Philip Augustus

King of France 1180-1223

Jim Bradbury

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317899020
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

This is the first major study in English of the reign of Philip Augustus who ruled France from 1180 - 1223. Outshone for posterity, by his flamboyant contemporaries, the Angevin family of Henry II and his feuding sons, Philip was in fact far more successful than any of them, astutely playing them off against each other and recovering for the French crown their vast estates in Northern France including Normandy itself. As well as reasserting the power of the Capetian monarchy, he was also leader of the Third Crusade. Drawing together all the threads in the life of one of France's most forceful rulers, this new study offers a study of the nature of monarchy in late medieval Europe as well as an insight into a subtle and secretive personality.

Chapter 1

PHILIP’S INHERITANCE

. . .

THE BIRTH OF PHILIP AUGUSTUS

In 1179 the abbot of Mont-St-Michel copied into his chronicle a prophecy made by ‘a certain astrologer’ that great calamities were in the offing, with signs from heaven in the form of great winds, death and disease, the eclipse of sun and moon, and ‘a fearful voice which shall terrify the hearts of men’.¹ For Henry IF’s Angevin Empire, within which Abbot Robert lived, the following year was indeed to see events of significance for the future, not least the coronation and succession of Philip II king of France.

Saracen ambassadors to France had predicted that Philip would be a great king. This was recorded by Gerald of Wales, as a twenty-year-old student at Paris in 1165. In later days Gerald recalled one Saturday night in August when he was woken from his sleep by noise, trumpets, lights and confusion: ‘through all the great city there was such a noise and clanging of bells, such a multitude of tapers kindled through all the open spaces of the town, that not knowing what such a racket and abnormal disturbance could mean, with such a blaze of light in the night, it was thought the city was threatened by a great fire’.² Gerald poked his head through the window of his room to investigate. Two old women bearing torches were passing by, and he asked the cause of the disturbance, to be told that a new prince had been born. At last King Louis VII (1137–80), after many years of marriage, and by this time with his third wife, had fathered a son and heir. ‘Now,’ Gerald reported one of the women saying, ‘we have a king given us by God, through whom your kingdom will be destroyed and damned.’ This prophecy spat at him by the old woman, says Gerald, would later come true. No doubt this smacks of hindsight, and not a little of the bitterness which he harboured for the Plantagenet rulers who blocked his hopes of advance to the bishopric of St David’s, but Gerald had recognized the fatal effect that Philip would have on the Angevin Empire.

In 1165 Henry II (king, 1154–89) ruled over an enormous parcel of territories collected through inheritance, aggression, agreement and marriage, which we have come to call the Angevin Empire. More than half of modern France was a part of this empire. The kings of France ruled the Ile-de-France and little more, which was still the case when Philip succeeded to the throne in 1180. Two years later Bertran de Born could still call Philip ‘the litde king of Lesser-land’.³ Yet, after some twenty-five years of the rule of Philip II (1180–1223), the Angevin Empire was smashed beyond repair, and the king of France had become unquestionably a more powerful ruler than the king of England. The birth of Philip Augustus was indeed a fateful event in medieval western Europe.

Louis VII heard of his son’s birth, appropriately and typically, while at matins, though the event had occurred at about eleven o’clock the previous evening. France rejoiced and Paris celebrated with the king. The infant was baptized the next day in the castle chapel of St-Michel-de-la-Place and given the exotic name Philip, after his tragically killed uncle. The first of the name in the family had been King Philip I (1060–1108). The unusual eastern name had been introduced into the Capetian family by Henry I’s Russian-born wife, Anna of Kiev, mother of Philip I.

Louis and the whole of France thanked God with all their hearts for the birth. Louis’s lack of an heir had threatened the future of the dynasty. Their luck in passing the throne from father to son had looked in danger. Louis’s first wife thought that marriage to him was like being wedded to a monk, though he fathered two children by her, and two more by his second wife. However, all his first four children were daughters. One senses the growing desperation as Louis hastily made a third marriage, to Adela of Champagne, and still the male heir did not arrive – until 1165. On being told the sex of her child, the queen wept with joy. The male slant of twelfth-century attitudes was expressed by Louis VII in a charter, referring to his daughters, and also now to the birth of a child ‘of a more noble sex’.⁴

. . .

PHILIP’S PARENTAGE

By 1180 the Capetian dynasty had held the throne of France for two centuries; the kings had been fertile and fortunate. Louis the Young had not expected to become king, a position reserved for his older brother Philip, but the latter suffered a riding accident in Paris in 1131. One source says a pig had run free and upset his mount, so that Philip fell and hit his head on a stone; while another records that Philip ‘was chasing a squire in sport through the streets of Paris, fractured his limbs terribly, and expired the next day’.⁵ At any rate Louis became the heir to Louis VI (1108–37). Still a boy, at his brother’s death, he was associated in the rule of France, and crowned by Pope Innocent II (1130–43).

Louis VII married three times, first to Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1137. Eleanor’s father, William X duke of Aquitaine (1126–1137), made deathbed arrangements for his daughter to marry the heir to the French crown. William had no sons, and Eleanor was his eldest daughter, so the Capetians looked set to acquire Aquitaine. Louis, aged sixteen, was sent south to claim the bride, and seems to have developed a passion for Eleanor. They produced two girls, Marie and Alice, but the marriage foundered. Louis had difficulty in accepting Eleanor’s southern ways, and their liaison was rocked by a rumoured affair between Eleanor and her uncle Raymond during the Second Crusade. After attempts at reconciliation, the marriage ended in 1152. Eleanor then fled to her second husband, Henry Plantagenet, soon to become Henry II of England.

