History of France | Page 4

in this he seems not
to have been so much guided by any fixed principle, as by his private
interests and feelings towards the individual city or lord in question.
However, the royal authority had begun to be respected by 1137, when
Louis VI. died, having just effected the marriage of his son, _Louis
VII._, with Eleanor, the heiress of the Dukes of Aquitaine--thus hoping
to make the crown really more powerful than the great princes who
owed it homage. At this time lived the great St. Bernard, Abbot of

Clairvaux, who had a wonderful influence over men's minds. It was a
time of much thought and speculation, and Peter Abailard, an able
student of the Paris University, held a controversy with Bernard, in
which we see the first struggle between intellect and authority. Bernard
roused the young king, Louis VII., to go on the second crusade, which
was undertaken by the Emperor and the other princes of Europe to
relieve the distress of the kingdom of Palestine. France had no navy, so
the war was by land, through the rugged hills of Asia Minor, where the
army was almost destroyed by the Saracens. Though Louis did reach
Palestine, it was with weakened forces; he could effect nothing by his
campaign, and Eleanor, who had accompanied him, seems to have been
entirely corrupted by the evil habits of the Franks settled in the East.
Soon after his return, Louis dissolved his marriage; and Eleanor
became the wife of Henry, Count of Anjou, who soon after inherited
the kingdom of England as our Henry II., as well as the duchy of
Normandy, and betrothed his third son to the heiress of Brittany.
Eleanor's marriage seemed to undo all that Louis VI. had done in
raising the royal power; for Henry completely overshadowed Louis,
whose only resource was in feeble endeavours to take part against him
in his many family quarrels. The whole reign of Louis the Young, the
title that adhered to him on account of his simple, childish nature, is
only a record of weakness and disaster, till he died in 1180. What life
went on in France, went on principally in the south. The lands of
Aquitaine and Provence had never dropped the old classical love of
poetry and art. A softer form of broken Latin was then spoken, and the
art of minstrelsy was frequent among all ranks. Poets were called
troubadours and _trouvères_ (finders). Courts of love were held, where
there were competitions in poetry, the prize being a golden violet; and
many of the bravest warriors were also distinguished
troubadours--among them the elder sons of Queen Eleanor. There was
much license of manners, much turbulence; and as the Aquitanians
hated Angevin rule, the troubadours never ceased to stir up the sons of
Henry II. against him.
7. Philip II. (1180--1223).--Powerful in fact as Henry II. was, it was his
gathering so large a part of France under his rule which was, in the end,
to build up the greatness of the French kings. What had held them in

check was the existence of the great fiefs or provinces, each with its
own line of dukes or counts, and all practically independent of the king.
But now nearly all the provinces of southern and western France were
gathered into the hand of a single ruler; and though he was a
Frenchman in blood, yet, as he was King of England, this ruler seemed
to his French subjects no Frenchman, but a foreigner. They began
therefore to look to the French king to free them from a foreign ruler;
and the son of Louis VII., called Philip Augustus, was ready to take
advantage of their disposition. Philip was a really able man, making up
by address for want of personal courage. He set himself to lower the
power of the house of Anjou and increase that of the house of Paris. As
a boy he had watched conferences between his father and Henry under
the great elm of Gisors, on the borders of Normandy, and seeing his
father overreached, he laid up a store of hatred to the rival king. As
soon as he had the power, he cut down the elm, which was so large that
300 horsemen could be sheltered under its branches. He supported the
sons of Henry II. in their rebellions, and was always the bitter foe of the
head of the family. Philip assumed the cross in 1187, on the tidings of
the loss of Jerusalem, and in 1190 joined Richard I. of England at
Messina, where they wintered, and then sailed for St. Jean d'Acre. After
this city was taken, Philip returned to France, where he continued to
profit by the crimes and dissensions of the Angevins, and gained, both
as their enemy and