#robert fawtier

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Capétiens vs Plantagenêts: a matter of suzerainty.

It was also his position as suzerain which gave Louis VII the chance of interfering in and inflaming the quarrels which raged in the Angevin family. This was an effective means of weakening his great antagonist. Henry II and Eleanor produced a large family, and reared four of their sons to the age at which custom demanded that they should be provided for. Their eldest son Henry was granted Normandy in October 1160 and was associated with his father on the throne of England in 1170. Richard was given Aquitaine in 1169 and Geoffrey Brittany in 1175. John, the youngest child of Henry and Eleanor, was not old enough to be entrusted with any estates until the very last years of his father's reign, and by the time he came of age all the available lands had been given away. As Duke of Normandy, Duke of Aquitaine, Count of Poitiers, the sons of Henry II came to perform homage to the King of France and became his men. It was in vain that Henry II sought to utilise the Norman procedure of pariage to maintain the unity of his continental territories in favour of his eldest son, the "Young King" Henry. (Under pariage the eldest son succeeded to all the heritable property and was alone answerable for it to the suzerain; each of his brothers received a share, but held it of him). This device could not be put into full operation in Aquitaine, which was not part of Henry's heritage but Eleanor's. And when she granted it to Richard, he owed homage not to his father or his eldest brother, but to the King of France. The Young King Henry had done homage as Duke of Normandy to Louis VII in October 1160. When he repeated his homage in 1170 it was made to embrace Anjou, Maine, and Brittany as well. At the same time Richard did homage to Louis for Aquitaine.

It is true that in 1174 Henry II compelled his sons to perform homage to him after their rebellion, but this new homage did not necessarily annul their homages to the King of France. Henry II himself had done homage to Louis VII in 1151 and again in 1169, and was to perform it yet again to Louis's successor, Philip Augustus, in 1180. Thus throughout the conflict between Louis VII and Henry II the French king's suzerainty was affirmed and recognised. This did not save Louis from defeats at his vassal's hands. Nevertheless, to judge from the Toulouse affair in 1159, Louis' suzerainty occasionally cramped Henry's style, and put him in the wrong in the eyes of contemporaries, including the barons of his continental fiefs. To play the rebel vassal was hardly prudent for a king when many of his own vassals were rebelliously inclined. It was not that the idea of rebellion itself shocked feudal society. On the contrary, it was one of the legitimate courses open to a vassal needing to safeguard his rights against the encroachments of his suzerain. But in the disputes between Louis VII and Henry II, Henry was the law-breaker as well as the vassal in revolt. For his rebelliousness against an impeccable suzerain there could be no justification.

It may be objected that Louis VII was constantly intriguing with Eleanor of Aquitaine and with Henry II's sons. But after all Eleanor, as Duchess of Aquitaine, was herself a royal vassal. Two of Henry's sons had done homage to Louis. Another, Geoffrey, by dint of his father's vassalage, was the French king's rear-vassal. And the king had, as suzerain, not merely the right but the duty to concern himself with the welfare and harmony of his great vassal's family, to ensure that a proper settlement was made on the sons. It would be unfair to accuse Louis of hypocrisy; nor did Henry ever complain that the French king was making trouble in his family. Louis' own grievances against Henry were many and varied, and Henry never made a serious effort to deny their validity.

Thus from 1154 to 1180 Henry II had the appearance of a vassal engaged in unjustifiable revolt against his suzerain. This line of conduct undermined his own position. It constantly reminded the baronage of the Angevin fiefs that the King of France was Henry's suzerain- if only because his suzerainty was so often invoked. And it helped to prevent the fusion of the individual elements of the Angevin empire on the continent. Provincial separation, already too strong for Angevin rule to subdue, was reinforced.

