William, and together with him gained a great victory at Val-ès-Dunes near Caen, which fully established the power of the Duke. William married soon after Henry's niece Matilda, daughter of Baldwin, Count of Flanders, and the king of France was recommended by the Pope to take for his wife Anne, daughter of Iaroslaf, the reigning Grand Prince of Russia.

9. War with Anjou, 1051.-Henry called William to his aid against Geoffrey Martel, Count of Anjou. This family had risen into power about the same time as did the counts of Paris and produced many able men, but with a wild strain of fierceness about them which caused them to be much hated and feared. Henry took alarm at Geoffrey's victories over William, Duke of Aquitaine and the sons of Odo, Count of Chartres, and with William's assistance defeated him several times. When Geoffrey became guardian of young Herbert, Count of Maine, called Eveille-Chien, or Wake-the-Dogs, a frontier war began which ended in Geoffrey's defeat upon the Sarthe, and Domfront and Alençon being taken by William. Henry, alarmed at his power, aided William, Count of Arques, an illegitimate uncle of Duke William, in a rebellion, but was again defeated, and finally, when in alliance with Geoffrey Martel, was routed at Varaville in 1058, after which peace was made. The king was in failing health, and wanted to secure the support of his vassals for his son Philip, who in 1059 was crowned at seven years old, the feudatories of the whole kingdom and the people of the county of Paris consenting in the cry, "We will it; we promise it; so be it." Henry had one other son Hugh, who afterwards became Count of Vermandois by marriage with the heiress.

10. Philip I., 1060.-Philip I. succeeded his father only a few months after his coronation, and was still a child when, in 1066, his great vassal, William of Normandy, gained the throne of England. The rivalry between France and Normandy henceforth grew into a rivalry between France and England. Philip chiefly showed the feeling by idle, offensive, words, and William was never willing to make open war against his feudal chief; but at last William, stung by Philip's jests, entered France, and burned Mantes, where the accident happened to which the great Conqueror owed his death in 1087.

II. Bertrade de Montfort, 1092.-Philip had no more ability than his three predecessors, and none of their piety.

He had been many years married to Bertha of Holland, and had four children, when he saw Bertrade de Montfort, whose beauty was such that Fulk, called le Rechin, Count of Anjou, had put away his wife to marry her, four years before. The king fell so madly in love with her that he declared his wedlock and hers both void, and by bribery obtained the performance of the rite of marriage. Pope Urban II. after admonition, excommunicated the guilty pair. At first Philip mocked at his censure, but then pretended to submit, though without really dismissing Bertrade, and for the chief part of fifteen years he was under sentence of excommunication. To prevent the loss of the throne, he caused his son Lewis, called l'Eveillé, or the Alert, to be crowned. Bertrade became so jealous of her stepson as to attempt his death; and only after much strife he received the county of the Vexin as the price of his toleration of her. She even contrived to reconcile her two husbands, who met at Angers on the most friendly terms, when she managed to stir up a quarrel between the Count of Anjou and the son of his first marriage. The youth rebelled, was killed in battle, and her son Fulk became heir.

12. The First Crusade, 1095.-In the meantime Pope Urban II. had visited Auvergne, and, together with Peter the Hermit, had preached the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont, where was enacted the canon that "he who from devotion alone, and not from desire of wealth or gain, shall consecrate himself to restore the Church of God at Jerusalem, may reckon his pilgrimage in the stead of all penance." This was the text of the preaching which sent thousands to take the Cross and win back the spots dear to all Christians. The chief of the vassals of the French crown who engaged in the First Crusade were Hugh, Count of Vermandois, Robert, Duke of Normandy, son of William the Conqueror, and Raymond, Count of Toulouse, who obtained the city of Tripoli as a feudal tenure under the first king of Jerusalem, Godfrey of Bouillon, Duke of Lorraine. The establishment of this kingdom and the need of guarding it by reinforcements from Europe had in the end a great effect on the French, who were so much the largest element in the crusading armies that the Eastern name for European is still Frank, and the dialect of the crusading camp was called lingua franca. The staple of the permanent defenders of the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem were however two religious orders, who

C

added to their monastic vows one of fighting against the Infidel. The Knights of St. John the Almoner, or Hospitallers, likewise undertook to lodge pilgrims, and tend their sick; the Knights Templars were guardians of the Temple. Both required noble birth, and were the resource of younger sons throughout France, where they soon had numerous houses for the receiving and training of novices.

13. Death of Philip I., 1108.- In his latter years, Philip, fat, sickly, and helpless, was fully reconciled to the Church, and professed such penitence that he would not be buried at St. Denys, but in an obscure Benedictine convent. In the robe of that order he died in

1108.

CHAPTER III.

GROWING IMPORTANCE OF THE KINGS.

