
 and Rigord stands forth among the French as a historian 
 who sought above all things to tell the truth. 
 
 But if Philip had his critic among the monks, he 
 found among the priesthood his most ardent panegyrist. 
 William, his chaplain, had all the suppleness of a courtier 
 and much of the genius of a Breton. Born at some village 
 on the coast by Finisterre in 1166, he was sent early to 
 the abbey school of Nantes. When he was a man he 
 came to Paris, to study at the University. He became a 
 canon of his own diocesan church of Saint Pol de Leon, 
 and afterwards also of Senlis. In the prime of life he 
 entered the court, and Philip at once saw his talents. 
 From 1200 he was employed again and again in negotia- 
 tions with the Pope. Again and again he travelled to 
 and fro at the king's bidding — " These are not journeys," 
 said one who condemned his time-serving; ''it is a so- 
 journ that you make at Home.'' To him the king 
 committed the delicate matter of the divorce proceedings, 
 and with equal confidence the education of Pierre Chariot, 
 his bastard son. When he was not abroad on the kinsj's 
 business, he was thus constantly at Philip's side. He 
 stood by him at the siege of Chateau Gaillard, and saw 
 
VII LAST YEARS 207 
 
 the poor starving folk turned forth by the besieged, on 
 whom the king had compassion, — and the unhappy man 
 who still clung to the bone of a dog, and would not give 
 it up till bread had been put in his mouth. At Dam he 
 saw the disaster by which the French fleet was burnt. 
 At Bouvines he stood behind his master, and never far 
 from him, singing with another clerk the psalm, " Blessed 
 be the Lord my strength, who teacheth my hands to war, 
 and my fingers to fight," and " Let God arise," and " The 
 king shall rejoice in Thy strength, Lord," as their sobs 
 and tears allowed. Bouvines was the great day of his 
 life, and so it seemed to him the centre of all that his 
 master had done. He set himself to commemorate it in 
 verse and in prose. The whole of his chronicle served 
 but as setting for the great triumph, and the Pldlippid 
 itself is as much a song of Bouvines as an epic of the 
 life of the king. In later years the writer revised and 
 reissued the chronicle and the poem which had been the 
 chief literary work of his life. As a chronicler, he began 
 by copying and abbreviating Eigord ; after 1209 he wrote 
 chiefly from his personal reminiscences in those events 
 of which he proudly said, " I have borne a part, and have 
 seen with my own eyes." He wrote as a frank eulogist ; 
 where Rigord criticised, he suppressed. 
 
 The FhilijJjndj a laboured but by no means unskilful 
 poem in twelve books, is a panegyric pure and simple. 
 It is in form the attempt of a clerical dilletante to adapt 
 the method of the JEneid to the record of the early 
 thirteenth century ; and it is indeed a passable imitation. 
 The writer has evidently a sense of style and an acquaint- 
 ance Avith classic literatiu'e which are rare in his day. 
 But while he believed himself to take his inspiration 
 
208 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 from Virgil, he did not scorn to follow also the poets of 
 his own day. Walter of Chfitillon in the Alexandreid 
 had commemorated the glories of the great Macedonian, 
 Peter Riga had turned Bible history into elegiacs. 
 Philip Augustus was no less valorous than Alexander, 
 and as a defender of the Church he deserved the fame 
 which a zealous churchman could give him in his verse. 
 So said William the Breton when he dedicated his poem 
 to Louis the king's son. The Philippid did not go forth 
 to the world with only one patron's name. It invoked 
 the favour also of Pierre Chariot as well as his brothers, 
 for whom also he wrote a Karolid which we have lost. In 
 spite of his absurd grandiloquence and the courtier-like 
 embellishments of his record, William the Breton keeps 
 still some of the freshness of a natural and vivacious per- 
 sonality. Personal reminiscence, a memory of childhood 
 or a happy comparison, now and again seem to bring us 
 into the presence of a man who had a kind heart and a 
 keen enjoyment of life, — like the jDriests of the south in 
 the songs of the Troubadours, he loved the red wine : his 
 poem is full of references to all the wines of his day, — a 
 poet who delighted in his work and magnified his office ; 
 a servant whose loyalty was genuine and came near to 
 hero-worship. The king in the Philippid, gigantic though 
 the proportions of his greatness are, never ceases to be 
 a very human character. The little touches of his 
 compassion and his wrath, his tears and his audacity, 
 make him as real to us, if not as lovable, as he was 
 to his enthusiastic chaplain. 
 