Robert Fawtier- The Capetian Kings of France

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Loyal brothers

The Capetian kings found their brothers no more difficult than their sons. The exceptions were the brothers of Henri I, Robert and Eudes, but thereafter the younger Capetians developed a tradition of loyalty to their elders. Robert of Dreux, the brother of Louis VII, who was the focus of a feudal revolt in 1149, was only a partial exception, for at that date the king was still in the East, and the real object of the hostility was the regent Suger. By contrast, Hugh of Vermandois was described by contemporaries as the coadjutor of his brother, Philip I. St Louis's brothers, Robert of Artois, Alphonse of Poitiers, and Charles of Anjou, never caused him any difficulties, and the same can be said of Peter of Alençon and Robert of Clermont in the reign of their brother Philip III. Even the disturbing Charles of Valois, with his designs on the crowns of Aragon and Constantinople, was always a faithful servant to his brother Philip the Fair, and to the latter's sons. The declaration which he made when on the point of invading Italy in the service of the Pope is revealing:

"As we propose to go to the aid of the Church of Rome and of our dear lord, the mighty prince Charles, by the grace of God King of Sicily, be it known to all men that, as soon as the necessities of the same Church and King shall be, with God's help, in such state that we may with safety leave them, we shall then return to our most dear lord and brother Philip, by the grace of God King of France, should he have need of us. And we promise loyally and in all good faith that we shall not undertake any expedition to Constantinople, unless it be at the desire and with the advice of our dear lord and brother. And should it happen that our dear lord and brother should go to war, or that he should have need of us for the service of his kingdom, we promise that we shall came to him, at his command, as speedily as may be possible, and in all fitting state, to do his will. In witness of which we have given these letters under our seal. Written at Saint-Ouen lès Saint-Denis, in the year of Grace one thousand and three hundred, on the Wednesday after Candlemas."

This absence of such sombre family tragedies as Shakespeare immortalised had a real importance. In a society always prone to anarchy the monarchy stood for a principle of order, even whilst its material and moral resources were still only slowly developing. Respectability and order in the royal family were prerequisites, if the dynasty was to establish itself securely.

Robert Fawtier - The Capetian Kings of France

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An absence of family strife

Their marriages were generally fruitful and, what was equally important, their sons were usually loyal, or at least obedient. There are remarkably few instances of rebellion against paternal authority. Robert the Pious did take arms against his father, probably in 996, and his own two sons Henri and Robert united against him in 1030; but these were isolated instances. The only other example that can be offered is the quarrel between Philip I and the future Louis VI, which may be attributed to the malicious intervention of the prince's stepmother, Queen Bertrada. If it demonstrates anything, it shows the patience and loyalty of Prince Louis under considerable provocation. No contemporary royal, or even noble, family, can show anything approaching so favourable a record in this respect.

The characters of the individual kings go some way towards explaining this absence of family strife. The Capetians were good husbands. Only two bastards are recorded for the fourteen kings of the dynasty: Isabella, daughter of Louis VI, who married Guillaume de Chaumont, and Pierre Charlot, the son of Philip Augustus and that 'damsel of Arras' whose name the chroniclers delicately omit. Only three scandals can be pointed to: the elopement of Philip I with Bertrada de Montfort, wife of Fulk of Anjou, on 15 May 1092; the estrangement of Philip Augustus and Ingeborg of Denmark in 1193; and the tragic episode of the daughters-in-law of Philip the Fair in 1314. The only excuse put forward for the first affair was the excessive obesity of the lawful queen ("praepinguis corpulentiae", according to William of Malmesbury); it would not be unfair to point out that the king himself, at the age of forty, was already very fat also. Dr Brachet has plausibly explained the behaviour of Philip Augustus as the consequence of the impact of a momentary anaphrodisia on a nervous system already strained by illness. Certainly, the adventure of the damsel of Arras apart, he does not appear to have led an irregular life. But we must look more closely at the third episode, which throws a vivid light on the moral values of the royal family.

