But he was the king's candidate,
and on 23 March 1127 the Flemish delegates hastened to elect him as
their suzerain in the presence of Louis VI at Arras.
and on 23 March 1127 the Flemish delegates hastened to elect him as
their suzerain in the presence of Louis VI at Arras.
Cambridge Medieval History - v5 - Contest of Empire and the Papacy
The writ of Darrein Presentment ordered the summons of
a jury to inquire who presented the last parson to a vacant church in time
of peace, and it was adjudged that he or his heir should present again.
The three recognitions begun by these writs became in a few years
extremely popular. They were speedy, for few essoins were allowed.
Few indeed were necessary, for a favourable judgment under one of
these assizes gave the winner no right of ownership in the disputed land
or advowson; the loser could still bring the writ of right in his lord's
court. Barons used the new procedure, which was meant as much for
them as for the humble freeman. It is customary to speak of these devices
as though they were directly aimed against the barons and their courts.
But to say that Henry deliberately set out to protect possession or seisin
in order to deprive the baronial courts of their jurisdiction is completely
to misunderstand the conditions of the time. The curtailment of suits
was as much to the advantage of barons as to that of other men. It was
also to the general good that men should not be tempted to self-help
by the law's delays. Moreover, such was the love of litigation at this
time that it is doubtful if the new recognitions made very much difference
to the volume of business in the feudal courts.
The Leges Henrici Primi shew that in the reign of Henry I a court
of justice was regarded as a place where men might either be brought
together in love or separated in judgment. It was as much the duty of
the judge to end litigation by arranging an agreement as by delivering
a judgment. The famous pleas of the early years of Henry II were often
ended by a compromise. In the course of the reign, the idea of embody-
ing the agreement so arranged in the form of a chirograph, an indenture,
was elaborated by the development of a definite formula for the record
of the convention. Written twice, head to head, on one piece of parch-
CH. XVII.
## p. 590 (#636) ############################################
590
The Carta of 1166
ment, the text recorded the place and date of the agreement and the
judges before whom it was made. It then proceeded to recite the terms
of the agreement. The authenticity of the text was guaranteed by the
device of severing the parchment through the word CYROGRAPHUM
written between the two copies. Originally devised with the object of
curtailing and preventing litigation, the final concord came to be regarded
as the ideal way of making an agreement touching ownership; for the
king's court would enforce its observance. It soon became worth men's
while to bring a fictitious action as the formal preliminary to a pre-
arranged agreement, in order to enjoy the security given by a final
concord made before the king's justices. The final concord had before
it a longer history than either Henry or Glanville can have foreseen.
The year 1166, in addition to being a turning point in legal history,
has been claimed as marking a revolution in financial organisation. In
that year the policy which ultimately assimilated towns to the royal
demesne, and made them with it subject to aids or tallages assessed by
royal justices, was definitely entered upon. Also in that year Henry
required his tenants-in-chief to send him a sealed return, informing him
how they had arranged the details of their knight-service. He did not
ask the amount of the knight-service that they owed, the servicium
debitum. He asked how many knights had been enfeoffed before the
death of Henry I, and how many since, and how many, if any, remained
to be provided for by the tenant-in-chief himself. He asked, in fact,
how many knights were of the old enfeoffment, how many of the new,
and how many “in demesne"; the names of the knights enfeoffed had
also to be returned. The object of this enquiry has generally been
regarded as financial. Dr Round has pointed out that after 1166 tenants-
in-chief paid on their servicium debitum only in those cases where they
had enfeoffed fewer knights than the amount of the knight-service that
they owed the king. Where for any reason the tenant-in-chief had
enfeoffed more knights than his actual service required, he paid after
1166 on the number of knights that he had actually enfeoffed and not
on his servicium debitum. Dr Round has therefore argued that the object
of the returns was to secure “a new feudal assessment. ” That Henry did
in fact compel some of his tenants-in-chief to pay on more knights than
their old servicium debitum is certain, but there remained many cases in
which no difference in the assessment or in the amount paid was made? .
It is also highly probable that Henry's object in making the enquiry was
in part at least political, and that the Archbishop of York is accurate
in his statement that the king has asked the questions because he wishes
to know the names of the knights, in order that those who have not
done allegiance, and whose names are not written on the king's roll,
may do allegiance before a certain date.
It is on his achievement in setting English lawyers upon the paths
1 More research into this matter is needed.
## p. 591 (#637) ############################################
Conclusion
591
that they have trodden for seven hundred years, and are indeed treading
yet, that the fame of Henry II rests. He was the greatest and the richest
king in western Europe. One of his daughters married the King of Sicily,
another the Duke of Saxony, Henry the Lion. The latter marriage made
much history. But the triumph of his reign lay, not in his riches or
alliances, but in the fact that his contemporaries recognised in him the
greatest lawyer of his day. Kings came to him for judgment. If in his
enforcement of the forest laws Henry shewed himself not only ungenerous
but unjust, it was a matter of gratulation and wonder that the poor
could come to his court and win justice against the rich. The men about
his court were not mere judges and administrators, they included men of
letters. Henry was fortunate in his servants, but the court of those
days was what the king made it. Henry's greatness has always been
recognised, and much that was done by previous kings has been in the
past assigned to him. Of late years, justice has been done to the work
of his predecessors. It has been realised that Henry worked on founda-
tions already laid. But the foundations were slight-a few formulas,
the beginnings of an idea,
CH. XVII.
## p. 592 (#638) ############################################
592
CHAPTER XVIII.
FRANCE: LOUIS VI AND LOUIS VII
(1108-1180).
The history of France throughout the reigns of Louis VI (1108–1137)
and Louis VII (1137–1180) is completely dominated by two apparently
contradictory factors. We see on the one hand the persistent extension
of the Anglo-Norman domain, which, from the day that it passed into
the hands of the Counts of Anjou, gradually increased until it included
more than half of France; while on the other hand it is obvious that the
king's power was daily becoming more firmly established, daily gaining
as much in strength as it lost in extent through the growing predominance
of Normandy and Anjou. Philip I's two immediate successors concentrated
nearly all their energies, though not with equal zeal, upon a twofold task:
to oppose the English monarch's invasion of the kingdom, and to
recover authority over all the territory that was normally subject to the
Crown.
The most urgent matter was to secure obedience from the barons of
the royal domain, whose turbulence and insubordination threatened to
make the sovereign's authority of no effect, even in the Isle de France.
This was the task to which Louis VI especially applied himself. Even in
his father's lifetime, as we have seen', he had attacked the problem with
energy.
No work could have better suited this vigorous soldier-king, in whom
courage was carried to the point of temerity. In person he was tall and
strong, with a tendency to corpulence that earned him the nickname of
le Gros, and, to his great sorrow, began to unfit him for the rough pro-
fession of arms when he was no more than forty years of age. A large
eater, and a lover of freedom and gaiety, he was at the same time honest
and upright, cheery and easy of approach; and his contemporaries charge
him with but one serious failing, that of cupidity. All are agreed in
praising the rare energy and valour of which the record of his actions is
sufficient evidence.
Of the first years of his reign, indeed, hardly one passed that did not
see him actively employed in fighting and chastising his turbulent vassals.
The massive castles by means of which they dominated the highways had
1 Supra, Vol. 11, Chap. v.
## p. 593 (#639) ############################################
Anarchy in the royal domain
593
become mere dens of brigands, and the terror that they inspired is
described in vivid terms by the chroniclers of the day. A traveller from
Paris to Orleans, for instance, was threatened at every step by some fresh
danger. Whether he were minded to follow the highroad, or to avoid it
in the hope of escaping “ the ravening wolves,” the lord of some castle
would be lying in wait to fall upon him and rob him. The owners of the
fortresses of Montlhery, Châteaufort, La Ferté-Alais, and Le Puiset were
masters of this part of the country, and had reduced it to such a “chaos
of confusion,” says one of the chroniclers, "that it was unsafe to venture
upon the road without either obtaining their consent or securing a con-
siderable escort. ” If a man were bound for Melun he found his way
barred by the fortress of Corbeil; if for Mantes, Dreux, or Chartres, he
was forced to reckon at least with the castles of Chevreuse, Épernon,
Rochefort, Gometz, Montfort-l'Amauri, Montchauvet, Houdan, and
Maule.
Everywhere the barons, safeguarded by their fortresses, perpetrated
the same excesses: these usually consisted, not only in robbing merchants
and pilgrims, but also in fleecing the peasants, in seizing their wine, corn,
and cattle, and in pillaging the property of the neighbouring churches
and abbeys, invading the abbeys themselves, and making imperious
demands for food and shelter for all their suite. It was these last mis-
doings that drew down upon them, not unnaturally, the worst impre-
cations of the writers of their day, who were nearly all clerics. There
were certain barons who went even further than the rest, and took
pleasure in posing as veritable dilettanti, so to speak, in the arts of
brigandage and cruelty. The most famous example of this type was the
son of Enguerrand of Coucy, that Thomas of Marle of whom a con-
temporary chronicler, Guibert, Abbot of the neighbouring monastery of
Nogent, has given us an imperishable portrait.
After a youth spent in debauchery, and in robbing unfortunate
pilgrims bound for the Holy Land, Thomas had come to take a positive
delight in murder. His cruelty, says the worthy Guibert of Nogent, “so
far exceeded previous experience that men who were notoriously cruel
killed cattle, apparently, with more regret than he shewed in slaying men. "
He slaughtered without cause for the sheer pleasure of it; and he ex-
hibited great ingenuity in devising horrible deaths for his victims. Some-
times, it was said, he would hang a man by his thumbs or some other part of
the body, and shower blows upon him till he died. Guibert of Nogent
declares that he was present one day when Thomas of Marle had the eyes
of ten of his victims torn out, with the result that they immediately
expired. On another occasion he asked a peasant who had angered him
why he did not walk faster, and on the man answering that he was
unable to do so—“Wait a moment," cried Thomas; “I'll make you bestir
yourself! ” and leaping from his horse he drew his sword and cut off both
the peasant's feet at a single blow. The poor wretch died; and Guibert,
C. MED, H, VOL. V, CH. XVIII.
38
## p. 594 (#640) ############################################
594
Struggle of Louis VI with the lesser barons
9
who tells the story, adds: “No one can imagine the number of those
who perished in his dungeons, from starvation, from torture, from
filth.
Fortunately, not all the petty barons by whom the king was confronted
were fashioned after this pattern; but the evil was deeply rooted every-
where, and it was necessary for Louis VI to complete without delay the
purge which he had begun even in his father's lifetime. The two seigneurs
who gave him the most trouble were this very Thomas of Marle whom
we have just described, and Hugh, lord of Le Puiset. The latter,
though not so perverted as Thomas, was the terror of the country round
Chartres, which he ravaged, pillaged, and devastated with fire, with-
out intermission and without mercy. In March 1111, when Louis VI was
holding his court at Melun, the charges brought against this brigand were
particularly vehement and urgent. To the complaints of Theobald, Count
of Chartres, were added those of the Archbishop of Sens, the Bishops of
Chartres and Orleans, the abbots of such monasteries as were especially
open to attack, and many canons and priests, all of whom besought the
king to rid them of this “rapacious wolf,” to “ tear from the monster's
jaws” their property, the fertile fields of Beauce that he “was devouring. ”
On being summoned to the king's presence to answer for his depredations,
Hugh, not unnaturally, evaded the summons. He was promptly
declared to have forfeited his fief by this refusal to appear, and Louis VI,
after calling upon the rebel to surrender, gathered an army and, supported
by the Count of Chartres, laid siege to the castle of Le Puiset. It was
only after a fierce struggle that he succeeded in reducing it. Hugh was
taken prisoner, and the castle was burnt and razed to the ground.
But Hugh was one of those men whom misfortunes only exasperate.
