CHAPTER XVIII.----THE KINGSHIP IN FRANCE.

That the kingship occupied an important place and played an important

part in the history of France is an evident and universally recognized

fact. But to what causes this fact was due, and what particular

characteristics gave the kingship in France that preponderating influence

which, in weal and in woe, it exercised over the fortunes of the country,

is a question which has been less closely examined, and which still

remains vague and obscure. This question it is which we would now shed

light upon and determine with some approach to precision. We cannot

properly comprehend and justly appreciate a great historical force until

we have seen it issuing from its primary source and followed it in its

various developments.

At the first glance, two facts strike us in the history of the kingship

in France. It was in France that it adopted soonest and most

persistently maintained its fundamental principle, heredity. In the

other monarchical states of Europe--in England, in Germany, in Spain, and

in Italy--divers principles, at one time election, and at another right

of conquest, have been mingled with or substituted for the heredity of

the throne; different dynasties have reigned; and England has had her

Saxon, Danish, and Norman kings, her Plantagenets, her Tudors, her

Stuarts, her Nassaus, her Brunswicks. In Germany, and up to the

eighteenth century, the Empire, the sole central dignity, was elective

and transferable. Spain was for a long while parcelled out into several

distinct kingdoms, and since she attained territorial unity the houses of

Austria and Bourbon have both occupied her throne. The monarchy and the

republic for many a year disputed and divided Italy. Only in France was

there, at any time during eight centuries, but a single king and a single

line of kings. Unity and heredity, those two essential principles of

monarchy, have been the invariable characteristics of the kingship in

France.

A second fact, less apparent and less remarkable, but, nevertheless, not

without importance or without effect upon the history of the kingship in

France, is the extreme variety of character, of faculties, of

intellectual and moral bent, of policy and personal conduct amongst the

French kings. In the long roll of thirty-three kings who reigned in

France from Hugh Capet to Louis XVI. there were kings wise and kings

foolish, kings able and kings incapable, kings rash and kings slothful,

kings earnest and kings frivolous, kings saintly and kings licentious,

kings good and sympathetic towards their people, kings egotistical and

concerned solely about themselves, kings lovable and beloved, kings

sombre and dreaded or detested. As we go forward and encounter them on

our way, all these kingly characters will be seen appearing and acting in

all their diversity and all their incoherence. Absolute monarchical

power in France was, almost in every successive reign, singularly

modified, being at one time aggravated and at another alleviated

according to the ideas, sentiments, morals, and spontaneous instincts of

the monarchs. Nowhere else, throughout the great European monarchies,

has the difference between kingly personages exercised so much influence

on government and national condition. In that country the free action of

individuals has filled a prominent place and taken a prominent part in

the course of events.

It has been shown how insignificant and inert, as sovereigns, were the

first three successors of Hugh Capet. The goodness to his people

displayed by King Robert was the only kingly trait which, during that

period, deserved to leave a trace in history. The kingship appeared once

more with the attributes of energy and efficiency on the accession of

Louis VI., son of Philip I. He was brought up in the monastery of St.

Denis, which at that time had for its superior a man of judgment, the

Abbot Adam; and he then gave evidence of tendencies and received his

training under influences worthy of the position which awaited him. He

was handsome, tall, strong, and alert, determined and yet affable. He

had more taste for military exercises than for the amusements of

childhood and the pleasures of youth. He was at that time called Louis

the Wide-awake. He had the good fortune to find in the Monastery of St.

Denis a fellow-student capable of becoming a king’s counsellor. Suger, a

child born at St. Denis, of obscure parentage, and three or four years

younger than Prince Louis, had been brought up for charity’s sake in the

abbey, and the Abbot Adam, who had perceived his natural abilities, had

taken pains to develop them. A bond of esteem and mutual friendship was

formed between the two young people, both of whom were disposed to

earnest thought and earnest living; and when, in 1108, Louis the Wide-

awake ascended the throne, the monk Suger became his adviser whilst

remaining his friend.

A very small kingdom was at that time the domain belonging properly and

directly to the King of France. Ile-de-France, properly so called, and a

part of Orleanness (_l’Oreanais_), pretty nearly the five departments of

the Seine, Seine-et-Oise, Seineet-Marne, Oise and Loiret, besides,

through recent acquisitions, French Vexin (which bordered on the Ile-de-

France and had for its chief place Pontoise, being separated by the

little River Epte from Norman Vexin, of which Rouen was the capital),

half the countship of Sens and the countship of Bourges--such was the

whole of its extent. But this limited state was as liable to agitation,

and often as troublous and as toilsome to govern, as the very greatest of

modern states. It was full of Petty lords, almost sovereigns in their

own estates, and sufficiently strong to struggle against their kingly

suzerain, who had, besides, all around his domains, several neighbors

more powerful than himself in the extent and population of their states.

But lord and peasant, layman and ecclesiastic, castle and country and the

churches of France, were not long discovering that, if the kingdom was

small, it had verily a king. Louis did not direct to a distance from

home his ambition and his efforts; it was within his own dominion, to

check the violence of the strong against the weak, to put a stop to the

quarrels of the strong amongst themselves, to make an end, in France at

least, of unrighteousness and devastation, and to establish there some

sort of order and some sort of justice, that he displayed his energy and

his perseverance. “He was animated,” says Suger, “by a strong sense of

equity; to air his courage was his delight; he scorned inaction; he

opened his eyes to see the way of discretion; he broke his rest and was

unwearied in his solicitude.” Suger has recounted in detail sixteen of

the numerous expeditions which Louis undertook into the interior, to

accomplish his work of repression or of exemplary chastisement.

Bouchard, Lord of Montmorency, Matthew de Beaumont, Dreux de Mouchy-le-

Chatel, Ebble de Roussi, Leon de Mean, Thomas de Marle, Hugh de Crecy,

William de la Roche-Guyon, Hugh du Puiset, and Amaury de Montfort

learned, to their cost, that the king was not to be braved with impunity.

“Bouchard, on taking up arms one day against him, refused to accept his

sword from the hands of one of his people who offered it to him, and said

by way of boast to the countess his wife, ‘Noble countess, give thou

joyously this glittering sword to the count thy spouse: he who taketh it

from thee as count will bring it back to thee as king.’ “In this very

campaign, Bouchard,” by his death,” says Suger, “restored peace to the

kingdom, and took away himself and his war to the bottomless pit of

hell.” Hugh du Puiset had frequently broken his oaths of peace and

recommenced his devastations and revolts; and Louis resumed his course of

hunting him down, “destroyed the castle of Puiset, threw down the walls,

dug up the wells, and razed it completely to the ground, as a place

devoted to the curse of Heaven.” Thomas de Marle, Lord of Couci, had

been_ committing cruel ravages upon the town and church of Laon, lands

and inhabitants; when “Louis, summoned by their complaints, repaired to

Laon, and there, on the advice of the bishops and grandees, and

especially of Raoul, the illustrious Count of Vermandois, the most

powerful, after the king, of the lords in this part of the country, he

determined to go and attack the castle of Couci, and so went back to his

own camp. The people whom he had sent to explore the spot reported that

the approach to the castle was very difficult, and in truth impossible.

Many urged the king to change his purpose in the matter; but he cried,

‘Nay, what we resolved on at Laon stands: I would not hold back

therefrom, though it were to save my life. The king’s majesty would be

vilified, if I were to fly before this scoundrel.’ Forthwith, in spite

of his corpulence, and with admirable ardor, he pushed on with his troops

through ravines and roads encumbered with forests. . . . Thomas, made

prisoner and mortally wounded, was brought to King Louis, and by his

order removed to Laon, to the almost universal satisfaction of his own

folk and ours. Next day, his lands were sold for the benefit of the

public treasury, his ponds were broken up, and King Louis, sparing the

country because he had the lord of it at his disposal, took the road back

to Laon, and afterwards returned in triumph to Paris.”

Sometimes, when the people, and their habitual protectors, the bishops,

invoked his aid, Louis would carry his arms beyond his own dominions, by

sole right of justice and kingship. It is known,” says Suger, “that

kings have long hands.” In 1121, the Bishop of Clermont-Ferrand made a

complaint to the king against William VI., Count of Auvergne, who had

taken possession of the town, and even of the episcopal church, and was

exercising therein “unbridled tyranny.” The king, who never lost a

moment when there was a question of helping the Church, took up with

pleasure and solemnity what was, under these circumstances, the cause of

God; and having been unable, either by word of mouth or by letters sealed

with the seal of the king’s majesty, to bring back the tyrant to his

duty, he assembled his troops, and led into revolted Auvergne a numerous

army of Frenchmen. He had now become exceeding fat, and could scarce

support the heavy mass of his body. Any one else, however humble, would

have had neither the will nor the power to ride a-horseback; but he,

against the advice of all his friends, listened only to the voice of

courage, braved the fiery suns of June and August, which were the dread

of the youngest knights, and made a scoff of those who could not bear the

heat, although many a time, during the passage of narrow and difficult

swampy places, he was constrained to get himself held on by those about

him.” After an obstinate struggle, and at the intervention of William

VII., Duke of Aquitaine, the Count of Auvergne’s suzerain, “Louis fixed a

special day for regulating and deciding, in parliament, at Orleans, and

in the duke’s presence, between the bishop and the count, the points to

which the Auvergnats had hitherto refused to subscribe. Then

triumphantly leading back his army, he returned victoriously to France.”

He had asserted his power, and increased his ascendency, without any

pretension to territorial aggrandizement.

