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CHAP. gonism. Battles were fought with the result of a very few slain, and ransom was more the object than conquest, especially in France, where Norman and Angevin, Fleming and Champagner were fellow countrymen, on good terms with each other during a campaign, and having a private rather than a public aim. Henry the Second and other princes, disgusted with the mockery of feudal fighting, hired mercenaries; but they, however more ferocious to pillage, were even less so to fight, than the noblesse, with whose scutage the Brabançons were paid. Armies therefore met merely to negotiate, and victory fell to the trickster rather than to the warrior. Philip Augustus excelled in this most antichivalrous science, with which he was able to circumvent even the veteran Henry. The brave but reckless Richard, who so far outshone the French monarch in the field, became of course his dupe, and paved the way for the imbecile John becoming his victim. The Anglo-Angevin princes were gaudy flies for whom Philip Augustus, as a crafty spider, wove the tangling web, to pounce upon them when embarrassed beyond power of extrication.

This nullity of warlike effort, and efficiency of diplomatic intrigue, gave great advantage and influence to the clergy. And the Capetians had taken care hitherto to come forward as ecclesiastical champions. Philip Augustus inaugurated his reign by what he considered an act of signal piety. He banished all the Jews, and confiscated their property. He followed up this by the persecution of the Waldensian protestants. The same spirit led him to embark on the crusade to Syria first, and later to promote that against the Albigenses. In return the clergy supported Philip Augustus to the utmost, and mainly aided in the extension of his empire, southward and westward. Nor was this early acquired character of being the eldest son of Rome without influence upon the future fortunes of the French monarchy.

V.

In the first year of Philip's reign, the intervention of CHAP. Henry the Second was necessary to remedy the effect of the young king's abandoning himself too completely to the influence of the Count of Flanders. Some time after, his intervention was required to put a stop to a war between France and Flanders. The young queen had died without issue; but Philip not the less claimed. the Vermandois. The great feudatories took part against Philip. It was the more necessary for Henry to come to his aid, and bring about an accommodation with the Count of Flanders, by which the King of France acquired Amiens.

There was one party which the negotiators forgot to consult. This was the citizens of Amiens. If the people of Aquitaine and Anjou preferred French suzerainty to the yoke of the Anglo-Norman kings, the towns of the north at this time preferred remaining united under the sovereignty of the Count of Flanders, who protected their municipal privileges and development, to passing under the dominion of a king of France. Amiens, therefore, refused to come under the royal jurisdiction; and when Philip Augustus insisted, the Count of Flanders stood on his defence. "His great towns mustered strong," says the poet, William the Breton. "Gand, proud of its castellated mansions, sent 20,000 combatants. Ypres, renowned for its dyes, two legions. Arras, the capital, was not behind, neither was Bruges famous for its buskins. — nor Lille, nor St. Omer." At the head of this formidable army the Count of Flanders marched nearly to the gates of Paris, which he threatened to break in. He, however, thought it advisable to retreat, and the king then advanced to Amiens. Unable to invest or approach so considerable a town, Philip contented himself with laying siege to the castle of Boves, where the king's uncle managed to patch up a peace.

Philip Augustus was also obliged to turn his arms

V.

CHAP. against the Duke of Burgundy, who affected to dispute the royal authority. The king, as usual, pretended that his object was to defend the Church, and compel those great nobles to be amenable, in all disputes with the high clergy, to his royal court in Paris. Philip besieged and took Chatillon, which forced the Burgundians to submit. In the course of the expedition, the king asked for the aid of the clergy of Rheims and their men. The clergy refused the men, but promised their prayers. Some time after, the lords of Coucy and Rethel pillaged the domains of these ecclesiastics, who immediately had recourse to Philip. The king's answer was, that he could only help the clergy of Rheims with his prayers.