No sooner had the king, in 1112, been rash enough to release him than,
with renewed ferocity, he returned to his evil courses, “as a dog that has
been chained up too long," says Suger, “will bite and tear everything that
comes his way. ” The king was engaged in a war with Henry of England
and Theobald of Chartres; and Hugh, taking advantage of his em-
barrassment, raised a band of marauders and proceeded to ravage the
country. Pillage, robbery under arms, imprisonments, were resumed with
fresh
energy;
and one day, when the king arrived in haste to put a bridle
on the robber's daring, he found that the castle of Le Puiset had arisen
from its ruins. Hugh, who on this occasion had the help of the Count of
Chartres, held his own against his sovereign, who was repeatedly repelled,
and only overcame the terrible baron after the Count of Chartres had
withdrawn from the struggle. Hugh was despoiled of all he possessed and
his castle was again destroyed, the walls razed, the moats filled up, the soil
levelled. This was trouble thrown away, however; for hardly was the
king's back turned before the demolished fortress rose again as though
by magic. Hugh, who was pledged to return to the place no more,
promptly entrenched himself within its walls, and continued, as before, to
## p. 595 (#641) ############################################
L
Subjugation of Thomas of Marle
595
terrorise his neighbours. This time the victory remained with Louis VI,
who besieged Le Puiset in 1118 and finally stripped the baron of his
possessions. Before surrendering, however, Hugh had at least the pleasure
of killing, with his own hand and lance, the king's seneschal and faithful
friend, Anseau of Garlande. He was destined soon afterwards to lose his
own life in an expiatory pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
These episodes in Louis VI's conflict with one of the most unruly
barons in his domain are an indication of the difficulties he had to
overcome. Against Thomas of Marle he was obliged to organise a
regular holy war. In the town of Laon, at this time, the fury of the
populace had broken loose and the most dreadful excesses were being
committed. Bishop Gaudri and his followers, who had tricked the
townsfolk and had suppressed their commune with the king's consent,
had been murdered in a riot, the prelate's body covered with wounds and
mutilated, the houses of the nobles and clergy sacked, and the churches
and episcopal palace set on fire. This was in April 1112. The townspeople,
fearing the consequences of the king's anger, appealed to Thomas of
Marle, who eagerly granted them his protection and enrolled them in his
band of robbers. He removed from his path by murder Gautier, the
Archdeacon of Laon, and took possession of two properties belonging to
the abbey of Saint-Jean-de-Laon, Crécy-sur-Serre and Nouvion-l'Abbesse.
Here he took shelter behind massive walls and strong towers, whence he
only emerged to fall upon his prey. The dignitaries of the Church were
roused; and in December 1114, at a council held at Beauvais under the
presidency of Cono, Cardinal-bishop of Palestrina and legate of the
Holy See, Thomas was excommunicated, placed under the ban of
Christendom, and pronounced unworthy henceforward to bear a sword.
The king was implored to lose no time in suppressing the insane audacity
of this protector of Bishop Gaudri's murderers, this rifler of churches and
pilgrims. Thomas was pursued by the reiterated anathemas of prelates
in council and synod, and of every parish priest; he soon found himself
held at bay by the popular levies, whom the summons of the clergy had
gathered in large numbers to fight in the pious cause under the king's
banner. The fortresses of Crécy and Nouvion fell in turn into Louis VI's
hands, and were utterly demolished (1115). Thomas was surrounded in
his castle of Marle, and was forced to beg for absolution from the Church
and for mercy from the king.
Louis, who at the time had a good deal of other business on his
hands, was imprudent enough to pardon him, and was hardly out of
sight before the robber's acts of violence began again. For fifteen long
years he was able to indulge in these practices to his heart's content,
while no one, not even the king, dared to oppose him. In the meantime,
on the death of his father Enguerrand in 1116, Thomas had become lord
of Coucy and Boves, and seemed able to defy all attacks; until, in 1130,
Louis VI was driven by the constant complaints of the clergy and the
CH. XVIII.
38—2
## p. 596 (#642) ############################################
596
Order re-established in the royal domain
urgent entreaty of Ralph, Count of Vermandois, to organise an expedition
against him. It was only by a stroke of good fortune that the king was
enabled to end the matter quickly. Thomas, being taken by surprise
before Coucy and mortally wounded, fell into Louis' hands, and died at
last, to the great relief of the whole district. To the very end he obsti-
nately refused, in spite of his sufferings and the threats and entreaties of
others, to order the merchants whom he had robbed and imprisoned to
be set at liberty.
With opponents such as this, as may easily be imagined, Louis VI
found that the task to which he had resolved to devote himself, of bringing
peace into the royal domain, was an arduous undertaking, and one that
required persistent effort on his part. Even in 1108, immediately on his
accession to the throne, he was involved in war with Hugh of Crécy,
who, not content with ravaging the country, had crowned his offences by
capturing Eudes, Count of Corbeil, and imprisoning him in the dungeons
of La Ferté-Alais. To set him free it was necessary to besiege that
fortress, which only surrendered to the king after a long struggle, full of
vicissitudes.
A few months later, in the spring of 1109, Louis VI was again in the
field. This time he was besieging Mantes, which he recovered after
a strenuous fight from his half-brother Philip, the son of Bertrada
of Montfort. This count, like the barons of less distinguished descent,
spent his time in the sordid plundering of the churches and peasants of
the neighbourhood. Moreover, he formed dangerous conspiracies against
the Crown.
Hardly was this danger averted before an equally serious one arose :
the lords of Montfort-l'Amauri were threatening to cut off all the king's
communications with the country south of Paris. Amauri of Montfort,
who was already in possession of the castles of Montfort, Montchauvet,
Houdan, and Epernon, had married his daughter to Louis VI's recent
opponent, Hugh of Crécy, and was willing to help his son-in-law in the
conquest of the castle of Montlhéry and its dependencies, notably the
castle of Arpajon. All these fortresses, combined with Hugh's other
castles of Crécy-en-Brie, Châteaufort, and Gometz, and those of Amauri's
brother Guy of Rochefort at Rochefort-en-Iveline, Chevreuse, and Bréthen-
court, would, if linked to one another, have interposed a continuous barrier
between the king and a considerable portion of his domain. Louis VI,
however, hastened to forestall his enemies, and, before Hugh of Crécy
could interfere, seized Arpajon and handed over Montlhéry to Milo of
Bray, Viscount of Troyes, who claimed it on the ground of hereditary
right. This occurred at the end of the year 1109. In the meantime Hugh
of Crécy was forced to fly precipitately. This turbulent vassal, who
was nearly as redoubtable as Hugh of Le Puiset or Thomas of Marle, and
like them had earned a sinister reputation for robbery and murder
(this “tool of the devil," as a contemporary chronicler calls him), was des-
## p. 597 (#643) ############################################
Louis V1 and the great fiefs
597
tined to be a source of trouble to the king for many years after this. In
1112 he was one of the most ardent supporters of Hugh of Le Puiset and
Theobald, Count of Blois, in their rebellion, and he was the life and soul
of the league that was formed at that time against the king by a handful
of petty barons: Lancelin of Bulles, lord of Dammartin, Païen of
Montjay, Ralph of Beaugency, Guy of Rochefort, and Milo of Bray-sur-
Seine, the very man whom Louis VI had weakly allowed to take possession
of Montlhéry. In 1118 Hugh of Crécy put the finishing touch to his
misdeeds by treacherously seizing this Milo (who was his cousin-german),
keeping him in chains in a dungeon at Châteaufort, and finally strangling
him and throwing his remains to the winds. This was more than could
be borne. Hugh was excommunicated and left without a friend, his
castle at Gometz was seized by the king, and he himself threatened with
the severest penalties. Seeing that his only safety lay in penitence, he
implored the king's pardon, which he only secured at the price of losing
all his estates and assuming the monastic habit. In this garb he was left
for the rest of his days to meditate on the difference between massacring
a few common peasants and murdering a baron.
It was thus, by means of a ceaseless struggle, of which the episodes
recorded are merely a few examples, that Louis VI gradually achieved
the establishment of the royal authority within the limits of his domain.
But Louis and his counsellors were becoming more and more alive to
the fact that it was the king's duty to see that peace and justice were
respected throughout the length and breadth of his kingdom; and that
by appearing everywhere, even in the most distant fiefs, as the protector
of the oppressed and the defender of law and right he would revive the
monarchical tradition, and would become really king of all France. A
letter addressed to him in 1114 by Ivo, Bishop of Chartres, reminded
him that “it behoved the King's Majesty to prevent the violation of the
covenant of peace, for which he had pledged himself, under Divine
inspiration, to enforce respect in his kingdom ”; and Suger repeatedly
insisted that the sovereign was bound by his office to “curb the audacity
of the tyrants” who robbed and oppressed the people, destroyed churches,
and disquieted the whole country.
Louis VI did all he could to fulfil this obligation. Vassals, who for
long years had never thought of their sovereign except to take arms
against him, he unhesitatingly summoned to appear before his tribunal;
nor, if any of them refused to obey, did the king fail to raise an army
and set out upon a costly and fatiguing expedition, with a view to
teaching the rebel a proper respect for law and order, and obedience to the
royal will. One day he was on the point of starting upon one of these petty
campaigns when he was reminded, not only that there were many diffi-
culties in his way, but that he might even find it impossible to reduce
a castle that had the reputation of being impregnable. With great
CH. XVIII.
## p. 598 (#644) ############################################
598 The king's intervention in the Bourbonnais and Auvergne
spirit Louis answered indignantly: “We decided, in a council held at
Laon, to make this expedition, and there is nothing in the world that
could make us change the decision to which we then came. What a
disgrace it would be for the majesty of the Crown if we were to hold back
for fear of a bandit! ” This answer shews us the whole man.
A few examples of Louis' intervention will reveal, not only the high
ideal that he had of his office, but also the increasing confidence with
which the oppressed, in every part of France, turned to him as to their
recognised protector. At the very beginning of his reign, in 1108 or
1109, a seigneur named Aymon Vaire-Vache unblushingly seized the lord-
ship of Bourbon, although its rightful inheritor was his nephew
Archambaud, at that time a minor. The king was informed of the
matter and was implored to maintain the boy's rights. As Aymon refused
to appear before the royal tribunal to explain his conduct, Louis VI
promptly crossed Berry with his troops, besieged the rebel in his castle
of Germigny-sur-l'Aubois, forced him to surrender at discretion, and
took him back to Paris, where he was condemned to restore all the
property that he had unlawfully seized. This rapid success was bewilder-
ing. “Kings have long arms! ” exclaimed Suger on this occasion, turning
to account a line of Ovid.
Perhaps even more characteristic was his behaviour in 1122, when
Aimeri, Bishop of Clermont, on being driven out of his episcopal town by
William VI, the Count of Auvergne, appealed to the king. Louis, with-
out a moment's hesitation, set off to punish the delinquent, after in vain
summoning him, both by word of mouth and by sealed letters, to appear
before the royal Court. Mustering at Bourges a large army which
included some of his most important vassals, such as the Counts of Anjou,
Brittany, and Nevers, the king marched rapidly into Auvergne, seized as
he passed the fortress of Pont-du-Château on the Allier, and fell upon
Clermont, which Count William and his men abandoned in disorder.
They had to submit to the triumphant return of the king's protégé, the
bishop
Four years later the Count of Auvergne thought the moment had
come to take his revenge. But Louis VI was able to shew that his will
must be obeyed. He entered upon a new campaign with undiminished
energy, though the summer heat was overpowering and his stoutness
increasing so much that, young as he was, the active life of a soldier
became more difficult for him every day. He advanced swiftly to
Montferrand, which he burnt, seized Clermont for the second time, and,
leaving the country settled and at peace, haled the rebel before the
royal Court at Orleans to render account for his latest misdeeds.
In the following year there occurred a still more serious episode. On
2 March 1127, the Count of Flanders, Charles the Good, was assassinated
in the church of St Donatian at Bruges while actually engaged in his
devotions. The story of this grievous scandal spread like wildfire through
## p. 599 (#645) ############################################
The question of the succession to Flanders
599
the kingdom, and even to England; the news was known in London in
less than forty-eight hours. Louis VI instantly set out for Arras, and
arrived there less than a week after the murder. Here he remained,
holding himself in readiness for any emergency. The crime demanded
an exemplary punishment, and the Flemings had turned to the king for
help as promptly as he had hurried to their aid. The question was
complicated, however, by difficulties in the matter of the succession. The
Count of Flanders had left no direct heir, and while the country was in
a state of hopeless confusion and the Flemings were occupied in dealing
with the murderers, a variety of claimants sprang up on all sides and fell
upon the quarry. William of Ypres, who was a natural son of the
murdered man's uncle and was popularly accused of complicity with the
murderers, succeeded in the course of a few days in taking forcible
possession of some of the strongest fortresses in Flanders. Other claim-
ants were Thierry of Alsace, son of Gertrude, Countess of Holland, who
based his pretensions on the fact that Robert the Frisian, Count of
Flanders (ob. 1093), was his maternal grandfather ; Arnold of Denmark,
nephew of Charles the Good, who seized Saint-Oiner; Baldwin IV, Count
of Hainault, who, though his only claim was through his great-grand-
father Baldwin VI of Flanders (ob. 1070), proceeded to occupy Oudenarde;
and several others, notably Godfrey the Bearded, Duke of Brabant, who,
profiting by the prevailing confusion, suddenly discovered claims of his
own, and hastened to vindicate them by force of arms.
