797 



PHILIPPE III. (OF FRANCE). 



PHILIPPE IV. (OF FRANCE). 



798 



sister of Canute VI., king of Denmark ; but having in a short time 

 obtained a divorce in an assembly of prelates and barons, he married, 

 in 1 196, Marie, or Agnes, daughter of Bercbtold, duke of Merauia, a 

 German noble, in contempt of the authority of the Pope, before whom 

 the case of Ingeburge had been carried, and by whom the divorce 

 had been annulled. The struggle between the king and the pope 

 (Innocent III.) continued for some years, until ail interdict laid on 

 Philippe's dominions obliged the king to submit the affair to an 

 ecclesiastical council at Soissons (1201) ; but he evaded their decision 

 by a pretended reconciliation with his queen Ingeburge, whose real 

 condition was however little improved. Marie of Merauia, from whom 

 he had been obliged to separate himself, died soon after, leaving two 

 children, whom the pope did not scruple to declare legitimate. 



The murder of Arthur of Bretagne, by his uncle John of England, 

 having roused general indignation, Philippe seized the occasion to 

 attack Guienne, Normandy, Touraine, Anjou, and Poitou. These, 

 except Guienue, he speedily conquered ; and prosecuting John before 

 the court of the twelve peers of France, by a sentence quite unpre- 

 cedented in France and unauthorised in such a case by the institutions 

 of feudalism, procured the confiscation of all his French dominions 

 (1205). Crimes, however flagrant, which did not violate the duty of 

 the uoble to his feudal superior, had not hitherto been cognisable in 

 the great feudatories; and the Court of Peers, which Philippe pro- 

 fessed to revive from the institutions of Charlemagne, was probably an 

 innovation, founded on romances to which the ignorance of the age 

 gave the credit of being faithful historical traditions. It consisted of 

 twtlve members, viz. : six of the great nobles (the dukes of Normandie, 

 Bourgogne, and Aquitaine ; and the counts of Toulouse, Flanders, 

 and Vermaadois, for the last of whom the Count of Champagne was 

 substituted), and six prelates, by means of whom the king sought to 

 influence the decisions of the tribunal. As in judgments involving a 

 capital sentence the ecclesiastics could not take part, it is probable 

 that the number of twelve was made up out of the higher nobility 

 v. ho were at court at the time. The nobles forming the court, proud 

 of sitting in judgment on a crowned head, lent themselves to the 

 purpose of Philippe, who met with no opposition in thus establishing a 

 jurisdiction which might hereafter promote the aggrandisement of the 

 crown. John succeeded in preserving Quienne and recovering Poitou 

 and part of Touraine ; but Normandy, and his other dominions to the 

 north of the Loire, were finally lost. 



In the interval of peace which followed, Philippe endeavoured to 

 consolidate the institutions of his kingdom by holding national 

 assemblies; but his authority in the south of France, where the 

 crusade against the Albigeois was about this time (1207 1213) carried 

 on, continued to be merely nominal. He embellished Paris, protected 

 the university of that city, and sought the favour of the church by 

 fending to the stake those charged with heresy. Under pretence of 

 supporting the cause of the church against John of England, Philippe 

 prepared for the invasion of that kingdom ; and when John had sub- 

 mitted to the church, under the protection of which he placed himself, 

 Philippe turned his arms against Flanders, the count of which had 

 refused to join in the invasion of England. He obliged the chief 

 towns to surrender, and committed great ravages; but lost his fleet, 

 part of which was taken by the English, and the rest burnt in the port 

 of Dam to prevent its falling into their hands (1213). Next year 

 Philippe was attacked on the side of Poitou by John, and on the part 

 of Flanders by the Flemish nobles and burghers, supported by the 

 Kmperor Otho IV. ; but John was repelled by Louis, the on of 

 Philippe ; and the emperor, whose army consisted almost entirely of 

 Flemings, was defeated by Philippe himself at Bouvines, between 

 Lille and Tournay (1214). 



In 1216, Louis, son of Philippe, wont over to England, whither he 

 was invited by the malcontent barons ; but he was obliged to return 

 the next year. In 1219 he took part iu the crusade against the 

 Albigeois; and was afterwards (1221) engaged in hostilities in the 

 provinces held by the English king Henry III. The Count of Mont- 

 fort, unable to retain the conquests which his father, Simon de 

 Montfort had made in the county of Toulouse, offered to cede them 

 all to Philippe Anguste ; but the king, who had never taken much 

 interest in the affairs of the south, declined engaging in the negociation. 

 The feebleness of his health increased the natural caution of age, and 

 he took little part in the affairs of foreign lands. He employed 

 himself chiefly in strengthening and improving the domains of the 

 crown, which he had BO widely extended ; and he walled in the towns 

 and villages which it comprehended. His regular management of his 

 revenues enabled him to effect this, and yet to bequeath to his various 

 legatees an immense sum, of which the maxims of the time enabled 

 him to dispose as if it had been his own property. He died at 

 Mantes, in 1223, in the fifty-eighth year of his age, having reigned 

 forty-three years. 



