Merovingian dynasty
The Merovingians were a Salian Frankish dynasty that ruled the Franks for three centuries in a region known as Francia in Latin, beginning in the middle of the 5th century. Their territory corresponded to ancient Gaul and the Roman provinces of Raetia, Germania Superior and the southern part of Germania; the semi legendary Merovech was supposed to have founded the Merovingian dynasty, but it was his famous grandson Clovis I who united all of Gaul under Merovingian rule. After the death of Clovis, there were frequent clashes between different branches of the family, but when threatened by its neighbours the Merovingians presented a strong united front. During the final century of Merovingian rule, the kings were pushed into a ceremonial role; the Merovingian rule ended in March 752 when Pope Zachary formally deposed Childeric III. Zachary's successor, Pope Stephen II, confirmed and anointed Pepin the Short in 754, beginning the Carolingian monarchy; the Merovingian ruling family were sometimes referred to as the "long-haired kings" by contemporaries, as their long hair distinguished them among the Franks, who cut their hair short.
The term "Merovingian" comes from medieval Latin Merovingi or Merohingi, an alteration of an unattested Old Dutch form, akin to their dynasty's Old English name Merewīowing, with the final -ing being a typical patronymic suffix. The Merovingian dynasty owes its name to the semi-legendary Merovech, leader of the Salian Franks; the victories of his son Childeric I against the Visigoths and Alemanni established the basis of Merovingian land. Childeric's son Clovis I went on to unite most of Gaul north of the Loire under his control around 486, when he defeated Syagrius, the Roman ruler in those parts, he won the Battle of Tolbiac against the Alemanni in 496, at which time, according to Gregory of Tours, Clovis adopted his wife Clotilda's Orthodox Christian faith. He subsequently went on to decisively defeat the Visigothic kingdom of Toulouse in the Battle of Vouillé in 507. After Clovis's death, his kingdom was partitioned among his four sons; this tradition of partition continued over the next century.
When several Merovingian kings ruled their own realms, the kingdom—not unlike the late Roman Empire—was conceived of as a single entity ruled collectively by these several kings among whom a turn of events could result in the reunification of the whole kingdom under a single ruler. Leadership among the early Merovingians was based on mythical descent and alleged divine patronage, expressed in terms of continued military success. In 1906, the British Egyptologist Flinders Petrie suggested that the Marvingi recorded by Ptolemy as living near the Rhine were the ancestors of the Merovingian dynasty. Upon Clovis's death in 511, the Merovingian kingdom included all of Gaul except Burgundy and all of Germania magna except Saxony. To the outside, the kingdom when divided under different kings, maintained unity and conquered Burgundy in 534. After the fall of the Ostrogoths, the Franks conquered Provence. After this their borders with Italy and Visigothic Septimania remained stable. Internally, the kingdom was divided among Clovis's sons and among his grandsons and saw war between the different kings, who allied among themselves and against one another.
The death of one king created conflict between the surviving brothers and the deceased's sons, with differing outcomes. Conflicts were intensified by the personal feud around Brunhilda. However, yearly warfare did not constitute general devastation but took on an ritual character, with established'rules' and norms. Clotaire II in 613 reunited the entire Frankish realm under one ruler. Divisions produced the stable units of Austrasia, Neustria and Aquitania; the frequent wars had weakened royal power, while the aristocracy had made great gains and procured enormous concessions from the kings in return for their support. These concessions saw the considerable power of the king parcelled out and retained by leading comites and duces. Little is in fact known about the course of the 7th century due to a scarcity of sources, but Merovingians remained in power until the 8th century. Clotaire's son Dagobert I, who sent troops to Spain and pagan Slavic territories in the east, is seen as the last powerful Merovingian King.
Kings are known as rois fainéants, despite the fact that only the last two kings did nothing. The kings strong-willed men like Dagobert II and Chilperic II, were not the main agents of political conflicts, leaving this role to their mayors of the palace, who substituted their own interest for their king's. Many kings came to the throne at a young age and died in the prime of life, weakening royal power further; the conflict between mayors was ended when the Austrasians under Pepin the Middle triumphed in 687 in the Battle of Tertry. After this, though not a king, was the political ruler of the Frankish kingdom and left this position as a heritage to his sons, it was now the sons of the mayor that divided the realm among each other under the rule of a single king. After Pepin's long rule, his son Charles Martel assumed power, fighting against nobles and his own stepmother, his reputation for ruthlessness further undermined the king's position. Under Charles Martel's leadership, the Franks defeated the Moors at the Battle of Tours in 732.