 The Philvppid^ and the literature of eulogy which it 
 represents, sought to find in the mythical ancestry and 
 the historic succession of the Capetian kings a new 
 
VII LAST YEARS 209 
 
 source of romance and dignity. The Franks are de- 
 scended from Hector, and Philip is the true heir of 
 Charles the Great, who now with the romancers becomes 
 Charlemagne, the great hero of legend, the Arthur of a 
 half-mythical age. The tendency to make the exploits 
 and character of Charlemagne mythical is a necessary 
 part of the scheme which makes an epic of King Philip's 
 life. This imaginative reconstruction of the past was 
 no doubt far more prominent in the Karolid than it is 
 in the Philip pid. It went far on the lines of Geoffrey 
 of Monmouth. It gave to Arthur and his Table Eound 
 a parallel in Charlemagne and his court of peers ; and, 
 just as the Welsh fables had an important bearing on 
 English politics, so had the French legends a powerful 
 influence on the construction of the strong monarchy of 
 Philip Augustus and his successors. King by divine 
 right and with the sanction to his monarchy of a romantic 
 and almost illimitable past, Philip appeared before 
 his court and in the judgment of his contemporaries as 
 possessed of an indefeasible right to powers which his 
 feeble predecessor could never exercise. His personal 
 character supi^orted the claim, and men called him the 
 "God-given," the "magnanimous," Karolides, Caesar, 
 and Augustus. 
 
 William the Breton was not alone in versifying the 
 deeds of the great king. Giles of Corbeil, Philip's physi- 
 cian, commemorated his triumphs in a long poem of 5925 
 hexameters. But his commemoration is only as it were 
 l^y accident. He calls his book Gera Figra, and its 
 main subject is an attack upon the vice and worclliness 
 of the French clergy. Not the first or the last physician 
 of the body who did not lie down comfortably with the 
 
 P 
 
210 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 physicians of the soul, he exhausts the language of in- 
 dignant rhetoric to denounce the luxury which he saw 
 around him. As a picture of the social life of the age, 
 his poem, tedious as it is, is valuable, but it does not 
 compare for its direct interest to our subject with the 
 vivacious if voluminous Philippkl. 
 
 As judging Philip from a further distance, Kobert 
 of Auxerre, a monk of S. Mariaiuis in that city, whose 
 original contributions to this history of his time extend 
 from 1180 to 1211, supplies a number of facts which 
 other Avriters have ignored, but he is not an author of 
 the first or second rank. 
 
 While in France S. Denys was the great treasure- 
 house of history, and the court the home of romantic 
 legend, both glorifying Philip the Conqueror, foreign 
 historians were little less impressed by his triumphs. 
 
 From his early years poets and chroniclers outside 
 his own lands had watched and speculated on his career. 
 " King Philip,'' says Bertrand de Born, " will he be like 
 his father, or follow the customs of the great Carlo ? " 
 " The little king of the great land," the same Troubadour 
 mockingly called him^ and he declared that he " has lost 
 his rights because he is so young." But Bertrand, fickle 
 though he was to the Angevin house, was too much 
 of a southern knight to look with any impartial feeling 
 on the northern king. It was difterent with the 
 chroniclers of Flanders and of England. 
 
 Gilbert of Mons, canon of S. Peter at Namur, 
 chancellor of the count Baldwin V. of Hainault, saw 
 French affairs and the character of Philip with a keen 
 but fair vision. He was the chief if not the only 
 statesman who advised the rulers of Hainault in their 
 
VII LAST YEARS 211 
 
 perilous position between the Empire and the Franks. 
 He was a faithful servant and a true patriot, a man of 
 great parts, a traveller, a diplomatist, just as a statesman 
 and as a historian. As early as 1184 he had negotiated 
 the grant of the succession of Namur to Baldwin, and 
 in later years was constantly engaged in the intricate 
 discussions and changes which eventually resulted in his 
 master's obtaining that county. His skill it was that 
 most aided Baldwin VI. in winning Flanders on his 
 uncle's death. He lived to sec the triumph but he did 
 not record the decay of the house of which he was the 
 lifelong servant. At Mons and at Namur he held 
 ecclesiastical office, and he died, perhaps at S. Germain 
 at Mons, within a few months at most of Philip Augustus 
 himself. His chronicle of Hainault is a record of facts 
 rather than of judgments, but it deals with facts as they 
 appear to a statesman and a man of affairs. On King 
 Philip he passes no direct criticism, but while he recog- 
 nises his power, he does not hesitate to accept as plausible 
 accusations against him of treachery and fraud. Of the 
 strength and freedom of the Flemish cities, and of the 
 discords to which they led, he gives a vivid picture. 
 But most of all he is a faithful servant of Count Baldwin, 
 " prince most prudent and most powerful, good judge, 
 and very greatly beloved by all his men both small and 
 great." It is good to read of Philip's acts as they 
 appeared in the eyes of the loyal servitor of his wife's 
 father. 
 
 Gilbert of Mons was not alone among those who 
 watched Philip from beyond his northern frontiers. 
 Flemish annalists and historians have many a reference 
 to the growth of his power. Especially eager was 
 
212 PHILIP AUGUSTUS ohap. 
 
 Tournai and the district round it. There Philippe 
 Mouskes, clerk and chronicler, put into popular verse the 
 alarums and excursions of the daring overlord which he 
 had witnessed with dismay and amazement. As close 
 was the scrutiny of the subjects of the Angevin house. 
 Robert of Torigny, abbat of S. Michael in peril of the 
 sea, watched and recorded the beginning of that long 
 struggle with the young Philip which should give his 
 beloved Normandy to the Prankish king. 
 