Whilst the monarch of France, in the first years of his reign, had thus so little command over his great feudatories, he still managed to keep up an antagonism with Henry the Second of England, and repay the generosity of that monarch by feeding the discontent and encouraging the turbulence of his sons. The Capetians habitually educated their princes in the cloister, the Plantagenets abandoned theirs to the nurture of the rudest chivalry. Mere hot-brained soldiers, their sire could not trust them with provinces or independent command; yet, refusing them this, drove them into rebellion. The eldest, Henry, died about this time, and sent to beseech his sire to hasten to his deathbed. The king could not but suspect there was artifice or an ambuscade in the message, and his eldest son expired alone. One of the troubadours of the time tells an affecting story of King Henry. He had captured his arch enemy, a poet and a warrior, Bertrand de Born, who had stirred Aquitaine against him, and who had ever prompted the deceased prince to rebellion. Henry reproached De Born with his villany and his want of "Sense!" exclaimed De Born, "you may truly say I lost it when your son Henry, my best friend and

sense.

noble champion, died." At the mention of his son's name the old king relented, burst into tears, and not only pardoned but enriched De Born.*

When Richard succeeded to the position of heirapparent to the English throne, Henry left him Aquitaine to govern, or rather misgovern, for his rule was most unpopular. Philip thought to take advantage of this, and, raising an army in Berry, laid siege to Chateauroux. Richard threw a force of cottereaux, or mercenaries, into it; and Philip being unable to take it, whilst Henry feared and suspected a secret understanding between the French king and his son, a truce was concluded between them.

The petty quarrels of the monarchs were silenced by the disastrous news which arrived in 1187, announcing that in July of that year the Crusaders of Syria had been defeated in a sanguinary battle near Tyberiade by Saladin, who afterwards captured the Holy City. The King of Jerusalem, the Princes of Antioch and Tyre, were made prisoners; the captive Templars and Hospitallers put to death; and the Christian hold of the Holy Land reduced to a few maritime towns. William, Archbishop of Tyre, and historian of the Crusades, himself brought home the melancholy tidings, first to Sicily and to Rome, from whence he proceeded on the same mission of succour to France.

Henry the Second had made frequent vows to assume the cross, and proceed to the Holy Land, where the Christian principalities had been long in a decaying state. Baldwin, King of Jerusalem, had become afflicted with the leprosy. The marriage of his daughter Sybille to Guy de Lusignan caused serious disagreements amongst the princes of Palestine. And the Archbishop of Jerusalem, choosing to excommunicate the Prince of Antioch for a question of marriage, turned his arms

* De Born figures in Dante's Purgatorio.

CHAP.

V.

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CHAP. against the Church and the crusaders, instead of against the Saracens. In 1185 the Patriarch of Jerusalem besought Henry the Second to come to its aid. But he and the King of France merely agreed to send a sum of money. Both, therefore, were conscience-smitten when, two years later, they heard of the battle of Tyberiade and the fall of Jerusalem. Early in 1188 the sovereigns held a solemn meeting under a celebrated beech tree between Trie and Gisors, where William of Tyre presented himself, and expatiated on the abandonment of the Holy Land by the princes of Christendom. Whether moved by policy or affected by religion, Henry fell on his knees and assumed the cross. The French expressed their annoyance that the Plantagenet should have anticipated the Capet. Philip Augustus at once assumed the red cross, the King of England and his son Richard. the white one. No slight incentive to both monarchs was the offer of the Pope, granting them a tenth from the clergy, which they hastened to promulgate and exact.* The speedy departure of the monarchs was prevented by an onslaught of the restless Richard upon Toulouse. Richard was in an understanding with Philip Augustus, and was unwilling to depart for Palestine whilst his brother John, whose insidious character he dreaded, and who was the favourite of his father, remained behind. At an interview with Henry, Philip demanded that John should join the crusade, and that the French princess Alix, betrothed to Richard and kept at the English court, should be given to him. Henry would not part with John, nor could Alix, whom it was said Henry had seduced, be married to Richard. The prince, therefore, aided by Philip, prosecuted the war with his father; and as the nobles of Aquitaine and Poictiers preferred the cause of Richard, the heir-apparent, to his

* The Jews in England paid 68,000l.; the Christians 78,0001.

The produce of the tax in France is not known.