After the victory of 718 of the Bulgarian Khan Ter
Hundred Years' War
The Hundred Years' War was a series of conflicts waged from 1337 to 1453 by the House of Plantagenet, rulers of the Kingdom of England, against the French House of Valois, over the right to rule the Kingdom of France. Each side drew many allies into the war, it was one of the most notable conflicts of the Middle Ages, in which five generations of kings from two rival dynasties fought for the throne of the largest kingdom in Western Europe. The war marked both the height of chivalry and its subsequent decline, the development of strong national identities in both countries. Tensions between the crowns of France and England can be traced back to the origins of the English royal family itself, French in origin. For this reason, English monarchs had held not only the English Crown, but titles and lands within France, the possession of which made them vassals to the kings of France; the status of the English King's French fiefs was a major source of conflict between the two monarchies throughout the Middle Ages.
French monarchs systematically sought to check the growth of English power, stripping away lands as the opportunity arose whenever England was at war with Scotland, an ally of France. Over the centuries, English holdings in France had varied in size, at some points dwarfing the French royal domain. In 1316, a principle was established denying women succession to the French throne. In 1328, Charles IV of France died without brothers, his closest male relative was his nephew Edward III of England, whose mother, Isabella of France, was sister of the deceased King. Isabella claimed the throne of France for her son, but the French rejected it, maintaining that Isabella could not transmit a right she did not possess. Furthermore, political sentiment favoured a Frenchman for the crown rather than a foreign prince; the throne passed instead to Philip, Count of Valois, a patrilineal cousin of Charles IV, who would become Philip VI of France, the first king of the House of Valois. The English had not expected their claim to meet with success, did not press the matter when it was denied.
However, disagreements between Philip and Edward induced the former to confiscate the latter's lands in France, in turn prompted Edward III to reassert his claim to the French throne. Several overwhelming English victories in the war—especially at Crécy, Agincourt—raised the prospects of an ultimate English triumph, convinced the English to continue pouring money and manpower into the war over many decades. However, the greater resources of the French monarchy prevented the English kings from completing the conquest of France. Starting in 1429, decisive French victories at Orléans, Patay and Castillon concluded the war in favour of the House of Valois, with England permanently losing most of its possessions on the continent. Historians divide the war into three phases separated by truces: the Edwardian War, the Caroline War, the Lancastrian War. Local conflicts in neighbouring areas, which were contemporarily related to the war, including the War of the Breton Succession, the Castilian Civil War, the War of the Two Peters in Aragon, the 1383–85 crisis in Portugal, were availed by the parties to advance their agendas.
Historians adopted the term "Hundred Years' War" as a historiographical periodisation to encompass all of these events, thus constructing the longest military conflict in European history. The war owes its historical significance to multiple factors. By its end, feudal armies had been replaced by professional troops, aristocratic dominance had yielded to a democratisation of the manpower and weapons of armies. Although a dynastic conflict, the war gave impetus to ideas of French and English nationalism; the wider introduction of weapons and tactics supplanted the feudal armies where heavy cavalry had dominated, artillery became important. The war precipitated the creation of the first standing armies in Western Europe since the time of the Western Roman Empire, thus helping to change their role in warfare. With respect to the belligerents, in France, civil wars, deadly epidemics and bandit free-companies of mercenaries reduced the population drastically. In England, political forces over time came to oppose the costly venture.
The dissatisfaction of English nobles, resulting from the loss of their continental landholdings, as well as the general shock at losing a war in which investment had been so great, became factors leading to the Wars of the Roses. The root causes of the conflict can be found in the demographic and political crises of 14th century Europe; the outbreak of war was motivated by a gradual rise in tension between the kings of France and England about Gascony and Scotland. The dynastic question, which arose due to an interruption of the direct male line of the Capetians, was the official pretext; the question of female succession to the French throne was raised after the death of Louis X in 1316. Louis X left only a daughter, his posthumous son John I lived only a few days. Furthermore, the paternity of his daughter was in question, as her mother, Margaret of Burgundy, had been exposed as an adulterer in the Tour de Nesle affair. Philip, Count of Poitiers, brother of Louis X, positioned himself to take the crown, advancing the stance that women should be ineligible to succeed to the French throne.