 Among many English chroniclers who wrote of 
 different periods of the long reign of the son of Louis 
 VII. some need special mention. Eichard Fitz-Neal, 
 bishop of London, and treasurer of Henry 11. , was in 
 possession of information as to all the alliances and the 
 quarrels between his master and the young Philip -, and 
 Roger of Hoveden, clerk and justice, followed in the 
 steps of his narration. Both were men who lived close 
 to the English kings, and who watched with jealous 
 interest the rising power of their young French rival. 
 Rarely do they turn aside from their record of fact, 
 semi-official as indeed it is, to discuss motives or describe 
 character, but in brief phrases, as well as in the detailed 
 account which they give of Philip's movements, they 
 show the deep interest with which the rise of his power 
 and the development of his personality were regarded 
 at the court of the Angevin king. Less of a courtier, 
 but as close an observer, was Ralph de Diceto, Dean of 
 S. Paul's. He was a personal friend of Richard Fitz-Neal, 
 bishop, treasurer, and annalist : no less well known was 
 he to William Longchamp and Walter of Coutances, 
 the ministers of Richard and of John. He is especially 
 full in treating of the life of Philip, not only in his 
 
VII LAST YEARS 213 
 
 relations with the English kings, but in his private 
 affairs, and chiefly his long contest with Innocent III. 
 on the divorce Cjuestion. The accuracy of his informa- 
 tion, his constant insertion of documents, and his 
 shrewd judgments, make the work of the Dean of S. 
 Paul's of great value for the student of Philip's career. 
 
 Not only at the centre of public business did English 
 writers note with surprise and in detail the growth of 
 the power which rivalled that of their masters. 
 Monastic chroniclers in the distant country valleys 
 waited eagerly for information of French doings, and 
 recorded what they learnt with pious interest. The 
 Coggeshall chronicler of this period was a writer of no 
 small ability, and his house had welcomed many a 
 traveller who could give information at first hand of 
 the doings of kings and churchmen. Anselm, King 
 Eichard's chaplain, who was with him in his romantic 
 adventures after leaving Palestine, Milon, abbat of Pin, 
 who heard his last confession, themselves told their 
 experiences to the receptive ear of the Coggeshall 
 historian, and among their tales the doings of young 
 PhiHp were not forgotten. Thus we find in an English 
 monastery what is practically a first-hand authority for 
 some of the chief acts of the French king. 
 
 The historian of the priory of Augustinian canons at 
 Newburgh, living far indeed from the great events he 
 described, gives some of the most valuable information 
 which we possess as to the last years of Henry II., the 
 reign of Eichard I., and the steady growth of the 
 strength of the Prankish monarchy. He dwells with 
 persistent iteration on the bitter jealousy which Philip 
 showed during the Crusade, on the *' venomous workings 
 
214 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 of his mind," bis "evil eye and galled imagination," his 
 eagerness to defame Eichard's character. Of Philip's 
 personal history William of Newburgh was as intimately 
 informed. He passed a severe judgment on his conduct 
 towards Ingeborgis, and no less on the " execrable 
 perjury of two false bishops," the bishop of Beauvais and 
 the bishop of Chartres, who pronounced the divorce. 
 Yet Philip is to him still " noble " and " most illustrious," 
 and the French king has, it is clear, not a little of the 
 Englishman's sympathy in his endeavours to win for 
 himself the lands of the Angevins. William of 
 Newburgh died probably in 1198, so that we have 
 nothing from his hand of the triumphs of King 
 Philip. 
 
 A greater historian than these, Matthew Paris, 
 the chronicler of S. Alban's, was a diplomatist as 
 well as a monk, and he had considerable knowledge 
 of public affairs. But as he was probably not born 
 before 1195, his information becomes of primar}^ value 
 only at the period when Philip had won Normandy and 
 was about to triumph over the great coalition of his 
 foes. Here he makes most important additions to our 
 knowledge. We derive from him better than from 
 any other writer a vivid impression of the English 
 feeling which did so much to render Philip's success 
 possible, and to which it was not altogether unwelcome. 
 For the stormy days of Louis's invasion there is no 
 authority more valuable than Matthew Paris. 
 
 It is not surprising that the clerks who saw the 
 working out of those vices which brought about the fall 
 of the Angevins, should turn for contrast to the French 
 court. In few of the English writers is there much 
 
VII LAST YEARS 215 
 
 bitter feeling against the French monarchs : but in one, a 
 Welshman and one who claimed to be litterateur as well 
 as historian, there is an approach to deliberate and 
 exaggerated eulogy of Philip the Conqueror. Gerald 
 de Barri, archdeacon of S. David's, had long experience 
 of the Angevins' treachery and ingratitude. Henry II. 
 he regarded as an incarnation of the vilest vices, and his 
 sons as born to cause the destruction of their house. 
 When he wrote his curious treatise on the " Instruction 
 of Princes," a book which he kept by him till old age to 
 alter and revise, he lost no chance of praising Louis VII. 
 and his son at the expense of their rivals. When he 
 issued his final version of the work, on which he had 
 bestowed so much pains, he would dedicate it, he said, 
 if to any one, to Louis of France, King Philip's son, 
 because he was from his tenderest years a friend to 
 letters, and because, it is clear, he regarded the failure 
 of his English expedition with the bitterest regret. 
 Giraldus watched the career of the great Philip with 
 the keenest interest. From his cradle he records the 
 visions of his fame, and he preserves little stories of the 
 sayings and adventures of his boyhood, which show 
 something of a personal aflf'cction and admiration for the 
 gallant king. Most clearly of all does he show in 
 what direction his sympathies flow by a comparison of 
 the French with the English court — a comparison of 
 peculiar interest. 
 
