The struggle still dragged on for five years with varied fortune on each side, but Amaury de Montfort was losing ground every day, and Raymond VI., when he died in August, 1222, had recovered the greater part of his dominions. His son, Raymond VII., continued the war for eighteen months longer, with enough of popular favor and of success to make his enemies despair of recovering their advantages; and, on the 14th of January, 1224, Amaury de Montfort, after having concluded with the Counts of Toulouse and Foix a treaty which seemed to have only a provisional character, “went forth,” says the History of Languedoc, “with all the French from Carcassonne, and left forever the country which his house had possessed for nearly fourteen years.” Scarcely had he arrived at the court of Louis VIII., who had just succeeded his father, Philip Augustus, when he ceded to the King of France his rights over the domains which the crusaders had conquered by a deed conceived in these terms: “Know that we give up to our Lord Louis, the illustrious King of the French, and to his heirs forever, to dispose of according to their pleasure, all the privileges and gifts that the Roman Church did grant unto our father Simon of pious memory, in respect of the countship of Toulouse and other districts in Albigeois; supposing that the pope do accomplish all the demands made to him by the king through the Archbishop of Bourges, and the Bishops of Langres and Chartres; else, be it known for certain that we cede not to any one aught of all these domains.”
Whilst this cruel war lasted Philip Augustus would not take any part in it. Not that he had any leaning towards the Albigensian heretics on the score of creed or religious liberty; but his sense of justice and moderation was shocked at the violence employed against them, and he had a repugnance to the idea of taking part in the devastation of the beautiful southern provinces. He took it ill, moreover, that the pope should arrogate to himself the right of despoiling of their dominions, on the ground of heresy, princes who were vassals of the King of France; and, without offering any formal opposition, he had no mind to give his assent thereto. When Innocent III. called upon him to co-operate in the crusade, Philip answered, “that he had at his flanks two huge and terrible lions, the Emperor Otho, and King John of England, who were working with all their might to bring trouble upon the kingdom of France; that, consequently, he had no inclination at all to leave France, or even to send his son; but it seemed to him enough, for the present, if he allowed his barons to march against the disturbers of peace and of the faith in the province of Narbonne.” In 1213, when Simon de Montfort had gained the battle of Muret, Philip allowed Prince Louis to go and look on when possession was taken of Toulouse by the crusaders; but when Louis came back and reported to his father, “in the presence of the princes and barons who were, for the most part, relatives and allies of Count Raymond, the great havoc committed by Count Simon in the city after surrender, the king withdrew to his apartments without any ado beyond saying to those present, ‘Sirs, I have yet hope that before very long Count de Montfort and his brother Guy will die at their work, for God is just, and will suffer these counts to perish thereat, because their quarrel is unjust.’” Nevertheless, at a little later period, when the crusade was at its greatest heat, Philip, on the pope’s repeated entreaty, authorized his son to take part in it with such lords as might be willing to accompany him; but he ordered that the expedition should not start before the spring, and, on the occurrence of some fresh incident, he had it further put off until the following year. He received visits from Count Raymond VI., and openly testified good will towards him. When Simon de Montfort was decisively victorious, and in possession of the places wrested from Raymond, Philip Augustus recognized accomplished facts, and received the new Count of Toulouse as his vassal; but when, after the death of Simon de Montfort and Innocent III., the question was once more thrown open, and when Raymond VI., first, and then his son Raymond VII., had recovered the greater part of their dominions, Philip formally refused to recognize Amaury de Montfort as successor to his father’s conquests: nay, he did more; he refused to accept the cession of those conquests, offered to him by Amaury de Montfort and pressed upon him by Pope Honorius III. Philip Augustus was not a scrupulous sovereign, nor disposed to compromise himself for the mere sake of defending justice and humanity; but he was too judicious not to respect and protect, to a certain extent, the rights of his vassals as well as his own, and, at the same time, too discreet to involve himself, without necessity, in a barbarous and dubious war. He held aloof from the crusade against the Albigensians with as much wisdom, and more than as much dignity, as he had displayed, seventeen years before, in withdrawing from the crusade against the Saracens.