Through his political sagacity he won over his adversaries and succeeded to the French throne as Philip V. By the same law that he procured, his daughters were denied the succession, whi
François Arago
Dominique François Jean Arago, known as François Arago, was a French mathematician, astronomer, supporter of the carbonari and politician. Arago was born at Estagel, a small village of 3,000 near Perpignan, in the département of Pyrénées-Orientales, where his father held the position of Treasurer of the Mint, his parents were Marie Arago. Arago was the eldest of four brothers. Jean became a general in the Mexican army. Jacques Étienne Victor took part in Louis de Freycinet's exploring voyage in the Uranie from 1817 to 1821, on his return to France devoted himself to his journalism and the drama; the fourth brother, Étienne Vincent, is said to have collaborated with Honoré de Balzac in The Heiress of Birague, from 1822 to 1847 wrote a great number of light dramatic pieces in collaboration. Showing decided military tastes, François Arago was sent to the municipal college of Perpignan, where he began to study mathematics in preparation for the entrance examination of the École Polytechnique. Within two years and a half he had mastered all the subjects prescribed for examination, a great deal more, and, on going up for examination at Toulouse, he astounded his examiner by his knowledge of J. L. Lagrange.
Towards the close of 1803, Arago entered the École Polytechnique, but found the professors there incapable of imparting knowledge or maintaining discipline. The artillery service was his ambition, in 1804, through the advice and recommendation of Siméon Poisson, he received the appointment of secretary to the Paris Observatory, he now became acquainted with Pierre-Simon Laplace, through his influence was commissioned, with Jean-Baptiste Biot, to complete the meridian arc measurements, begun by J. B. J. Delambre, interrupted since the death of P. F. A. Méchain in 1804. Arago and Biot began operations along the mountains of Spain. Biot returned to Paris after they had determined the latitude of Formentera, the southernmost point to which they were to carry the survey. Arago continued the work until 1809, his purpose being to measure a meridian arc in order to determine the exact length of a metre. After Biot's departure, the political ferment caused by the entrance of the French into Spain extended to the Balearic Islands, the population suspected Arago's movements and his lighting of fires on the top of Mount Galatzó as the activities of a spy for the invading army.
Their reaction was such that he was obliged to give himself up for imprisonment in the fortress of Bellver in June 1808. On 28 July he escaped from the island in a fishing-boat, after an adventurous voyage he reached Algiers on 3 August. From there he obtained a passage in a vessel bound for Marseille, but on 16 August, just as the vessel was nearing Marseille, it fell into the hands of a Spanish corsair. With the rest the crew, Arago was taken to Roses, imprisoned first in a windmill, afterwards in a fortress, until the town fell into the hands of the French, when the prisoners were transferred to Palamos. After three months' imprisonment and the others were released on the demand of the dey of Algiers, again set sail for Marseille on 28 November, but within sight of their port they were driven back by a northerly wind to Bougie on the coast of Africa. Transport to Algiers by sea from this place would have occasioned a weary delay of three months. After six months in Algiers he once again, on 21 June 1809, set sail for Marseille, where he had to undergo a monotonous and inhospitable quarantine in the lazaretto, before his difficulties were over.
The first letter he received, while in the lazaretto, was from Alexander von Humboldt. Arago had succeeded in preserving the records of his survey; as a reward for his adventurous conduct in the cause of science, he was elected a member of the French Academy of Sciences, at the remarkably early age of twenty-three, before the close of 1809 he was chosen by the council of the École Polytechnique to succeed Gaspard Monge in the chair of analytical geometry. At the same time he was named by the emperor one of the astronomers of the Paris Observatory, accordingly his residence till his death, it was in this capacity that he delivered his remarkably successful series of popular lectures in astronomy, which were continued from 1812 to 1845. In 1818 or 1819 he proceeded along with Biot to execute geodetic operations on the coasts of France and Scotland, they measured the length of the seconds-pendulum at Leith, in the Shetland Islands, the results of the observations being published in 1821, along with those made in Spain.