The king determined to assert himself. While occupied in concen-
trating his troops at Arras he sent an urgent summons to the Flemings,
bidding them elect a new count in his presence without delay. Louis had
a candidate of his own, William Clito the son of Robert Curthose, who
had been disinherited by his uncle Henry I of England, and has been
justly called “a perpetual pretender to the duchy of Normandy. ” His
right was certainly no better than that of Baldwin of Hainault, seeing
that his only connexion with the House of Flanders was through his
maternal great-grandfather, Baldwin of Lille, Count of Flanders (ob. 1067),
father-in-law to William the Conqueror.
But he was the king's candidate,
and on 23 March 1127 the Flemish delegates hastened to elect him as
their suzerain in the presence of Louis VI at Arras. The election was at
once confirmed by Ghent, Bruges, Lille, and Saint-Omer; and the king,
accompanied by the new count, whom he was fully determined to keep in
a state of strict pupillage, advanced rapidly into the heart of Flanders,
announcing in a circular letter his intention of making an example of the
murderers and restoring order to the country. By 2 April he was at
Ghent; on 5 April he reached Bruges, where the murderers were block-
aded in the tower of St Donatian and forced to surrender; a few days
later, on 26 April, he took Ypres, captured William of Ypres, confiscated
his property, and dispatched him to a dungeon at Lille; on the fol-
lowing day he reduced Aire, Cassel, and all the towns in which William
CH. XVIII.
## p. 600 (#646) ############################################
600
Royal intervention in Flanders
יל
of Ypres had obtained recognition ; and finally, on 6 May, he was able
to set out on his return journey to France by way of Arras. But first,
he saw the murderers executed-hurled, under his eyes, from the top of
the tower in which they had taken refuge. He had, it seemed, imposed
the suzerain of his choice upon the whole of Flanders.
That a king of France should be in a position to act with so much
daring and resolution shews plainly how much ground the Crown had
recovered. His success, it is true, was short-lived; but this was the fault
of the young count, whose blundering stupidity compromised the whole
situation as soon as his royal protector left him to himself. In a country
where the bourgeois were predominant, where commercial and industrial
interests prevailed, and where social development was far more advanced
than in that of its neighbours, William Clito imagined that he could
ignore the people and rely on the nobles alone. The barons and knights
thought that the moment had come for them to take their revenge, and
a period of feudal reaction followed. Almost immediately riots broke out
in the towns; the evicted claimants plucked up courage; Ghent and
Bruges opened their gates to Thierry of Alsace ; Saint-Omer recalled
Arnold of Denmark, who was secretly supported by the King of England.
Disorder once more reigned supreme.
Louis VI tried to intervene, thinking he could take a high tone with
the rebels. “I desire you,” he wrote to the people of Bruges on
10 April 1128, “to send eight notables to me at Arras on Palm Sunday
(15 April); I will summon as many from each of the towns of Flanders,
in order to inquire, in their presence and in that of all my barons, into
the reasons of your disagreement and of your conflict with your Count
William, and I shall make it my business forthwith to establish peace
between you and him. If there be any man among you who dares not
come to me, I will give him a safe-conduct, both for coming and for
going. ” But this time his authoritative tone made no impression on the
men of Bruges, whose answer was a haughty and violent indictment of
the King of France. They accused him of selling their country for a
thousand marks, denied him all right of interference in the election of
their suzerain, and condemned in very energetic language the treacherous
treatment they had received from William Clito. They, moreover, had
settled the question for themselves. They announced without further ado
that in place of William Clito, who had played them false and had been
expelled by them, they would recognise no suzerain in future but Thierry
of Alsace, “who had a stronger hereditary right to be their count, was a
wise and loyal man, and had been raised to power in accordance with the
custom of the country. To him who so admirably adhered to the manners
and customs of his predecessors they had pledged their faith and homage. "
This was a direct declaration of war.
Louis VI, who was at the moment engrossed in other difficulties,
doubtless understood that the game was lost. The rapid successes of
## p. 601 (#647) ############################################
Louis VI and the Anglo-Norman kingdom
601
Thierry of Alsace, who made his entry into Lille on 11 April 1128, left
no room for hope. He contented himself with convening a great assembly
at Arras, in which Thierry was excommunicated, and with making a
demonstration before the walls of Lille. Then, having satisfied his
conscience, he abandoned William Clito to his unhappy fate (May 1128).
William's death at the siege of Alost (27 July 1128) hastened the end.
The whole country submitted to Thierry, and Louis VI was obliged to
ratify the accomplished fact by giving investiture to the conqueror. This
time the king had overrated his powers; the hour had not yet come for
great conquests and the subjection of the great fiefs. It was the head
of the Anglo-Norman monarchy who was to be the chief instrument in
proving this fact to Louis.
Ever since the middle of the eleventh century the kings of France had
been making ceaseless efforts to arrest the dangerous and ever-increasing
expansion of the Norman dominion. Philip I, as we have seen', was as
eager as his father Henry to seize every possible chance of embarrassing
this formidable vassal and supporting his enemies. But the King of
France had a redoubtable foe to deal with. The Conqueror's third son,
Henry Beauclerc, was not the man to be intimidated by the Capetian.
Having deprived his brother Robert Curthose of his duchy of Normandy
and sent him into captivity, declaring, not without reason, that he was
incapable of maintaining order and peace in his dominion (1106),
Henry I hastened to take possession of the castle of Gisors. This fortress
on the right bank of the Epte formed, it is true, an integral part of the
Norman Vexin, but such was the strategic importance of its position
commanding the road from Rouen to Paris, that when Henry I did
homage for Normandy to the King of France they made a special
agreement on the subject. Both were pledged never to occupy the place
in person, but either to leave it in the hands of a neutral castellan, at
that time Païen of Neauphle, or else to demolish it.
Louis VI lost no time in protesting. He called upon his vassal to
observe the conventions of the treaty, and summoned him to account for
his conduct in the presence of his suzerain, whom he was to meet on the
frontier of their respective dominions, at the bridge of Neauphle on the
Epte. Both kings came there in force. Henry refused to submit to the
demands of the King of France, whereupon the latter naively, if courage-
ously, offered, if need were, to prove his right by meeting the King of
England in single combat. To the bearers of this strange message Henry
replied: “When the King of France attacks me I shall know how to
defend myself! ” This incident happened about March 1109.
This meant war—a war that was destined to drag on for twenty years,
interrupted from time to time by a truce or a sham peace which enabled
each of the two foes to keep his eye upon the other while awaiting a
Supra, Vol. II, Chap. v.
CH. XVIII.
## p. 602 (#648) ############################################
602
Struggle with Henry I of England
propitious moment to renew the attack. The tactics of the King of
France, in his efforts to arrest the growth of the power of Normandy,
were simple. They consisted in allying himself with the Count of Anjou,
and favouring the Angevin intrigues in Maine, with a view to keeping
the Norman from that province, and finally himself attacking him at his
most vulnerable point, the Vexin, in order to free the royal domain from
the perpetual menace that threatened it if Gisors remained in the hands
of the English king. As for Henry, his policy was to secure freedom of
action by seizing every possible chance of creating difficulties for the
King of France in his own dominions; and, while seeking to be on good
terms with the Count of Anjou, to lend his support to Theobald, Count
of Blois and Chartres, who was to wage perpetual war against Louis,
harassing his army in the rear as his Norman foes slowly advanced.
In 1109, at the beginning of hostilities, the alliance between Henry
of England and Theobald of Blois was not yet concluded, and at one time
it almost seemed as though Louis VI were about to triumph. He crossed
the Epte, repulsed Henry's troops, and pursued his victorious way
through part of the Norman Vexin. But in 1111 everything was changed.
Theobald, who in 1109 had figured in Louis VI's army, suddenly changed
sides, and by the spring of the following year had succeeded in bringing
together a formidable coalition against the King of France. This coalition
was composed, as we have already seen', of Henry of England and a host
of petty barons: Lancelin of Bulles, lord of Dammartin, Païen of
Montjay, Ralph of Beaugency, Milo of Bray-sur-Seine, Hugh of Crécy,
Guy of Rochefort, and Hugh of Le Puiset himself, not to speak of Hugh,
Count of Troyes. This time Louis was forced to yield. He succeeded, it
is true, in overcoming the coalition of French barons and in repulsing
Theobald; but he found it impossible to defeat the English monarch.
Not only was there now no question of obliging him to abandon Gisors,
but a treaty was signed before the walls of that fortress at the end of
March 1113, by which Louis agreed, perforce, to recognise Henry I as
suzerain of Brittany as well as of Maine, which in 1110 had come by
marriage into the hands of the Count of Anjou.
Three years were hardly gone before war broke out again (April 1116),
a war of constant skirmishes on the confines of the Norman and the
French Vexin, in which each king captured in turn the strongholds of his
rival. Louis VI, encouraged by several successes, of which the most
brilliant was the surprise and capture of Les Andelys, early in 1119, by
means of treachery within the walls, thought the hour had come for
a decisive engagement. He suddenly offered battle to Henry I in the plain
of Brémule, not far from Noyon-sur-Andelle. The result was disaster.
The troops of the King of France were seized with panic when confronted
by the large and well-disciplined army that the English king had at bis
disposal, and took to flight, carrying Louis with them in their stampede.
1 See supra, p. 597.
## p. 603 (#649) ############################################
Negotiations for peace
603
He fled precipitately to Les Andelys, where he succeeded in finding a refuge,
but only after wandering alone in the forest of Musegros; his war-horse and
banner he left in the hands of the enemy (20 August 1119). In his rage
and humiliation he vainly tried, a month later, to avenge himself by
attacking the district of Évreux; but, though he captured and burnt Ivry,
he failed before Breteuil, which was the object of the expedition. In the
meantime his son-in-law William of Chaumont was being equally un-
successful at the siege of Tillières, where he fell into the hands of the
enemy. Louis was again forced to beat a retreat, and such was his fury
that he was on the point of burning Chartres, to vent his wrath at the
expense of Count Theobald.
And now his failing health, and his weariness of this long struggle
that had brought him only mortification, prompted Louis to negotiate
for peace. He appealed to the supreme arbitrator, Pope Calixtus II, on
the occasion of a council held by the latter at Rheims on 20 and 21
October 1119. The Norman monk, Ordericus Vitalis, has given us in
his chronicle, if not the exact words, at least the substance of the speech
delivered on this occasion by the “strongly-built, pale, corpulent, eloquent”
king, whom he seems himself to have seen and heard. The speech was a
veritable indictment, a denunciation of Henry I's conduct from first to
last. Nothing was overlooked, from the iniquitous imprisonment of
Robert Curthose to the arrest of Robert, lord of Bellême, who had been
sent on a mission to Henry by the King of France in 1112. “The King
of England, who was long my ally, has been guilty of constant acts of
aggression and violence at my expense, and at that of my subjects; he
took forcible possession of Normandy, which forms part of my kingdom ;
he has treated Robert, Duke of Normandy, shamefully, in defiance of law
and justice. Ignoring the fact that Robert was my vassal and his own
brother and lord, he subjected him to all manner of vexations, and finally
imprisoned him. Even now he has him fast in his dungeons. And here
before you stands the son of this unhappy duke, William (Clito), who has
come hither with me, having been driven into exile and disinherited by
the King of England! By the mouths of bishops and counts and many
others, I have called upon him to restore to me the duke whom he holds
imprisoned; but I have obtained no satisfaction. Robert of Bellême, my
ambassador, whom I sent to signify my will to him, was arrested by his
orders in his palace. He loaded him with chains, and has kept him to this
day in a cruel prison. ” Finally, Henry was also accused of inciting to
rebellion that Count of Blois, Theobald, whose shameful excesses had
disturbed the whole kingdom. The Pope promised to intervene. But
this ex parte statement of Louis VI, who had omitted to say that he
himself, in 1107, had connived at the spoliation of Robert Curthose,
was met by Henry I with another that was no less biassed, and
moreover supported by various gifts on the occasion of an interview that
he had with Calixtus II at Gisors in the following November. Henry
was
CH. XVIII.
## p. 604 (#650) ############################################
604 Marriage of Louis VII with Eleanor of Aquitaine
agreed, however, to enter into negotiations with the King of France, and
in 1120 peace was concluded on these terms: the two adversaries were to
restore their respective conquests, and Louis VI was to receive homage
for the duchy of Normandy from William Aetheling, only legitimate
son of Henry I and heir apparent to the throne of England. In the
matter of Gisors Louis was obliged to yield. This was a decided set-back.