He had, in 1216, another great chance of showing his discretion. The English barons were at war with their king, John Lackland, in defence of Magna Charta, which they had obtained the year before; and they offered the crown of England to the King of France, for his son, Prince Louis. Before accepting, Philip demanded twenty-four hostages, taken from the men of note in the country, as a guarantee that the offer would be supported in good earnest; and the hostages were sent to him. But Pope Innocent III. had lately released King John from his oath in respect of Magna Charta, and had excommunicated the insurgent barons; and he now instructed his legate to oppose the projected design, with a threat of excommunicating the King of France. Philip Augustus, who in his youth had dreamed of resuscitating the empire of Charlemagne, was strongly tempted to seize the opportunity of doing over again the work of William the Conqueror; but he hesitated to endanger his power and his kingdom in such a war against King John and the pope. The prince was urgent in entreating his father: “Sir,” said he, “I am your liegeman for the fief you have given me on this side of the sea; but it pertains not to you to decide aught as to the kingdom of England; I do beseech you to place no obstacle in the way of my departure.” The king, “seeing his son’s firm resolution and anxiety,” says the historian Matthew Paris, “was one with him in feeling and desire; but, foreseeing the dangers of events to come, he did not give his public consent, and, without any expression of wish or counsel, permitted him to go, with the gift of his blessing.” It was the young and ambitious Princess Blanche of Castille, wife of Prince Louis, and destined to be the mother of St. Louis, who, after her husband’s departure for England, made it her business to raise troops for him and to send him means of sustaining the war. Events justified the discreet reserve of Philip Augustus; for John Lackland, after having suffered one reverse previously, died on the 19th of October, 1216; his death broke up the party of the insurgent barons; and his son, Henry III., who was crowned on the 28th of October, in Gloucester cathedral, immediately confirmed the Great Charter. Thus the national grievance vanished, and national feeling resumed its sway in England; the French everywhere became unpopular; and after a few months’ struggle, with equal want of skill and success, Prince Louis gave up his enterprise and returned to France with his French comrades, on no other conditions but a mutual exchange of prisoners, and an amnesty for the English who had been his adherents.
At this juncture, as well as in the crusade against the Albigensians, Philip Augustus behaved towards the pope with a wisdom and ability hard of attainment at any time, and very rare in his own: he constantly humored the papacy without being subservient to it, and he testified towards it his respect, and at the same time his independence. He understood all the gravity of a rupture with Rome, and he neglected nothing to avoid one; but he also considered that Rome, herself not wanting in discretion, would be content with the deference of the King of France rather than get embroiled with him by exacting his submission. Philip Augustus, in his political life, always preserved this proper mean, and he found it succeed; but in his domestic life there came a day when he suffered himself to be hurried out of his usual deference towards the pope; and, after a violent attempt at resistance, he resigned himself to submission. Three years after the death of his first wife, Isabel of Hainault, who had left him a son, Prince Louis, he married Princess Ingeburga of Denmark, without knowing anything at all of her, just as it generally happens in the case of royal marriages. No sooner had she become his wife than, without any cause that can be assigned with certainty, he took such a dislike to her that, towards the end of the same year, he demanded of and succeeded in obtaining from a French council, held at Compiegne, nullity of his marriage on the ground of prohibited consanguinity. “O, naughty France! naughty France! O, Rome! Rome!” cried the poor Danish princess, on learning this decision; and she did in fact appeal to Pope Celestine III. Whilst the question was being investigated at Rome, Ingeburga, whom Philip had in vain tried to send back to Denmark, was marched about, under restraint, in France from castle to castle and convent to convent, and treated with iniquitous and shocking severity. Pope Celestine, after examination, annulled the decision of the council of Compiegne touching the pretended consanguinity, leaving in suspense the question of divorce, and, consequently, without breaking the tie of marriage between the king and the Danish princess. “I have seen,” he wrote to the Archbishop of Sens, “the genealogy sent to me by the bishops, and it is due to that inspection and the uproar caused by this scandal that I have annulled the decree; take care now, therefore, that Philip do not marry again, and so break the tie which still unites him to the Church.” Philip paid no heed to this canonical injunction; his heart was set upon marrying again; and, after having unsuccessfully sought the band of two German princesses, on the borders of the Rhine, who were alarmed by the fate of Ingeburga, he obtained that of a princess, a Tyrolese by origin, Agnes (according to others, Mary) of Merania, that is, Moravia (an Austrian province, in German Moehren, out of which the chroniclers of the time made Meranie or Merania, the name that has remained in the history of Agnes). She was the daughter of Berthold, Marquis of Istria, whom, about 1180, the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa had made Duke of Moravia. According to all contemporary chronicles, Agnes was not only beautiful, but charming; she made a great impression at the court of France; and Philip Augustus, after his marriage with her in June, 1196, became infatuated with her. But a pope more stern and bold than Celestine III., Innocent III., had just been raised to the Holy