Arago was elected a member of the Bureau des Longitudes afterwards, contributed to each of its Annuals, for about twenty-two years, important scientific notices on astronomy and meteorology and on civil engineering, as well as interesting memoirs of members of the Academy. Arago's earliest physical researches were on the pressure of steam at different temperatures, the velocity of sound, 1818 to 1822, his magnetic observations took place from 1823 to 1826. He discovered rotatory magnetism, what has been called Arago's rotations
World War II
World War II known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries; the major participants threw their entire economic and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China, it included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, the only use of nuclear weapons in war. Japan, which aimed to dominate Asia and the Pacific, was at war with China by 1937, though neither side had declared war on the other. World War II is said to have begun on 1 September 1939, with the invasion of Poland by Germany and subsequent declarations of war on Germany by France and the United Kingdom.
From late 1939 to early 1941, in a series of campaigns and treaties, Germany conquered or controlled much of continental Europe, formed the Axis alliance with Italy and Japan. Under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of August 1939, Germany and the Soviet Union partitioned and annexed territories of their European neighbours, Finland and the Baltic states. Following the onset of campaigns in North Africa and East Africa, the fall of France in mid 1940, the war continued between the European Axis powers and the British Empire. War in the Balkans, the aerial Battle of Britain, the Blitz, the long Battle of the Atlantic followed. On 22 June 1941, the European Axis powers launched an invasion of the Soviet Union, opening the largest land theatre of war in history; this Eastern Front trapped most crucially the German Wehrmacht, into a war of attrition. In December 1941, Japan launched a surprise attack on the United States as well as European colonies in the Pacific. Following an immediate U. S. declaration of war against Japan, supported by one from Great Britain, the European Axis powers declared war on the U.
S. in solidarity with their Japanese ally. Rapid Japanese conquests over much of the Western Pacific ensued, perceived by many in Asia as liberation from Western dominance and resulting in the support of several armies from defeated territories; the Axis advance in the Pacific halted in 1942. Key setbacks in 1943, which included a series of German defeats on the Eastern Front, the Allied invasions of Sicily and Italy, Allied victories in the Pacific, cost the Axis its initiative and forced it into strategic retreat on all fronts. In 1944, the Western Allies invaded German-occupied France, while the Soviet Union regained its territorial losses and turned toward Germany and its allies. During 1944 and 1945 the Japanese suffered major reverses in mainland Asia in Central China, South China and Burma, while the Allies crippled the Japanese Navy and captured key Western Pacific islands; the war in Europe concluded with an invasion of Germany by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, culminating in the capture of Berlin by Soviet troops, the suicide of Adolf Hitler and the German unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945.
Following the Potsdam Declaration by the Allies on 26 July 1945 and the refusal of Japan to surrender under its terms, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August respectively. With an invasion of the Japanese archipelago imminent, the possibility of additional atomic bombings, the Soviet entry into the war against Japan and its invasion of Manchuria, Japan announced its intention to surrender on 15 August 1945, cementing total victory in Asia for the Allies. Tribunals were set up by fiat by the Allies and war crimes trials were conducted in the wake of the war both against the Germans and the Japanese. World War II changed the political social structure of the globe; the United Nations was established to foster international co-operation and prevent future conflicts. The Soviet Union and United States emerged as rival superpowers, setting the stage for the nearly half-century long Cold War. In the wake of European devastation, the influence of its great powers waned, triggering the decolonisation of Africa and Asia.
Most countries whose industries had been damaged moved towards economic expansion. Political integration in Europe, emerged as an effort to end pre-war enmities and create a common identity; the start of the war in Europe is held to be 1 September 1939, beginning with the German invasion of Poland. The dates for the beginning of war in the Pacific include the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War on 7 July 1937, or the Japanese invasion of Manchuria on 19 September 1931. Others follow the British historian A. J. P. Taylor, who held that the Sino-Japanese War and war in Europe and its colonies occurred and the two wars merged in 1941; this article uses the conventional dating. Other starting dates sometimes used for World War II include the Italian invasion of Abyssinia on 3 October 1935; the British historian Antony Beevor views the beginning of World War II as the Battles of Khalkhin Gol fought between Japan and the fo
House of Montmorency
Not to be confused with the Irish De Montmorency baronets, named for Castle Morres, Kilkenny. Montmorency, pronounced, is one of the oldest and most distinguished noble families in France; the family name Montmorency derived from their castle in the pays de France, recorded in Latin as Mons Maurentiacus, in 993. Maurentiacus, the name of the area surrounding the castle, meant "estate of Maurentius" a Gallo-Roman landowner; the village which grew up in the vicinity of the castle was known as Montmorency, is eponymous of the modern commune of Montmorency, Val-d'Oise département, in the immediate neighborhood of Enghien-les-Bains and Saint-Denis, about 15 km northwest of Paris. The family, since its first appearance in history in the person of Bouchard I of Montmorency in the 10th century, has furnished six constables and twelve marshals of France, several admirals and cardinals, numerous grand officers of the Crown and grand masters of various knightly orders. Henry IV of France once said, that if the House of Bourbon should fail, no European family deserved the French crown more than the House of Montmorency.