 " At this point," he says, after speaking of the modest 
 claim of Louis YII. for his beautiful realm, the land of 
 chivalry and valour, that it had "bread and wine and 
 pleasure"; "at this point, this seems meet to l)c added, 
 that in the court of the kings of France no one sees 
 
216 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 anything of mere show or of tyranny. They do not 
 load themselves with warlike weapons in time of peace. 
 An object of loathing to none of their subjects, they 
 deserve to be an object of affection to all, seeing that 
 they do not employ rods or sticks, chamberlains or 
 attendants, to debar individuals with grievances from 
 access to their person. At the court of France justice 
 is ever at hand ; it is prompt and free, not put up for 
 sale, nor made the object of that vile and accursed 
 traffic and sin of simony. Nor, as elsewhere, is justice, 
 an attribute so priceless and divine, con-substantial and 
 co-eternal with God Himself, prostituted in that shame- 
 ful way, by being invariably put off from day to day 
 ^vith the harshness of caprice. 
 
 "Again, the rulers of other lands throughout their 
 conversation make use of strange oaths, such as 'od's 
 death, or eyes, or feet, or teeth, or throat, venturing on 
 oaths as foolish as they are indiscriminate. While they 
 show their hardihood in thus tearing the Deity limb 
 from limb, they also show that they neither fear nor 
 revere the excellence of the Divine majesty with that 
 devotion which is its due. The kings of France, on the 
 other hand, whenever they think fit to make use of 
 oaths in their speech, swear by the saints of France 
 either under their simple names, or with the addition of 
 their titles, with the view of filling out and embellish- 
 ing their conversation. And it is not in words alone, 
 but in almost every act that they aim at simplicity, 
 knowing as they do that 'he who walketh simply, 
 walketh surely.' 
 
 " Again, they do not behave as bears or lions in the 
 presence of their subjects, as we have seen some rulers 
 
VII LAST YEARS 217 
 
 do. Nay, though they are exalted on the earth, they 
 display affabilit}^ and kindness towards their inferiors ; 
 instead of being insolent and haughty, they are the 
 rather lowly and courteous. They know and remember 
 that they are but men, and recall the saying of the wise 
 man ' they have made thee a ruler ; be not elated, but 
 be among thy subjects as one who is of them,' and that 
 other saying 'if thou art great, humble thyself in all 
 things.' 
 
 "Again, many a ruler have we seen who, when in the 
 chances of war or the hazards of fortune he has 
 achieved some praiseworthy success, immediately in the 
 excess of his pride ascribes it entirely to his own right 
 hand. But the kings of France in every success bestow 
 praise on the exceeding great mercy and power of 
 Heaven, and to God alone give all the thanks and 
 glory, whenever they have performed some action which 
 has brought them thanks or earned them glory. 
 
 " There have been rulers too, aye, and are in our days, 
 who treat justice and injustice as universally equivalent, 
 who absolutely ignore the distinctions of right and 
 wrong, who, regarding their will as law, neither secure 
 justice to their subjects, nor preserve inviolate the troth 
 and honour of the marriage tie. With unpardonable 
 effrontery they disobey the dictates of honour and 
 justice in the full light of day, setting by their sinful 
 conduct an unholy precedent for sin. In the case of 
 the kings of France, however, a sense of purity and 
 honour, deserving of all praise in a ruler, preserves 
 unsullied the sanctity of the lawful bond ; while the 
 impartiality of the scales of justice, and the fairness of 
 the methods of government, like precious jewels brought 
 
218 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 from every quarter, shed a becoming lustre on the 
 throne of the ruling sovereign. 
 
 *' Again, I have seen rulers who, instead of succeeding 
 to the crown in turn according to lineal descent, prefer 
 to put the cart before the horse, and by means of the 
 wholesale slaughter of their kinsmen to secure for 
 themselves a sovereignty of violence. For their 
 excesses of bloodshed, tyranny, and cruelty they 
 experience even in this world the retribution of divine 
 vengeance. By arrows and crossbolts, in many a war- 
 like encounter and many a hostile inroad, they die 
 unnatural deaths, and await in another world the ever- 
 lasting punishment of the torments of Grehenna. 
 Neither to their sons nor grandsons, nor yet to any 
 other relation, do they bequeath what they have Avon by 
 foul means, and held by fouler ; their rule is throughout 
 marked by unprincipled transgressions. The kings of 
 France, on the other hand, invariably attain to their 
 father's realm by the natural right of hereditary 
 succession ; they are in the highest degree moderate, 
 respectful, and lenient towards their subjects ; they 
 avoid cruelty and outrage in their government. There- 
 fore it is, that in their long reigns of undisturbed 
 prosperity, God, Who even in this world sometimes 
 bestows some recognition on good deserts, grants them 
 from day to day increase of honour in ever fuller 
 measure, and when at length the course of this temporal 
 life is run, they die a blessed death, and handing on to 
 their sons and heirs their realms in happy succession, 
 they receive in heaven the everlasting reward of their 
 own godly and righteous government. 
 