See, and was exerting himself, in court as well as monastery, to effect a reformation of morals. Immediately after his accession, he concerned himself with the conjugal irregularity in which the King of France was living. “My predecessor, Celestine,” he wrote to the Bishop of Paris, “would fain have put a stop to this scandal, but he was unsuccessful; as for me, I am quite resolved to prosecute his work, and obtain by all and any means fulfilment of God’s law. Be instant in speaking thereof to the king on my behalf; and tell him that his obstinate refusals may probably bring upon him both the wrath of God and the thunders of the Church.” And indeed Philip’s refusals were very obstinate; for the pride of the king and the feelings of the man were equally wounded. “I had rather lose half my domains,” said he, “than separate from Agnes.” The pope threatened him with the interdict,—that is, the suspension of all religious ceremonies, festivals, and forms in the Church of France. Philip resisted not only the threat, but also the sentence of the interdict, which was actually pronounced, first in the churches of the royal domain, and afterwards in those of the whole kingdom. “So wroth was the king,” says the chronicle of St. Denis, “that he thrust from their sees all the prelates of his kingdom, because they had assented to the interdict.” “I had rather turn Mussulman,” said Philip; “Saladin was a happy man, for he had no pope.” But Innocent III. was inflexible; he claimed respect for laws divine and human, for the domestic hearth and public order. The conscience of the nation was troubled. Agnes herself applied to the pope, urging her youth, her ignorance of the world, the sincerity and purity of her love for her husband. Innocent III. was touched, and before long gave indisputable evidence that he was, but without budging from his duty and his right as a Christian. For four years the struggle went on. At last Philip yielded to the injunction of the pope and the feeling of his people; he sent away Agnes, and recalled Ingeburga. The pope, in his hour of victory, showed his sense of equity and his moral appreciation; taking into consideration the good faith of Agnes in respect of her marriage, and Philip’s possible mistake as to his right to marry her, he declared the legitimacy of the two children born of their union. Agnes retired to Poissy, where, a few months afterwards, she died. Ingeburga resumed her title and rights as queen, but without really enjoying them. Philip, incensed as well as beaten, banished her far from him and his court, to Etampes, where she lived eleven years in profound retirement. It was only in 1212 that, to fully satisfy the pope, Philip, more persevering in his political wisdom than his domestic prejudices, restored the Danish princess to all her royal station at his side. She was destined to survive him.
There can be little doubt but that the affection of Philip Augustus for Agnes of Merania was sincere; nothing can be better proof of it than the long struggle he maintained to prevent separation from her; but, to say nothing of the religious scruples which at last, perhaps, began to prick the conscience of the king, great political activity and the government of a kingdom are a powerful cure for sorrows of the heart, and seldom is there a human soul so large and so constant as to have room for sentiments and interests so different, both of them at once, and for a long continuance. It has been shown with what intelligent assiduity Philip Augustus strove to extend, or, rather, to complete the kingdom of France; what a mixture of firmness and moderation he brought to bear upon his relations with his vassals, as well as with his neighbors; and what bravery he showed in war, though he preferred to succeed by the weapons of peace. He was as energetic and effective in the internal administration of his kingdom as in foreign affairs. M. Leopold Delisle, one of the most learned French academicians, and one of the most accurate in his knowledge, has devoted a volume of more than seven hundred pages octavo to a simple catalogue of the official acts of Philip Augustus, and this catalogue contains a list of two thousand two hundred and thirty-six administrative acts of all kinds, of which M. Delisle confines himself to merely setting forth the title and object. Search has been made in this long table to see what part was taken by Philip Augustus in the establishment and interior regulation of the communes, that great fact which is so conspicuous in the history of French civilization, and which will before long be made the topic of discourse here. The search brings to light, during this reign, forty-one acts confirming certain communes already established, or certain privileges previously granted to certain populations, forty-three acts establishing new communes, or granting new local privileges, and nine acts decreeing suppression of certain communes, or a repressive intervention of the royal authority in their internal regulation, on account of quarrels or irregularities in their relations either with their lord, or, especially, with their bishop. These mere figures show the liberal character of the government of Philip Augustus, in respect of this important work of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. Nor are we less struck by his efficient energy in his care for the interests and material civilization of his people. In 1185, “as he was walking one day in his palace, he placed himself at a window whence he was sometimes pleased, by way of pastime, to watch the Seine flowing by. Some carts, as they passed, caused the mud with which the streets were filled to emit a fetid smell, quite unbearable. The king, shocked at what was as unhealthy as it was disgusting, sent for the burghers and provost of the city, and ordered that all the thoroughfares and streets of Paris should be paved with hard and solid stone, for this right Christian prince aspired to rid Paris of her ancient name, Lutetia (Mud-town).” It is added that, on hearing of so good a resolution, a moneyed man of the day, named Gerard de Poissy, volunteered