On both sides underhand hostilities continued. On 25 November
1120, Louis VI's hopes were revived by the unexpected death of William
Aetheling in the White Ship; and in 1123 a coalition of Norman
and French seigneurs was formed with the object of expelling the King
of England from the duchy of Normandy and replacing him by William
Clito. Henry I stoutly held his own against this coalition, while at his
instigation his son-in-law, the Emperor Henry V, made ready to fall upon
Rheims in order to hamper Louis VI's actions (August 1124). The latter,
however, succeeded in diverting the storm. With the most remarkable
eagerness and unanimity the entire country rose at the king's appeal, and
rallied round him to repel the national danger. Thereupon Henry V,
daunted by finding a whole nation in arms, beat a hasty retreat. But
Louis could not recover the upper hand in Normandy. Henry I triumphed
over all his enemies, and contributed by his manoeuvres and aggressions
towards the frustration of the French policy in Flanders. He even went
so far as to ally himself with the Count of Anjou by marrying (1127
or 1128) his widowed daughter Matilda, the sole survivor of his legi-
timate children, to Geoffrey the Fair, heir to the fiefs of Anjou and
Maine. This marriage was a terrible menace to hang over the head of
the French king, and it was not long before Louis VII felt its fatal
effects.
And yet, as the time drew near for Louis VI to die, it seemed that
the French monarchy was in a good position. Henry I of England had
died on 1 December 1135, and Stephen of Blois, who obtained the
English crown, was fully occupied at home with difficulties that quite
prevented him from meditating any kind of intervention on the Continent.
Count Theobald, who, since the death of his uncle Hugh I of Champagne
in 1125, had been lord over all the territory of the ancient House of Blois
-namely Champagne, Blois, and Chartres—had at last laid down his arms
and rallied to the Capetian cause. And finally, an unexpected windfall
had just placed the whole duchy of Aquitaine in the hands of the future
king. Duke William X, who had died on 9 April 1137, during a
pilgrimage to the shrine of St James of Compostella, had upon his
death-bed confided to Louis VI the care of marrying his daughter and
heiress Eleanor; and Louis had promptly taken steps to get his son
accepted as her husband. The future Louis VII was occupied in taking
possession of Aquitaine when the death of his father on 1 August 1137
placed him on the throne of France.
## p. 605 (#651) ############################################
The early years of Louis VII
605
During the first few years of his reign the new king, who thus became
his own master at the age of sixteen or seventeen, displayed more activity
than discretion. It is possible that the suggestions of his young queen,
Eleanor, on whom he lavished, says one of the chroniclers, “an extravagant
love," may sometimes have misdirected his energies; and the counsels of
the discreet but somewhat ingenuous Suger were inadequate to counteract
this influence. Without disturbing himself in the least, or putting the
smallest obstacle in the way, Louis allowed the Count of Anjou to
increase his territory so rapidly that his power was every day a greater
menace, and in the meantime threw himself heart and soul into rash
undertakings which, being ill-organised and ill-executed, brought him
nothing but mortification.
Not content with the acquisition of Aquitaine, which he had already
found sufficiently hard to control, he bethought him soon afterwards, in
1141, of insisting upon the rights to the county of Toulouse that his
predecessors in the duchy had several times claimed. Accordingly he
organised an expedition against Count Alphonse-Jourdain. Towards the
end of June a considerable army marched rapidly upon Toulouse under
the king's leadership; but after a few weeks he was obliged to retrace
his steps without having gained any advantage.
It was not long before the young king was concerned with more serious
affairs. For more than two years he squandered the strength of the
monarchy in a twofold and sterile struggle against the Papacy on the one
hand and Count Theobald of Champagne on the other. On the death of
the Archbishop of Bourges in 1141 two candidates were put forward to
succeed him: Cadure, the king's Chancellor, and Peter of La Châtre, a
near relative of the Chancellor of the Roman Church. The one was the
king's candidate, the other the Pope's. The second was elected, in spite
of the fact that Louis forbade the clergy to choose him. Louis in a fury
swore upon the sacred relics that, as long as he lived, Peter should not
enter Bourges. The sovereign pontiff, Innocent II, calmly retorted by con-
secrating Peter with his own hands at Rome, and, since Bourges still
remained closed to him, by laying an interdict on every town, village, or
castle that should shelter the king. "The King of France is a child,” the
Pope is declared to have said, "and must be educated, and prevented
from acquiring bad habits. ” In the meantime Count Theobald had added
fuel to the fire by taking part openly against his sovereign and receiving
Peter of La Châtre in his domain. This was enough to exasperate Louis VII,
who already had a subject of complaint against this vassal, in that he had
twice refused his feudal contingent–in 1138, on the occasion of an ex-
pedition against the rebels of Poitou, and more recently when Louis had
marched against Toulouse.
A fresh incident occurred to aggravate the dissension and hasten
the rupture. Ralph, Count of Vermandois and Seneschal of France,
having repudiated his first wife, Theobald's niece, in order to marry
cu. XVIII.
## p. 606 (#652) ############################################
606
Struggle with Count Theobald of Champagne
Queen Eleanor's sister Alice (also called Petronilla) of Aquitaine, three
bishops of the royal domain consented to dissolve the first marriage on
grounds of consanguinity, and to bless the second. It was not long
before protests were raised; and, at a council held under the presidency
of a papal legate at Lagny-sur-Marne, the three accommodating prelates
were excommunicated, their decision reversed, the second marriage
annulled, and the territory of the Count of Vermandois laid under an
interdict. In itself the incident was commonplace, and the history of the
times records a score of similar episodes. But the young king, stimulated
by Queen Eleanor, took the matter as a personal insult. Here again he
was confronted with Count Theobald. The council that had annulled
the marriage of Ralph and Petronilla was held at Lagny-sur-Marne, on
the territory of the Count of Champagne, who openly took the part of
his niece, Ralph's repudiated wife. This was enough to make the irascible
King of France hold Theobald responsible for the whole affair. With an
outburst of fury that took his enemy by surprise, Louis VII descended on
Champagne, attacked Vitry-sur-Marne, captured it, and left it in flames.
Hundreds of the inhabitants-thirteen hundred, it is said-perished in
the burning church. Theobald, whose turbulent habits and baneful
energy had gradually given place of late years to a spirit of devotion and
a zeal for good works, assumed a pathetic attitude that earned him the
ridicule even of his own subjects. “Why,” they asked, “has not Count
Theobald spent his time and his money in more useful ways? He has
what he deserves: for knights he has monks; for bowmen, lay brethren.
He sees now how little such as these can avail to serve him! ” The
clergy of Champagne, who had suffered cruelly from the royal invasion,
were at a loss to determine what to do.
But Louis VII, no doubt, was equally embarrassed. His victory
brought him no practical advantage; it merely increased the unpopu-
larity of his cause. He was only too thankful, in the summer of 1143,
to accept terms that pledged him to evacuate Champagne on condition
that Theobald—through the good offices of Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux
-should secure the removal of the ban that had been laid upon the Count
of Vermandois and the queen's sister.
It was not long before Louis perceived that the venerable Abbot of
Clairvaux, who had conducted all the negotiations, had taken unworthy
advantage of his inexperience. Hardly had he restored his conquests to
Theobald before Ralph and Petronilla, who refused to be separated, were
excommunicated for the second time. The young king's wrath was
boundless, and he swore to be revenged upon Count Theobald. Bernard
of Clairvaux only incensed him the more by affecting airs of innocence.
What, asked the abbot, had he and Theobald done to deserve the king's
reproaches? Was it their fault if Ralph had behaved in such a way as to
merit excommunication? Had not Count Theobald done his utmost, had
he not even done violence to his conscience, to secure Ralph's absolution
## p. 607 (#653) ############################################
Conquest of Normandy by the Count of Anjou
607
on the first occasion in the face of a thousand difficulties? And what
could he do against this fresh excommunication?
The war was resumed. Louis VII again occupied a portion of
Champagne, and refused to allow the appointment of bishops to vacant
sees. Theobald's attempt at retaliation was to form a feudal league; he
allied himself with the Counts of Flanders and Soissons. Every day the
conflict became more bitter, without any advantage accruing to either
party. Suger and St Bernard were in favour of peace, and perhaps also
the immediate circle of the new Pope, Celestine II, who had just
(26 September 1143) succeeded Innocent II, but it was not without
difficulty that they prevailed over the obstinacy of the young king.
After stubbornly seeking for months to wreak his vengeance upon
Theobald, he was forced to yield at all points: to evacuate Champagne
entirely and unconditionally, to abandon Ralph of Vermandois to his
fate, and to recognise Peter of La Châtre as Archbishop of Bourges.
This was indeed a triumph for the Papacy.
It was fully time for Louis to pull himself together and turn his
attention towards the west. For, while he was thus exhausting his
strength in fruitless efforts, the Count of Anjou and Maine, Geoffrey the
Fair, was taking advantage of every opportunity to extend his dominions.
While his wife Matilda in England was carrying on a ceaseless struggle
with its king, Stephen of Blois, in defence of the rights that she had in-
herited from her father Henry I, Geoffrey descended upon Normandy and
conquered it by slow degrees. In the course of the successive campaigns
in which he engaged almost yearly between 1136 and 1144 he won
nearly the entire province. There remained at last only Rouen; and on
23 April 1144 that town also yielded. Louis had no choice but to
accept the accomplished fact, and to recognise his powerful vassal as the
possessor of the conquered duchy. He had the acuteness, however, to
prevail upon Geoffrey, in exchange for this concession, to evacuate
Gisors, the strategical importance of which we have already seen. This
was, at all events, some compensation.
It may be thought that by this time the king would have learnt
wisdom and, profiting by the experience of these early years, would take
up the reins of government with a firm hand. But hardly was his
desperate struggle with the Church at an end, before he became possessed
by a spirit of mystic piety which prompted him to desert his kingdom
and go forth to fight the infidels in a distant land.
The news of the capture of Edessa by the Atābeg Zangi of Mosul on
25 December 1144 had recently filled the whole of western Christendom
with consternation. On Christmas Day 1145, when Louis was with his
court at Bourges for the ceremony of wearing his crown- a solemnity
that was customary at the great festivals-he suddenly informed the
barons of his intention to take the Cross, and exhorted them to follow
CH. XVIII.
## p. 608 (#654) ############################################
608
Louis VII on crusade
his example. This suggestion they received with so little enthusiasm that
it was found necessary to postpone the final decision to another court to
be held at Vézelay the following Easter. The pious Suger himself advised
the king against this enterprise; and St Bernard, on being entreated to
use his influence for the furtherance of the Crusade, dared not take upon
himself so serious a responsibility, and therefore referred the question to
the Pope. We have seen in an earlier chapter how the latter decided to
espouse the cause, and how St Bernard, in accordance with the Pontiff's
urgent desire, preached the Crusade with enthusiasm and became its life
and soul. He it was whose eloquence, at the assembly at Vézelay on
31 March 1146, succeeded in rousing a fresh outburst of zeal for the holy
war; it was he who kindled the ardour of the Germans and overcame the
resistance of King Conrad III, and who was responsible for the organisa-
tion of the expedition, for all the preparations and arrangements. When
Louis VII's army set out on 11 June 1147, success appeared certain. We
know how these hopes were frustrated: by the discord that so soon broke
out between French and Germans, and weakened their attack upon the
common enemy; by the disasters that overtook both armies, the Germans
at Dorylaeum and the French near Laodicea; and finally by the deplorable
repulse of the crusaders before Damascus in July 1148, after which the
greater number of them gave up the struggle.
Louis VII, however, was quite content to linger in the Holy Land,
visiting the sacred places and forgetting his own kingdom while he
devoted himself overseas to pious works. The Abbot of St Denis, Suger,
who had carried on his shoulders nearly the whole weight of the regency
since the day of the king's departure, urged him to return. Hitherto the
abbot had succeeded admirably in keeping order in the kingdom; but the
king's brother Robert of Dreux had lately returned, and the malcontents
had begun to gather round him. There was even some talk among
them
of deposing Louis and making Robert their king. Happily Suger
contrived to frustrate these intrigues, and, when at last, at the beginning
of November 1149, Louis made up his mind to return to his kingdom
after an absence of nearly two years and a half, he found the country at
peace.
Louis VII at last realised where the true interests of the monarchy
lay. During the early years of his reign he had allowed the whole of
Normandy to be appropriated by the Count of Anjou, Geoffrey the Fair ;
and the energetic campaigns conducted by Geoffrey's wife Matilda and
their son Henry Plantagenet-afterwards Henry II-plainly shewed
whither the dangerous ambitions of the House of Anjou were likely to
lead. The security of the Crown imperatively demanded that the king
should employ every possible means, if indeed it were not already too late,
to undermine this formidable power, which was infinitely more menacing
1 See supra, Chap. xi, pp. 373-75.
## p. 609 (#655) ############################################
Eleanor's divorce and re-marriage
609
than the Anglo-Norman power had ever been in the days of Henry I of
France.