[Illustration: Louis the Fat on an Expedition----69]

Into his relations with his two powerful neighbors, the King of England,

Duke of Normandy, and the Emperor of Germany, Louis the Fat introduced

the same watchfulness, the same firmness, and, at need, the same warlike

energy, whilst observing the same moderation, and the same policy of

holding aloof from all turbulent or indiscreet ambition, adjusting his

pretensions to his power, and being more concerned to govern his kingdom

efficiently than to add to it by conquest. Twice, in 1109 and in 1118,

he had war in Normandy with Henry I., King of England, and he therein was

guilty of certain temerities resulting in a reverse, which he hastened to

repair during a vigorous prosecution of the campaign; but, when once his

honor was satisfied, he showed a ready inclination for the peace which

the Pope, Calixtus II., in council at Rome, succeeded in establishing

between the two rivals. The war with the Emperor of Germany, Henry V.,

in 1124, appeared, at the first blush, a more serious matter. The

emperor had raised a numerous army of Lorrainers, Allemannians,

Bavarians, Suabians, and Saxons, and was threatening the very city of

Rheims with instant attack. Louis hastened to put himself in position;

he went and took solemnly, at the altar of St. Denis, the banner of that

patron of the kingdom, and flew with a mere handful of men to confront

the enemy, and parry the first blow, calling on the whole of France to

follow him. France summoned the flower of her chivalry; and when the

army had assembled from every quarter of the kingdom at Rheims, there was

seen, says Suger, “so great a host of knights and men a-foot, that they

might have been compared to swarms of grasshoppers covering the face of

the earth, not only on the banks of the rivers, but on the mountains and

over the plains.” This multitude was formed in three divisions. The

third division was composed of Orleanese, Parisians, the people of

Etampes, and those of St. Denis; and at their head was the king in

person: “With them,” said he, “I shall fight bravely and with good

assurance; besides being protected by the saint, my liege lord, I have

here of my country-men those who nurtured me with peculiar affection, and

who, of a surety, will back me living, or carry me off dead, and save my

body.” At news of this mighty host, and the ardor with which they were

animated, the Emperor Henry V. advanced no farther, and, before long,

“marching, under some pretext, towards other places, he preferred the

shame of retreating like a coward to the risk of exposing his empire and

himself to certain destruction. After this victory, which was more than

as great as a triumph on the field of battle, the French returned, every

one, to their homes.”

The three elements which contributed to the formation and character of

the kingship in France,--the German element, the Roman element, and the

Christian element,--appear in con-junction in the reign of Louis the Fat.

We have still the warrior-chief of a feudal society founded by conquest

in him who, in spite of his moderation and discretion, cried many a time,

says Suger, “What a pitiable state is this of ours, to never have

knowledge and strength both together! In my youth had knowledge, and in

my old age had strength been mine, I might have conquered many kingdoms;

“and probably from this exclamation of a king in the twelfth century came

the familiar proverb, “If youth but knew, and age could do! “We see the

maxims of the Roman empire and reminiscences of Charlemagne in Louis’s

habit of considering justice to emanate from the king as fountain head,

and of believing in his right to import it everywhere. And what

conclusion of a reign could be more Christian-like than his when,

“exhausted by the long enfeeblement of his wasted body, but disdaining to

die ignobly or unpreparedly, he called about him pious men, bishops,

abbots, and many priests of holy Church; and then, scorning all false

shame, he demanded to make his confession devoutly before them all, and

to fortify himself against death by the comfortable sacrament of the body

and blood of Christ! Whilst everything is being arranged, the king on a

sudden rises, of himself, dresses himself, issues, fully clad, from his

chamber, to the wonderment of all, advances to meet the body of our Lord

Jesus Christ, and prostrates himself in reverence. Thereupon, in the

presence of all, cleric and laic, he lays aside his kingship, deposes

himself from the government of the state, confesses the sin of having

ordered it ill, hands to his son Louis the king’s ring, and binds him to

promise, on oath, to protect the Church of God, the poor, and the orphan,

to respect the rights of everybody, and to keep none prisoner in his

court, save such a one as should have actually transgressed in the court

itself.”

This king, so well prepared for death, in his last days found great cause

for rejoicing as a father. William VII., Duke of Aquitaine, had, at his

death, intrusted to him the guardianship of his daughter Eleanor, heiress

of all his dominions, that is to say, of Poitou, of Saintonge, of

Gascony, and of the Basque country, the most beautiful provinces of the

south-west of France, from the lower Loire to the Pyrenees. A marriage

between Eleanor and Louis the Young, already sharing his father’s throne,

was soon concluded; and a brilliant embassy, composed of more than five

hundred lords and noble knights, to whom the king had added his intimate

adviser, Suger, set out for Aquitaine, where the ceremony was to take

place. At the moment of departure the king had them all assembled about

him, and, addressing himself to his son, said, “May the strong hand of

God Almighty, by whom kings reign, protect thee, my dear son, both thee

and thine! If, by any mischance, I were to lose thee, thee and those I

send with thee, neither my life, nor my kingdom would thenceforth be

aught to me.” The marriage took place at Bordeaux, at the end of July,

1137, and, on the 8th of August following, Louis the Young, on his way

back to Paris, was crowned at Poitiers as Duke of Aquitaine. He there

learned that the king, his father, had lately died, on the 1st of August.

Louis the Fat was far from foreseeing the deplorable issues of the

marriage, which he regarded as one of the blessings of his reign.

In spite of its long duration of forty-three years, the reign of Louis

VII., called the Young, was a period barren of events and of persons

worthy of keeping a place in history. We have already had the story of

this king’s unfortunate crusade from 1147 to 1149, the commencement at

Antioch of his imbroglio with his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and the

fatal divorce which, in 1152, at the same time that it freed the king

from a faithless queen, entailed for France the loss of the beautiful

provinces she had brought him in dowry, and caused them to pass into the

possession of Henry II., King of England. Here was the only event, under

Louis the Young’s reign, of any real importance, in view of its long and

bloody consequences for his country. A Petty war or a sullen strife

between the Kings of France and England, petty quarrels of Louis with

some of the great lords of his kingdom, certain rigorous measures against

certain districts in travail of local liberties, the first bubblings of

that religious fermentation which resulted before long, in the south of

France, in the crusade against the Albigensians--such were the facts

which went to make up with somewhat of insipidity the annals of this

reign. So long as Suger lived, the kingship preserved at home the wisdom

which it had been accustomed to display, and abroad the respect it had

acquired under Louis the Fat; but at the death of Suger it went on

languishing and declining, without encountering any great obstacles. It

was reserved for Louis the Young’s son, Philip Augustus, to open for

France, and for the kingship in France, a new era of strength and

progress.

Philip II., to whom history has preserved the name of Philip Augustus,

given him by his contemporaries, had shared the crown, been anointed, and

taken to wife Isabel of Hainault, a year before the death of Louis VII.

put him in possession of the kingdom. He was as yet only fifteen, and

his father, by his will, had left him under the guidance of Philip of

Alsace, Count of Flanders, as regent, and of Robert Clement, marshal of

France, as governor. But Philip, though he began his reign under this

double influence, soon let it be seen that he intended to reign by

himself, and to reign with vigor. “Whatever my vassals do,” said he,

during his minority, “I must bear with their violence and outrageous

insults and villanous misdeeds; but, please God, they will get weak and

old whilst I shall grow in strength and power, and shall be, in my turn,

avenged according to my desire.” He was hardly twenty, when, one day,

one of his barons seeing him gnawing, with an air of abstraction and

dreaminess, a little green twig, said to his neighbors, “If any one could

tell me what the king is thinking of, I would give him my best horse.”

Another of those present boldly asked the King. “I am thinking,”

answered Philip, “of a certain matter, and that is, whether God will

grant unto me or unto one of my heirs grace to exalt France to the height

at which she was in the time of Charlemagne.”

It was not granted to Philip Augustus to resuscitate the Frankish empire

of Charlemagne, a work impossible for him or any one whatsoever in the

twelfth and thirteenth centuries; but he made the extension and

territorial construction of the kingdom of France the chief aim of his

life, and in that work he was successful. Out of the forty-three years

of his reign, twenty-six at the least were war-years, devoted to that

very purpose. During the first six, it was with some of his great French

vassals, the Count of Champagne, the Duke of Burgundy, and even the Count

of Flanders, sometime regent, that Philip had to do battle, for they all

sought to profit by his minority so as to make themselves independent and

aggrandize themselves at the expense of the crown; but, once in

possession of the personal power as well as the title of king, it was,

from 1187 to 1216, against three successive kings of England, Henry II.,

Richard Coeur de Lion, and John Lackland, masters of the most beautiful

provinces of France, that Philip directed his persistent efforts. They

were in respect of power, of political capacity and military popularity,

his most formidable foes. Henry II., what with his ripeness of age, his

ability, energy, and perseverance, without any mean jealousy or puerile

obstinacy, had over Philip every advantage of position and experience,

and he availed himself thereof with discretion, habitually maintaining

his feudal status of great French vassal as well as that of foreign

sovereign, seeking peace rather than strife with his youthful suzerain,

and some-times even going to his aid. He thus played off the greater

part of the undeclared attempts or armed expeditions by which, from 1186

to 1189, Philip tried to cut him short in his French possessions, and,

so long as Henry IL lived, there were but few changes in the territorial

proportions of the two states. But, at Henry’s death, Philip found

himself in a very different position towards Henry’s two sons, Richard

Coeur de Lion and John Lackland. They were of his own generation; he had

been on terms with them, even in opposition to their own father, of

complicity and familiarity: they had no authority over him, and he had no

respect for them. Richard was the feudal prince, beyond comparison the

boldest, the most unreflecting, the most passionate, the most ruffianly,

the most heroic adventurer of the middle ages, hungering after movement

and action, possessed of a craving spirit for displaying his strength,

and doing his pleasure at all times and in all places, not only in

contempt of the rights and well-being of his subjects, but at the risk of

his own safety, his own power, and even of his crown. Philip was of a

sedate temperament, patient, persevering, moved but little by the spirit

of adventure, more ambitious than fiery, capable of far-reaching designs,

and discreet at the same time that he was indifferent as to the

employment of means. He had fine sport with Richard. We have already

had the story of the relations between them, and their rupture during

their joint crusade in the East. On returning to the West, Philip did

not wrest from King Richard those great and definitive conquests which

were to restore to France the greater part of the marriage-portion that

went with Eleanor of Aquitaine; but he paved the way for them by petty

victories and petty acquisitions, and by making more and more certain his

superiority over his rival. When, after Richard’s death, he had to do

with John Lackland, cowardly and insolent, knavish and addle-pated,

choleric, debauched, and indolent, an intriguing subordinate on the

throne on which he made pretence to be the most despotic of kings, Philip

had over him, even more than over his brother Richard, immense

advantages. He made such use of them that after six years’ struggling,

from 1199 to 1205, he deprived John of the greater part of his French

possessions, Anjou, Normandy, Touraine, Maine, and Poitou. Philip would

have been quite willing to dispense with any legal procedure by way of

sanction to his conquests, but John furnished him with an excellent

pretext; for on the 3d of April, 1203, he assassinated with his own hand,

in the tower of Rouen, his young nephew Arthur, Duke of Brittany, and in

that capacity vassal of Philip Augustus, to whom he was coming to do

homage. Philip had John, also his vassal, cited before the court of the

barons of France, his peers, to plead his defence of this odious act.