PHILIPPE III., surnamed LE HARDI, was the eldest son of 

 Louis IX. (or St. Louis). He was born in May, 1245 ; and was pro- 

 claimed king in the camp before Tunis, which city his father was 

 besieging at the time of his death, August, 1270. The army remained 

 two months longer in Africa, suffering much from the climate : at 

 length peace was made with the king of Tunis; and part of the 

 besiegers determined to proceed with Alphonse, Count of Poitou and 

 Toulouse, the king's uncle, to the Holy Land; another part with 



Charles of Anjou, another of his uncles, for Constantinople ; while the 

 remainder, under Philippe himself, were to return to France. Before 

 their final separation, the division destined for the Holy Land was 

 shattered by a tempest, and many vessels were lost. The expeditious 

 to the Holy Land and to Constantinople were consequently given up, 

 except by an auxiliary division of English, which proceeded under 

 Prince Edward (afterwards Edward I.) to Acre ; and the wreck of the 

 army, diminished by sickness, proceeded with Philippe to France. 

 His father and one of his brothers had died at Tunis, and he lost, on 

 his way through Sicily and Italy, his brother-in-law, the king of 

 Navarre, through disease, and his wife, Isabella of Aragon, who died 

 through premature childbirth, the consequence of a fall. It was not 

 till May 21st, 1271, that he reached Paris. He was crowned at Reims 

 in the following August, and shortly after, by the death of his uncle 

 Alphonse, acquired the counties of Poitiers and Toulouse, which that 

 prince had possessed. 



It was the object of Philippe to render the great feudal nobles more 

 completely subject to his sceptre, and he reduced to subjection the 

 Count of Foix, who had refused obedience to his commands (1272). 

 He married, in 1274, Marie, daughter of the Duke of Brabant, who was 

 crowned as queen the following year. Ho interfered iu the affairs of 

 Navarre, during the minority of his kinswoman Jeanne, heiress of that 

 kingdom, who was designed to be married to one of his sons ; and in 

 the affairs of Castile, to support the claims of the Infants of La Cerda, 

 his sister's children, and heirs iu the direct line to that kingdom, 

 whom the Cortes had set aside in favour of Sanchez, their maternal 

 uncle. He succeeded in retaining Navarre for some years, but his 

 projects iu Castile failed of success. 



During the earlier years of his reign Philippe was much under the 

 influence of Pierre de la Brosse, who had cotnrneuced his career at 

 court as barber-surgeon to Saint Louis, and had risen to the rank of 

 chamberlain. His elevation, and the abuse, real or supposed, of his 

 influence over the king, caused his downfal ; he was arrested, in 

 1278, tried on some charge never promulgated, before a commission of 

 nobles, condemned to be hung, and executed iu pursuance of his 

 sentence. The immediate cause of his downfal is supposed to have 

 been his inspiring Philippe with a suspicion that his queen, Marie 

 of Brabant, had poisoned her step-son Louis, Philippe's eldest sou 

 by his first wife, iu order to open a way for her own children to the 

 succession. 



In 1283 Philippe engaged in war with Pedro, king of Aragon ; the 

 crown of which kingdom had been offered by the pope (who had 

 excommunicated Pedro) to Charles of Valois, Philippe's second son, to 

 be held in feudal subjection to the holy see. The French king 

 assembled his barons and prelates to deliberate on the matter, and by 

 their advice accepted the pope's offer. The prelates and uoblus 

 formed on this occasion two separate chambers. In 1285 he invaded 

 Catalonia, took the town of Elna by assault and massacred the in- 

 habitants, compelled Rosas and Figueras to submit, fought an inde- 

 cisive battle at Hostalrich, and took Gerona by capitulation. But the 

 long siege and severe loss which this last-mentioned town had cost 

 him, the superiority of the Aragonese and Sicilians by sea, and the 

 wasting of his army by disease, compelled him to commence a retreat, 

 which ha did not effect without considerable loss. Philippe was 

 himself seized by the disease which had wasted his army, and died, on 

 his return to France, at Perpignan, 5th October, 1285. 



PHILIPPE IV., better known as PHILIPPK LE BEL, son of 

 Philippe le Hardi, by his first wife, Isabella of Aragon, was born in 

 1268 ; and succeeded his father on the throne of France, October 1285, 

 having previously acquired, in right of his wife Jeanne, the crown of 

 Navarre. He was crowned at Reims in January 1286. The war with 

 Aragon continued, but was carried on languidly. The young king 

 gave, from the first, his confidence to the lawyers, who were gradually 

 working the overthrow of the feudal system, and giving consistency 

 and stability to a system of jurisprudence favourable to despotism. 

 It is probable, from his continual poverty, that in the earlier period of 

 his reign he indulged the love of luxury aud refinement then pre- 

 valent. In 1290 he despoiled the Jews; and in 1291 he ordered the 

 Italian merchants, who engrossed nearly all the commerce of his 

 kingdom, to be imprisoned ; and by the apprehensions of further 

 violence, with which he inspired them, induced them to ransom them- 

 selves by heavy payments. Most of them speedily quitted the 

 kingdom. Two brothers, Florentines, Biccio and Musciatto Franxesi, 

 are supposed to have prompted Philippe to this deed of violence and 

 injustice, by which they not only filled the king's coffers, but acquired 

 for themselves the monopoly of the French markets. The success of 

 these experiments encouraged the king to make the lawyers the 

 instruments of his exactions. 



In 1290 Philippe paid a visit to the south of France, in order to form 

 with his allies a plan of combined operations against Aragon, to con- 

 firm his authority over his remote vassal* at the foot of the Pyrenees, 

 and to gain the affections of the nobles of Guienne, then subject to 

 Edward I. of England, of whom Philippe began to be jealous. In 1291 

 he proposed to renew the attack upon Aragon, refusing to ratify the 

 treaty which had been concluded by the other belligerent parties at 

 Tarascon in the early part of the year : but the proposal was probably 

 a mere feint to raise money. 



In 1292 a quarrel between some English and Norman sailors at 