It was an incident of minor importance, the siege of Montreuil-Bellay
by Geoffrey the Fair, that supplied the pretext for a rupture. Gerald, the
lord of this little Angevin fortress, had placed himself at the head of a
strong coalition formed against his suzerain, Count Geoffrey, who had
retaliated by laying siege to the rebel's stronghold.
a jury to inquire who presented the last parson to a vacant church in time
of peace, and it was adjudged that he or his heir should present again.
The three recognitions begun by these writs became in a few years
extremely popular. They were speedy, for few essoins were allowed.
Few indeed were necessary, for a favourable judgment under one of
these assizes gave the winner no right of ownership in the disputed land
or advowson; the loser could still bring the writ of right in his lord's
court. Barons used the new procedure, which was meant as much for
them as for the humble freeman. It is customary to speak of these devices
as though they were directly aimed against the barons and their courts.
But to say that Henry deliberately set out to protect possession or seisin
in order to deprive the baronial courts of their jurisdiction is completely
to misunderstand the conditions of the time. The curtailment of suits
was as much to the advantage of barons as to that of other men. It was
also to the general good that men should not be tempted to self-help
by the law's delays. Moreover, such was the love of litigation at this
time that it is doubtful if the new recognitions made very much difference
to the volume of business in the feudal courts.
The Leges Henrici Primi shew that in the reign of Henry I a court
of justice was regarded as a place where men might either be brought
together in love or separated in judgment. It was as much the duty of
the judge to end litigation by arranging an agreement as by delivering
a judgment. The famous pleas of the early years of Henry II were often
ended by a compromise. In the course of the reign, the idea of embody-
ing the agreement so arranged in the form of a chirograph, an indenture,
was elaborated by the development of a definite formula for the record
of the convention. Written twice, head to head, on one piece of parch-
CH. XVII.
## p. 590 (#636) ############################################
590
The Carta of 1166
ment, the text recorded the place and date of the agreement and the
judges before whom it was made. It then proceeded to recite the terms
of the agreement. The authenticity of the text was guaranteed by the
device of severing the parchment through the word CYROGRAPHUM
written between the two copies. Originally devised with the object of
curtailing and preventing litigation, the final concord came to be regarded
as the ideal way of making an agreement touching ownership; for the
king's court would enforce its observance. It soon became worth men's
while to bring a fictitious action as the formal preliminary to a pre-
arranged agreement, in order to enjoy the security given by a final
concord made before the king's justices. The final concord had before
it a longer history than either Henry or Glanville can have foreseen.
The year 1166, in addition to being a turning point in legal history,
has been claimed as marking a revolution in financial organisation. In
that year the policy which ultimately assimilated towns to the royal
demesne, and made them with it subject to aids or tallages assessed by
royal justices, was definitely entered upon. Also in that year Henry
required his tenants-in-chief to send him a sealed return, informing him
how they had arranged the details of their knight-service. He did not
ask the amount of the knight-service that they owed, the servicium
debitum. He asked how many knights had been enfeoffed before the
death of Henry I, and how many since, and how many, if any, remained
to be provided for by the tenant-in-chief himself. He asked, in fact,
how many knights were of the old enfeoffment, how many of the new,
and how many “in demesne"; the names of the knights enfeoffed had
also to be returned. The object of this enquiry has generally been
regarded as financial. Dr Round has pointed out that after 1166 tenants-
in-chief paid on their servicium debitum only in those cases where they
had enfeoffed fewer knights than the amount of the knight-service that
they owed the king. Where for any reason the tenant-in-chief had
enfeoffed more knights than his actual service required, he paid after
1166 on the number of knights that he had actually enfeoffed and not
on his servicium debitum. Dr Round has therefore argued that the object
of the returns was to secure “a new feudal assessment. ” That Henry did
in fact compel some of his tenants-in-chief to pay on more knights than
their old servicium debitum is certain, but there remained many cases in
which no difference in the assessment or in the amount paid was made? .
It is also highly probable that Henry's object in making the enquiry was
in part at least political, and that the Archbishop of York is accurate
in his statement that the king has asked the questions because he wishes
to know the names of the knights, in order that those who have not
done allegiance, and whose names are not written on the king's roll,
may do allegiance before a certain date.
It is on his achievement in setting English lawyers upon the paths
1 More research into this matter is needed.
## p. 591 (#637) ############################################
Conclusion
591
that they have trodden for seven hundred years, and are indeed treading
yet, that the fame of Henry II rests. He was the greatest and the richest
king in western Europe. One of his daughters married the King of Sicily,
another the Duke of Saxony, Henry the Lion. The latter marriage made
much history. But the triumph of his reign lay, not in his riches or
alliances, but in the fact that his contemporaries recognised in him the
greatest lawyer of his day. Kings came to him for judgment. If in his
enforcement of the forest laws Henry shewed himself not only ungenerous
but unjust, it was a matter of gratulation and wonder that the poor
could come to his court and win justice against the rich. The men about
his court were not mere judges and administrators, they included men of
letters. Henry was fortunate in his servants, but the court of those
days was what the king made it. Henry's greatness has always been
recognised, and much that was done by previous kings has been in the
past assigned to him. Of late years, justice has been done to the work
of his predecessors. It has been realised that Henry worked on founda-
tions already laid. But the foundations were slight-a few formulas,
the beginnings of an idea,
CH. XVII.
## p. 592 (#638) ############################################
592
CHAPTER XVIII.
FRANCE: LOUIS VI AND LOUIS VII
(1108-1180).
The history of France throughout the reigns of Louis VI (1108–1137)
and Louis VII (1137–1180) is completely dominated by two apparently
contradictory factors. We see on the one hand the persistent extension
of the Anglo-Norman domain, which, from the day that it passed into
the hands of the Counts of Anjou, gradually increased until it included
more than half of France; while on the other hand it is obvious that the
king's power was daily becoming more firmly established, daily gaining
as much in strength as it lost in extent through the growing predominance
of Normandy and Anjou. Philip I's two immediate successors concentrated
nearly all their energies, though not with equal zeal, upon a twofold task:
to oppose the English monarch's invasion of the kingdom, and to
recover authority over all the territory that was normally subject to the
Crown.
The most urgent matter was to secure obedience from the barons of
the royal domain, whose turbulence and insubordination threatened to
make the sovereign's authority of no effect, even in the Isle de France.
This was the task to which Louis VI especially applied himself. Even in
his father's lifetime, as we have seen', he had attacked the problem with
energy.
No work could have better suited this vigorous soldier-king, in whom
courage was carried to the point of temerity. In person he was tall and
strong, with a tendency to corpulence that earned him the nickname of
le Gros, and, to his great sorrow, began to unfit him for the rough pro-
fession of arms when he was no more than forty years of age. A large
eater, and a lover of freedom and gaiety, he was at the same time honest
and upright, cheery and easy of approach; and his contemporaries charge
him with but one serious failing, that of cupidity. All are agreed in
praising the rare energy and valour of which the record of his actions is
sufficient evidence.
Of the first years of his reign, indeed, hardly one passed that did not
see him actively employed in fighting and chastising his turbulent vassals.
The massive castles by means of which they dominated the highways had
1 Supra, Vol. 11, Chap. v.
## p. 593 (#639) ############################################
Anarchy in the royal domain
593
become mere dens of brigands, and the terror that they inspired is
described in vivid terms by the chroniclers of the day. A traveller from
Paris to Orleans, for instance, was threatened at every step by some fresh
danger. Whether he were minded to follow the highroad, or to avoid it
in the hope of escaping “ the ravening wolves,” the lord of some castle
would be lying in wait to fall upon him and rob him. The owners of the
fortresses of Montlhery, Châteaufort, La Ferté-Alais, and Le Puiset were
masters of this part of the country, and had reduced it to such a “chaos
of confusion,” says one of the chroniclers, "that it was unsafe to venture
upon the road without either obtaining their consent or securing a con-
siderable escort. ” If a man were bound for Melun he found his way
barred by the fortress of Corbeil; if for Mantes, Dreux, or Chartres, he
was forced to reckon at least with the castles of Chevreuse, Épernon,
Rochefort, Gometz, Montfort-l'Amauri, Montchauvet, Houdan, and
Maule.
Everywhere the barons, safeguarded by their fortresses, perpetrated
the same excesses: these usually consisted, not only in robbing merchants
and pilgrims, but also in fleecing the peasants, in seizing their wine, corn,
and cattle, and in pillaging the property of the neighbouring churches
and abbeys, invading the abbeys themselves, and making imperious
demands for food and shelter for all their suite. It was these last mis-
doings that drew down upon them, not unnaturally, the worst impre-
cations of the writers of their day, who were nearly all clerics. There
were certain barons who went even further than the rest, and took
pleasure in posing as veritable dilettanti, so to speak, in the arts of
brigandage and cruelty. The most famous example of this type was the
son of Enguerrand of Coucy, that Thomas of Marle of whom a con-
temporary chronicler, Guibert, Abbot of the neighbouring monastery of
Nogent, has given us an imperishable portrait.
After a youth spent in debauchery, and in robbing unfortunate
pilgrims bound for the Holy Land, Thomas had come to take a positive
delight in murder. His cruelty, says the worthy Guibert of Nogent, “so
far exceeded previous experience that men who were notoriously cruel
killed cattle, apparently, with more regret than he shewed in slaying men. "
He slaughtered without cause for the sheer pleasure of it; and he ex-
hibited great ingenuity in devising horrible deaths for his victims. Some-
times, it was said, he would hang a man by his thumbs or some other part of
the body, and shower blows upon him till he died. Guibert of Nogent
declares that he was present one day when Thomas of Marle had the eyes
of ten of his victims torn out, with the result that they immediately
expired. On another occasion he asked a peasant who had angered him
why he did not walk faster, and on the man answering that he was
unable to do so—“Wait a moment," cried Thomas; “I'll make you bestir
yourself! ” and leaping from his horse he drew his sword and cut off both
the peasant's feet at a single blow. The poor wretch died; and Guibert,
C. MED, H, VOL. V, CH. XVIII.
38
## p. 594 (#640) ############################################
594
Struggle of Louis VI with the lesser barons
9
who tells the story, adds: “No one can imagine the number of those
who perished in his dungeons, from starvation, from torture, from
filth.
Fortunately, not all the petty barons by whom the king was confronted
were fashioned after this pattern; but the evil was deeply rooted every-
where, and it was necessary for Louis VI to complete without delay the
purge which he had begun even in his father's lifetime. The two seigneurs
who gave him the most trouble were this very Thomas of Marle whom
we have just described, and Hugh, lord of Le Puiset. The latter,
though not so perverted as Thomas, was the terror of the country round
Chartres, which he ravaged, pillaged, and devastated with fire, with-
out intermission and without mercy. In March 1111, when Louis VI was
holding his court at Melun, the charges brought against this brigand were
particularly vehement and urgent. To the complaints of Theobald, Count
of Chartres, were added those of the Archbishop of Sens, the Bishops of
Chartres and Orleans, the abbots of such monasteries as were especially
open to attack, and many canons and priests, all of whom besought the
king to rid them of this “rapacious wolf,” to “ tear from the monster's
jaws” their property, the fertile fields of Beauce that he “was devouring. ”
On being summoned to the king's presence to answer for his depredations,
Hugh, not unnaturally, evaded the summons. He was promptly
declared to have forfeited his fief by this refusal to appear, and Louis VI,
after calling upon the rebel to surrender, gathered an army and, supported
by the Count of Chartres, laid siege to the castle of Le Puiset. It was
only after a fierce struggle that he succeeded in reducing it. Hugh was
taken prisoner, and the castle was burnt and razed to the ground.
But Hugh was one of those men whom misfortunes only exasperate.