 "Again, some rulers, as a sign of high spirit, have a 
 
VII LAST YEARS 219 
 
 preference for savage and ravening beasts, such as bears, 
 leopards, lions, to be carried before them, painted on 
 armour or (embroidered on) standards : they are 
 desirous apparently of being likened to these creatures 
 among their fellow-men. The kings of France, alone, 
 set a praiseworthy example ; not only in word and 
 gesture, but in their every act their one desire is to 
 attain moderation and humility, to avoid arrogance and 
 haughtiness. Thus it is that they mark and adorn 
 their shields, standards, and the rest of their armour 
 with nothing but the simple flowerets of the fleur-de-lys. 
 It is strange, and as deserving of honourable record as 
 it is worthy of all praise, that in these days of ours (to 
 anticipate a little), we have seen these simple flowers 
 overcome the pards and lions. These awe-inspiring 
 beasts — so marvellous are the turns of fortune — at the 
 first breath of these Frankish flowers turned to instant 
 and craven flight. Without a glance behind, without 
 another struggle, they abandoned, among the very first- 
 fruits of the war, all their caves and dens, all their 
 wonted haunts and lairs, together with spoil untold, 
 pastures rich and wide and studded with flowers. Then 
 was fulfilled, as in many other cases, the gospel sentence 
 pronounced by the infallible lips of Truth itself, 'He 
 that humbleth himself shall be exalted, and he that 
 exalteth himself shall be abased.' 
 
 " Again, in these latter days of ours, there have been 
 rulers who, as if war had been declared, have constantly 
 laid grasping and plundering hands on God's property. 
 They have not permitted the bride of Christ, which He 
 purchased for Himself, and for whose welfare He shed 
 His blood, to enjoy any freedom in their realms. 
 
220 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 Therefore has Heaven made of them all an awful 
 example, and brought upon them the exquisite re- 
 tribution they deserved. Their own children, brought 
 up in evil ways, have risen up in arms against their 
 fathers from their very boyhood, and harassed them 
 with constant and effective persecution. From the 
 very realms in which these rulers forbade the worship 
 of God with due rights, Heaven has granted that 
 powerful avengers of the flourishing stock of Pepin and 
 Charles should spring, to take up the cause of vengeance 
 and drive them forth root and branch in sorrow and 
 disgrace. For their evil deeds they have been irrevoc- 
 ably driven forth, not only from this world of the 
 dying, but from that other world of the living ; not 
 only from this world of punishment and death, but 
 from that other world of life ; not only from this world 
 which we tread, but from that other world which we 
 seek. Would to Heaven that they had not brought 
 this fate upon their heads ! But the kings of France 
 in their realms zealously render unto God the things 
 which are God's, leaving to the prelates, untouched 
 and unimpaired, the right of handling and dispensing 
 ecclesiastical law, together with all their dignities and 
 liberties. In this, as in other spheres, they receive 
 their reward. For a rule so righteous and godl}^ they 
 earn for themselves on earth great increase of honour, 
 and in heaven, after the course of this temporal life, 
 the imperishable meed of a triumphal crown. 
 
 "Deservedly, then, and by the manifest sentence of the 
 heavenly Judge, is it that the realms of tyrants so utterly 
 wicked and perverted as those whom I have mentioned 
 and noted above, through a divine dispensation, which 
 
VII LAST YEARS 221 
 
 even in this world sometimes rewards the good and 
 evil according to their deserts, have now by force of 
 arms passed into the possession of godly and kindly 
 rulers, deserving of praise in every quarter of the globe 
 — the rulers whose character and habits I have partially 
 sketched. The course of events would doubtless have 
 been the same in England as in the realm of the Franks 
 if England had shown to the Church that faith and 
 loyalty, that accord and respect which are her due. 
 But of this enough." 
 
 Whatever allowance may be made for the wounded 
 vanity of Giraldus at the persistent ignoring of his 
 claims to high office, which had been the studied policy 
 of Henry II., Richard I., and John, it is clear enough 
 that such an eulogy of the French royal house, however 
 exaggerated, must have had some real foundation in a 
 dignity and grandeur which impressed contemporaries. 
 For the reason of this impression we have not far to 
 seek. Philip was the centre of a court which was the 
 resort of great soldiers, great lawyers, and great priests. 
 The poem of William the Breton shows us how close 
 Philip lived to the familiares of his household. Gucirin the 
 Hospitaller, the bishop -elect of Senlis, who fought so 
 manfully and planned vtdth such skill on the great day 
 of Bouvines, was much more than a minister of the 
 king, he was his dear friend. The language of Giraldus 
 indeed suggests that the French kings lived in more 
 amiable fashion with their men than did the "demon 
 race " of the Angevins. Gu^rin certainly was in the 
 most critical period of the reign always at the king's right 
 hand. Philip would listen to him, even in the delicate 
 matter of Ingeborgis, when he would hear no one else. 
 