Bouchard I's son Thibaud of Montmorency was the ancestor of the lords of Montlhéry. Matthieu I of Montmorency received in 1138 the post of constable, died in 1160, his first wife was a natural daughter of Henry I of England. Matthieu II of Montmorency had an important share in the victory of Bouvines; as he captured 12 enemy flags at Bouvines, he was permitted by the king to display 12 eagles on his coat of arms. He was made constable in 1218. During the reign of Louis VIII he distinguished himself chiefly in the south of France. On the accession of Louis IX, he was one of the chief supports of the queen-regent Blanche of Castile, was successful in reducing all vassals to obedience, he died in 1230. His younger son, Guy, in right of his mother, became head of the House of Laval. Canada's oldest French-language university, Université Laval, was named after François de Montmorency-Laval, first bishop of New France and founder of the Quebec Seminary, from while Université Laval emerged. Anne de Montmorency, so named, it is said, after his godmother Anne of Brittany, was the first to attain the ducal title.
His eldest son, François de Montmorency, was married to Diane, natural daughter of Henry II. Another son, Henri I de Montmorency, who became duc de Montmorency on his brother's death in 1579, had been governor of Languedoc since 1563; as a leader of the party called the Politiques he took a prominent part in the French Wars of Religion. In 1593 he was made constable, but Henry IV showed some anxiety to keep him away from Languedoc, which he ruled like a sovereign prince. Henri II de Montmorency, son of Duke Henri I, succeeded to the title in 1614, having been made Grand Admiral, he was governor of Languedoc. In 1625 he defeated the French Protestant fleet under Soubise, seized the islands of Ré and Oleron, but the jealousy of Richelieu deprived him of the means of following up these advantages. In 1628-1629 he was allowed to command against the Duke of Rohan in Languedoc. In the same year he was created marshal. In 1632 he joined the party of Gaston, duke of Orleans, placed himself at the head of the rebel army, defeated by Marshal Henri de Schomberg at Castelnaudary.
The ducal title passed to his sister Charlotte-Marguerite, princess of Condé. From the barons de Fosseux, a branch of the Montmorency family established in Brabant in the 15th century, sprang the seigneurs de Bouteville, among whom was the duellist François de Montmorency-Bouteville, beheaded in 1627, his son, François Henri, marshal of France, became Duke of Piney-Luxemburg by his marriage with Madeleine de Clermont, daughter of Marguerite Charlotte de Luxemburg, Duchesse de Piney. Charles François Frédéric de Montmorency-Luxembourg, son of the marshal, was created Duc de Beaufort in 1688 and Duke of Montmorency in 1689. In 1767 the title of Duke of Beaufort-Montmorency passed by marriage to another branch of the Montmorency-Fosseux; this branch becoming extinct in 1862, the title was taken by the Duc de Valencay, who belonged to the Talleyrand-Périgord family and married one of the two heiresses of this branch. There were many other branches of the Montmorency family, among others that of the seigneurs of Laval.