No sooner had the king, in 1112, been rash enough to release him than,
with renewed ferocity, he returned to his evil courses, “as a dog that has
been chained up too long," says Suger, “will bite and tear everything that
comes his way. ” The king was engaged in a war with Henry of England
and Theobald of Chartres; and Hugh, taking advantage of his em-
barrassment, raised a band of marauders and proceeded to ravage the
country. Pillage, robbery under arms, imprisonments, were resumed with
fresh
energy;
and one day, when the king arrived in haste to put a bridle
on the robber's daring, he found that the castle of Le Puiset had arisen
from its ruins. Hugh, who on this occasion had the help of the Count of
Chartres, held his own against his sovereign, who was repeatedly repelled,
and only overcame the terrible baron after the Count of Chartres had
withdrawn from the struggle. Hugh was despoiled of all he possessed and
his castle was again destroyed, the walls razed, the moats filled up, the soil
levelled. This was trouble thrown away, however; for hardly was the
king's back turned before the demolished fortress rose again as though
by magic. Hugh, who was pledged to return to the place no more,
promptly entrenched himself within its walls, and continued, as before, to
## p. 595 (#641) ############################################
L
Subjugation of Thomas of Marle
595
terrorise his neighbours. This time the victory remained with Louis VI,
who besieged Le Puiset in 1118 and finally stripped the baron of his
possessions. Before surrendering, however, Hugh had at least the pleasure
of killing, with his own hand and lance, the king's seneschal and faithful
friend, Anseau of Garlande. He was destined soon afterwards to lose his
own life in an expiatory pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
These episodes in Louis VI's conflict with one of the most unruly
barons in his domain are an indication of the difficulties he had to
overcome. Against Thomas of Marle he was obliged to organise a
regular holy war. In the town of Laon, at this time, the fury of the
populace had broken loose and the most dreadful excesses were being
committed. Bishop Gaudri and his followers, who had tricked the
townsfolk and had suppressed their commune with the king's consent,
had been murdered in a riot, the prelate's body covered with wounds and
mutilated, the houses of the nobles and clergy sacked, and the churches
and episcopal palace set on fire. This was in April 1112. The townspeople,
fearing the consequences of the king's anger, appealed to Thomas of
Marle, who eagerly granted them his protection and enrolled them in his
band of robbers. He removed from his path by murder Gautier, the
Archdeacon of Laon, and took possession of two properties belonging to
the abbey of Saint-Jean-de-Laon, Crécy-sur-Serre and Nouvion-l'Abbesse.
Here he took shelter behind massive walls and strong towers, whence he
only emerged to fall upon his prey. The dignitaries of the Church were
roused; and in December 1114, at a council held at Beauvais under the
presidency of Cono, Cardinal-bishop of Palestrina and legate of the
Holy See, Thomas was excommunicated, placed under the ban of
Christendom, and pronounced unworthy henceforward to bear a sword.
The king was implored to lose no time in suppressing the insane audacity
of this protector of Bishop Gaudri's murderers, this rifler of churches and
pilgrims. Thomas was pursued by the reiterated anathemas of prelates
in council and synod, and of every parish priest; he soon found himself
held at bay by the popular levies, whom the summons of the clergy had
gathered in large numbers to fight in the pious cause under the king's
banner. The fortresses of Crécy and Nouvion fell in turn into Louis VI's
hands, and were utterly demolished (1115). Thomas was surrounded in
his castle of Marle, and was forced to beg for absolution from the Church
and for mercy from the king.
Louis, who at the time had a good deal of other business on his
hands, was imprudent enough to pardon him, and was hardly out of
sight before the robber's acts of violence began again. For fifteen long
years he was able to indulge in these practices to his heart's content,
while no one, not even the king, dared to oppose him. In the meantime,
on the death of his father Enguerrand in 1116, Thomas had become lord
of Coucy and Boves, and seemed able to defy all attacks; until, in 1130,
Louis VI was driven by the constant complaints of the clergy and the
CH. XVIII.
38—2
## p. 596 (#642) ############################################
596
Order re-established in the royal domain
urgent entreaty of Ralph, Count of Vermandois, to organise an expedition
against him. It was only by a stroke of good fortune that the king was
enabled to end the matter quickly. Thomas, being taken by surprise
before Coucy and mortally wounded, fell into Louis' hands, and died at
last, to the great relief of the whole district. To the very end he obsti-
nately refused, in spite of his sufferings and the threats and entreaties of
others, to order the merchants whom he had robbed and imprisoned to
be set at liberty.
With opponents such as this, as may easily be imagined, Louis VI
found that the task to which he had resolved to devote himself, of bringing
peace into the royal domain, was an arduous undertaking, and one that
required persistent effort on his part. Even in 1108, immediately on his
accession to the throne, he was involved in war with Hugh of Crécy,
who, not content with ravaging the country, had crowned his offences by
capturing Eudes, Count of Corbeil, and imprisoning him in the dungeons
of La Ferté-Alais. To set him free it was necessary to besiege that
fortress, which only surrendered to the king after a long struggle, full of
vicissitudes.
A few months later, in the spring of 1109, Louis VI was again in the
field. This time he was besieging Mantes, which he recovered after
a strenuous fight from his half-brother Philip, the son of Bertrada
of Montfort. This count, like the barons of less distinguished descent,
spent his time in the sordid plundering of the churches and peasants of
the neighbourhood. Moreover, he formed dangerous conspiracies against
the Crown.
Hardly was this danger averted before an equally serious one arose :
the lords of Montfort-l'Amauri were threatening to cut off all the king's
communications with the country south of Paris. Amauri of Montfort,
who was already in possession of the castles of Montfort, Montchauvet,
Houdan, and Epernon, had married his daughter to Louis VI's recent
opponent, Hugh of Crécy, and was willing to help his son-in-law in the
conquest of the castle of Montlhéry and its dependencies, notably the
castle of Arpajon. All these fortresses, combined with Hugh's other
castles of Crécy-en-Brie, Châteaufort, and Gometz, and those of Amauri's
brother Guy of Rochefort at Rochefort-en-Iveline, Chevreuse, and Bréthen-
court, would, if linked to one another, have interposed a continuous barrier
between the king and a considerable portion of his domain. Louis VI,
however, hastened to forestall his enemies, and, before Hugh of Crécy
could interfere, seized Arpajon and handed over Montlhéry to Milo of
Bray, Viscount of Troyes, who claimed it on the ground of hereditary
right. This occurred at the end of the year 1109. In the meantime Hugh
of Crécy was forced to fly precipitately. This turbulent vassal, who
was nearly as redoubtable as Hugh of Le Puiset or Thomas of Marle, and
like them had earned a sinister reputation for robbery and murder
(this “tool of the devil," as a contemporary chronicler calls him), was des-
## p. 597 (#643) ############################################
Louis V1 and the great fiefs
597
tined to be a source of trouble to the king for many years after this. In
1112 he was one of the most ardent supporters of Hugh of Le Puiset and
Theobald, Count of Blois, in their rebellion, and he was the life and soul
of the league that was formed at that time against the king by a handful
of petty barons: Lancelin of Bulles, lord of Dammartin, Païen of
Montjay, Ralph of Beaugency, Guy of Rochefort, and Milo of Bray-sur-
Seine, the very man whom Louis VI had weakly allowed to take possession
of Montlhéry. In 1118 Hugh of Crécy put the finishing touch to his
misdeeds by treacherously seizing this Milo (who was his cousin-german),
keeping him in chains in a dungeon at Châteaufort, and finally strangling
him and throwing his remains to the winds. This was more than could
be borne. Hugh was excommunicated and left without a friend, his
castle at Gometz was seized by the king, and he himself threatened with
the severest penalties. Seeing that his only safety lay in penitence, he
implored the king's pardon, which he only secured at the price of losing
all his estates and assuming the monastic habit. In this garb he was left
for the rest of his days to meditate on the difference between massacring
a few common peasants and murdering a baron.
It was thus, by means of a ceaseless struggle, of which the episodes
recorded are merely a few examples, that Louis VI gradually achieved
the establishment of the royal authority within the limits of his domain.
But Louis and his counsellors were becoming more and more alive to
the fact that it was the king's duty to see that peace and justice were
respected throughout the length and breadth of his kingdom; and that
by appearing everywhere, even in the most distant fiefs, as the protector
of the oppressed and the defender of law and right he would revive the
monarchical tradition, and would become really king of all France. A
letter addressed to him in 1114 by Ivo, Bishop of Chartres, reminded
him that “it behoved the King's Majesty to prevent the violation of the
covenant of peace, for which he had pledged himself, under Divine
inspiration, to enforce respect in his kingdom ”; and Suger repeatedly
insisted that the sovereign was bound by his office to “curb the audacity
of the tyrants” who robbed and oppressed the people, destroyed churches,
and disquieted the whole country.
Louis VI did all he could to fulfil this obligation. Vassals, who for
long years had never thought of their sovereign except to take arms
against him, he unhesitatingly summoned to appear before his tribunal;
nor, if any of them refused to obey, did the king fail to raise an army
and set out upon a costly and fatiguing expedition, with a view to
teaching the rebel a proper respect for law and order, and obedience to the
royal will. One day he was on the point of starting upon one of these petty
campaigns when he was reminded, not only that there were many diffi-
culties in his way, but that he might even find it impossible to reduce
a castle that had the reputation of being impregnable. With great
CH. XVIII.
## p. 598 (#644) ############################################
598 The king's intervention in the Bourbonnais and Auvergne
spirit Louis answered indignantly: “We decided, in a council held at
Laon, to make this expedition, and there is nothing in the world that
could make us change the decision to which we then came. What a
disgrace it would be for the majesty of the Crown if we were to hold back
for fear of a bandit! ” This answer shews us the whole man.
A few examples of Louis' intervention will reveal, not only the high
ideal that he had of his office, but also the increasing confidence with
which the oppressed, in every part of France, turned to him as to their
recognised protector. At the very beginning of his reign, in 1108 or
1109, a seigneur named Aymon Vaire-Vache unblushingly seized the lord-
ship of Bourbon, although its rightful inheritor was his nephew
Archambaud, at that time a minor. The king was informed of the
matter and was implored to maintain the boy's rights. As Aymon refused
to appear before the royal tribunal to explain his conduct, Louis VI
promptly crossed Berry with his troops, besieged the rebel in his castle
of Germigny-sur-l'Aubois, forced him to surrender at discretion, and
took him back to Paris, where he was condemned to restore all the
property that he had unlawfully seized. This rapid success was bewilder-
ing. “Kings have long arms! ” exclaimed Suger on this occasion, turning
to account a line of Ovid.
Perhaps even more characteristic was his behaviour in 1122, when
Aimeri, Bishop of Clermont, on being driven out of his episcopal town by
William VI, the Count of Auvergne, appealed to the king. Louis, with-
out a moment's hesitation, set off to punish the delinquent, after in vain
summoning him, both by word of mouth and by sealed letters, to appear
before the royal Court. Mustering at Bourges a large army which
included some of his most important vassals, such as the Counts of Anjou,
Brittany, and Nevers, the king marched rapidly into Auvergne, seized as
he passed the fortress of Pont-du-Château on the Allier, and fell upon
Clermont, which Count William and his men abandoned in disorder.
They had to submit to the triumphant return of the king's protégé, the
bishop
Four years later the Count of Auvergne thought the moment had
come to take his revenge. But Louis VI was able to shew that his will
must be obeyed. He entered upon a new campaign with undiminished
energy, though the summer heat was overpowering and his stoutness
increasing so much that, young as he was, the active life of a soldier
became more difficult for him every day. He advanced swiftly to
Montferrand, which he burnt, seized Clermont for the second time, and,
leaving the country settled and at peace, haled the rebel before the
royal Court at Orleans to render account for his latest misdeeds.
In the following year there occurred a still more serious episode. On
2 March 1127, the Count of Flanders, Charles the Good, was assassinated
in the church of St Donatian at Bruges while actually engaged in his
devotions. The story of this grievous scandal spread like wildfire through
## p. 599 (#645) ############################################
The question of the succession to Flanders
599
the kingdom, and even to England; the news was known in London in
less than forty-eight hours. Louis VI instantly set out for Arras, and
arrived there less than a week after the murder. Here he remained,
holding himself in readiness for any emergency. The crime demanded
an exemplary punishment, and the Flemings had turned to the king for
help as promptly as he had hurried to their aid. The question was
complicated, however, by difficulties in the matter of the succession. The
Count of Flanders had left no direct heir, and while the country was in
a state of hopeless confusion and the Flemings were occupied in dealing
with the murderers, a variety of claimants sprang up on all sides and fell
upon the quarry. William of Ypres, who was a natural son of the
murdered man's uncle and was popularly accused of complicity with the
murderers, succeeded in the course of a few days in taking forcible
possession of some of the strongest fortresses in Flanders. Other claim-
ants were Thierry of Alsace, son of Gertrude, Countess of Holland, who
based his pretensions on the fact that Robert the Frisian, Count of
Flanders (ob. 1093), was his maternal grandfather ; Arnold of Denmark,
nephew of Charles the Good, who seized Saint-Oiner; Baldwin IV, Count
of Hainault, who, though his only claim was through his great-grand-
father Baldwin VI of Flanders (ob. 1070), proceeded to occupy Oudenarde;
and several others, notably Godfrey the Bearded, Duke of Brabant, who,
profiting by the prevailing confusion, suddenly discovered claims of his
own, and hastened to vindicate them by force of arms.
The king determined to assert himself. While occupied in concen-
trating his troops at Arras he sent an urgent summons to the Flemings,
bidding them elect a new count in his presence without delay. Louis had
a candidate of his own, William Clito the son of Robert Curthose, who
had been disinherited by his uncle Henry I of England, and has been
justly called “a perpetual pretender to the duchy of Normandy. ” His
right was certainly no better than that of Baldwin of Hainault, seeing
that his only connexion with the House of Flanders was through his
maternal great-grandfather, Baldwin of Lille, Count of Flanders (ob. 1067),
father-in-law to William the Conqueror.