222 PHILIP AUGUSTUS ohap. 
 
 The clerks who sate in the council, the lawyers and 
 diplomatists who carried out his policy, formed a close 
 circle round the king. And beside them were the 
 young barons of the maison du roi, the men who 
 saved his life at Bou vines, and whom charter after 
 charter rewards with lands and privileges. But to the 
 outside world the court of the great Capetian king 
 remained ever more or less of a mystery. The fact 
 that for a long time there was no queen to dispense 
 courtesies and to attract maidens and their lovers to 
 her side, in itself set a gulf between court and people. 
 Men knew that their lord did not live an austere life, 
 and yet he could hardly ever be called a popular king. 
 There were days, as on his return from his great victory 
 over the three allied Powers, and when he took his 
 ill-used wife again to his side, when his people's hearts 
 seemed to go out to him. But on the whole he lived 
 a solitary and unsympathetic life. A great king, cease- 
 lessly active, of unwearied vigilance and ever-changing 
 scheme, he was stern, secret, subtle, obstinate, and 
 invincibly patient in the pursuit of what his eye desired 
 and his hand found to do. And this character im- 
 pressed itself year by year more clearly on the men of 
 his age, so that as the days went on they became more 
 reticent in writing of him, and the burst of spring-tide 
 enthusiasm which hailed his accession died down at 
 the end of his life into the most meagre record of his 
 acts. The astute sovereign who began life so gallantly 
 had become more and more of a grim enigma to his 
 subjects. They had woven legends about his life. He 
 had become a Charlemagne, the mysterious, half-magical 
 sovereign, rather than a gallant knight-errant of poesy ; 
 
VII LAST YEARS 223 
 
 and each romance took his real personality farther from 
 his people's sight. New men arose who carried on his 
 work without any of his own characteristics. The hot- 
 headed, gallant Louis — ever ready to break a lance or 
 lead a forlorn hope — began with his pious, domineer- 
 ing, Spanish mfe, to fill a space in the popular eye 
 from which the great conqueror had receded. Still 
 the old king lived on, silent and self-contained, deep 
 in schemes and verj^ chary of action. He would not 
 lift his hand to a romantic enterprise outside his own 
 land. He watched and waited for results which he 
 foresaw. 
 
 And so death came to him as he quietly continued 
 the work of consolidation and order on which he had 
 set his heart. He passed from district to district hearing 
 complaints, redressing wrongs, rewarding faithful service. 
 He bent his mind to knit the newly won provinces to 
 the central power. Privileges overflowed to the towns 
 of Normandy, Anjou, and Touraine. New barons were 
 given new fiefs. And over all the king watched closely, 
 but Avith patience. Augustus he was called, said 
 E-igord, because of the vast additions he had made to 
 the royal domain. Since his accession Vermandois, 
 Poitou, Anjou, Touraine, Maine, Alen^on, Clermont in 
 Beauvaisis, Beaumont, Ponthieu, Artois, Amiens, Valois, 
 and, greatest of all, the duchy of Normandy, had been 
 added to the territory of the French crown. By pur- 
 chase, by exchange, by treaty of alliance, a heritage 
 almost as great had come into the king's hands. He 
 might well feel that his work was done. 
 
 Philip had lived a hard life. He had been on crusade. 
 He had not spared himself in marches or in vigils by 
 
224 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 the camp-fire. At home he had been no more prudent 
 than the other monarchs of his day. At fifty-eight he 
 was ah^eady an old man. He had a son of thirty-six 
 who had won his spurs in England and in the South. 
 In the autumn of 1222 he began to suffer from a wasting 
 fever, but still he worked as before. He was spared 
 his father's sad end of impotence and decay. At Pacy, 
 in July 1223, he had summoned a council to provide 
 against one of the small baronial outbreaks which even 
 the persistent vigilance of his long reign had not entirely 
 suppressed. He felt himself sickening and gave himself 
 into the hands of his physicians. Yet he seemed for 
 several days to rally. He determined to go home to 
 his new tower, the Louvre. On Tuesday, July 11, he 
 had felt better. On Wednesday he was worse, and 
 received the last sacraments. But he still kept on his 
 journey to Mantes. There on Thursday he rested, and 
 on Friday the 14th he passed away. 
 