Robert Fawtier - The Capetian Kings of France

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"A kind of political continuity"

It [..] appears impossible to portray the royal counsellors convincingly, still less to single out with precision the contribution made by each of them or indeed by any one of them to the dynasty's general achievement; but there seems to have been one important respect in which their actions probably helped to reinforce the dynastic views of the Capetian kings. The Capetians were remarkably loyal to their counsellors. In so far as the history of their council is known, disgrace appears rarely to have been visited on its members. Etienne de Garlande, archdeacon of Notre-Dame de Paris, and chancellor and seneschal to Louis VI, Pierre de La Broce, and Enguerrand de Marigny, the cynical Norman adviser of Philip the Fair, are the only royal counsellors known for certain to have been disgraced. For that matter, Marigny was deserted not by the king he had served, but by his son Louis X, who lived to experience remorse for it. Counsellors frequently survived the king who had first admitted them to his council, nor did the royal favour shown them die with him. Out of filial respect a new king, on succeeding to the throne, would usually retain his father's counsellors in his service. The association of the heir-presumptive with the throne during his father's lifetime helps to explain this policy during the reigns preceding that of Philip Augustus; so does the quasi-hereditary nature of the functions of some of the great offices of state. But in Philip Augustus' time these last two factors finally ceased to operate. All that now counted was the regard of a new king for his father's memory and his father's works. Louis VIII retained all the counsellors of his father, Philip Augustus. After him, his widow and son retained the services of the Hospitaller Guérin and of Renaud de Roye, who had been reared in the school of the victor of Bouvines. Until the closing years of his reign, Philip III allowed the old servants of St Louis to carry on his father's policy. Many of Philip the Fair's officials began their careers under Philip III and, after a temporary eclipse, Philip the Fair's counsellors very largely made up the council of his three sons.

The relative permanence of the royal counsellors helped to create a kind of political continuity for the whole Capetian period. For two centuries, each Capet king in turn was associated with his father in governing before coming to rule on his own. Every king of the dynasty was surrounded by counsellors who had already worked with his predecessor and sometimes with the last king but one. And every king was persuaded to follow the same broad lines of policy, the more so as the very exigencies of his situation set him on the path he must tread. Hence Capetian policy was not cursed with the vagaries characteristic of so many dynasties and governments. A last contributing factor was the modest and reasonable character of everything they purposed and accomplished. Excess was foreign to their natures.

Robert Fawtier - The Capetian Kings of France

From Les Rois Maudits (1972)- A dying Philippe IV worries about everything he did, and everything he couldn't do, and Marigny tries, with unwavering confidence and loyalty, to assuage his fears.

[histoireettralala]

The Iron King

He schooled himself to face manifold difficulties coldly and unflinchingly. Exasperation with Philip drove the Bishop of Pamiers to declare: "The king stares at men fixedly, without uttering a word… He is not a man, not a beast, he is a graven image." This frigid, silent man left a deep mark on the history of the French monarchy. In his reign the royal administration reached a new and mature stage of its development. It was a body filled with zeal for its task, insatiable in its demands, keen to swoop on the smallest detail, more devoted to the interests of the crown than was the king himself [..] Yet despite the reputation of Philip IV and his administrators for over-governing, the people's regard for the monarchy did not slacken. Contemporaries praised Philip for his benevolent qualities. That the monarchy was popular in his lifetime may be judged from the absence of any stirrings of revolt as long as he remained on the throne. Trouble did not break out until after his death.

Robert Fawtier- The Capetian Kings of France

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Rassemblement

Various explanations have been offered for the widespread popularity of Gothic. In particular it has been stressed that Gothic was a method of building which offered new solutions to the problems architects had long encountered in the construction of large and well-lit edifices. But even if Gothic originated as a series of new devices in architectural engineering, it was far more than a mere way of building. The revolution was aesthetic as well as technical, inaugurating an age of discovery in the resources of the plastic arts. Its birth and success are not to be explained away by the simple statement that the potentialities of the pointed arch had been realised.