But he was the king's candidate,
and on 23 March 1127 the Flemish delegates hastened to elect him as
their suzerain in the presence of Louis VI at Arras. The election was at
once confirmed by Ghent, Bruges, Lille, and Saint-Omer; and the king,
accompanied by the new count, whom he was fully determined to keep in
a state of strict pupillage, advanced rapidly into the heart of Flanders,
announcing in a circular letter his intention of making an example of the
murderers and restoring order to the country. By 2 April he was at
Ghent; on 5 April he reached Bruges, where the murderers were block-
aded in the tower of St Donatian and forced to surrender; a few days
later, on 26 April, he took Ypres, captured William of Ypres, confiscated
his property, and dispatched him to a dungeon at Lille; on the fol-
lowing day he reduced Aire, Cassel, and all the towns in which William
CH. XVIII.
## p. 600 (#646) ############################################
600
Royal intervention in Flanders
יל
of Ypres had obtained recognition ; and finally, on 6 May, he was able
to set out on his return journey to France by way of Arras. But first,
he saw the murderers executed-hurled, under his eyes, from the top of
the tower in which they had taken refuge. He had, it seemed, imposed
the suzerain of his choice upon the whole of Flanders.
That a king of France should be in a position to act with so much
daring and resolution shews plainly how much ground the Crown had
recovered. His success, it is true, was short-lived; but this was the fault
of the young count, whose blundering stupidity compromised the whole
situation as soon as his royal protector left him to himself. In a country
where the bourgeois were predominant, where commercial and industrial
interests prevailed, and where social development was far more advanced
than in that of its neighbours, William Clito imagined that he could
ignore the people and rely on the nobles alone. The barons and knights
thought that the moment had come for them to take their revenge, and
a period of feudal reaction followed. Almost immediately riots broke out
in the towns; the evicted claimants plucked up courage; Ghent and
Bruges opened their gates to Thierry of Alsace ; Saint-Omer recalled
Arnold of Denmark, who was secretly supported by the King of England.
Disorder once more reigned supreme.
Louis VI tried to intervene, thinking he could take a high tone with
the rebels. “I desire you,” he wrote to the people of Bruges on
10 April 1128, “to send eight notables to me at Arras on Palm Sunday
(15 April); I will summon as many from each of the towns of Flanders,
in order to inquire, in their presence and in that of all my barons, into
the reasons of your disagreement and of your conflict with your Count
William, and I shall make it my business forthwith to establish peace
between you and him. If there be any man among you who dares not
come to me, I will give him a safe-conduct, both for coming and for
going. ” But this time his authoritative tone made no impression on the
men of Bruges, whose answer was a haughty and violent indictment of
the King of France. They accused him of selling their country for a
thousand marks, denied him all right of interference in the election of
their suzerain, and condemned in very energetic language the treacherous
treatment they had received from William Clito. They, moreover, had
settled the question for themselves. They announced without further ado
that in place of William Clito, who had played them false and had been
expelled by them, they would recognise no suzerain in future but Thierry
of Alsace, “who had a stronger hereditary right to be their count, was a
wise and loyal man, and had been raised to power in accordance with the
custom of the country. To him who so admirably adhered to the manners
and customs of his predecessors they had pledged their faith and homage. "
This was a direct declaration of war.
Louis VI, who was at the moment engrossed in other difficulties,
doubtless understood that the game was lost. The rapid successes of
## p. 601 (#647) ############################################
Louis VI and the Anglo-Norman kingdom
601
Thierry of Alsace, who made his entry into Lille on 11 April 1128, left
no room for hope. He contented himself with convening a great assembly
at Arras, in which Thierry was excommunicated, and with making a
demonstration before the walls of Lille. Then, having satisfied his
conscience, he abandoned William Clito to his unhappy fate (May 1128).
William's death at the siege of Alost (27 July 1128) hastened the end.
The whole country submitted to Thierry, and Louis VI was obliged to
ratify the accomplished fact by giving investiture to the conqueror. This
time the king had overrated his powers; the hour had not yet come for
great conquests and the subjection of the great fiefs. It was the head
of the Anglo-Norman monarchy who was to be the chief instrument in
proving this fact to Louis.
Ever since the middle of the eleventh century the kings of France had
been making ceaseless efforts to arrest the dangerous and ever-increasing
expansion of the Norman dominion. Philip I, as we have seen', was as
eager as his father Henry to seize every possible chance of embarrassing
this formidable vassal and supporting his enemies. But the King of
France had a redoubtable foe to deal with. The Conqueror's third son,
Henry Beauclerc, was not the man to be intimidated by the Capetian.
Having deprived his brother Robert Curthose of his duchy of Normandy
and sent him into captivity, declaring, not without reason, that he was
incapable of maintaining order and peace in his dominion (1106),
Henry I hastened to take possession of the castle of Gisors. This fortress
on the right bank of the Epte formed, it is true, an integral part of the
Norman Vexin, but such was the strategic importance of its position
commanding the road from Rouen to Paris, that when Henry I did
homage for Normandy to the King of France they made a special
agreement on the subject. Both were pledged never to occupy the place
in person, but either to leave it in the hands of a neutral castellan, at
that time Païen of Neauphle, or else to demolish it.
Louis VI lost no time in protesting. He called upon his vassal to
observe the conventions of the treaty, and summoned him to account for
his conduct in the presence of his suzerain, whom he was to meet on the
frontier of their respective dominions, at the bridge of Neauphle on the
Epte. Both kings came there in force. Henry refused to submit to the
demands of the King of France, whereupon the latter naively, if courage-
ously, offered, if need were, to prove his right by meeting the King of
England in single combat. To the bearers of this strange message Henry
replied: “When the King of France attacks me I shall know how to
defend myself! ” This incident happened about March 1109.
This meant war—a war that was destined to drag on for twenty years,
interrupted from time to time by a truce or a sham peace which enabled
each of the two foes to keep his eye upon the other while awaiting a
Supra, Vol. II, Chap. v.
CH. XVIII.
## p. 602 (#648) ############################################
602
Struggle with Henry I of England
propitious moment to renew the attack. The tactics of the King of
France, in his efforts to arrest the growth of the power of Normandy,
were simple. They consisted in allying himself with the Count of Anjou,
and favouring the Angevin intrigues in Maine, with a view to keeping
the Norman from that province, and finally himself attacking him at his
most vulnerable point, the Vexin, in order to free the royal domain from
the perpetual menace that threatened it if Gisors remained in the hands
of the English king. As for Henry, his policy was to secure freedom of
action by seizing every possible chance of creating difficulties for the
King of France in his own dominions; and, while seeking to be on good
terms with the Count of Anjou, to lend his support to Theobald, Count
of Blois and Chartres, who was to wage perpetual war against Louis,
harassing his army in the rear as his Norman foes slowly advanced.
In 1109, at the beginning of hostilities, the alliance between Henry
of England and Theobald of Blois was not yet concluded, and at one time
it almost seemed as though Louis VI were about to triumph. He crossed
the Epte, repulsed Henry's troops, and pursued his victorious way
through part of the Norman Vexin. But in 1111 everything was changed.
Theobald, who in 1109 had figured in Louis VI's army, suddenly changed
sides, and by the spring of the following year had succeeded in bringing
together a formidable coalition against the King of France. This coalition
was composed, as we have already seen', of Henry of England and a host
of petty barons: Lancelin of Bulles, lord of Dammartin, Païen of
Montjay, Ralph of Beaugency, Milo of Bray-sur-Seine, Hugh of Crécy,
Guy of Rochefort, and Hugh of Le Puiset himself, not to speak of Hugh,
Count of Troyes. This time Louis was forced to yield. He succeeded, it
is true, in overcoming the coalition of French barons and in repulsing
Theobald; but he found it impossible to defeat the English monarch.
Not only was there now no question of obliging him to abandon Gisors,
but a treaty was signed before the walls of that fortress at the end of
March 1113, by which Louis agreed, perforce, to recognise Henry I as
suzerain of Brittany as well as of Maine, which in 1110 had come by
marriage into the hands of the Count of Anjou.
Three years were hardly gone before war broke out again (April 1116),
a war of constant skirmishes on the confines of the Norman and the
French Vexin, in which each king captured in turn the strongholds of his
rival. Louis VI, encouraged by several successes, of which the most
brilliant was the surprise and capture of Les Andelys, early in 1119, by
means of treachery within the walls, thought the hour had come for
a decisive engagement. He suddenly offered battle to Henry I in the plain
of Brémule, not far from Noyon-sur-Andelle. The result was disaster.
The troops of the King of France were seized with panic when confronted
by the large and well-disciplined army that the English king had at bis
disposal, and took to flight, carrying Louis with them in their stampede.
1 See supra, p. 597.
## p. 603 (#649) ############################################
Negotiations for peace
603
He fled precipitately to Les Andelys, where he succeeded in finding a refuge,
but only after wandering alone in the forest of Musegros; his war-horse and
banner he left in the hands of the enemy (20 August 1119). In his rage
and humiliation he vainly tried, a month later, to avenge himself by
attacking the district of Évreux; but, though he captured and burnt Ivry,
he failed before Breteuil, which was the object of the expedition. In the
meantime his son-in-law William of Chaumont was being equally un-
successful at the siege of Tillières, where he fell into the hands of the
enemy. Louis was again forced to beat a retreat, and such was his fury
that he was on the point of burning Chartres, to vent his wrath at the
expense of Count Theobald.
And now his failing health, and his weariness of this long struggle
that had brought him only mortification, prompted Louis to negotiate
for peace. He appealed to the supreme arbitrator, Pope Calixtus II, on
the occasion of a council held by the latter at Rheims on 20 and 21
October 1119. The Norman monk, Ordericus Vitalis, has given us in
his chronicle, if not the exact words, at least the substance of the speech
delivered on this occasion by the “strongly-built, pale, corpulent, eloquent”
king, whom he seems himself to have seen and heard. The speech was a
veritable indictment, a denunciation of Henry I's conduct from first to
last. Nothing was overlooked, from the iniquitous imprisonment of
Robert Curthose to the arrest of Robert, lord of Bellême, who had been
sent on a mission to Henry by the King of France in 1112. “The King
of England, who was long my ally, has been guilty of constant acts of
aggression and violence at my expense, and at that of my subjects; he
took forcible possession of Normandy, which forms part of my kingdom ;
he has treated Robert, Duke of Normandy, shamefully, in defiance of law
and justice. Ignoring the fact that Robert was my vassal and his own
brother and lord, he subjected him to all manner of vexations, and finally
imprisoned him. Even now he has him fast in his dungeons. And here
before you stands the son of this unhappy duke, William (Clito), who has
come hither with me, having been driven into exile and disinherited by
the King of England! By the mouths of bishops and counts and many
others, I have called upon him to restore to me the duke whom he holds
imprisoned; but I have obtained no satisfaction. Robert of Bellême, my
ambassador, whom I sent to signify my will to him, was arrested by his
orders in his palace. He loaded him with chains, and has kept him to this
day in a cruel prison. ” Finally, Henry was also accused of inciting to
rebellion that Count of Blois, Theobald, whose shameful excesses had
disturbed the whole kingdom. The Pope promised to intervene. But
this ex parte statement of Louis VI, who had omitted to say that he
himself, in 1107, had connived at the spoliation of Robert Curthose,
was met by Henry I with another that was no less biassed, and
moreover supported by various gifts on the occasion of an interview that
he had with Calixtus II at Gisors in the following November. Henry
was
CH. XVIII.
## p. 604 (#650) ############################################
604 Marriage of Louis VII with Eleanor of Aquitaine
agreed, however, to enter into negotiations with the King of France, and
in 1120 peace was concluded on these terms: the two adversaries were to
restore their respective conquests, and Louis VI was to receive homage
for the duchy of Normandy from William Aetheling, only legitimate
son of Henry I and heir apparent to the throne of England. In the
matter of Gisors Louis was obliged to yield. This was a decided set-back.