 So died Philip the illustrious king of the Franks, 
 writes the chronicler of S. Denys, "a man of high 
 prudence by nature and by art, mighty in valour, 
 glorious in his deeds, renowned in fame, victorious in 
 battles, who wondrously enlarged the rights and the 
 power of the realm of the Franks and enriched the 
 royal treasure ; for against many renowned princes, 
 powerful in their lands, their arms and their wealth, 
 did he manfully contend, and conquered. A mighty 
 defender and protector was he also of the churches, 
 and sj^ecially the holy church of S. Denys did he, with 
 peculiar favour and with, as it were, a largess of love, 
 nourish and guard, and prove by many an effectual 
 deed the fondness which he had towards it. Zealous 
 
Yii LAST YEARS 225 
 
 from his early years for the Christian faith, in his 
 youth he affixed the cross to his breast and warred 
 over sea against the Saracens with a strong hand. And 
 moreover when verging on old age he spared not his 
 own son, but sent him twice against the heretic Albigenses 
 Avith great cost and expense, and both in life and in 
 death spent largely himself in that business. Above all 
 things he was most generous in giving to the poor and 
 spreading charity in many a place." They made for 
 the great king a great burying. S. Denys received 
 him w^ith all its dignity and pomp. The archbishops of 
 Eheims and Sens were there, and twenty bishops, among 
 them the pope's legate, Conrad, bishop of Porto, and 
 Pandulf, bishop of Norwich, and the faithful Gu^rin, 
 bishop of Senlis, the right hand of the dead king. At 
 the same time at tAvo altars the requiem mass was said 
 by the pope's legate and William of Joinville, archbishop 
 of E-heims. The tears coursed down Louis's cheeks, 
 says William the Breton, as he followed his father's 
 body to the tomb. By him stood his half-brother, Philip 
 Hurepel, the legitimated offspring of the unhappy 
 union with Agnes of Meran, and John of Brienne, 
 king of Jerusalem. 
 
 There was no doubt or danger as to the succession. 
 Louis had long been in possession of a separate provision 
 and a considerable power. Married in 1200 to Blanche 
 of Castile, niece of King John, he had received Issouduu, 
 Gra(^ay, and large fiefs in Berry, as his Avife's doA\Ty, and 
 nine years later he had been giA^en by his father great 
 estates in the South. Vermandois and Artois Avere 
 practically recognised as his property, and as count of 
 Artois he treated separately Avith the Flanders in 1212, 
 
 Q 
 
226 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 He had long been employed by the king in im- 
 portant diplomatic missions, and his expeditions to 
 England, to Poitou, and to Toulouse, had shown him 
 possessed of the spirit and energy which the great con- 
 queror looked for in his heir. All men spoke well of 
 him as a Christian knight and a man of honour. At 
 his side was an intrepid and capable woman, worthy to 
 share his throne, and, it was already evident, to guide 
 his counsels. His eldest living son was already nine 
 years old. The monarchy of Philip Augustus was too 
 strong to need the support of a coronation of the heir. 
 The constantly repeated election for the benefit of the 
 same family had become merely a formal recognition of 
 the right of hereditary succession. Louis was the first 
 of his house who was not crowned in the lifetime of his 
 predecessor. The force of routine and the strength of 
 Philip Augustus had firmly established the doctrine of 
 hereditary right. 
 
 The two children of Agnes of Meran had already 
 been provided for. Within a year of the birth of Philip 
 Hurepel, and before he had been recognised as legitimate, 
 treaties had been drawn up to establish his position. 
 He had been married when he was nine years old and 
 knighted in 1222. He was fixed in the position of a 
 baron of the second rank. His sister Mary had been 
 betrothed in 1202 to Arthur of Brittany. Four years 
 later she was betrothed to Philip of Namur, whom she 
 married in 1210. On his death she married Henry of 
 Brabant, but the marriage failed to seciure her father 
 against her husband's hostility in 1214. 
 
 Philip had left a will, Avrittcn in the September of 1222, 
 when he felt his sickness coming upon him. He left 
 
VII LAST YEAK8 227 
 
 behind him an enormous treasure, which proved his care- 
 ful management and his skilful treatment of the royal 
 domain. He directed that a large sum should be distri- 
 buted among those from whom he had unjustly extorted. 
 A hundred and fifty thousand marks of silver he left, 
 for the succour of the Holy Land, to the Templars and 
 Hospitallers, and to John of Brienne. His jewels he left 
 to the monks of S. Den3^s. They were bought l^ack hy 
 his successor, leaving only a golden cross which the 
 abbey retained. To his long-suffering wife Ingeborgis 
 and others, and to the poor, he left legacies, and interpret- 
 ing his wishes some money was given to x4maury de 
 Montfort after his death. The will, in strict feudal 
 fashion, concerns only the treasury. The royal domain 
 is left untouched. Philip's grandfather, Louis VL, had 
 begun the wise policy of leaving to his younger children 
 only the position of vassals of the second rank. His 
 example was follow^ed by the Conqueror. He left to 
 his son, Philip Hnrepel, only the county of Clermont in 
 the Beauvaisis, which he had acquired on the extinction 
 of the male line of the house of Chartres. He had 
 already been invested with the county of Boulogne, 
 forfeited by the traitor Reginald w^hose daughter he 
 had married. 
 