“King John,” says the contemporary English historian Matthew Paris, “sent

Eustace, Bishop of Ely, to tell King Philip that he would willingly go to

his court to answer before his judges, and to show entire obedience in

the matter, but that he must have a safe-conduct. King Philip replied,

but with neither heart nor visage unmoved, ‘Willingly; let him come in

peace and safety.’ ‘And return so too, my lord?’ said the bishop.

‘Yes,’ rejoined the king, ‘if the decision of his peers allow him.’

And when the envoys from England entreated him to grant to the King of

England to go and return in safety, the King of France was wroth, and

answered with his usual oath, ‘No, by all the saints of France, unless

the decision tally therewith.’ ‘My lord king,’ rejoined the bishop, ‘the

Duke of Normandy cannot come unless there come also the King of England,

since the duke and the king are one and the same person. The baronage of

England would never allow it in any way, and if the king were willing,

he would run, as you know, risk of imprisonment or death.’ King Philip

answered him, ‘How now, my lord bishop? It is well known that my

liegeman, the Duke of Normandy, by violence got possession of England.

And so, prithee, if a vassal increase in honor and power, shall his lord

suzerain lose his rights? Never!’

“King John was not willing to trust to chance and the decision of the

French, who liked him not; and he feared above everything to be

reproached with the shameful murder of Arthur. The grandees of France,

nevertheless, proceeded to a decision, which they could not do lawfully,

since he whom they had to try was absent, and would have gone had he been

able.”

The condemnation, not a whit the less, took full effect; and Philip

Augustus thus recovered possession of nearly all the territories which

his father, Louis VII., had kept but for a moment. He added, in

succession, other provinces to his dominions; in such wise that the

kingdom of France, which was limited, as we have seen, under Louis the

Fat, to the Ile-de-France and certain portions of Picardy and Orleanness,

comprised besides, at the end of the reign of Philip Augustus,

Vermandois, Artois, the two Vexins, French and Norman, Berri, Normandy,

Maine, Anjou, Poitou, Touraine, and Auvergne.

In 1206 the territorial work of Philip Augustus was well nigh completed;

but his wars were not over. John Lackland, when worsted, kicked against

the pricks, and was incessantly hankering, in his antagonism to the King

of France, after hostile alliances and local conspiracies easy to hatch

amongst certain feudal lords discontented with their suzerain. John was

on intimate terms with his nephew, Otho IV., Emperor of Germany and the

foe of Philip Augustus, who had supported against him Frederick II., his

rival for the empire. They prepared in concert for a grand attack upon

the King of France, and they had won over to their coalition some of his

most important vassals, amongst others, Renaud de Dampierre, Count of

Boulogne. Philip determined to divert their attack, whilst anticipating

it, by an unexpected enterprise--the invasion of England itself.

Circumstances seemed favorable. King John, by his oppression and his

perfidy, had drawn upon him the hatred and contempt of his people; and

the barons of England, supported and guided by the Archbishop of

Canterbury, Stephen Langton, had commenced against him the struggle which

was to be ended some years afterwards by the forced concession of Magna

Charta, that foundation-stone of English liberties. John, having been

embroiled for five years past with the court of Rome, affected to defy

the excommunication which the pope had hurled at him, and of which the

King of France had been asked by several prelates of the English Church

to insure the efficient working. On the 8th of April, 1213, Philip

convoked, at Soissons, his principal vassals or allies, explained to them

the grounds of his design against the King of England, and, by a sort of

special confederation, they bound themselves, all of them, to support

him. One of the most considerable vassals, however, the sometime regent

of France during the minority of Philip, Ferrand, Count of Flanders, did

not attend the meeting to which he had been summoned, and declared his

intention of taking no part in the war against England. “By all the

saints of France,” cried Philip, “either France shall become Flanders, or

Flanders France!” And, all the while pressing forward the equipment of a

large fleet collected at Calais for the invasion of England, he entered

Flanders, besieged and took several of the richest cities in the country,

Cassel, Ypres, Bruges, and Courtrai, and pitched his camp before the

walls of Ghent, “to lower,” as he said, “the pride of the men of Ghent

and make them bend their necks beneath the yoke of kings.” But he heard

that John Lackland, after making his peace with the court of Rome through

acceptance of all the conditions and all the humiliations it had thought

proper to impose upon him, had just landed at Rochelle, and was exciting

a serious insurrection amongst the lords of Saintonge and Poitou. At the

same time Philip’s fleet, having been attacked in Calais roads by that of

John, had been half destroyed or captured; and the other half had been

forced to take shelter in the harbor of Damme, where it was strictly

blockaded. Philip, forthwith adopting a twofold and energetic

resolution, ordered his son Philip to go and put down the insurrection of

the Poitevines on the banks of the Loire, and himself took in hand the

war in Flanders, which was of the most consequence, considering the

quality of the foe and the designs they proclaimed. They had at their

head the Emperor Otho IV., who had already won the reputation of a brave

and able soldier; and they numbered in their ranks several of the

greatest lords, German, Flemish, and Dutch, and Hugh de Boves, the most

dreaded of those adventurers in the pay of wealthy princes who were known

at that time by the name of roadsters (routiers, mercenaries). They

proposed, it was said, to dismember France; and a promise to that effect

had been made by the Emperor Otho to his principal chieftains assembled

in secret conference. “It is against Philip himself, and him alone,” he

had said to them, “that we must direct all our efforts; it is he who must

be slain first of all, for it is he alone who opposes us and makes

himself our foe in everything. When he is dead, you will be able to

subdue and divide the kingdom according to our pleasure; as for thee,

Renaud, thou shalt take Peronne and all Vermandois; Hugh shall be master

of Beauvais, Salisbury of Dreux, Conrad of Mantes, together with Vexin,

and as for thee, Ferranti, thou shalt have Paris.”

The two armies marched over the Low Countries and Flanders, seeking out

both of them the most favorable position for commencing the attack. On

Sunday, the 27th of August, 1214, Philip had halted near the bridge of

Bouvines, not far from Lille, and was resting under an ash beside a small

chapel dedicated to St. Peter. There came running to him a messenger,

sent by Guerin, Bishop of Senlis, his confidant in war as well as

government, and brought him word that his rear-guard, attacked by the

Emperor Otho, was not sufficient to resist him. Philip went into the

chapel, said a short prayer, and cried as he came out, “Haste we forward

to the rescue of our comrades!” Then he put on his armor, mounted his

horse, and made swiftly for the point of attack, amidst the shouts of all

those who were about him, “To arms! to arms!”

[Illustration: BATTLE OF BOUVINES----81]

Both armies numbered in their ranks not only all the feudal chivalry on

the two sides, but burgher-forces, those from the majority of the great

cities of Flanders being for Otho, and those from sixteen towns or

communes of France for Philip Augustus. It was not, as we have seen, the

first time that the forces from the French rural districts had taken part

in the king’s wars; Louis the Fat had often received their aid against

the tyrannical and turbulent lords of his small kingdom; but since the

reign of Louis the Fat the organization and importance of the communes

had made great progress in France; and it was not only rural communes,

but considerable cities, such as Amiens, Arras, Beauvais, Compiegne, and

Soissons, which sent to the army of Philip Augustus bodies of men in

large numbers and ready trained to arms. Contemporary historians put the

army of Otho at one hundred thousand, and that of Philip Augustus at from

fifty to sixty thousand men; but amongst modern historians one of the

most eminent, M. Sismondi, reduces them both to some fifteen or twenty

thousand. One would say that the reduction is as excessive as the

original estimate. However that may be, the communal forces evidently

filled an important place in the king’s army at Bouvines, and maintained

it brilliantly. So soon as Philip had placed himself at the head of the

first line of his troops, “the men of Soissons,” says William the Breton,

who was present at the battle, “being impatient and inflamed by the words

of Bishop Guerin, let out their horses at the full speed of their legs,

and attacked the enemy. But the Flemish knights prick not forward to the

encounter, indignant that the first charge against them was not made by

knights, as would have been seemly, and remain motionless at their post.

The men of Soissons, meanwhile, see no need of dealing softly with them

and humoring them, so thrust them roughly, upset them from their horses,

slay a many of them, and force them to leave their place or defend

themselves, willy nilly. At last, the Chevalier Eustace, scorning the

burghers and proud of his illustrious ancestors, moves out into the

middle of the plain, and with haughty voice, roars, “Death to the

French!” The battle soon became general and obstinate; it was a

multitude of hand-to-hand fights in the midst of a confused melley.