The beauties of the Gothic style were not its only attraction. For it was the style of the royal domain and in consequence fashionable everywhere. Fashion is a matter of taste, not of reason, and there have been periods of the history of art when bad taste has triumphed. It is a fair assumption that the prestige of the Capetian monarchy helped to create a preference for the artistic styles favoured in the royal domain and the great royal city of Paris. When a clerk who had studied at the University of Paris acquired a benefice or an ecclesiastical dignity it was natural that he should want to rebuild his church in the "Parisian" manner. Very little is known of the artists of this period, but some of them seem to have been remarkably cultivated men. The architect Villard de Honnecourt certainly was. In those days apprentices in the arts may well have mixed freely with university students as they do today. The student who got preferment and rose in the world would eventually want to employ artists himself, and would give his old artist friends the benefit of his patronage. The aesthetic fashions of the bourgeoisie were learned from the great lords; those of the great lords from the royal domain.

It is conceivable that to copy royal fashion in the arts was a method of paying court to the powerful kings of the thirteenth century. The artists themselves are almost completely anonymous. But systematic research on their patrons, though very difficult to carry out, might clarify the motives which led them to adopt the new styles and to employ the artists of the royal domain. This may well have been a way of demonstrating loyalty, paying one's addresses to the royal officiers, or pleasing a bishop noted for his devotion to the crown. The question is worth investigating.

To sum up: at the very time when the Capetian kings were bringing together under their authority the various territorial lordships of the kingdom, the vernacular spoken in the royal domain was beginning to be accepted and spoken throughout France and to become the predominant language of literature. A new art-form, created by the eclectic artists of the royal domain, was spreading to every corner of the kingdom, and was ultimately to establish itself all over Europe. At Paris, the seat of government and the king's own city, the university had won an undisputed ascendancy over the minds of the French clergy. Rival universities- those already in existence and those which were to be founded in the fourteenth century- were doomed to obscurity or the pursuit of a few specialised studies.

The political achievement of the Capetians had included the bringing together of the great fiefs of the kingdom and their subjection to closer control; in the realm of thought and culture the dynasty bad accomplished, consciously or not, a similar rassemblement of the leading minds of France. And there is a last process of this kind to be considered. It might fittingly be called the rassemblement of the mass of the crown's subjects.

At the beginning of the fourteenth century Philip IV twice appealed, on religious issues, to the public opinion of his entire kingdom (not merely that of the populace of the royal domain) and gathered together its representatives. In 1303, at the most critical stage of his conflict with Boniface VIII, Philip decided to appeal to the Church Universal, sitting in a general council, against a pope whose legitimacy and orthodoxy he now denied. He resolved to appeal to a general council not only in his own name but also in the name of his whole realm. Consequently the people had to be consulted first. An assembly of delegates from the different estates of society was decided on, and a great campaign was launched to secure the support of the French people for the request for a general council which Philip had put forward in their name. The people of each town and village assembled in church or market-place, cloister or cemetery, heard the royal commissioners give an account of the situation, and with virtual unanimity declared themselves in favour of the royal policy, though it is true that some of those present saw in the projected general council a forum in which the pope would be able to justify his own cause.

Some historians have regarded Philip's campaign to recruit support for his demand for a council as no more than a dishonest farce. They deny that the Frenchmen who were consulted were allowed to voice their true opinions. There were, however, groups which openly refused to support the king. Whether these historians are right or wrong is of no consequence. For even if the consultation was a sham, the fact that even a pretence of it took place was of great importance. For the first time a question affecting the whole realm had been placed before all the king's subjects, without distinction of class or sex. (The official reports from various urban and rural communities mention the names of women who took part in their local assemblies). Frenchmen had their first opportunity ever to realise that they all belonged to one community and that there was indeed a kingdom of France.

Robert Fawtier- The Capetian Kings of France

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Growth and prosperity

Philip II showed interest in urban development, particularly over financial benefit for the crown and political gain by alliance with urban elites. There is a distinction to be made between the treatment of towns in the demesne and those outside it. Philip, like his predecessors, was prepared to make wider grants of privilege to towns outside the demesne so as to appear as their protector.

