Rival: Phillip II Augustus of France, 1165-1223

There's one in every family, an annoying in-law who has to butt in to every bit of family drama, and has to prove that he's a cut above everybody else.  Phillip II of France, 1165-1223, was a pain in the behind of four Plantagenet Kings, from Henry II to Henry III.  And the feeling was mutual.  But Phillip often gets a bad rap.  Against rambunctious Henry II and heroic Richard I, Phillip comes across as a weasel, a bumbler, or even a nelly if the plotline in Lion in Winter is to be believed.  In reality, he was a capable ruler who was able to strip the Plantagenets of over half their territory in France, among other accomplishments.  He was called Augustus in his own time because of his many accomplishments, including consolidating much of what is now French territory.

Like all family feuds, there was serious backstory to this one.  Phillip's father was Louis VII.  Louis' first wife had been Eleanor of Aquitaine.  The marriage was annulled by mutual consent of both parties when Eleanor managed to produce only two daughters.  It didn't help that when she married the newly-crown Henry II of England that she bore him no less than 5 sons, four of whom lived to adulthood.  Louis VII and Henry II were two grumpy old men, bickering over land and who owed homage to whom for what piece of it.  Henry's growing brood reminded Louis that, after two wives, he had no heir.  The Plantagenets would have loved to scoop up more Capetian territory in the even of a default in the succession.  Then, in 1165, with his third wife, Adele of Champagne, Louis' luck changed.  She gave birth to a boy, Phillip, who was known in France as le dieudonne, or the God-Given.  Phillip received the standard education for royal males, learning how to fight, hunt and rule a kingdom.  One day, at the age of 13, he became lost of a hunt in the Forest of Compeigne, and caught a dangerous fever.  Louis VII stepped foot into Henry II's realm to make a pilgrimage to the new shrine of St. Thomas Becket for his son's recovery, and it worked.

Louis VII wasted no time having Phillip crowned as a junior king, much as Henry II had done with his own surviving son, Henry.  Henry II attended the coronation.  He and Louis hand long since done some matchmaking of their own.  Phillip older half-sister Marguerite was married to Henry the Young King.  An even older half-sister Alys was betrothed to the next in line, Richard.  Only that marriage was never consummated and it was rumored that Alys was in fact Henry II's mistress.  Meanwhile, Phillip married as his first wife an Isabella of Hainault (there were several women with this name and designation) and began to take over the kingdom as Louis VII slipped into senility.  He became King on Louis' death in 1180.  Phillip lost no time consolidating his lands, becoming the first king to style himself King of France rather than King of the Franks.  He would engage in several costly wars with powerful vassals and rivals, including the Plantagenets.  Technically, Henry II owed Phillip homage for Normandy, Anjou and Aquitaine.  Henry wasn't about to bend the knee.  Then in 1183 Young Henry died and Marguerite was left a widow.  Henry II wasn't about to return her dower lands, either.

Marguerite was married off to King Bela of Hungary and Henry II had to return her dowry.  Then Geoffrey Plantagenet died in 1186 and Henry II insisted on remaining guardian of Geoffrey's heir, who was also an heir to England, Arthur of Brittany.  As Arthur's overlord, it was Phillip's right to be Arthur's guardian.  The question of when Richard would either marry Alys or return her and her dowry kept coming up and coming up.  Phillip aligned himself with Henry's two surviving sons, Richard and John, who were in rebellion against the old man.  They were on the verge of victory when Henry II died in 1189 and Phillip had a new King of England, and Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine to deal with, Richard.  In real life, they weren't lovers.  They could barely stand to be in the same room together.  In 1189 crusade fever was sweeping Europe and both Richard and Phillip were too busy putting together their respective national contingents of knights and men-at-arms to do more than snipe at one another.  No sooner had Philip reached the Holy Land than he realized that Richard not only wasn't marrying Alys, he'd married Berengaria of Navarre and wasn't returning Alys and her dower.

The two armies wintered in Messina and later arrived in time for the Siege of Acre, which fell in 1191.  During the final battles, the Count of Flanders, another important vassal died and Phillip had to leave the Holy Land to settle the inheritance as Flanders' overlord.  Richard made a cute comment about, "it is a shame and disgrace on my lord if he goes away without having finished the business that brought him thither.  But still, if he finds himself in bad health or is afraid to die here, his will be done."  Richard wasn't only busy impressing Saladin, he was also making serious enemies.  The remark got back to Phillip.  He was also aware that John, Richard's brother, was gaining strength in England and on the verge of ousting Richard's justiciar, William Longchamp.  Phillip was only too happy to lend his support to John.  He also began attacking Richard's lands in Normandy, though he was still under the Crusader's vow not to make war on a fellow king away on God's business.  When word reached Phillip that Richard had been captured in 1193, Phillip invaded the Vexin, ironically part of Alys' dowry.  Richard's councilors came to a deal to allow Phillip to keep some of this property, provided he cease any further aggressive activity.  Then, everyone knowing what Richard's reaction would be, tried to bribe Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI to keep Richard.

Henry had his money coming, so wasn't interested.  He released Richard, who hurried back to England, collected a fleet of ships and returned to Normandy, bent on war with Phillip.  The two men sparred back and forth for the next few years of Richard's life.  At one point, Phillip had Arthur of Brittany under his control and he received back Alys and her dowry.  Richard soon began gaining on Phillip, winning back most of the Vexin and Normandy.  They had agreed to further mediation when Richard was killed putting down a rebellion in Normandy in 1199.  On to Plantagenet King number 3, John Lackland.  Phillip and John initially signed the Treaty of Le Goulet in 1200, agreeing that John was Phillip's vassal for Normany, Anjou, Maine and Touraine.  John agreed to pay Phillip 2,000 marks.  Phillip agreed to accept John as King of Normandy, throwing Arthur under a bus (or a cart).  No sooner had the ink dried on this treaty than the two old frenemies, John and Phillip, were once more at war with one another.