In this melley, the knights of the Emperor Otho did not forget the

instructions he had given them before the engagement: they sought out the

King of France himself, to aim their blows at him; and ere long they knew

him by the presence of the royal standard, and made their way almost up

to him. The communes, and chiefly those of Corbeil, Amiens, Beauvais,

Compiegne, and Arras, thereupon pierced through the battalions of the

knights and placed themselves in front of the king, when some German

infantry crept up round Philip, and with hooks and light lances threw him

down from his horse; but a small body of knights who had remained by him

overthrew, dispersed, and slew these infantry, and the king, recovering

himself more quickly than had been expected, leaped upon another horse,

and dashed again into the melley. Then danger threatened the Emperor

Otho in his turn. The French drove back those about him, and came right

up to him; a sword thrust, delivered with vigor, entered the brain of

Otho’s horse; the horse, mortally wounded, reared up and turned his head

in the direction whence he had come; and the emperor, thus carried away,

showed his back to the French, and was off in full flight. “Ye will see

his face no more to-day,” said Philip to his followers: and he said

truly. In vain did William des Barres, the first knight of his day in

strength, and valor, and renown, dash off in pursuit of the emperor;

twice he was on the point of seizing him, but Otho escaped, thanks to the

swiftness of his horse and the great number of his German knights, who,

whilst their emperor was flying, were fighting to a miracle. But their

bravery saved only their master; the battle of Bouvines was lost for the

Anglo-Germano-Flemish coalition. It was still prolonged for several

hours; but in the evening it was over, and the prisoners of note were

conducted to Philip Augustus. There were five counts, Ferrand of

Flanders, Renaud of Boulogne, William of Salisbury, a natural brother of

King John, Otho of Tecklemburg, and Conrad of Dartmund; and twenty-five

barons “bearing their own standard to battle.” Philip Augustus spared

all their lives; sent away the Earl of Salisbury to his brother, confined

the Count of Boulogne at Peronne, where he was subjected “to very

rigorous imprisonment, with chains so short that he could scarce move one

step,” and as for the Count of Flanders, his sometime regent, Philip

dragged him in chains in his train,

[Illustration: The Battle of Bouvines----81]

It is difficult to determine, from the evidence of contemporaries, which

was the more rejoiced at and proud of this victory, king or people. “The

same day, when evening approached,” says William the Breton, “the army

returned laden with spoils to the camp; and the king, with a heart full

of joy and gratitude, offered a thousand thanksgivings to the Supreme

King, who had vouchsaved to him a triumph over so many enemies. And in

order that posterity might preserve forever a memorial of so great a

success, the Bishop of Senlis founded, outside the walls of that town, a

chapel, which he named Victory, and which, endowed with great possessions

and having a government according to canonical rule, enjoyed the honor of

possessing an abbot and a holy convent. . . . Who can recount,

imagine, or set down with a pen, on parchment or tablets, the cheers of

joy, the hymns of triumph, and the numberless dances of the people; the

sweet chants of the clergy; the harmonious sounds of warlike instruments;

the solemn decorations of the churches, inside and out; the streets, the

houses, the roads of all the castles and towns, hung with curtains and

tapestry of silk and covered with flowers, shrubs and green branches; all

the inhabitants of every sort, sex, and age running from every quarter to

see so grand a triumph; peasants and harvesters breaking off their work,

hanging round their necks their sickles and hoes (for it was the season

of harvest), and throwing themselves in a throng upon the roads to see in

irons that Count of Flanders, that Fernand whose arms they had formerly

dreaded!”

It was no groundless joy on the part of the people, and a spontaneous

instinct gave them a forecast of the importance of that triumph which

elicited their cheers. The battle of Bouvines was not the victory of

Philip Augustus, alone, over a coalition of foreign princes; the victory

was the work of king and people, barons, knights, burghers, and peasants

of Ile-de-France, of Orleanness, of Picardy, of Normandy, of Champagne,

and of Burgundy. And this union of different classes and different

populations in a sentiment, a contest, and a triumph shared in common was

a decisive step in the organization and unity of France. The victory of

Bouvines marked the commencement of the time at which men might speak,

and indeed did speak, by one single name, of the French. The nation in

France and the kingship in France on that day rose out of and above the

feudal system.

Philip Augustus was about the same time apprised of his son Louis’s

success on the banks of the Loire. The incapacity and swaggering

insolence of King John had made all his Poitevine allies disgusted with

him; he had been obliged to abandon his attack upon the King of France in

the provinces, and the insurrection, growing daily more serious, of the

English barons and clergy for the purpose of obtaining Magna Charta was

preparing for him other reverses. He had ceased to be a dangerous rival

to Philip.

No period has had better reason than our own to know how successes and

conquests can intoxicate warlike kings; but Philip, whose valor, on

occasion, was second to none, had no actual inclination towards war or

towards conquest for the sole pleasure of extending his dominion.

“Liking better, according to his custom,” says William the Breton, “to

conquer by peace than by war,” he hasted to put an end by treaties,

truces, or contracts to his quarrels with King John, the Count of

Flanders, and the principal lords made prisoners at Bouvines; discretion,

in his case, was proof against the temptations of circumstances, or the

promptings of passion, and he took care not to overtly compromise his

power, his responsibility, and the honor of his name by enterprises which

did not naturally come in his way, or which he considered without chances

of success. Whilst still a youth, he had given, in 1191, a sure proof of

that self-command which is so rare amongst ambitious princes by

withdrawing from the crusade in which he had been engaged with Richard

Coeur de Lion; and it was still more apparent in two great events at the

latter end of his reign--the crusade against the Albigensians and his son

Louis’s expedition in England, the crown of which had, in 1215, been

offered to him by the barons at war with King John in defence of Magna

Charta.

The organization of the kingdom, the nation, and the kingship in France

was not the only great event and the only great achievement of that

epoch. At the same time that this political movement was going on in the

State, a religious and intellectual ferment was making head in the Church

and in men’s minds. After the conquest of the Gauls by the Franks, the

Christian clergy, sole depositaries of all lights to lighten their age,

and sole possessors of any idea of opposing the conquerors with arguments

other than those of brute force, or of employing towards the vanquished

any instrument of subjection other than violence, became the connecting

link between the nation of the conquerors and the nation of the

conquered, and, in the name of one and the same divine law, enjoined

obedience on the subjects, and, in the case of the masters, moderated the

transports of power. But in the course of this active and salutary

participation in the affairs of the world, the Christian clergy lost

somewhat of their primitive and proper character; religion in their hands

was a means of power as well as of civilization; and its principal

members became rich, and frequently substituted material weapons for the

spiritual authority which had originally been their only reliance. When

they were in a condition to hold their own against powerful laymen, they

frequently adopted the powerful laymen’s morals and shared their

ignorance; and in the seventh and eighth centuries the barbarism which

held the world in its clutches had made inroads upon the Church.

Charlemagne essayed to resuscitate dying civilization, and sought amongst

the clergy his chief means of success; he founded schools, filled them

with students to whom promises of ecclesiastical preferments were held

out as rewards of their merit, and, in fine, exerted himself with all his

might to restore to the Christian Church her dignity and her influence.

When Charlemagne was dead, nearly all his great achievements disappeared

in the chaos which came after him; his schools alone survived and

preserved certain centres of intellectual activity. When the feudal

system had become established, and had introduced some rule into social

relations, when the fate of mankind appeared no longer entirely left to

the risks of force, intellect once more found some sort of employment,

and once more assumed some sort of sway. Active and educated minds once

more began to watch with some sort of independence the social facts

before their eyes, to stigmatize vices and to seek for remedies. The

spectacle afforded by their age could not fail to strike them. Society,

after having made some few strides away from physical chaos, seemed in

danger of falling into moral chaos; morals had sunk far below the laws,

and religion was in deplorable contrast to morals. It was not laymen

only who abandoned themselves with impunity to every excess of violence

and licentiousness; scandals were frequent amongst the clergy themselves;

bishoprics and other ecclesiastical benefices, publicly sold or left by

will, passed down through families from father to son, and from husband

to wife, and the possessions of the Church served for dowry to the

daughters of bishops. Absolution was at a low quotation in the market,

and redemption for sins of the greatest enormity cost scarcely the price

of founding a church or a monastery. Horror-stricken at the sight of

such corruption in the only things they at that time recognized as holy,

men no longer knew where to find the rule of life or the safeguard of

conscience. But it is the peculiar and glorious characteristic of

Christianity that it is unable to bear for long, without making an effort

to check them, the vices it has been unable to prevent, and that it

always carries in its womb the vigorous germ of human regeneration. In

the midst of their irregularities, the eleventh and twelfth centuries saw

the outbreak of a grand religious, moral, and intellectual fermentation,

and it was the Church herself that had the honor and the power of taking

the initiative in the reformation. Under the influence of Gregory VII.

the rigor of the popes began to declare itself against the scandals of

the episcopate, the traffic in ecclesiastical benefices, and the bad

morals of the secular clergy. At the same time, austere men exerted

themselves to rekindle the fervor of monastic life, re-established rigid

rules in the cloister, and refilled the monasteries by their preaching

and example. St. Robert of Moleme founded the order of Citeaux; St.

Norbert that of Premontre; St. Bernard detached Clairvaux from Meaux,

which he considered too worldly; St. Bruno built Chartreuse; St. Hugo,

St. Gerard, and others besides gave the Abbey of Cluni its renown; and

ecclesiastical reform extended everywhere. Hereupon rich and powerful

laymen, filled with ardor for their faith or fear for their eternal

welfare, went seeking after solitude, and devoted themselves to prayer in

the monasteries they had founded or enriched with their wealth; whole

families were dispersed amongst various religious houses; and all the

severities of penance hardly sufficed to quiet imaginations scared at the

perils of living in the world or at the vices of their age. And, at the

same time, in addition to this outburst of piety, ignorance was decried

and stigmatized as the source of the prevailing evils; the function of

teaching was included amongst the duties of the religious estate; and

every newly-founded or reformed monastery became a school in which pupils

of all conditions were gratuitously instructed in the sciences known by

the name of liberal arts. Bold spirits began to use the rights of

individual thought in opposition to the authority of established

doctrines; and others, without dreaming of opposing, strove at any rate

to understand, which is the way to produce discussion. Activity and

freedom of thought were receiving development at the same time that

fervent faith and fervent piety were.

This great moral movement of humanity in the eleventh and twelfth

centuries arose from events very different in different parts of the

beautiful country which was not yet, but was from that time forward

tending to become, France. Amongst these events, which cannot be here

recounted in detail, we will fix upon two, which were the most striking,

and the most productive of important consequences in the whole history of

the epoch, the quarrel of Abelard with St. Bernard and the crusade

against the Albigensians. We shall there see how Northern France and

Southern France differed one from the other before the bloody crisis

which was to unite them in one single name and one common destiny.

