VIII
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He was 15 when he became count and would hold the title for 53 years. He was one of the most extraordinary personalities at the turn of the millen-nium and one of the greatest builders of the Loire valley.
Homme de parole aussi, il est fidèle à son suzerain le roi Hugues-Capet d'abord, puis Robert-le-pieux, et enfin Henri Ier, qu'il aide et défend lors de la guerre civile qui risque de lui coûter son trône. Foulques-Nerra sera avant tout un homme d'ordre . He
built probably more than anyone else in the The struggle against the counts of Blois, who owned Touraine, the country around Chartres, and Dunois, was the main focus of his life. When he died at the age of 68 after his second pilgrimage to the Holy Land, 50 years be-fore the Crusades, Touraine and Vendomois were part of the Anjou do-mains. To the west of the royal lands stood a formidable new power that, in the 12th century, would become the Plantagenêts and the kings of Eng-land (through Henry II Plantagenet). *Robert-le-Pieux ("Robert the Pious"), , king in the year 1000, had been raised by the monk Gerbert. Now, Gerbert was probably the most learned man of his time and was bishop of Rheims before becoming the pope of the year 1000. Robert was thus associated with his father's throne since the age of 15, and he established the Capetian dynasty. At the time, feudalism was sometimes misconstrued by some lords, who behaved in their own fiefdoms or toward their neighbors' worse than any barbarians would have dared to. Things got so bad that the pope had to en-act the "truce of God." These lords, including especially the counts of Blois and Champagne, also rebelled against royal authority, and Robert the Pious had a rough time with them. However, with the support of loyal nobles like the hard-nosed Foulques-Nerra, the king managed to overcome his opponents. Robert
rebuilt Orleans, his capital, which had burned to the ground in
989. He restored the Chatelet, a stone tower guarding the bridge,
to his subjects' surprise, and also some churches: the Grande
Eglise Sainte-Croix ("Great Holy Cross Church"), Saint-Avit and
especially Saint-Aignan, which he dedicated in July 1029. In the reign of Robert the Pious, many lands were cleared for farming and many new villages started. In addition, religious foundations and con-struction, often due to Cluny influence, also stimulated the economy. The kings held the main abbeys and imposed on Orleans the bishop of their choice. Beginning with Robert the Pious, they were represented locally by provosts in Chécy, Châteauneuf sur Loire, Fay aux Loges, Neuville aux Bois, ou Sully. Their domains, the forest of Orleans, Lorris, Choisy, Vitry aux loges, are both hunting grounds and important sources of in-come. The king's half-brother, Gozlin, who had defended Paris with Eudes against the Normans and who would later become bishop of Bourges, was abbot of Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire. He had the famous nartex-entrance built at the front of the abbey; it can still be seen today. The Normans built or rebuilt the abbeys of Fécamp and Bernay. The work was done by Guillaume de Volpiano, one of the rare master builders whose name is known today. The master's students built, in their turn: Jumièges, Bec-Hellouin, the abbeys for men and women in Caen, the Mont Saint-Michel and many others. All were built on the Benedictine model. At about the same time, Pierre de Molesmes, also a Benedictine, founded Citeaux, which was also to have an enormous influence.... *Robert the Pious' son, Henri Ier left no personal traces in the historical record except that he separated Burgundy from the royal domains. He also allowed a power to develop within the kingdom and within his own family relations, one that would soon overshadow him and go on to conquer England: that of the duke of Normandy, William the Conqueror. At the end of his reign, the "Rex Francorum" seemed to be of little account in comparison to his powerful neighbors, the Germanic Holy Roman Empire of Henri III, the duchies of Aquitaine and Normandy, the kingdom of Brettany, the county of Flanders and even that of Anjou. When
Henri I died, his son Philippe Ier
was eight years old. His mother and, especially, his uncle, Beaudoin
of Flanders reigned as
regents. At
the age of 15, Philippe reigned as king, since his uncle had passed
away in about 1067. But the unlucky boy was not cut out to wear
the crown. He yielded to corruption by failing to fulfill his
legal duties in a conflict of interests between two grandsons
of Foulques-Nerra of Anjou. He repudiated his wife, Berthe de Frise (Bertha of Frisia), a daughter of the king of Holland, after the future Louis-le-Gros (Louis the Fat) was born. And he abducted the wife of his accomplice in the Anjou affair, Bertrade, the wife of Foulques-le-Réchin. He even found a bishop corrupt enough to bless their marriage, so that Bertrade became queen of France. In short, Philippe misbehaved so badly so often that he was finally excom-municated by Pope Urbain II, who pronounced anathema on all the places in which the royal couple resided. Under these conditions, the kingdom could not be properly administered. Many local lords, who no longer respected the king, caused him serious trouble and threatened the main lines of communication, notably the road that linked the two capitals, Paris and Orleans. The key point was held by the lord of Puiset, near Janville. He even gave the king a humiliating de-feat in battle at Yèvres-le-Châtel, near Pithiviers, in 1081. This miscreant king thought he could make a bargain by marrying his sec-ond son, whom he had had with Bertrade and who was also named Philippe, to the daughter of the lord of Montlhéry, but it was just another mistake. Philippe Jr. acted like a great feudal lord in rivalry with his half-brother Louis the Fat; Louis' stepmother Bertrade had already tried to poi-son her stepson. Louis the Fat, disgusted by so much hatred, took refuge for a while in England, at the court of his cousin Henri-Ier-Beauclerc, the third son of William the Conqueror. In
