Henry the Second | Page 5

hastily, for fear of any hindrance, married to the
young Count of Anjou, "without the pomp or ceremony which befitted
their rank." At nineteen, therefore, Henry found himself the husband of
a wife about twenty-seven years of age, and the lord, besides his own
hereditary lands and his Norman duchy, of Poitou, Saintonge, Perigord,
Limousin, Angoumois, and Gascony, with claims of suzerainty over
Auvergne and Toulouse. In a moment the whole balance of forces in
France had changed; the French dominions were shorn to half their size;
the most brilliant prospects that had ever opened before the monarchy
were ruined; and the Count of Anjou at one bound became ruler of
lands which in extent and wealth were more than double those of his

suzerain lord.
The rise of this great power to the west was necessarily the absorbing
political question of the day. It menaced every potentate in France; and
before a month was out a ring of foes had gathered round the upstart
Angevin ruler. The outraged King of France; Stephen, King of England,
and Henry's rival in the Norman duchy; Stephen's nephew, the Count of
Champagne, brother of the Count of Blois; the Count of Perche; and
Henry's own brother, Geoffrey, were at once united by a common
alarm; and their joint attack on Normandy a month after the marriage
was but the first step in a comprehensive design of depriving the
common enemy of the whole of his possessions. Henry met the danger
with all the qualities which mark a great general and a great statesman.
Cool, untroubled, impetuous, dashing from point to point of danger, so
that horses sank and died on the road in his desperate marches, he was
ready wherever a foe threatened, or a friend prayed help. Foreign
armies were driven back, rebel nobles crushed, robber castles broken
down; Normandy was secured and Anjou mastered before the year was
out. The strife, however, had forced him for the first time into open war
with Stephen, and at twenty Henry turned to add the English crown to
his dominions.
Already the glory of success hung about him; his footsteps were guided
by prophecies of Merlin; portents and wonders marked his way. When
he landed on the English shores in January 1153, he turned into a
church "to pray for a space, after the manner of soldiers," at the
moment when the priest opened the office of the mass for that day with
the words, "Behold there cometh the Lord, the Ruler, and the kingdom
is in his hand." In his first battle at Malmesbury the wintry storm and
driving rain which beat in the face of Stephen's troops showed on
which side Heaven fought. As the king rode out to the next great fight
at Wallingford, men noted fearfully that he fell three times from his
horse. Terror spread among the barons, whose interests lay altogether
in anarchy, as they saw the rapid increase of Henry's strength; and they
sought by a mock compromise to paralyse the power of both Stephen
and his rival. "Then arose the barons, or rather the betrayers of England,
treating of concord, although they loved nothing better than discord;

but they would not join battle, for they desired to exalt neither of the
two, lest if the one were overcome the other should be free to govern
them; they knew that so long as one was in awe of the other he could
exercise no royal authority over them." Henry subdued his wrath to his
political sagacity. He agreed to meet Stephen face to face at
Wallingford; and there, with a branch of the Thames between them,
they fixed upon terms of peace. Stephen's son Eustace, however,
refused to lay down arms, and the war lingered on, Stephen being
driven back to the eastern counties, while Henry held mid-England. In
August, however, Eustace died suddenly, "by the favour of God," said
lovers of peace; and Stephen, utterly broken in spirit, soon after
yielded.
The strife died out, in fact, through sheer exhaustion, for years of
anarchy and war had broken the strength of both sides; and at last "that
happened which would least be believed, that the division of the
kingdom was not settled by the sword." The only body of men who still
possessed any public feeling, any political sagacity, or unity of purpose,
found its opportunity in the general confusion. The English Church, "to
whose right it principally belongs to elect the king," as Theobald had
once said in words which Gregory VII. would have approved, beat
down all opposition of the angry nobles; and in November 1153
Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Henry of Blois, Bishop of
Winchester and brother of Stephen, brought about a final compromise.
The treaty which had been drawn up at Wallingford was