In France properly so called at that time, north of the Rhone and the

Loire, the church had herself accomplished the chief part of the reforms

which had become necessary. It was there that the most active and most

eloquent of the reforming monks had appeared, had preached, and had

founded or regenerated a great number of monasteries. It was there that,

at first amongst the clergy, and then, through their example, amongst the

laity, Christian discipline and morals had resumed some sway. There,

too, the Christian faith and church were, amongst the mass of the

population, but little or not at all assailed; heretics, when any

appeared, obtained support neither from princes nor people; they were

proceeded against, condemned, and burned, without their exciting public

sympathy by their presence, or public commiseration by their punishment.

It was in the very midst of the clergy themselves, amongst literates and

teachers, that, in Northern France, the intellectual and innovating

movement of the period was manifested and concentrated. The movement was

vigorous and earnest, and it was a really studious host which thronged to

the lessons of Abelard at Paris, on Mount St. Genevieve, at Melun, at

Corbeil, and at the Paraclete; but this host contained but few of the

people; the greater part of those who formed it were either already in

the church, or soon, in various capacities, about to be. And the

discussions raised at the meetings corresponded with the persons

attending them; there was the disputation of the schools; there was no

founding of sects; the lessons of Abelard and the questions he handled

were scientifico-religious; it was to expound and propagate what they

regarded as the philosophy of Christianity, that masters and pupils made

bold use of the freedom of thought; they made but slight war upon the

existing practical abuses of the church; they differed from her in the

interpretation and comments contained in some of her dogmas; and they

considered themselves in a position to explain and confirm faith by

reason. The chiefs of the church, with St. Bernard at their head, were

not slow to descry, in these interpretations and comments based upon

science, danger to the simple and pure faith of the Christian; they saw

the apparition of dawning rationalism confronting orthodoxy. They were,

as all their contemporaries were, wholly strangers to the bare notion of

freedom of thought and conscience, and they began a zealous struggle

against the new teachers; but they did not push it to the last cruel

extremities. They had many a handle against Abelard: his private life,

the scandal of his connection with Heloise, the restless and haughty

fickleness of his character, laid him open to severe strictures; but his

stern adversaries did not take so much advantage of them as they might

have taken. They had his doctrines condemned at the councils of Soissons

and Sens; they prohibited him from public lecturing; and they imposed

upon him the seclusion of the cloister; but they did not even harbor the

notion of having him burned as a heretic, and science and glory were

respected in his person, even when his ideas were proscribed. Peter the

Venerable, Abbot of Cluni, one of the most highly considered and honored

prelates of the church, received him amongst his own monks, and treated

him with paternal kindness, taking care of his health, as well as of his

eternal welfare; and he who was the adversary of St. Bernard and the

teacher condemned by the councils of Soissons and Sens, died peacefully,

on the 21st of April, 1142, in the abbey of St. Marcellus, near

Chalon-sur-Saone, after having received the sacraments with much piety,

and in presence of all the brethren of the monastery. “Thus,” wrote

Peter the Venerable to Heloise, abbess for eleven years past of the

Paraclete, “the man who, by his singular authority in science, was known

to nearly all the world, and was illustrious wherever he was known,

learned, in the school of Him who said, ‘Know that I am meek and lowly of

heart,’ to remain meek and lowly; and, as it is but right to believe, he

has thus returned to Him.”

The struggle of Abelard with the Church of Northern France and the

crusade against the Albigensians in Southern France are divided by much

more than diversity and contrast; there is an abyss between them. In

their religious condition, and in the nature as well as degree of their

civilization, the populations of the two regions were radically

different. In the north-east, between the Rhine, the Scheldt, and the

Loire, Christianity had been obliged to deal with little more than the

barbarism and ignorance of the German conquerors. In the south, on the

two banks of the Rhone and the Garonne, along the Mediterranean, and by

the Pyrenees, it had encountered all manner of institutions, traditions,

religions, and disbeliefs, Greek, Roman, African, Oriental, Pagan, and

Mussulman; the frequent invasions and long stay of the Saracens in those

countries had mingled Arab blood with the Gallic, Roman, Asiatic, and

Visigothic, and this mixture of so many different races, tongues, creeds,

and ideas had resulted in a civilization more developed, more elegant,

more humane, and more liberal, but far less coherent, simple, and strong,

morally as well as politically, than the warlike, feudal civilization of

Germanic France. In the religious order especially, the dissimilarity

was profound. In Northern France, in spite of internal disorder, and

through the influence of its bishops, missionaries, and monastic

reformers, the orthodox Church had obtained a decided superiority and

full dominion; but in Southern France, on the contrary, all the

controversies, all the sects, and all the mystical or philosophical

heresies which had disturbed Christendom from the second century to the

ninth, had crept in and spread abroad. In it there were Arians,

Manicheans, Gnostics, Paulicians, Cathars (the pure), and other sects of

more local or more recent origin and name, Albigensians, Vaudians, Good

People and Poor of Lyons, some piously possessed with the desire of

returning to the pure faith and fraternal organization of the primitive

evangelical Church, others given over to the extravagances of imagination

or asceticism. The princes and the great laic lords of the country, the

Counts of Toulouse, Foix, and Comminges, the Viscount of Beziers, and

many others had not remained unaffected by this condition of the people:

the majority were accused of tolerating and even protecting the heretics;

and some were suspected of allowing their ideas to penetrate within their

own households. The bold sallies of the critical and jeering spirit, and

the abandonment of established creeds and discipline, bring about, before

long, a relaxation of morals; and liberty requires long time and many

trials before it learns to disavow and rise superior to license. In many

of the feudal courts and castles of Languedoc, Provence, and Aquitaine,

imaginations, words, and lives were licentious; and the charming poetry

of the troubadours and the gallant adventures of knights caused it to be

too easily forgotten that morality was but little more regarded than the

faith. Dating from the latter half of the eleventh century, not only the

popes, but the whole orthodox Church of France and its spiritual heads,

were seriously disquieted at the state of mind of Southern France, and

the dangers it threatened to the whole of Christendom. In 1145

St. Bernard, in all the lustre of his name and influence, undertook, in

concert with Cardinal Alberic, legate of the Pope Eugenius III., to go

and preach against the heretics in the countship of Toulouse. “We see

here,” he wrote to Alphonse Jourdain, Count of Toulouse, “churches

without flocks, flocks without priests, priests without the respect which

is their due, and Christians without Christ; men die in their sins

without being reconciled by penance or admitted to the holy communion;

souls are sent pell-mell before the awful tribunal of God; the grace of

baptism is refused to little children; those to whom the Lord said,

‘Suffer little children to come unto Me,’ do not obtain the means of

coming to salvation. Is it because of a belief that these little

children have no need of the Saviour, inasmuch as they are little? Is it

then for nought that our Lord from being great became little? What say

I? Is it then for nought that He was scourged and spat upon, crucified

and dead?” St. Bernard preached with great success in Toulouse itself,

but he was not satisfied with easy successes. He had come to fight the

heretics; and he went to look for them where he was told he would find

them numerous and powerful. “He repaired,” says a contemporary

chronicler, “to the castle of Vertfeuil (or Verfeil, in the district of

Toulouse), where flourished at that time the scions of a numerous

nobility and of a multitude of people, thinking that, if he could

extinguish heretical perversity in this place where it was so very much

spread, it would be easy for him to make head against it elsewhere. When

he had begun preaching, in the church, against those who were of most

consideration in the place, they went out, and the people followed them;

but the holy man, going out after them, gave utterance to the word of God

in the public streets. The nobles then hid themselves on all sides in

their houses; and as for him, he continued to preach to the common people

who came about him. Whereupon, the others making uproar and knocking

upon the doors, so that the crowd could not hear his voice, he then,

having shaken off the dust from his feet as a testimony against them,

departed from their midst, and, looking on the town, cursed it, saying,

‘Vertfeuil, God wither thee!’ Now there were, at that time, in the

castle, a hundred knights abiding, having arms, banners, and horses, and

keeping themselves at their own expense, not at the expense of other.”

After the not very effectual mission of St. Bernard, who died in 1153,

and for half a century, the orthodox Church was several times occupied

with the heretics of Southern France, who were before long called

Albigensians, either because they were numerous in the diocese of Albi,

or because the council of Lombers, one of the first at which their

condemnation was expressly pronounced (in 1165), was held in that

diocese. But the measures adopted at that time against them were at

first feebly executed, and had but little effect. The new ideas spread

more and more; and in 1167 the innovators themselves held, at

St. Felix-de-Caraman, a petty council, at which they appointed bishops

for districts where they had numerous partisans. Raymond VI., who, in

1195, succeeded his father, Raymond V., as Count of Toulouse, was

supposed to be favorably disposed towards them; he admitted them to

intimacy with him, and, it was said, allowed himself, in respect of the

orthodox Church, great liberty of thought and speech. Meanwhile the

great days and the chief actors in the struggle commenced by St. Bernard

were approaching. In 1198, Lothaire Conti, a pupil of the University of

Paris, was elected pope, with the title of Innocent III.; and, four or

five years later, Simon, Count of Montfort l’Amaury, came back from the

fifth crusade in the East, with a celebrity already established by his

valor and his zeal against the infidels. Innocent III., no unworthy

rival of Gregory VII., his late predecessor in the Holy See, had the same

grandeur of ideas and the same fixity of purpose, with less headiness in

his character, and more knowledge of the world, and more of the spirit of

policy. He looked upon the whole of Christendom as his kingdom, and upon

himself as the king whose business it was to make prevalent everywhere

the law of God. Simon, as Count of Montfort l’Amaury, was not a powerful

lord; but he was descended, it was said, from a natural son of King

Robert his mother, who was English, had left him heir to the earldom of

Leicester, and he had for his wife Alice de Montmorency. His social

status and his personal renown, superior as they were to his worldly

fortunes, authorized in his case any flight of ambition; and in the East

he had learned to believe that anything was allowed to him in the service

of the Christian faith. Innocent III., on receiving the tiara, set to

work at once upon the government of Christendom. Simon de Montfort, on

returning from Palestine, did not dream of the new crusade to which he

was soon to be summoned, and for which he was so well prepared.