the end, Philippe I had to renounce Bertrade officially and humiliate
himself before the assembly of bishops in 1094. Because of his misdeeds, he did not wish to be buried beside his ancestors in the basilica at Saint-Denis. Rather, he asked to be interred at his favorite abbey, Saint-Benoit-sur-Loire. As for his legacy, he left the "Regnum Francorum" larger rather than smaller, but his excommunication made him miss the most important ad-venture of his reign, the First Crusade and the capture of Jerusalem. During his reign, the former prior of Cluny, Odon de Lagery, became Pope Urbain II and launched the Crusades at the Council of Clermont and in Marmoutiers in 1095. Louis
VI was called "Louis the Fat" simply because he was fat. But he
was also called "the battler" because of his incessant actions
against his feudal vassals. He was also the first sovereign to
be known as the "king of France." He put down rebels such as his half-brother Philippe de Montlhéry, the lord Hugues du Puiset, whom we will soon meet again in the Holy Land, and Lionnet de Garlande. In a battle at Meung-sur-Loire, Lionnet threw himself from the top of the Manasses tower onto the pikes of his be-siegers. Louis also overcame the lords of Montmorency, Courcy and Crecy. He had less luck against foreign powers. Twenty years of war with King Henry I of England achieved nothing. Worse, he saw his former vassal, Etienne de Blois, a descendant of Thibault the Cheat, ascend to the throne of England. The counts of Anjou, Geoffroy-Plantagenets and his son Henri quickly took advantage of the situation. They retook Normandy and had themselves crowned in Westminster. England thus passed forever into the hands of men from the Loire valley; more than a thousand years later, their descendants would still be on the throne of Albion ... The conquest of Great Britain by the counts of Anjou, who were vassals of the king of France but also his greatest rivals, foreshadows all of Western history. Over the centuries, constant rivalry would stimulate, upset, an-nihilate or enhance one or another of these two quarrelsome neighbors. They would bury the hatchet when a threat from Germany loomed on the horizon; then and only then would these eternal adversaries reaffirm their common values while they faced adversity together. Otherwise, any pre-text would suffice to try determinedly and often violently to wrest from each other supremacy in the Western world... *The idea of national feeling emerges for the first time in the reign of Louis the Fat. Threatened by an invasion from the alliance of Henri Ist of England and the German emperor Henri V, "townspeople" joined the counts' and barons' troops to defend the frontiers of the kingdom. This rise of a new feeling of belonging to a French nation is probably due to the increased circulation of ideas, accounts and deeds by the Crusaders in the Near East. The emergence of a national consciousness was certainly helped by the ed-ucation of some subjects in the many monasteries of France as well as by the qualifications of the workers who built monuments like the abbey of the Mont Saint-Michel, Fontevrault, Cluny, or Citeaux, etc., and by their traveling about the kingdom. Louis
VI probably realized what was happening and tried to distance
him-self a little from the support of the religious powers that
be, a power that all his forefathers had been able to count on.
He wished to base Capetian power on popular consent. Louis VI granted these charters preferably outside of the royal domains; he may have been a demagogue, but he wasn't crazy. He thus hoped to help advance men of the people to positions of responsibility. That fit in with his policy of weakening the feudal nobles, including the religious landowners. Cities like Meung-sur-Loire or Pithiviers, cities and lands belonging to the bishops of Orleans, were indeed strongholds that could harass the king's power if they ever took a mind to do so. Despite that, he counted the superior of Saint-Aignan, the bishop of Orleans Etienne de Garlande, and the monk Suger among his most loyal advisors. As a result, trade and commercial initiatives were encouraged, such as large fairs in Orleans and Dreux; intellectual freedom and disciplines were developed (e.g. Abélard and the first of the gothic architects); and the serfs were freed at the end of his reign. His son Louis VII did not follow that path. He had other problems with the council of Beaugency in 1152 , which made him divorce the woman who was by all accounts the most interesting wife of the time and whom his fa-ther had succeeded in arranging for him to marry: Aleanor of Aquitaine.. It was a fatal political blunder, one that would be disastrous for French history...
Henri-II-Plantagenets, count of Anjou and king of England, immediately saw that he could benefit from this separation and did not hesitate to marry the young and beautiful divorcee in May 1152. Her dowry was the entire south of France. From that moment on, the center of power moved from the Loire to the Seine. It would return only at brief moments in later history depending on the fortunes of war, events or the whim of the court. *
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