 Philip, unlike many of his fathers, left no legacy of 
 difficulties and disunion for his heir. Of the forty-three 
 3-ears of his reign at least twenty-six had been years of 
 war, and from each war the monarchy had risen stronc^er 
 than before. To restore his power to the strength of 
 that of Charles the Great, men said he had declared to 
 be his aim. He had done as much as one man could do 
 to accomplish the task. He had found France a small 
 
228 PHILIP AUGUSTUS chap. 
 
 realm hedged in by mighty rivals. When he began to 
 reign, but a very small portion of the French-speaking 
 people had owned his sway. As suzerain his power 
 was derided. Even as immediate lord he was defied 
 and set at nought. But when he died the whole face 
 of France was changed. The king of the Franks was 
 undisputedly the king of by far the greater part of the 
 land. And the internal strength of his government 
 had advanced as rapidly and as securely as the external 
 power. Philip Augustus was the first of his race who 
 could reign if he Avilled as a despot. In conquering 
 the Angevins he had succeeded to something of the 
 characteristics of their government. The master of 
 Rouen and of Angers was a different man from the mere 
 lord of Paris and Orleans. 
 
 The march of the monarchy under Philip the Con- 
 queror by changing the face of France changed the 
 history of Europe. It placed a new power among the 
 great states, which should henceforth exercise a com- 
 manding influence. It had been Philip's task to found 
 France in the sense in which we now use the word. 
 Under him the king of the Franks is first clearly seen 
 to be sovereign of Gaul. Great as a conqueror, he was 
 even greater in constructive and unifying power. What 
 he found he consolidated, and what he founded he laid 
 firm. In a century of great men, beside Innocent III. 
 and Frederic I. and Henry II. and S. Bernard, he 
 stands with the greatest. In his work and in himself 
 he is worthy to take place among the great statesmen 
 who have made the Europe of to-day. 
 
NOTE 
 
 In writincr this book I have found the conclusions which I 
 had drawn from the original authorities so constantly an- 
 ticipated by the French and German historians who have 
 studied the subject within the last fifty years, that I have 
 often had no other course open to me but to follow closely 
 in the path that they had marked out. The plan of this 
 series does not allow" me to mention my obligations as they 
 occur. I have only, therefore, to say that I am very 
 greatly indebted to the works of I\IM. Luchaire (Institutions 
 Mojiarchiques, and Communes francaises), Leopold Delisle 
 (Catalogue des ades de Philippe Awjiiste)^ Davidsohn (Philip 
 August und Pngehorg), W. Walker (Increase of Boy at Power 
 under Philip Augustus), and to many articles in the Ilevue 
 Historique, and Eevue des Questions Historiques, by M]\I. 
 Castellieri, Lot, and others, as well as to older works, such as 
 Hurter's Innocent III, and books on points of military 
 history, etc. I have named the chief chroniclers in my last 
 chapter, but I cannot forbear to express my admiration of the 
 admirable edition of Eigord and JFilliam the Breton which we 
 owe to the labour of M. Delaborde. My book, if nothing 
 else, should be a tribute of homage to the French historians, 
 my masters. 
 
 W. H. H. 
 
Printed by R. & R. Clark, Limited, Edinburgh. 
 
FOREIGN STATESMEN 
 
 It has been decided to issue, under this title, the 
 lives of eminent statesmen of Continental Europe, 
 corresponding" in form and size, and similar in scope, 
 to the series which, under the name " Twelve English 
 Statesmen," was confined to the British Islands. The 
 new series does not aim at including every statesman 
 who has made his mark in the history of his country ; 
 it is necessarily limited to a selection from those who 
 have exercised a commanding influence on the general 
 course of European affairs, and impressed their 
 memory deeply on the minds of men. 
 
 The series will be edited by Professor BURY of 
 Trinity College, Dublin. 
 
 The following volumes have already been arranged 
 for, and will be published at short intervals : — 
 
 Richelieu. 
 
 By R. Lodge, Professor of History in the University 
 of Glasgow. \_Read}K 
 
 Philip Augustus. 
 
 By Rev. W. H. Hutton, Fellow and Tutor of St. 
 John's College, Oxford. \Ready, 
 
 William the Silent 
 
 By Frederic Harrison. 
 
 Maria Theresa. 
 
 By Dr. J. Franck Bright, Master of University 
 College, Oxford. 
 
FOREIGN STATESMEN— C^;z//;^/^^^. 
 
 Charles the Great. 
 
 By Thomas Hodgkin, D.C.L., Author of Italy and 
 Her Invade?'s^ etc, 
 
 Louis XI. 
 
 By G.^ W. Prothero, Professor of History in the 
 University of Edinburgh. 
 
 Ferdinand the Catholic. 
 
 By E. Armstrong, Fellow of Queen's College, 
 Oxford. 
 
 Mazarin. 
 
 By Arthur Hassall, Student and Tutor of Christ 
 Church, Oxford. 
 
 Louis XIV. 
 
 By H. O. Wakeman, Fellow of All Souls College, and 
 Tutor of Keble College, Oxford. 
 
 Catherine II. 
 
 By J. B. Bury, Professor of Modern History in the 
 University of Dublin. 
 
 Mirabeau. 
 
 By P. F. WiLLERT, Fellow of Exeter College, 
 Oxford. 
 
 Cavour. 
 
 By the Countess Martinengo Cesaresco,