Innocent III. at first employed against the heretics of Southern France

only spiritual and legitimate weapons. Before proscribing, he tried to

convert them; he sent to them a great number of missionaries, nearly all

taken from the order of Citeaux, and of proved zeal already; many amongst

them had successively the title and power of legates; and they went

preaching throughout the whole country, communicating with the princes

and laic lords, whom they requested to drive away the heretics from their

domains, and holding with the heretics themselves conferences which

frequently drew a numerous attendance. A knight “full of sagacity,”

according to a contemporary chronicler, “Pons d’Adhemar, of Rodelle, said

one day to Foulques, Bishop of Toulouse, one of the most zealous of the

pope’s delegates, ‘We could not have believed that Rome had so many

powerful arguments against these folk here.’ ‘See you not,’ said the

bishop, ‘how little force there is in their objections?’ ‘Certainly,’

answered the knight. ‘Why, then, do you not expel them from your lands?’

‘We cannot,’ answered Pons; ‘we have been brought up with them; we have

amongst them folk near and dear to us, and we see them living honestly.’”

Some of the legates, wearied at the little effect of their preaching,

showed an inclination to give up their mission. Peter de Castelnau

himself, the most zealous of all, and destined before long to pay for his

zeal with his life, wrote to the pope to beg for permission to return to

his monastery. Two Spanish priests, Diego Azebes, Bishop of Osma, and

his sub-prior Dominic, falling in with the Roman legates at Montpellier,

heard them express their disgust. “Give up,” said they to the legates,

“your retinue, your horses, and your goings in state; proceed in all

humility, afoot and barefoot, without gold or silver, living and teaching

after the example of the Divine Master.” “We dare not take on ourselves

such things,” answered the pope’s agents; “they would seem sort of

innovation; but if some person of sufficient authority consent to precede

us in such guise, we would follow him readily.” The Bishop of Osma sent

away his retinue to Spain, and kept with him only his companion Dominic;

and they, taking with them two of the monks of Citeaux, Peter de

Castelnau and Raoul,--the most fervent of the delegates from Rome,--began

that course of austerity and of preaching amongst the people which was

ultimately to make of the sub-prior Dominic a saint and the founder of a

great religious order, to which has often, but wrongly, been attributed

the origin, though it certainly became the principal agent, of the

Inquisition. Whilst joining in humble and pious energy with the two

Spanish priests, the two monks of Citeaux, and Peter de Castelnau

especially, did not cease to urge amongst the laic princes the

extirpation of the heretics. In 1205 they repaired to Toulouse to demand

of Raymond VI. a formal promise, which indeed they obtained; but Raymond

was one of those undecided and feeble characters who dare not refuse to

promise what they dare not attempt to do. He wished to live in peace

with the orthodox Church without behaving cruelly to a large number of

his subjects. The fanatical legate, Peter de Castelnau, enraged at his

tergiversation, instantly excommunicated him; and the pope sent the count

a threatening letter, giving him therein to understand that in case of

need stronger measures would be adopted against him. Raymond,

affrighted, prevailed on the two legates to repair to St. Gilles, and he

there renewed his promises to them; but he always sought for and found on

the morrow some excuse for retarding the execution of them. The legates,

after having reproached him vehemently, determined to leave St. Gilles

without further delay, and the day after their departure (January 15th,

1208), as they were getting ready to cross the Rhone, two strangers, who

had lodged the night before in the same hostelry with them, drew near,

and one of the two gave Peter de Castelnau a lance-thrust with such

force, that the legate, after exclaiming, “God forgive thee, as I do!”

had only time to give his comrade his last instructions, and then

expired.

Great was the emotion in France and at Rome. It was barely thirty years

since in England, after an outburst of passion on the part of King Henry

II., four knights of his court had murdered the Archbishop Thomas-a-

Becket in Canterbury Cathedral. Was the Count of Toulouse, too, guilty

of having instigated the shedding of blood and the murder of a prelate?

Such was, in the thirteenth century, the general cry throughout the

Catholic Church and the signal for war against Raymond VI.; a war

undertaken on the plea of a personal crime, but in reality for the

extirpation of heresy in Southern France, and for the dispossession of

the native princes, who would not fully obey the decrees of the papacy,

in favor of foreign conquerors who would put them into execution. The

crusade against the Albigensians was the most striking application of two

principles equally false and fatal, which did more than as much evil to

the Catholics as to the heretics, and to the papacy as to freedom; and

they are, the right of the spiritual power to claim for the coercion of

souls the material force of the temporal powers, and its right to strip

temporal sovereigns, in case they set at nought its injunctions, of their

title to the obedience of their people; in other words, denial of

religious liberty to conscience and of political independence to states.

It was by virtue of these two principles, at that time dominant, but not

without some opposition, in Christendom, that Innocent III., in 1208,

summoned the King of France, the great lords and the knights, and the

clergy, secular and regular, of the kingdom to assume the cross and go

forth to extirpate from Southern France the Albigensians, “worse than the

Saracens;” and that he promised to the chiefs of the crusaders the

sovereignty of such domains as they should win by conquest from the

princes who were heretics or protectors of heretics.

Throughout all France, and even outside of France, the passions of

religion and ambition were aroused at this summons.

Twelve abbots and twenty monks of Citeaux dispersed themselves in all

directions preaching the crusade; and lords and knights, burghers and

peasants, laymen and clergy, hastened to respond. “From near and far

they came,” says the contemporary poet-chronicler, William of Tudela;

“there be men from Auvergne and Burgundy, France and Limousin; there be

men from all the world; there be Germans, Poitevines, Gascons, Rouergats,

and Saintongese. Never did God make scribe who, whatsoever his pains,

could set them all down in writing, in two months or in three.” The poet

reckons “twenty thousand horsemen armed at all points, and more than two

hundred thousand villeins and peasants, not to speak of burghers and

clergy.” A less exaggerative though more fanatical writer, Peter of

Vaulx-Cernay, the chief contemporary chronicler of this crusade, contents

himself with saying that, at the siege of Carcassonne, one of the first

operations of the crusaders, “it was said that their army numbered fifty

thousand men.” Whatever may be the truth about the numbers, the

crusaders were passionately ardent and persevering: the war against the

Albigensians lasted fifteen years (from 1208 to 1223), and of the two

leading spirits, one ordering and the other executing, Pope Innocent III.

and Simon de Montfort, neither saw the end of it. During these fifteen

years, in the region situated between the Rhone, the Pyrenees, the

Garonne, and even the Dordogne, nearly all the towns and strong castles,

Beziers, Carcassonne, Castelnaudary, Lavaur, Gaillac, Moissae, Minerve,

Termes, Toulouse, &c., were taken, lost, retaken, given over to pillage,

sack, and massacre, and burnt by the crusaders with all the cruelty of

fanatics and all the greed of conquerors. We do not care to dwell here

in detail upon this tragical and monotonous history; we will simply

recall some few of its characteristics. Doubt has been thrown upon the

answer attributed to Arnauld-Amaury, Abbot of Citeaux, when he was asked,

in 1209, by the conquerors of Beziers, how, at the assault of the city,

they should distinguish the heretics from the faithful: “Slay them all;

God will be sure to know His own.” The doubt is more charitable than

reasonable; for it is a contemporary, himself a monk of Citeaux, who

reports, without any comment, this hateful speech. Simon de Montfort,

the hero of the crusade, employed similar language. One day two

heretics, taken at Castres, were brought before him; one of them was

unshakable in his belief, the other expressed a readiness to turn

convert: “Burn them both,” said the count; “if this fellow mean what he

says, the fire will serve for expiation of his sins, and, if he lie, he

will suffer the penalty for his imposture.” At the siege of the castle

of Lavaur, in 1211, Amaury, Lord of Montr6al, and eighty knights, had

been made prisoners: and “the noble Count Simon,” says Peter of Vaulx-

Cernay, decided to hang them all on one gibbet; but when Amaury, the most

distinguished amongst them, had been hanged, the gallows-poles, which,

from too great haste, had not been firmly fixed in the ground, having

come down, the count, perceiving how great was the delay, ordered the

rest to be slain. The pilgrims therefore fell upon them right eagerly

and slew them on the spot. Further, the count caused stones to be heaped

upon the lady of the castle, Amaury’s sister, a very wicked heretic, who

had been cast into a well. Finally our crusaders, with extreme alacrity,

burned heretics without number.”

In the midst of these atrocious unbridlements of passions supposed to be

religious, other passions were not slow to make their appearance.

Innocent III. had promised the crusaders the sovereignty of the domains

they might win by conquest from princes who were heretics or protectors

of heretics. After the capture, in 1209, of Beziers and Carcassonne,

possessions of Raymond Roger, Viscount of Albi, and nephew of the Count

of Toulouse, the Abbot of Citeaux, a legate of the pope, assembled the

principal chiefs of the crusaders that they might choose one amongst them

as lord and governor of their conquests. The offer was made,

successively, to Eudes, Duke of Burgundy, to Peter de Courtenay, Count of

Nevers, and to Walter de Chatilion, Count of St. Paul; but they all three

declined, saying that they had sufficient domains of their own without

usurping those of the Viscount of Beziers, to whom, in their opinion,

they had already caused enough loss. The legate, somewhat embarrassed,

it is said, proposed to appoint two bishops and four knights, who, in

concert with him, should choose a new master for the conquered

territories. The proposal was agreed to, and, after some moments of

hesitation, Simon de Montfort, being elected by this committee, accepted

the proffered domains, and took imdiate possession of them on publication

of a charter conceived as follows: “Simon, Lord of Montfort, Earl of

Leicester, Viscount of Beziers and Carcassonne. The Lord having

delivered into my hands the lands of the heretics, an unbelieving people,

that is to say, whatsoever He hath thought fit to take from them by the

hand of the crusaders, His servants, I have accepted humbly and devoutly

this charge and administration, with confidence in His aid.” The pope

wrote to him forthwith to confirm him in hereditary possession of his new

dominions, at the same time expressing to him a hope that, in concert

with the legates, he would continue to carry out the extirpation of the

heretics. The dispossessed Viscount, Raymond Roger, having been put in

prison by his conqueror in a tower of Carcassonne itself, died there at

the end of three months, of disease according to some, and a violent

death according to others; but the latter appears to be a groundless

suspicion, for it was not to cowardly and secret crimes that Simon de

Montfort was inclined.

