Philip II of France

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Philip II of France was born on the 21st of August 1165 in Gonesse, the only son of King Louis VII and his third wife, Adela of Champagne. His birth was so longed for, arriving so late in his father's reign, that the boy was nicknamed Dieudonné, the God-given. He would go on to become the first French monarch to call himself King of France rather than King of the Franks, a shift in language that was no small thing. It announced a new idea about what France was and who ruled it.

  By the time Philip died in 1223, he had transformed a middling kingdom hemmed in by powerful vassals into the most prosperous and powerful country in Europe. He fought the Angevin kings of England across four decades of warfare. He went on crusade, narrowly escaped drowning in a river, and nearly drowned a second time in a very different way at a battlefield near a village called Bouvines. He married three times, and two of those marriages became crises of their own.

  The monk Rigord gave him the epithet Augustus for having extended the crown lands of France so remarkably. The questions that follow are how he did it, at what cost, and what he left behind.

• 2. A Kingdom Inherited Young

  ›

  Louis VII had Philip crowned and anointed at Reims on the 1st of November 1179, when the boy was fourteen years old. The ceremony was conducted by Archbishop William of the White Hands, with Louis too unwell to guarantee he would survive long enough to see the succession secured. The older king had suffered a stroke after returning from a pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral, a trip he had made to pray for Philip's recovery from a sudden illness following a hunting trip.

  From the moment of that coronation, real power passed to Philip. His mother and four uncles had exercised enormous influence over Louis, and they were deeply unhappy with Philip's rise. He had already taken the royal seal from his father. When Louis died on the 18th of September 1180, Philip was fifteen and formally alone at the head of the kingdom.

  The young king moved quickly. His marriage to Isabella of Hainault, daughter of Count Baldwin V of Hainaut and Countess Margaret I of Flanders, had taken place on the 28th of April 1180 at Bapaume, with the bishops of Senlis and Laon in attendance. Isabella brought the County of Artois as her dowry. The great nobles resented the advantageous match, but Philip had secured a foothold he intended to build on.

• 3. Dismantling the Angevin Empire

  ›

  The kings of England who ruled in Philip's time were also, as Dukes of Normandy and Aquitaine and Counts of Anjou, the most powerful and dangerous vassals Philip faced. He made it, by his own reckoning, his life's work to destroy Angevin power in France.

  His preferred method was patient and somewhat cold-blooded. Philip befriended Henry II's sons and used them against their father. He kept close to Henry the Young King and Geoffrey, Duke of Brittany, until their deaths. At Geoffrey's funeral, Philip was so overtaken by grief that bystanders had to forcibly restrain him from throwing himself into the grave. Whether that grief was genuine or performed, the political utility was the same: it made Philip appear loyal while keeping him close to potential instruments of pressure.

  Henry II's own health was failing by 1189 when Richard openly joined forces with Philip. Together they drove Henry from Le Mans to Saumur, capturing Tours along the way. By the Treaty of Azay-le-Rideau on the 4th of July 1189, Henry was forced to renew his homage to Philip, confirm the cession of Issoudun and Graçay, and renounce his claim to suzerainty over Auvergne. Henry died two days later.

  With Richard on the English throne, Philip's strategy changed. After returning early from the Third Crusade, Philip spent years pressing Richard in Normandy, losing ground, regaining it, and losing it again. Richard won back almost all that had been lost by autumn 1198. Then, in 1199, Richard was killed during a siege involving one of his own vassals, and Philip's opportunity shifted once more.

  John, who followed Richard, proved easier to maneuver. After Arthur of Brittany disappeared in 1203, widely believed murdered by John, the resulting outrage gave Philip the political cover he needed. He swept through Normandy, and by the end of 1204, most of the Angevin lands, including much of Aquitaine, had fallen into his hands.

• 4. The Bridge at Bouvines

  ›

  On the 27th of July 1214, two armies stumbled into proximity on the banks of a tributary of the River Lys, near the bridge at Bouvines, close to Lille in southern Flanders. Philip had not expected a fight that day. It was a Sunday, and it was considered deeply wrong to engage in battle on the Sabbath.

  The allied force, which included Holy Roman Emperor Otto IV and the Count of Flanders, numbered around 9,000 men. Philip's army was smaller, at roughly 7,000. The battle that followed was chaotic enough that Philip was knocked from his horse by Flemish pikemen. His mail armor likely saved his life.

  The tide turned when Otto's horse, wounded and panicked, carried the emperor off the field. The Count of Flanders was severely wounded and taken prisoner. With their leaders gone, the allied troops broke and fled. The French held back from pursuit, as it was nearly dark.

