ft.ins.
1.Total Length—{ Exterior,5064
Interior,4265
This is less than that
of the Cathedrals
of Le Mans, Reims,
Amiens,Bordeaux and Rouen.
2.Length of Nave,2404
3. Length of Choir,1215
4. Length of Transept
(largest in France),		2116
5. Width of West Front,1560
6. Width of Nave
(largest in France),		536
7. Length of Crypt,3666
8. Width of Crypt,180
9. Height of Vaulting of Nave,1223
10. Height of Vaulting in Aisles,456
11. North Tower (Clocher Neuf),3774
12. South Tower (Clocher Vieux),3496
13. Diameter of the three large
Rose Windows,		440

CHAPTER VIII
The Birth of the Bourgeoisie and the English Occupation

‘Servanti Civem querna corona datur.’
Town Motto.[83]

WHILST the Cathedral was a-building, events had happened at Chartres which serve to indicate the importance of the position attained by the town in feudal France by virtue of the power of its Counts, the greatness of its Bishops and the prosperity of its commerce. The legate, Pierre Léon, who was afterwards to become the anti-pope Anaclete, held a council here and, in 1130, the legitimate Pope sought refuge at Chartres, where Henry the First of England came to prostrate himself before him. As to the Counts, their greatness had been increased by the inheritance of the County of Champagne. They were not chary of using their strength to advance their own importance. Thibault the Great, son of Adèle, Countess of Chartres and daughter of William the Conqueror, allied himself with the King of England and waged continual warfare with the King of France. When his foreign ally died, Thibault’s brother Stephen ascended the English throne, and he himself became Duke of Normandy.



His eldest son, Henry, was one of those who took the Cross when S. Bernard came to Chartres, preaching the Crusade of 1145. On that memorable occasion the Abbot of Clairvaux was elected, by acclaim in the Cathedral, Generalissimo of the Christian forces. But with the example of the disastrous leadership of Peter the Hermit before his eyes, S. Bernard wisely declined. ‘Who am I,’ he wrote to the Pope, ‘that I should order the lines of battle, and go out before the faces of armed men, or what is more remote from my profession?’ Count Henry gained great renown in the Holy Land, and when at last, after fifty years of opposition to his King, the old Count died, he left to his valorous eldest son the County of Champagne, and Chartres and Blois passed to his second son, Thibault, owing homage to Henry. This Thibault, surnamed Le Bon, aided the King against Henry Plantagenet, and was rewarded by being made Seneschal of France. The amicable relations which were now at last established between the race of Thibault and the throne were still further strengthened by the marriage of Louis-le-Jeune with Alice of Champagne, the sister of Thibault, and mother, by this marriage, of Philippe-Auguste. Thibault himself, through the good offices of the Queen, obtained the hand of the King’s daughter by his first wife. The alliance thus consolidated bore fruit for the King when he took the offensive against the King of England in 1167. For the troops of Chartres and of Champagne followed the royal standard on that occasion. A few years before, a younger brother of Count Thibault, William of the White Hands, had succeeded Robert-le-Breton as Bishop of Chartres, and he soon became the adviser of the princes whose relative he was. Philippe-Auguste used to speak of him as ‘the watchful eye of his Council.’ Together with Count Henry and the King, he received the exiled Thomas of Canterbury with open arms, and succeeded in effecting a reconciliation between him and the English King, whose imperious will he had thwarted. The reconciliation was hollow. Before long France was filled with horror at the news of the murder of À Becket. Louis demanded vengeance from the Pope: Count Thibault wrote to the Roman pontiff that the ‘dogs of the Court had spilled the blood of the just’; the Bishop of Chartres excommunicated all the Continental possessions of the King of England.