On both sides underhand hostilities continued. On 25 November
1120, Louis VI's hopes were revived by the unexpected death of William
Aetheling in the White Ship; and in 1123 a coalition of Norman
and French seigneurs was formed with the object of expelling the King
of England from the duchy of Normandy and replacing him by William
Clito. Henry I stoutly held his own against this coalition, while at his
instigation his son-in-law, the Emperor Henry V, made ready to fall upon
Rheims in order to hamper Louis VI's actions (August 1124). The latter,
however, succeeded in diverting the storm. With the most remarkable
eagerness and unanimity the entire country rose at the king's appeal, and
rallied round him to repel the national danger. Thereupon Henry V,
daunted by finding a whole nation in arms, beat a hasty retreat. But
Louis could not recover the upper hand in Normandy. Henry I triumphed
over all his enemies, and contributed by his manoeuvres and aggressions
towards the frustration of the French policy in Flanders. He even went
so far as to ally himself with the Count of Anjou by marrying (1127
or 1128) his widowed daughter Matilda, the sole survivor of his legi-
timate children, to Geoffrey the Fair, heir to the fiefs of Anjou and
Maine. This marriage was a terrible menace to hang over the head of
the French king, and it was not long before Louis VII felt its fatal
effects.
And yet, as the time drew near for Louis VI to die, it seemed that
the French monarchy was in a good position. Henry I of England had
died on 1 December 1135, and Stephen of Blois, who obtained the
English crown, was fully occupied at home with difficulties that quite
prevented him from meditating any kind of intervention on the Continent.
Count Theobald, who, since the death of his uncle Hugh I of Champagne
in 1125, had been lord over all the territory of the ancient House of Blois
-namely Champagne, Blois, and Chartres—had at last laid down his arms
and rallied to the Capetian cause. And finally, an unexpected windfall
had just placed the whole duchy of Aquitaine in the hands of the future
king. Duke William X, who had died on 9 April 1137, during a
pilgrimage to the shrine of St James of Compostella, had upon his
death-bed confided to Louis VI the care of marrying his daughter and
heiress Eleanor; and Louis had promptly taken steps to get his son
accepted as her husband. The future Louis VII was occupied in taking
possession of Aquitaine when the death of his father on 1 August 1137
placed him on the throne of France.
## p. 605 (#651) ############################################
The early years of Louis VII
605
During the first few years of his reign the new king, who thus became
his own master at the age of sixteen or seventeen, displayed more activity
than discretion. It is possible that the suggestions of his young queen,
Eleanor, on whom he lavished, says one of the chroniclers, “an extravagant
love," may sometimes have misdirected his energies; and the counsels of
the discreet but somewhat ingenuous Suger were inadequate to counteract
this influence. Without disturbing himself in the least, or putting the
smallest obstacle in the way, Louis allowed the Count of Anjou to
increase his territory so rapidly that his power was every day a greater
menace, and in the meantime threw himself heart and soul into rash
undertakings which, being ill-organised and ill-executed, brought him
nothing but mortification.
Not content with the acquisition of Aquitaine, which he had already
found sufficiently hard to control, he bethought him soon afterwards, in
1141, of insisting upon the rights to the county of Toulouse that his
predecessors in the duchy had several times claimed. Accordingly he
organised an expedition against Count Alphonse-Jourdain. Towards the
end of June a considerable army marched rapidly upon Toulouse under
the king's leadership; but after a few weeks he was obliged to retrace
his steps without having gained any advantage.
It was not long before the young king was concerned with more serious
affairs. For more than two years he squandered the strength of the
monarchy in a twofold and sterile struggle against the Papacy on the one
hand and Count Theobald of Champagne on the other. On the death of
the Archbishop of Bourges in 1141 two candidates were put forward to
succeed him: Cadure, the king's Chancellor, and Peter of La Châtre, a
near relative of the Chancellor of the Roman Church. The one was the
king's candidate, the other the Pope's. The second was elected, in spite
of the fact that Louis forbade the clergy to choose him. Louis in a fury
swore upon the sacred relics that, as long as he lived, Peter should not
enter Bourges. The sovereign pontiff, Innocent II, calmly retorted by con-
secrating Peter with his own hands at Rome, and, since Bourges still
remained closed to him, by laying an interdict on every town, village, or
castle that should shelter the king. "The King of France is a child,” the
Pope is declared to have said, "and must be educated, and prevented
from acquiring bad habits. ” In the meantime Count Theobald had added
fuel to the fire by taking part openly against his sovereign and receiving
Peter of La Châtre in his domain. This was enough to exasperate Louis VII,
who already had a subject of complaint against this vassal, in that he had
twice refused his feudal contingent–in 1138, on the occasion of an ex-
pedition against the rebels of Poitou, and more recently when Louis had
marched against Toulouse.
A fresh incident occurred to aggravate the dissension and hasten
the rupture. Ralph, Count of Vermandois and Seneschal of France,
having repudiated his first wife, Theobald's niece, in order to marry
cu. XVIII.
## p. 606 (#652) ############################################
606
Struggle with Count Theobald of Champagne
Queen Eleanor's sister Alice (also called Petronilla) of Aquitaine, three
bishops of the royal domain consented to dissolve the first marriage on
grounds of consanguinity, and to bless the second. It was not long
before protests were raised; and, at a council held under the presidency
of a papal legate at Lagny-sur-Marne, the three accommodating prelates
were excommunicated, their decision reversed, the second marriage
annulled, and the territory of the Count of Vermandois laid under an
interdict. In itself the incident was commonplace, and the history of the
times records a score of similar episodes. But the young king, stimulated
by Queen Eleanor, took the matter as a personal insult. Here again he
was confronted with Count Theobald. The council that had annulled
the marriage of Ralph and Petronilla was held at Lagny-sur-Marne, on
the territory of the Count of Champagne, who openly took the part of
his niece, Ralph's repudiated wife. This was enough to make the irascible
King of France hold Theobald responsible for the whole affair. With an
outburst of fury that took his enemy by surprise, Louis VII descended on
Champagne, attacked Vitry-sur-Marne, captured it, and left it in flames.
Hundreds of the inhabitants-thirteen hundred, it is said-perished in
the burning church. Theobald, whose turbulent habits and baneful
energy had gradually given place of late years to a spirit of devotion and
a zeal for good works, assumed a pathetic attitude that earned him the
ridicule even of his own subjects. “Why,” they asked, “has not Count
Theobald spent his time and his money in more useful ways? He has
what he deserves: for knights he has monks; for bowmen, lay brethren.
He sees now how little such as these can avail to serve him! ” The
clergy of Champagne, who had suffered cruelly from the royal invasion,
were at a loss to determine what to do.
But Louis VII, no doubt, was equally embarrassed. His victory
brought him no practical advantage; it merely increased the unpopu-
larity of his cause. He was only too thankful, in the summer of 1143,
to accept terms that pledged him to evacuate Champagne on condition
that Theobald—through the good offices of Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux
-should secure the removal of the ban that had been laid upon the Count
of Vermandois and the queen's sister.
It was not long before Louis perceived that the venerable Abbot of
Clairvaux, who had conducted all the negotiations, had taken unworthy
advantage of his inexperience. Hardly had he restored his conquests to
Theobald before Ralph and Petronilla, who refused to be separated, were
excommunicated for the second time. The young king's wrath was
boundless, and he swore to be revenged upon Count Theobald. Bernard
of Clairvaux only incensed him the more by affecting airs of innocence.
What, asked the abbot, had he and Theobald done to deserve the king's
reproaches? Was it their fault if Ralph had behaved in such a way as to
merit excommunication? Had not Count Theobald done his utmost, had
he not even done violence to his conscience, to secure Ralph's absolution
## p. 607 (#653) ############################################
Conquest of Normandy by the Count of Anjou
607
on the first occasion in the face of a thousand difficulties? And what
could he do against this fresh excommunication?
The war was resumed. Louis VII again occupied a portion of
Champagne, and refused to allow the appointment of bishops to vacant
sees. Theobald's attempt at retaliation was to form a feudal league; he
allied himself with the Counts of Flanders and Soissons. Every day the
conflict became more bitter, without any advantage accruing to either
party. Suger and St Bernard were in favour of peace, and perhaps also
the immediate circle of the new Pope, Celestine II, who had just
(26 September 1143) succeeded Innocent II, but it was not without
difficulty that they prevailed over the obstinacy of the young king.
After stubbornly seeking for months to wreak his vengeance upon
Theobald, he was forced to yield at all points: to evacuate Champagne
entirely and unconditionally, to abandon Ralph of Vermandois to his
fate, and to recognise Peter of La Châtre as Archbishop of Bourges.
This was indeed a triumph for the Papacy.
It was fully time for Louis to pull himself together and turn his
attention towards the west. For, while he was thus exhausting his
strength in fruitless efforts, the Count of Anjou and Maine, Geoffrey the
Fair, was taking advantage of every opportunity to extend his dominions.
While his wife Matilda in England was carrying on a ceaseless struggle
with its king, Stephen of Blois, in defence of the rights that she had in-
herited from her father Henry I, Geoffrey descended upon Normandy and
conquered it by slow degrees. In the course of the successive campaigns
in which he engaged almost yearly between 1136 and 1144 he won
nearly the entire province. There remained at last only Rouen; and on
23 April 1144 that town also yielded. Louis had no choice but to
accept the accomplished fact, and to recognise his powerful vassal as the
possessor of the conquered duchy. He had the acuteness, however, to
prevail upon Geoffrey, in exchange for this concession, to evacuate
Gisors, the strategical importance of which we have already seen. This
was, at all events, some compensation.
It may be thought that by this time the king would have learnt
wisdom and, profiting by the experience of these early years, would take
up the reins of government with a firm hand. But hardly was his
desperate struggle with the Church at an end, before he became possessed
by a spirit of mystic piety which prompted him to desert his kingdom
and go forth to fight the infidels in a distant land.
The news of the capture of Edessa by the Atābeg Zangi of Mosul on
25 December 1144 had recently filled the whole of western Christendom
with consternation. On Christmas Day 1145, when Louis was with his
court at Bourges for the ceremony of wearing his crown- a solemnity
that was customary at the great festivals-he suddenly informed the
barons of his intention to take the Cross, and exhorted them to follow
CH. XVIII.
## p. 608 (#654) ############################################
608
Louis VII on crusade
his example. This suggestion they received with so little enthusiasm that
it was found necessary to postpone the final decision to another court to
be held at Vézelay the following Easter. The pious Suger himself advised
the king against this enterprise; and St Bernard, on being entreated to
use his influence for the furtherance of the Crusade, dared not take upon
himself so serious a responsibility, and therefore referred the question to
the Pope. We have seen in an earlier chapter how the latter decided to
espouse the cause, and how St Bernard, in accordance with the Pontiff's
urgent desire, preached the Crusade with enthusiasm and became its life
and soul. He it was whose eloquence, at the assembly at Vézelay on
31 March 1146, succeeded in rousing a fresh outburst of zeal for the holy
war; it was he who kindled the ardour of the Germans and overcame the
resistance of King Conrad III, and who was responsible for the organisa-
tion of the expedition, for all the preparations and arrangements. When
Louis VII's army set out on 11 June 1147, success appeared certain. We
know how these hopes were frustrated: by the discord that so soon broke
out between French and Germans, and weakened their attack upon the
common enemy; by the disasters that overtook both armies, the Germans
at Dorylaeum and the French near Laodicea; and finally by the deplorable
repulse of the crusaders before Damascus in July 1148, after which the
greater number of them gave up the struggle.
Louis VII, however, was quite content to linger in the Holy Land,
visiting the sacred places and forgetting his own kingdom while he
devoted himself overseas to pious works. The Abbot of St Denis, Suger,
who had carried on his shoulders nearly the whole weight of the regency
since the day of the king's departure, urged him to return. Hitherto the
abbot had succeeded admirably in keeping order in the kingdom; but the
king's brother Robert of Dreux had lately returned, and the malcontents
had begun to gather round him. There was even some talk among
them
of deposing Louis and making Robert their king. Happily Suger
contrived to frustrate these intrigues, and, when at last, at the beginning
of November 1149, Louis made up his mind to return to his kingdom
after an absence of nearly two years and a half, he found the country at
peace.
Louis VII at last realised where the true interests of the monarchy
lay. During the early years of his reign he had allowed the whole of
Normandy to be appropriated by the Count of Anjou, Geoffrey the Fair ;
and the energetic campaigns conducted by Geoffrey's wife Matilda and
their son Henry Plantagenet-afterwards Henry II-plainly shewed
whither the dangerous ambitions of the House of Anjou were likely to
lead. The security of the Crown imperatively demanded that the king
should employ every possible means, if indeed it were not already too late,
to undermine this formidable power, which was infinitely more menacing
1 See supra, Chap. xi, pp. 373-75.
## p. 609 (#655) ############################################
Eleanor's divorce and re-marriage
609
than the Anglo-Norman power had ever been in the days of Henry I of
France.
It was an incident of minor importance, the siege of Montreuil-Bellay
by Geoffrey the Fair, that supplied the pretext for a rupture. Gerald, the
lord of this little Angevin fortress, had placed himself at the head of a
strong coalition formed against his suzerain, Count Geoffrey, who had
retaliated by laying siege to the rebel's stronghold.