1. Suger-1108.-Lewis VI., known as the Fat, was the ablest man that his line had produced since Hugh the White. He had as his minister and adviser, Suger, Abbot of St. Denys, a far-sighted man, who did his best to give weight to the kingly power, and to whom we owe the history of Lewis's life. Now for the first time there was some real attempt to restrain the violence of the feudal nobles. The domains where alone the king had any real power, and whence came his revenues, were the five cities of Paris, Orleans, Etampes, Melun, and Compiègne. All the land between was held by barons in their castles, who were generally at war with the king or with each other, and preyed on all merchants and travellers. Hugh, Lord of Puiset, was one of the worst, constantly plundering the vassals of his neighbours. The monks of St. Denys, and the Countess of Blois, Adela, mother and guardian of the young Count Theobald, and daughter of William the Conqueror, complained to the king, who summoned a parliament at Melun. Hosts of clergy and laymen came to lodge complaints of Hugh of Puiset's ravages, but he himself disdained to appear. The king attacked his castle with an army, not only of nobles, but of whole parishes led by their priests, one of whom was the first to break through the defence. Hugh shut

himself up in the keep, till he was forced by hunger to surrender, when he promised to amend his ways, and was released. Then he repaired his castle, allied himself with Theobald of Blois, who had quarrelled with the king for not making this very castle over to him, began his robberies again, and besieged the little town of Touri. Lewis, who was absent in Flanders, hurried home, and after a sharp war of varying success, at last made the Count of Blois prisoner, and overthrew the robber castle of Puiset. This was the first instance of baronial violence being repressed by a legal sentence; and other acts of justice ensued, which showed that the nobles' time of impunity was drawing to a close.

2. The Communes, 1114.—Another change was working in the cities. Many of the towns in Southern Gaul had kept some trace of their old municipal rights handed down from Roman times. But in France itself, and generally in the north, very few, if any, enjoyed any freedom or self-government. All had become the fiefs of some count, baron, or bishop, some of two or three at once, and their lords were constantly calling on them for dues, on a death, on marrying a daughter, or knighting a son, joining the army, &c. Indeed they were squeezed and misused without any such reasonable cause whenever it pleased the noble or his followers. At last, when the exactions had become intolerable, some revolted, the inhabitants taking an oath to each other to maintain their freedom and defend one another. Le Mans had done this under Philip I., and had become a free commonwealth, and though it was overcome and forced to surrender to William of Normandy, it remained a privileged municipality. other places, when the lord was in distress for money, the townsmen who were prospering in trade banded together to buy from their lord freedom and right of self-government, as a commune. The needs of crusading nobles made them willing to sell these charters of freedom, but it sometimes became convenient to forget the transaction, and resume the old claim. Then followed struggles and appeals to the king; and Lewis had no fixed principles of dealing with them. He would allow no fresh communes that he could help in his own lands; elsewhere he cared more for weakening his enemies than strengthening the burghers. Thus when Laon had obtained a grant, he withdrew it on the offer of 700 pounds of silver from the bishop and the nobles. He marched to Laon;

In

the commune was destroyed, and the townspeople afterwards taxed to pay the expenses of their own ruin. A great insurrection was the consequence, in which the bishop was murdered, and in the uproar the peasants broke in upon the city, doing such damage that the burghers called in the aid of Thomas of Marne, heir of Coucy. This house of Coucy was one of the proudest of the old nobles. Their castle was a wonder of massive strength and ingenuity, and they hardly owned any superior. According to their favourite saying:

Ne suis roy ni comte aussi,

Je suis le Sire de Coucy.

This Thomas, having no fear of king or priest, was the chosen protector of the men of Laon, although at Amiens, of which his father, Enguerrand de Coucy, was count, he was playing a contrary part. The burghers of that city had, with the consent of their bishop, obtained a charter from the king, and formed a commune, whereupon the father and son made war on them, and on all who travelled to and fro. Thomas was in effect a regular freebooter, seizing all who fell in his way, and torturing them in his dungeons till he could obtain a ransom; but at length the king besieged him in his castle of Crecy in Picardy, and sufficiently broke his strength to force him to restrain his ferocities: and then began the first steps towards raising the burghers and taming the nobles.

3. Abailard and St. Bernard, 1120-1136.—Paris already was the seat of a highly-esteemed university, where the course of sciences was taught by doctors and masters to scholars assembled from every country round, who lived a strange wild life, between study, beggary, and robbery. Here studied and taught the Breton Peter Abailard, who plunged deep into the mysteries of philosophy and theology, until, at a synod held at Soissons in 1120, his theology was condemned and his writings burned. He submitted for a while, but after some years he returned to Paris, and put forth the same opinions. A synod was convoked at Sens, at which the chief of the opposite side was St. Bernard, the most remarkable man of his time. Son of a noble family in Burgundy, his longing for holiness had led him to retire to the monastery of Citeaux, the head of the Cistercian order, and his example had brought thither his six brothers and his aged father. Being sent to found the abbey of Clairvaux, an offshoot of Citeaux, he there became the leading spirit of the