By 1204, most of the Angevin empire, including much of Aquitaine and Normandy had fallen into Phillip's hands.  John would launch one campaign after another in an attempt to get it all back, costing much money, men and materiel in the process and further angering his own barons.  In 1214, at the Battle of Bouvines, the Plantagenets lost the core of their Continental empire for good and John was out of options.  By 1215, his own barons had forced him to agree to the Magna Carta, and John was embroiled in a war for his own throne during which he would die of dysentery in 1216.  By this time, Phillip's son and heir Louis had marched to England with an army and was in possession of London as a pseudo-king.  It would take all of William Marshal's military skill to eject Louis and drive the French back across the Channel.  Phillip was, by this time, too busy to bother with a 9-year-old King of a distant kingdom when he was sitting on so much Plantagenet family real estate.  He turned his attention to other conflicts and died in 1223.  He's buried in the Basilica S. Denis in Paris.

Battle: Defeat at Bouvines, July 27, 1214

Plantagenet met would spend most of their lives either warring or preparing for war.  Some were inspired military leaders (Henry V).  Others could inspire men to follow them even when things were going far from well (Richard I).  Then there was John, King of England from 1199-1216. 

The feud between Phillip II Augustus of France, and Henry II of England and his sons was deep and personal.  The issues ranged from women, Eleanor of Aquitaine's divorce of Phillip's father and his sister Alys' being jilted by Richard (and maybe raped by Henry).  It was over money, lands, who was giving more to the Church and to the crusading effort.  If there was something to quarrel about, they were on it.  Although Kings were admonished by the Church not to war against one another while their neighbors were away on Crusade, the vow was almost never kept or enforced.  Upon Richard's capture after the Third Crusade (1192), Phillip II was relentless in his quest to wrest Normandy, Brittany, Anjou and the rest of the Plantagenet domain away from them.  With Richard's death in 1199, Phillip knew that he had easy mark.  Nobody took John seriously as a commander. 

Holy Roman Emperor Otto IV (1185-1218) was the nephew of Richard and John, grandson of Henry and Eleanor through their daughter, Matilda.  He claimed the Holy Roman Empire.  The problem is, so did several other rulers including Phillip II, who wasn't called Augustus for nothing, and Frederick II of Germany, one of the more eccentric rulers ever to wear a crown.  Dreams of a new Roman Empire weren't very far from their mind.  These men were willing to fight and their vassals were backing the most viable candidates, putting the Empire of Charlemagne into a temporary North/South split.  While John was terrible at military command and keeping his barons in line, he could at times be a better intriguer.  If he could draw Phillip into a war that Phillip might lose, Plantagenet possessions in France might be more secure and might increase in size.  He could back his nephew Otto for the Holy Roman Empire as long as he got something from the effort.  After two losses in battle against Phillip in Aquitaine, though, he had turned command over to Otto and scurried home to deal with mutinous barons who were winding up for the signing of the Magna Carta, and a chronic situation of unrest in Ireland.  The English contingent at the battle wasn't very large, owing to the barons anger at John.  So Otto had to look elsewhere for allies and they weren't short in coming.   Ferdinand of Flanders had been forced to give up several cities to Phillip in recent wars and he wanted them back.  There were others, including the Dukes of Lorraine and Brabant, part of Belgium now. 

Meanwhile, Phillip of France was not without powerful friends of his own.  Frederick II of Germany was another man who claimed the Holy Roman Empire.  For the time being, he was willing to join Phillip in driving the Plantagenets off the Continent of Europe, and deal with Charlemagne's legacy later.  The Duke of Burgundy was another powerful ally, among others.  All these men, with their knights and levies, found themselves near the town of Bouvines on what is now the France/Belgium border with, not only the Crown of Charlemagne at stake, and John's English possessions at stake, but, though they did not know it yet, the makeup of modern England and France also in the balance.  Otto had more men, 25,000, with less than 4,000 of them cavalry, knights and mounted levies.  Phillip of France had 15,000, but with an equal number of cavalry. 

From the start, this should have been a walkover for Otto, but it wasn't.  Each leader divided his forces into roughly three groups.  Phillip sent his cavalry on the right against the Flemish cavalry on Otto's left.  The French broke the Flemings, who quickly fled.  That left Phillip's cavalry to deal with the more serious infantry clash at the center.  Infantrymen from what is now the Netherlands were ranked among the finest in the world and were standing strong for Otto.  Phillip repurposed his cavalry from his right to his center and plowed into them.  During a pitched battle that almost cost his own life, Phillip drove the opposing infantrymen back further and further.  Meanwhile, on Otto's left was the English contingent, contesting the bridge at Bouvines.  They, too were slowly driven back, with William Longespee (Longsword), Earl of Salisbury, being captured.  Ferdinand of Flanders was also captured, as were the Dukes of Lorraine and Brabant.  Reginaud of Bolougne attempted a stand with seven hundred pikemen, but he too was ridden down and captured.  Otto fled the field, but his Imperial standard was captured by the French.

John knew the game was up and quickly asked for a truce.  Phillip's terms were harsh enough, requiring that John give up Normandy, Brittany and Anjou.  John would dodge these demands until after his death, his son Henry III was forced to acknowledge them in the Treaty of Paris, 1259.  Otto also had to face Frederick II, who defeated him and took the crown of the Holy Roman Empire the following year.  The Plantagenet empire in France was at an end, with only some holdings in Aquitaine and around Calais.  France as we know it today was beginning to take shape.