to contribute towards the construction of the pavement eleven thousand silver marks. Nor was Philip Augustus less concerned for the external security than for the internal salubrity of Paris. In 1190, on the eve of his departure for the crusade, “he ordered the burghers of Paris to surround with a good wall, flanked by towers, the city he loved so well, and to make gates thereto;” and in twenty years this great work was finished on both sides of the Seine. “The king gave the same orders,” adds the historian Rigord, “about the towns and castles of all his kingdom;” and indeed it appears from the catalogue of M. Leopold Delisle, at the date of 1193, “that, at the request of Philip Augustus, Peter de Courtenai, Count of Nevers, with the aid of the church-men, had the walls of the town of Auxerre built.” And Philip’s foresight went beyond such important achievements. “He had a good wall built to enclose the wood of Vincennes, heretofore open to any sort of folk. The King of England, on hearing thereof, gathered a great mass of fawns, hinds, does, and bucks, taken in his forests in Normandy and Aquitaine; and having had them shipped aboard a large covered vessel, with suitable fodder, he sent them by way of the Seine to King Philip Augustus, his liege-lord at Paris. King Philip received the gift gladly, had his parks stocked with the animals, and put keepers over them.” A feeling, totally unconnected with the pleasures of the chase, caused him to order an enclosure very different from that of Vincennes. “The common cemetery of Paris, hard by the Church of the Holy Innocents, opposite the street of St. Denis, had remained up to that time open to all passers, man and beast, without anything to prevent it from being confounded with the most profane spot; and the king, hurt at such indecency, had it enclosed by high stone walls, with as many gates as were judged necessary, which were closed every night.” At the same time he had built, in this same quarter, the first great municipal market-places, enclosed, likewise, by a wall, with gates shut at night, and surmounted by a sort of covered gallery. He was not quite a stranger to a certain instinct, neither systematic nor of general application, but practical and effective on occasion, in favor of the freedom of industry and commerce. Before his time, the ovens employed by the baking trade in Paris were a monopoly for the profit of certain religious or laic establishments; but when Philip Augustus ordered the walling in of the new and much larger area of the city “he did not think it right to render its new inhabitants subject to these old liabilities, and he permitted all the bakers to have ovens wherein to bake their bread, either for themselves, or for all individuals who might wish to make use of them.” Nor were churches and hospitals a whit less than the material interests of the people an object of solicitude to him. His reign saw the completion, and, it might almost be said, the construction of Notre-Dame de Paris, the frontage of which, in particular, was the work of this epoch. At the same time the king had the palace of the Louvre repaired and enlarged; and he added to it that strong tower in which he kept in captivity for more than twelve years Ferrand, Count of Flanders, taken prisoner at the battle of Bouvines. It would be a failure of justice and truth not to add to these proofs of manifold and indefatigable activity on the part of Philip Augustus the constant interest he testified in letters, science, study, the University of Paris, and its masters and pupils. It was to him that in 1200, after a violent riot, in which they considered they had reason to complain of the provost of Paris, the students owed a decree, which, by regarding them as clerics, exempted them from the ordinary criminal jurisdiction, so as to render them subject only to ecclesiastical authority. At that time there was no idea how to efficiently protect freedom save by granting some privilege.
A death which seems premature for a man as sound and strong in constitution as in judgment struck down Philip Augustus at the age of only fifty-eight, as he was on his way from Pacy-sur-Eure to Paris to be present at the council which was to meet there and once more take up the affair of the Albigensians. He had for several months been battling with an incessant fever; he was obliged to halt at Mantes, and there he died on the 14th of January, 1223, leaving the kingdom of France far more extensive and more compact, and the kingship in France far stronger and more respected than he had found them. It was the natural and well-deserved result of his life. At a time of violence and irregular adventure, he had shown to Europe the spectacle of an earnest, far-sighted, moderate, and able government, and one which in the end, under many hard trials, had nearly always succeeded in its designs, during a reign of forty-three years.
He disposed, by will, of a considerable amount amassed without parsimony, and even, historians say, in spite of a royal magnificence. We will take from that will but two paragraphs, the first two:—
“We will and prescribe first of all that, without any gainsaying, our testamentary executors do levy and set aside, out of our possessions, fifty thousand livres of Paris, in order to restore, as God shall inspire them with wisdom, whatsoever may be due to those from whom they shall recognize that we have unjustly taken or extorted or kept back aught; and we do ordain this most strictly.”
“We do give to our dear spouse Isamber (evidently Inyeburya), Queen of the French, ten thousand livres of Paris. We might have given more to the said queen, but we have confined ourselves to this sum in order that we might make more complete restitution and reparation of what we have unjustly levied.”
There is in these two cases of testamentary reparation, to persons unknown on the one hand and to a lady long maltreated on the other, a touch of probity and honorable regret for wrong-doing which arouses for this great king, in his dying hour, more moral esteem than one would otherwise be tempted to feel for him.