From this time forth the war in Southern France changed character, or,

rather, it assumed a double character; with the war of religion was

openly joined a war of conquest; it was no longer merely against the

Albigensians and their heresies, it was against the native princes of

Southern France and their domains that the crusade was prosecuted. Simon

de Montfort was eminently qualified to direct and accomplish this twofold

design: sincerely fanatical and passionately ambitious; of a valor that

knew no fatigue; handsome and strong; combining tact with authority;

pitiless towards his enemies as became his mission of doing justice in

the name of the faith and the Church; a leader faithful to his friends

and devoted to their common cause whilst reckoning upon them for his own

private purposes, he possessed those natural qualities which confer

spontaneous empire over men and those abilities which lure them on by

opening a way for the fulfilment of their interested hopes. And as for

himself, by the stealthy growth of selfishness, which is so prone to

become developed when circumstances are tempting, he every day made his

personal fortunes of greater and greater account in his views and his

conduct. His ambitious appetite grew by the very difficulties it

encountered as well as by the successes it fed upon. The Count of

Toulouse, persecuted and despoiled, complained loudly in the ears of the

pope; protested against the charge of favoring the heretics; offered and

actually made the concessions demanded by Rome; and, as security, gave up

seven of his principal strongholds. But, being ever too irresolute and

too weak to keep his engagements to his subjects’ detriment no less than

to stand out against his adversaries’ requirements, he was continually

falling back into the same condition, and keeping off attacks which were

more and more urgent by promises which always remained without effect.

After having sent to Rome embassy upon embassy with explanations and

excuses, he twice went thither himself, in 1210 and in 1215; the first

time alone, the second with his young son, who was then thirteen, and who

was at a later period Raymond VII. He appealed to the pope’s sense of

justice; he repudiated the stories and depicted the violence of his

enemies; and finally pleaded the rights of his son, innocent of all that

was imputed to himself, and yet similarly attacked and despoiled.

Innocent III. had neither a narrow mind nor an unfeeling heart; he

listened to the father’s pleading, took an interest in the youth, and

wrote, in April, 1212, and January, 1213, to his legates in Languedoc and

to Simon de Montfort, “After having led the army of the crusaders into

the domains of the Count of Toulouse, ye have not been content with

invading all the places wherein there were heretics, but ye have further

gotten possession of those where-in there was no suspicion of heresy.

. . . The same ambassadors have objected to us that ye have usurped

what was another’s with so much greed and so little consideration that of

all the domains of the Count of Toulouse there remains to him barely the

town of that name, together with the castle of Montauban. . . . Now,

though the said count has been found guilty of many matters against God

and against the Church, and our legates, in order to force him to

acknowledgment thereof, have excommunicated his person, and have left his

domains to the first captor, nevertheless, he has not yet been condemned

as a heretic nor as an accomplice in the death of Peter de Castelnau, of

sacred memory, albeit he is strongly suspected thereof. That is why we

did ordain that, if there should appear against him a proper accuser,

within a certain time, there should be appointed him a day for clearing

himself, according to the form pointed out in our letters, reserving to

ourselves the delivery of a definitive sentence thereupon: in all which

the procedure hath not been according to our orders. We wot not,

therefore, on what ground we could yet grant to others his dominions

which have not been taken away either from him or from his heirs; and,

above all, we would not appear to have fraudulently extorted from him the

castles he hath committed to us, the will of the Apostle being that we

should refrain from even the appearance of wrong.”

But Innocent III. forgot that, in the case of either temporal or

spiritual sovereigns, when there has once been an appeal to force, there

is no stopping, at pleasure and within specified limits, the movement

that has been set going and the agents which have the work in hand. He

had decreed war against the princes who were heretics or protectors of

heretics; and he had promised their domains to their conquerors. He

meant to reserve to himself the right of pronouncing definitive judgment

as to the condemnation of princes as heretics, and as to dispossessing

them of their dominions; but when force had done its business on the very

spot, when the condemnation of the princes as heretics had been

pronounced by the pope’s legates and their bodily dispossession effected

by his laic allies, the reserves and regrets of Innocent III. were vain.

He had proclaimed two principles--the bodily extirpation of the heretics

and the political dethronement of the princes who were their accomplices

or protectors; but the application of the principles slipped out of his

own hands. Three local councils assembled in 1210, 1212, and 1213, at

St. Gilles, at Arles, and at Lavaur, and presided over by the pope’s

legates, proclaimed the excommunication of Raymond VI., and the cession

of his dominions to Simon de Montfort, who took possession of them for

himself and his comrades. Nor were the pope’s legates without their

share in the conquest; Arnauld Amaury, Abbot of Citeaux, became

Archbishop of Narbonne; and Abbot Foulques of Marseilles, celebrated in

his youth as a gallant troubadour, was Bishop of Toulouse and the most

ardent of the crusaders. When these conquerors heard that the pope had

given a kind reception to Raymond VI. and his young son, and lent a

favorable ear to their complaints, they sent haughty warnings to Innocent

III., giving him to understand that the work was all over, and that, if

he meddled, Simon de Montfort and his warriors might probably not bow to

his decisions. Don Pedro II., king of Aragon, had strongly supported

before Innocent III. the claims of the Count of Toulouse and of the

southern princes his allies. “He cajoled the lord pope,” says the

prejudiced chronicler of these events, the monk Peter of Vaulx-Cernay,

“so far as to persuade him that the cause of the faith was achieved

against the heretics, they being put to distant flight and completely

driven from the Albigensian country, and that accordingly it was

necessary for him to revoke altogether the indulgence be had granted to

the crusaders. . . . The sovereign pontiff, too credulously listening

to the perfidious suggestions of the said king, readily assented to his

demands, and wrote to the Count of Montfort, with orders and commands to

restore without delay to the Counts of Comminges and of Foix, and to

Gaston of Beam, very wicked and abandoned people, the lands which, by

just judgment of God and by the aid of the crusaders, he at last had

conquered.” But, in spite of his desire to do justice, Innocent III.,

studying policy rather than moderation, did not care to enter upon a

struggle against the agents, ecclesiastical and laic, whom he had let

loose upon Southern France. In November, 1215, the fourth Lateran

council met at Rome; and the Count of Toulouse, his son, and the Count of

Foix brought their claims before it. “It is quite true,” says Peter of

Vaulx-Cernay, “that they found there--and, what is worse, amongst the

prelates--certain folk who opposed the cause of the faith, and labored

for the restoration of the said counts; but the counsel of Ahitophel did

not prevail, for the lord pope, in agreement with the greater and saner

part of the council, decreed that the city of Toulouse and other

territories conquered by the crusaders should be ceded to the Count of

Montfort, who, more than any other, had borne himself right valiantly and

loyally in the holy enterprise; and, as for the domains which Count

Raymond possessed in Provence, the sovereign pontiff decided that they

should be reserved to him, in order to make provision, either with part

or even the whole, for the son of this count, provided always that, by

sure signs of fealty and good behavior, he should show himself worthy of

compassion.”

This last inclination towards compassion on the part of the pope in favor

of the young Count Raymond, “provided he showed himself worthy of it,”

remained as fruitless as the remonstrances addressed to his legates; for

on the 17th of July, 1216, seven months after the Lateran council,

Innocent III. died, leaving Simon de Montfort and his comrades in

possession of all they had taken, and the war still raging between the

native princes of Southern France and the foreign conquerors. The

primitive, religious character of the crusade wore off more and more;

worldly ambition and the spirit of conquest became more and more

predominant; and the question lay far less between catholics and heretics

than between the old and new masters of the country, between the

independence of the southern people and the triumph of warriors come

from the north of France, that is to say, between two different races,

civilizations, and languages. Raymond VI. and his son recovered

thenceforth certain supports and opportunities of which hitherto the

accusation of heresy and the judgments of the court of Rome had robbed

them; their neighboring allies and their secret or intimidated partisans

took fresh courage; the fortune of battle became shifty; successes and

reverses were shared by both sides; and not only many small places and

castles, but the largest towns, Toulouse amongst others, fell into the

hands of each party alternately. Innocent III.’s successor in the Holy

See, Pope Honorius III., though at first very pronounced in his

opposition to the Albigensians, had less ability, less perseverance, and

less influence than his predecessor. Finally, on the 20th of June, 1218,

Simon de Montfort, who had been for nine months unsuccessfully besieging

Toulouse, which had again come into the possession of Raymond VI., was

killed by a shower of stones, under the walls of the place, and left to

his son Amaury the inheritance of his war and his conquests, but not of

his vigorous genius and his warlike renown.

[Illustration: Death of De Montfort----104]

The struggle still dragged on for five years with varied fortune on each

side, but Amaury de Montfort was losing ground every day, and Raymond

VI., when he died in August, 1222, had recovered the greater part of his

dominions. His son, Raymond VII., continued the war for eighteen months

longer, with enough of popular favor and of success to make his enemies

despair of recovering their advantages; and, on the 14th of January,

1224, Amaury de Montfort, after having concluded with the Counts of

Toulouse and Foix a treaty which seemed to have only a provisional

character, “went forth,” says the History of Languedoc, “with all the

French from Carcassonne, and left forever the country which his house had

possessed for nearly fourteen years.” Scarcely had he arrived at the

court of Louis VIII., who had just succeeded his father, Philip Augustus,

when he ceded to the King of France his rights over the domains which the

crusaders had conquered by a deed conceived in these terms: “Know that we

give up to our Lord Louis, the illustrious King of the French, and to his

heirs forever, to dispose of according to their pleasure, all the

privileges and gifts that the Roman Church did grant unto our father

Simon of pious memory, in respect of the countship of Toulouse and other

districts in Albigeois; supposing that the pope do accomplish all the

demands made to him by the king through the Archbishop of Bourges, and

the Bishops of Langres and Chartres; else, be it known for certain that

we cede not to any one aught of all these domains.”