Paris was now unquestionably the capital of the Capetian realm and a major European city. Its schools became a university in this period, attracting leading intellectuals and scholars, and many students. Philip built a covered market at Les Halles for the merchants and paved the main streets. He built a new wall and the castle of the Louvre, defending Paris from the west. Recent excavations beneath the modern art gallery and its courtyard have shown the true dimensions and strength of Philip's fortifications. The Louvre enclosed a space of 78 metres by 72. The new walls were four metres thick, studded with ten towers, and protected by a moat filled from the Seine. The central keep, the Grosse-Tour, was cylindrical and 31 metres high, protected by a circular dry ditch six metres deep. Ferrand of Flanders was imprisoned there after Bouvines. The Louvre had two gates, a drawbridge to the eastern gate to the town, and a southern gate with access to the river.

Philip added defences to other French towns. His first register noted work on Laon, Compiègne, St-Mard and Melun. Curtain walls, towers, gates and ditches were built. A major new tower was built at Bourges in 1190. Instructions were sent to Garnier the mason and Gilbert the ditcher. By the end of Philip's reign every major town in the demesne had a fortress and wall. Philip's castles were massive. The tower at Villeneuve-sur-Yonne was over 27 metres high with a ditch 13 metres wide. They also have architectural interest with the emphasis on round towers- as in the Louvre. The records mention at least 18 new cylindrical towers. Dun-le-Roi in Berry used the Louvre as a model. The tower at Issoudun was cylindrical; the added spur an early example of an en bec tower. Philip's last major castle was at Dourdan with the keep in one corner, concentrating on the walls rather than the interior- the direction in which castle planning would go. Philip II was one of the greatest of medieval castle-builders, on a level with Edward I.

Philip gave protection to fairs and markets throughout the realm, as for Compiegne in 1185, when merchants going to the fair were guaranteed royal protection. In 1209 the Champagne fairs were promised similar protection. It was part of Philip's bid for support from merchants, and brought additional revenue. Register A recorded demesne rights in 32 towns. Royal towns were more freely able to recruit new citizens from serfs admitted to them. Communes prospered under Philip. They welcomed the new independence in administration, justice and financial arrangements. They raised and trained their own militias and were loyal supporters of the crown. Philip was sympathetic to communes, making grants of the status to Chaumont in 1182, Amiens 1185 and Pontoise 1188. He was more cautious over towns in the demesne, though granted them privileges. Commune status was a means of winning support in newly conquered areas, as at Les Andelys and Nonancourt after the conquest of Normandy. Beauvais valued its new commune charter: 'in no event will it [the charter] be taken outside the city'. Citizens knew the value of royal support. Walter Tirel granted a commune to Foix, but the citizens still wanted royal approval - going to Philip in Paris for a charter. The value to the king was also considerable. The tallies collected by thebaillis from demesne towns were very profitable - £2,995 from Paris, £1,500 each from Etampes and Orleans. Possibly as much as 15% of royal income came from Paris but less pressure for payment was put on newly acquired towns. The period saw economic advance and prosperity for France. William the Breton noted the fertile fields and vines of his native Brittany, the salmon and eels caught from fishing, and the flourishing of trade.

Robert Fawtier- The Capetians Kings of France

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"To all intents and purposes she may be counted among the kings of France"