Louis’s second marriage was to Constance of Castile, in 1154. If the divorce meant the loss of Aquitaine, the marriage to the Castilian princess gave Louis VII a renewed interest in southern France and an ally against the Plantagenets. Louis’s main motive in divorcing Eleanor may have been her failure to produce a son, in which case he was again disappointed, since Constance bore two more daughters but no male heir.⁶

By the time of Constance’s death in 1160 the situation was causing concern. Louis married Adela of Champagne within five weeks of being widowed, failing even to observe the normal period of mourning. Adela was the daughter of Theobald IV count of Blois (1102–1152), whose territories to the east and west of the Capetian lands were a potential threat. The house of Champagne was the major rival to the Plantagenets, and a useful ally for Louis. Adela’s brothers played a major role in French politics: Theobald, Henry the Liberal count of Champagne (1152–81), Stephen count of Sancerre, and William Whitehands bishop of Chartres, then archbishop of Sens and later of Reims. The house of Champagne claimed descent from Charlemagne, so that Adela and Louis’s son was called ‘Karolide’ by his foremost chronicler.⁷

. . .

THE FORMATION OF THE PRINCIPALITIES OF FRANCE

By the tenth century royal power had been sinking to a level little greater than that of the territorial princes, who had come to dominate the regions of France. From the ninth century, the Carolingian Empire had been split into three separate realms. The West Frankish monarchy had attempted to keep control in its sector by establishing favoured individuals to rule on behalf of the monarchy in the regions. These counts and dukes had some success in their regions, and the monarchy had failed to keep them subordinate. Under such men were formed virtually autonomous principalities, such as the duchies of Aquitaine and Burgundy. Even these principalities proved too large to retain political unity with ease, and some split further into counties or other lordships.

But the fragmentation of political units slowed. Like logs, flecks and weeds floating in a pond, certain more solid centres attracted the attachment of weaker neighbours. Such centres, each in their own way, formed principalities, often by an accumulation of lordships, viscounties and counties. Thus was formed, for example, Normandy, Brittany, Anjou, Blois and Flanders. There was no uniformity about this process. To an extent royal power had passed from the Carolingians to their locally appointed rulers. But the nature of the principalities depended on the method of formation of each one; they formed from below according to local conditions rather than from above by central decree. Hence the inconsistency in titles: duke, marquis, count or prince. In most cases these terms included aspects of military command, judicial powers and financial rights, but these powers had been seized rather than granted.

The vast territory of Aquitaine, the whole area south of the Loire, assumed the name of duchy, but the ducal power could not be retained by one family or one centre, and for centuries was at stake in internal conflicts. The title moved from the lords of the Auvergne to the counts of Toulouse, and then to those of Poitou. By the beginning of the Capetian period, Aquitaine was ruled by the comital family of Poitou and royal power in the region was minimal.

Like Aquitaine, Burgundy had ancient historical claims to autonomy. Burgundy had been an independent middle kingdom in the Frankish lands. But the duchy of Burgundy was a lesser unit, retained from the old middle kingdom by the ruler of the West Franks at the end of the ninth century. Richard the Justiciar, count of Autun, had established his authority in this area by military victory over the Vikings and Magyars, and by loyalty to the Carolingian monarch. This tradition of loyalty was an abiding element in the history of the duchy. Indeed in 960, through marriage, Capetian relatives took over an admittedly reduced Burgundy.

Flanders, like Burgundy, was troubled for centuries to come by its historical connections to the old middle kingdom. The memory of this past produced aspirations to a power and independence at odds with the ambitions of the West Frankish monarchy. Both Flanders and Burgundy, from historical past and geographical position, were troubled by the interest of the East Frankish as well as the West Frankish kings. The county of Flanders owed its formation partly to the opportunism of its founder, Baldwin I (862–79), who in 863 seized and married the monarch’s daughter. Against the odds he withstood opposition from her father and from the Church, and with the lands now granted to him was able to establish a new powerful principality. These beginnings were consolidated and extended by the efforts of Baldwin’s son and successor, Baldwin II (879–918).

Brittany also had pretensions to a greater past, with claims to have been a kingdom. As in Normandy, there had been Viking settlement, but no enduring dynasty was able to establish itself. In the 930s a descendant of the old ruling house, Alan II Barbetorte (936–52), recovered power in Brittany, becoming count of Nantes and reuniting the duchy. But Brittany failed to achieve quite the power of the other major principalities, partly because of internal division between the lords at Nantes and those at Rennes, and partly because of external threats from the neighbouring principalities of Blois, Anjou and Normandy. Brittany remained for centuries strong in tradition, but weak in terms of centralized government.

Normandy had been part of the northern area of the West Franks, once known as Neustria. In 911 the West Frankish monarch, Charles the Simple (893–929), permitted the formation of a territory ruled by a Viking leader, Rollo (911–28), partly in order to counter raids by other Scandinavians. The dynasty founded by Rollo acquired a ducal title and was to continue in power to the time of William the Conqueror and beyond. Rollo and his descendants extended their authority to the boundaries of what became Normandy, and began to absorb neighbouring counties.

Anjou and Blois also grew from relatively small and largely military foundations. Blois merged with the neighbouring county of Tours, while Anjou gradually expanded...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Genealogical Tables and maps
• Editor’s Preface
• Preface
• A Note on the Sources
• Chapter 1 Philip’s Inheritance
• Chapter 2 The Young King
• Chapter 3 Philip Augustus and the East
• Chapter 4 The Conflict with Richard I
• Chapter 5 The Defeat of the Angevin Empire
• Chapter 6 Philip Augustus and the Papacy
• Chapter 7 Philip and the Church in France
• Chapter 8 The Transformation of French Kingship
• Chapter 9 The Foundations of Philip’s Government
• Chapter 10 Triumph at Bouvines
• Chapter 11 The Last Years
• Bibliography
• Genealogical Tables and Maps
• Index