Whilst this cruel war lasted Philip Augustus would not take any part in

it. Not that he had any leaning towards the Albigensian heretics on the

score of creed or religious liberty; but his sense of justice and

moderation was shocked at the violence employed against them, and he

had a repugnance to the idea of taking part in the devastation of the

beautiful southern provinces. He took it ill, moreover, that the pope

should arrogate to himself the right of despoiling of their dominions, on

the ground of heresy, princes who were vassals of the King of France;

and, without offering any formal opposition, he had no mind to give his

assent thereto. When Innocent III. called upon him to co-operate in the

crusade, Philip answered, “that he had at his flanks two huge and

terrible lions, the Emperor Otho, and King John of England, who were

working with all their might to bring trouble upon the kingdom of France;

that, consequently, he had no inclination at all to leave France, or even

to send his son; but it seemed to him enough, for the present, if he

allowed his barons to march against the disturbers of peace and of the

faith in the province of Narbonne.” In 1213, when Simon de Montfort had

gained the battle of Muret, Philip allowed Prince Louis to go and look on

when possession was taken of Toulouse by the crusaders; but when Louis

came back and reported to his father, “in the presence of the princes and

barons who were, for the most part, relatives and allies of Count

Raymond, the great havoc committed by Count Simon in the city after

surrender, the king withdrew to his apartments without any ado beyond

saying to those present, ‘Sirs, I have yet hope that before very long

Count de Montfort and his brother Guy will die at their work, for God is

just, and will suffer these counts to perish thereat, because their

quarrel is unjust.’” Nevertheless, at a little later period, when the

crusade was at its greatest heat, Philip, on the pope’s repeated

entreaty, authorized his son to take part in it with such lords as might

be willing to accompany him; but he ordered that the expedition should

not start before the spring, and, on the occurrence of some fresh

incident, he had it further put off until the following year. He

received visits from Count Raymond VI., and openly testified good will

towards him. When Simon de Montfort was decisively victorious, and in

possession of the places wrested from Raymond, Philip Augustus recognized

accomplished facts, and received the new Count of Toulouse as his vassal;

but when, after the death of Simon de Montfort and Innocent III., the

question was once more thrown open, and when Raymond VI., first, and then

his son Raymond VII., had recovered the greater part of their dominions,

Philip formally refused to recognize Amaury de Montfort as successor to

his father’s conquests: nay, he did more; he refused to accept the

cession of those conquests, offered to him by Amaury de Montfort and

pressed upon him by Pope Honorius III. Philip Augustus was not a

scrupulous sovereign, nor disposed to compromise himself for the mere

sake of defending justice and humanity; but he was too judicious not to

respect and protect, to a certain extent, the rights of his vassals as

well as his own, and, at the same time, too discreet to involve himself,

without necessity, in a barbarous and dubious war. He held aloof from

the crusade against the Albigensians with as much wisdom, and more than

as much dignity, as he had displayed, seventeen years before, in

withdrawing from the crusade against the Saracens.

He had, in 1216, another great chance of showing his discretion. The

English barons were at war with their king, John Lackland, in defence of

Magna Charta, which they had obtained the year before; and they offered

the crown of England to the King of France, for his son, Prince Louis.

Before accepting, Philip demanded twenty-four hostages, taken from the

men of note in the country, as a guarantee that the offer would be

supported in good earnest; and the hostages were sent to him. But Pope

Innocent III. had lately released King John from his oath in respect of

Magna Charta, and had excommunicated the insurgent barons; and he now

instructed his legate to oppose the projected design, with a threat of

excommunicating the King of France. Philip Augustus, who in his youth

had dreamed of resuscitating the empire of Charlemagne, was strongly

tempted to seize the opportunity of doing over again the work of William

the Conqueror; but he hesitated to endanger his power and his kingdom in

such a war against King John and the pope. The prince was urgent in

entreating his father: “Sir,” said he, “I am your liegeman for the fief

you have given me on this side of the sea; but it pertains not to you to

decide aught as to the kingdom of England; I do beseech you to place no

obstacle in the way of my departure.” The king, “seeing his son’s firm

resolution and anxiety,” says the historian Matthew Paris, “was one with

him in feeling and desire; but, foreseeing the dangers of events to come,

he did not give his public consent, and, without any expression of wish

or counsel, permitted him to go, with the gift of his blessing.” It was

the young and ambitious Princess Blanche of Castille, wife of Prince

Louis, and destined to be the mother of St. Louis, who, after her

husband’s departure for England, made it her business to raise troops for

him and to send him means of sustaining the war. Events justified the

discreet reserve of Philip Augustus; for John Lackland, after having

suffered one reverse previously, died on the 19th of October, 1216; his

death broke up the party of the insurgent barons; and his son, Henry

III., who was crowned on the 28th of October, in Gloucester cathedral,

immediately confirmed the Great Charter. Thus the national grievance

vanished, and national feeling resumed its sway in England; the French

everywhere became unpopular; and after a few months’ struggle, with equal

want of skill and success, Prince Louis gave up his enterprise and

returned to France with his French comrades, on no other conditions but a

mutual exchange of prisoners, and an amnesty for the English who had been

his adherents.

At this juncture, as well as in the crusade against the Albigensians,

Philip Augustus behaved towards the pope with a wisdom and ability hard

of attainment at any time, and very rare in his own: he constantly

humored the papacy without being subservient to it, and he testified

towards it his respect, and at the same time his independence. He

understood all the gravity of a rupture with Rome, and he neglected

nothing to avoid one; but he also considered that Rome, herself not

wanting in discretion, would be content with the deference of the King of

France rather than get embroiled with him by exacting his submission.

Philip Augustus, in his political life, always preserved this proper

mean, and he found it succeed; but in his domestic life there came a day

when he suffered himself to be hurried out of his usual deference towards

the pope; and, after a violent attempt at resistance, he resigned himself

to submission. Three years after the death of his first wife, Isabel of

Hainault, who had left him a son, Prince Louis, he married Princess

Ingeburga of Denmark, without knowing anything at all of her, just as it

generally happens in the case of royal marriages. No sooner had she

become his wife than, without any cause that can be assigned with

certainty, he took such a dislike to her that, towards the end of the

same year, he demanded of and succeeded in obtaining from a French

council, held at Compiegne, nullity of his marriage on the ground of

prohibited consanguinity. “O, naughty France! naughty France! O, Rome!

Rome!” cried the poor Danish princess, on learning this decision; and she

did in fact appeal to Pope Celestine III. Whilst the question was being

investigated at Rome, Ingeburga, whom Philip had in vain tried to send

back to Denmark, was marched about, under restraint, in France from

castle to castle and convent to convent, and treated with iniquitous and

shocking severity. Pope Celestine, after examination, annulled the

decision of the council of Compiegne touching the pretended

consanguinity, leaving in suspense the question of divorce, and,

consequently, without breaking the tie of marriage between the king and

the Danish princess. “I have seen,” he wrote to the Archbishop of Sens,

“the genealogy sent to me by the bishops, and it is due to that

inspection and the uproar caused by this scandal that I have annulled the

decree; take care now, therefore, that Philip do not marry again, and so

break the tie which still unites him to the Church.” Philip paid no heed

to this canonical injunction; his heart was set upon marrying again; and,

after having unsuccessfully sought the band of two German princesses, on

the borders of the Rhine, who were alarmed by the fate of Ingeburga, he

obtained that of a princess, a Tyrolese by origin, Agnes (according to

others, Mary) of Merania, that is, Moravia (an Austrian province, in

German _Moehren,_ out of which the chroniclers of the time made Meranie

or Merania, the name that has remained in the history of Agnes). She was

the daughter of Berthold, Marquis of Istria, whom, about 1180, the

Emperor Frederick Barbarossa had made Duke of Moravia. According to all

contemporary chronicles, Agnes was not only beautiful, but charming; she

made a great impression at the court of France; and Philip Augustus,

after his marriage with her in June, 1196, became infatuated with her.

But a pope more stern and bold than Celestine III., Innocent III., had

just been raised to the Holy See, and was exerting himself, in court as

well as monastery, to effect a reformation of morals. Immediately after

his accession, he concerned himself with the conjugal irregularity in

which the King of France was living. “My predecessor, Celestine,” he

wrote to the Bishop of Paris, “would fain have put a stop to this

scandal, but he was unsuccessful; as for me, I am quite resolved to

prosecute his work, and obtain by all and any means fulfilment of God’s

law. Be instant in speaking thereof to the king on my behalf; and tell

him that his obstinate refusals may probably bring upon him both the

wrath of God and the thunders of the Church.” And indeed Philip’s

refusals were very obstinate; for the pride of the king and the feelings

of the man were equally wounded. “I had rather lose half my domains,”

said he, “than separate from Agnes.” The pope threatened him with the

interdict,--that is, the suspension of all religious ceremonies,

festivals, and forms in the Church of France. Philip resisted not only

the threat, but also the sentence of the interdict, which was actually

pronounced, first in the churches of the royal domain, and afterwards in

those of the whole kingdom. “So wroth was the king,” says the chronicle

of St. Denis, “that he thrust from their sees all the prelates of his

kingdom, because they had assented to the interdict.” “I had rather turn

Mussulman,” said Philip; “Saladin was a happy man, for he had no pope.”

But Innocent III. was inflexible; he claimed respect for laws divine and

human, for the domestic hearth and public order. The conscience of the

nation was troubled. Agnes herself applied to the pope, urging her

youth, her ignorance of the world, the sincerity and purity of her love

for her husband. Innocent III. was touched, and before long gave

indisputable evidence that he was, but without budging from his duty and

his right as a Christian. For four years the struggle went on. At last

Philip yielded to the injunction of the pope and the feeling of his

people; he sent away Agnes, and recalled Ingeburga. The pope, in his

hour of victory, showed his sense of equity and his moral appreciation;

taking into consideration the good faith of Agnes in respect of her

marriage, and Philip’s possible mistake as to his right to marry her, he

declared the legitimacy of the two children born of their union. Agnes

retired to Poissy, where, a few months afterwards, she died. Ingeburga

resumed her title and rights as queen, but without really enjoying them.

Philip, incensed as well as beaten, banished her far from him and his

court, to Etampes, where she lived eleven years in profound retirement.

It was only in 1212 that, to fully satisfy the pope, Philip, more

persevering in his political wisdom than his domestic prejudices,

restored the Danish princess to all her royal station at his side. She

was destined to survive him.