The hour that struck the death of Louis VIII was arguably the most critical in the history of the Capetian family. The new king, one day to be St Louis, was still a child. The trend of events in the previous two reigns had brought the higher nobility to realise that its independence would soon be seriously threatened. But a unique opportunity was raised to the regency of the queen-mother, Blanche of Castile, on the pretext that she was a woman and a foreigner. Yet this was not the first occasion on which the king's widow had acted as regent, nor the first on which a queen had played a part in politics. Philip Augustus had been the first Capetian not to involve his wife in the government of his realm. Before his time the queens of France had often intervened in affairs of state. Constance of Arles, not content with making married life difficult for Robert the Pious, had wanted to change the order of succession to the throne. She had led the opposition to Henri I, provoking and upholding his brothers against him, and she was perhaps responsible for the separation of Burgundy from the royal domain, to which Robert the Pious had joined it. Anna of Kiev, after the death of her husband Henri I, had been one of the regents, and it was only her second marriage, to Raoul de Crépy, that took her out of politics. Bertrada de Montfort's influence over Philip I had been notorious, and so had her hostility to the heir to the throne, whom she had even been accused of trying to poison. Adelaide of Maurienne, despite a physical personality before which Count Baldwin III of Hainault is said to have recoiled, had held considerable sway over Louis VI, procuring the disgrace of the chancellor, Etienne de Garlande, and egging on Louis to the Flemish adventure from which her brother-in-law, William Clito, was to profit so much. Eleanor of Aquitaine- as St Bernard had complained- had more power than anyone else over Louis VII as long as their marriage lasted. Louis VII's third wife, Adela of Champagne, had appealed to the king of England for help against her son Philip Augustus when he had sought to free himself of the tutelage of her brothers of Champagne. Later, reconciled with Philip, Adela had been regent during his absence from France on crusade. From the beginnings of Capet rule, the queens of France had enjoyed substantial influence over their husbands and over royal policy.

But Blanche of Castile was to play a greater role than any of her predecessors. To all intents and purposes she may be counted among the kings of France. For from 1226 until her death in 1252 she governed the kingdom. Twice she was regent: from 1226 to 1234, while Louis IX was a minor, and from 1248 to 1252 during his first absence on crusade. Between 1234 and 1248 Blanche bore no official title, but her power was no less effective. Severe in personality, heroic in stature, this Spanish princess took control of the fortunes of the dynasty and the kingdom in outstandingly difficult circumstances. For in 1226 there arose the most redoubtable coalition of great barons which the House of Capet ever had to face. Loyalty to the crown, so constant a feature of the past, seemed to be in eclipse. This was at any rate true of the barons who revolted, for they appear to have tried to seize the person of the young king himself- an attempt without parallel in Capetian history.

Blanche of Castile threw herself energetically into the struggle over her son and his throne. Taking her father-in-law, Philip Augustus, as her model, she won over half her enemies by craft, vigorously gave battle to the rest, and enlisted the alliance of the Church, including the Pope himself, and of the burgess class, which in marked fashion took the side of the royal family. Blanche was able to fend off Henry III of England, who tried to take the opportunity of recovering his ancestral lands, lost by John to Philip Augustus. She broke up the baronial coalition and reduced to submission the most dangerous of the rebels, Peter Mauclerc, Count of Brittany, and Raymond VII, Count of Toulouse. She adroitly took advantage of her victory to re-establish- this time definitively- the royal power in the south of France: her son Alphonse was married to the daughter and heiress of Raymond of Toulouse. The way was now open for the union of all Raymond's rich patrimony with the royal domain.

The Capetian monarchy emerged all the stronger from a crisis which had threatened to overwhelm it. Blanche felt it her duty not to rest on her laurels. After her son came of age she continued to make herself responsible for good and stable government. By the force of her example she drove home the lessons which Philip Augustus seems to have wanted to press upon his grandson when they had talked together. To Blanche's initiative must be credited the measures taken to suppress the dangerous revolt of Trencavel in Languedoc, as also those taken to defeat the coalition broken up after the battle of Saintes. On these occasions Louis IX did no more than carry out his mother's policy. When he went off on crusade, Blanche one more officially shouldered the government of the kingdom. She maintained law and order, prevented the further outbreak of war with England, and successfully pressed on with the policy which was to lead to the annexation of Languedoc. Likewise it was she who refurnished her son's crusade with men and money, and she took all the steps necessary for the safety of the kingdom when Louis was captured in Egypt.

Robert Fawtier- The Capetian Kings of France- Monarchy and Nation (987-1328)