  Philip returned to Paris in procession, his captive prisoners marching behind him while grateful crowds came out to meet him. The consequences of that afternoon spread far beyond France. Otto retreated to his castle at Harzburg and was soon overthrown, replaced as Holy Roman Emperor by Frederick II. John, back in England, found himself so weakened by the disaster that his barons compelled him to sign Magna Carta, which limited the power of the crown and laid the foundations of English common law. Philip's son Louis was already involved in the First Barons' War in England, aiding the rebellion against John.

• 5. The Three Marriages

  ›

  Isabella of Hainault died in childbirth in 1190. Philip, then looking to remarry, chose Ingeborg, daughter of King Valdemar I of Denmark, who brought 10,000 marks of silver as her dowry. Philip met her at Amiens on the 14th of August 1193, and they were married that same day.

  What followed was extraordinary. During the ceremony, Philip was pale and visibly agitated. After the feast, he had Ingeborg sent to the convent of Saint-Maur-des-Fosses and immediately petitioned Pope Celestine III for an annulment on grounds of non-consummation. His reasons for this sudden revulsion remain historically unclear; no source offers a satisfying explanation.

  Ingeborg refused to accept any of it. She insisted the marriage had been consummated, that she was his legitimate wife and the rightful queen of France. The Franco-Danish churchman William of Aebelholt intervened on her behalf, preparing a genealogy of the Danish kings to disprove the alleged impediment of consanguinity that Philip's representatives had raised.

  Ignoring all of this, Philip arranged a third marriage in June 1196 to Agnes of Merania from Dalmatia. Pope Innocent III declared this marriage null and void, since Philip was still legally bound to Ingeborg, and when Philip refused to part from Agnes, the pope placed France under an interdict in 1199. That interdict lasted until the 7th of September 1200. Agnes died in 1201, and pressure from Ingeborg's brother, King Valdemar II of Denmark, combined with the papal interdict, eventually wore Philip down. He took Ingeborg back as his wife, though it was not until 1213, two decades after their wedding day, that she was recognized at court as queen of France.

• 6. Paris and the Royal Demesne

  ›

  Philip paved the main thoroughfares of Paris. He built Les Halles, the central market, and gave a charter to the University of Paris in 1200. He continued the construction of Notre-Dame de Paris, which had begun in 1163, and he constructed the first incarnation of the Louvre as a fortress. He also built the great wall around the city that would become known as the Wall of Philip II Augustus.

  These were not the acts of a king focused only on war. Philip worked to check the power of the nobles and to help towns free themselves from the authority of local lords, extending privileges and liberties to the emergent bourgeoisie. He reorganized the French government and brought financial stability to the kingdom.

  The royal demesne grew steadily through his reign by a variety of methods. The first major territorial addition came in 1185, with the acquisition of the County of Amiens. He purchased the County of Clermont-en-Beauvaisis in 1218. When Robert I, Count of Alençon, died in 1219, Philip obtained the city and county of Alençon.

  Towards the end of his reign, Philip could muster roughly 3,000 knights, 9,000 sergeants, 6,000 urban militiamen, and thousands of foot soldiers. He was also the first Capetian king to actively build a French navy; by 1215, his fleet could carry a total of 7,000 men and included ten large ships and many smaller ones. The French poet Henry d'Andeli, writing in 1224, recorded that Philip had commissioned a great wine-tasting competition known as the Battle of the Wines.

• 7. The End in Mantes

  ›

  Philip fell ill in September 1222 and had a will drawn up, though he continued traveling his kingdom afterward. The following summer's heat brought a fever. He recovered enough to resume his restless touring, and on the 13th of July 1223, against the advice of his physician, he set out for Paris.

  The journey was too much. Philip II Augustus died the next day, in Mantes-la-Jolie, at the age of 57. His body was carried to Paris and interred in the Basilica of St Denis. Present at the burial were his son and successor Louis VIII, his illegitimate son Philip, Count of Boulogne, and John of Brienne, the King of Jerusalem.

  The reign he left behind had lasted more than four decades. He had entered it as a fourteen-year-old in Reims and ended it as the king who had broken the Angevin Empire, built the walls of Paris, and compelled John of England down a path that ended in Magna Carta. His grandson Louis IX would eventually reap the southern fruits of the Albigensian Crusade that Philip had permitted his vassals to fight on his behalf. The only known written description of Philip himself calls him handsome and ruddy-faced, generous to friends and stingy to those who displeased him, tough with powerful men who resisted him. It also notes that he never, in all his years of war and political manipulation, caused an adversary to die in prison.