Possessions of the duke of Aquitaine and of the counts of Toulouse and Champagne.
The ancient duchy of Aquitaine (later Guienne), including a large part of what is now central and southern France, was abolished in 877, but the title of Duke of Aquitaine was conferred by the king upon a certain family of feudal lords, who gradually extended their power over Gascony and northward. To the southeast, the counts of Toulouse had begun to consolidate a little state which was to be the seat of the extraordinary literature of the troubadours. The county of Champagne has already been considered in the discussion of feudalism.
This completes the survey of the countries over which Hugh Capet and his immediate successors strove to rule. All those districts to the east of the Saône and the Rhone which now form a part of France were amalgamated (in 933) into the kingdom of Arles, or Burgundy,[77] which in 1032 fell into the hands of the German king.
Complicated position of the Capetian kings.
48. The position of the Capetian rulers was a complicated one. As counts of Paris, Orleans, etc., they enjoyed the ordinary rights of a feudal lord; as dukes of France, they might exercise a vague control over the district north of the Seine; as suzerains of the great feudal princes,—the duke of Normandy, the counts of Flanders, Champagne, and the rest,—they might require homage and certain feudal services from these great personages. But besides all these rights as feudal lords they had other rights as kings. They were crowned and consecrated by the Church, as Pippin and Charlemagne had been. They thus became, by God's appointment, the protectors of the Church and the true fountain of justice for all who were oppressed or in distress throughout their realms. Therefore they were on a higher plane in the eyes of the people than any of the great vassals. Besides the homage of their vassals, they exacted an oath of fidelity from all whom they could reach.
The great vassals, on the other hand, acted on the theory that the king was simply their feudal lord. As for the king himself, he accepted both views of his position and made use both of the older theory of kingship and of his feudal suzerainty to secure more and more control over his realms. For over three hundred years the direct male line of the Capetians never once failed. It rarely happened, moreover, that the crown was left in the weak hands of a child. By the opening of the fourteenth century there was no doubt that the king, and not the feudal lords, was destined to prevail.
Louis the Fat, 1108–1137.
Philip Augustus, 1180–1223.
The first of the kings of France to undertake with success the serious task of conquering his own duchy was Louis the Fat (1108–1137). He was an active soldier and strove to keep free the means of communication between the different centers of his somewhat scattered feudal domains and to destroy the power of the usurping castellans in his fortresses. But he made only a beginning; it was reserved for his famous grandson, Philip Augustus (1180–1223), to make the duchy of France into a real kingdom.
The Plantagenets in France.