In the 19th century the Irish Morres family highlighted a dubious claim to descent from the Montmorency family. Morres descendants persisted in asserting the connection, obtaining a Royal license to change their name, despite objections expressed in the 1860s by undisputed descendants of the Montmorency family in France; the lords of Montmorency were: Bouchard I of Montmorency Bouchard II of Montmorency Bouchard III of Montmorency Hervé of Montmorency, Grand Butler of France Bouchard IV of Montmorency, lord of Montmorency, Feuillarde, Saint-Brice, Épinay and Hérouville Matthieu I of Montmorency, Grand Constable of France, lord of Montmorency, Écouen, Marly and Attichy Bouchard V of Montmorency Matthieu II of Montmorency, Grand Constable of France Bouchard VI of Montmorency Matthieu III of Montmorency (died
Philip II of France
Philip II, known as Philip Augustus, was King of France from 1180 to 1223, the seventh from the House of Capet. His predecessors had been known as kings of the Franks, but from 1190 onward, Philip became the first French monarch to style himself "King of France"; the son of King Louis VII and his third wife, Adela of Champagne, he was nicknamed Dieudonné because he was a first son and born late in his father's life. Philip was given the epithet "Augustus" by the chronicler Rigord for having extended the crown lands of France so remarkably; the only known description of Philip describes him as "a handsome, strapping fellow, bald but with a cheerful face of ruddy complexion, a temperament much inclined towards good-living and women. He was generous to his friends, stingy towards those who displeased him, well-versed in the art of stratagem, orthodox in belief and stubborn in his resolves, he made judgements with great exactitude. Fortune's favorite, fearful for his life excited and placated, he was tough with powerful men who resisted him, took pleasure in provoking discord among them.
Never, did he cause an adversary to die in prison. He liked to employ humble men, to be the subduer of the proud, the defender of the Church, feeder of the poor". After a twelve-year struggle with the Plantagenet dynasty in the Anglo-French War of 1202–14, Philip broke up the large Angevin Empire presided over by the crown of England and defeated a coalition of his rivals at the Battle of Bouvines in 1214; this victory would have a lasting impact on western European politics: the authority of the French king became unchallenged, while the English King John was forced by his barons to sign Magna Carta and deal with a rebellion against him aided by Philip, the First Barons' War. The military actions surrounding the Albigensian Crusade helped prepare the expansion of France southward. Philip did not participate directly in these actions, but he allowed his vassals and knights to help carry it out. Philip transformed France from a small feudal state into the most prosperous and powerful country in Europe.
He checked the power of the nobles and helped the towns to free themselves from seigniorial authority, granting privileges and liberties to the emergent bourgeoisie. He built a great wall around Paris, re-organized the French government and brought financial stability to his country. Philip was born in Gonesse on 21 August 1165. King Louis VII intended to make his son Philip co-ruler with him as soon as possible, in accordance with the traditions of the House of Capet, but these plans were delayed when Philip, at the age of thirteen, was separated from his companions during a royal hunt and became lost in the Forest of Compiègne, he spent much of the following night attempting to find his way out, but to no avail. Exhausted by cold and fatigue, he was discovered by a peasant carrying a charcoal burner, but his exposure to the elements meant he soon contracted a dangerously high fever, his father went on pilgrimage to the Shrine of Thomas Becket to pray for Philip's recovery and was told that his son had indeed recovered.
However, on his way back to Paris, the king suffered a stroke. In declining health, Louis VII had his 14-year-old son crowned and anointed as king at Reims on 1 November 1179 by Archbishop William of the White Hands, he was married on 28 April 1180 to Isabelle of Hainaut, the daughter of Baldwin V, Count of Hainaut, Margaret I, Countess of Flanders, who brought the County of Artois as her dowry. From the time of his coronation, all real power was transferred to Philip, as his father descended into senility; the great nobles were discontented with Philip's advantageous marriage, while his mother and four uncles, all of whom exercised enormous influence over Louis, were unhappy with his attainment of the throne, which caused a diminution of their power. Louis died on 18 September 1180. While the royal demesne had increased under Philip I and Louis VI, it had diminished under Louis VII. In April 1182 to enrich the French crown, Philip expelled all Jews from the demesne and confiscated their goods.
Philip's eldest son Louis was born on 5 September 1187 and inherited the County of Artois in 1190, when his mother Isabelle died. The main source of funding for Philip's army was from the royal demesne. In times of conflict, he could call up 250 knights, 250 horse sergeants, 100 mounted crossbowmen, 133 crossbowmen on foot, 2,000 foot sergeants, 300 mercenaries. Towards the end of his reign, the king could muster some 3,000 knights, 9,000 sergeants, 6,000 urban militiamen, thousands of foot sergeants. Using his increased revenues, Philip was the first Capetian king to build a French navy actively. By 1215, his fleet could carry a total of 7,000 men. Within two years, his fleet included 10 large ships and many smaller ones. In 1181, Philip began a war with Philip, Count of Flanders, over the Vermandois, which King Philip claimed as his wife's dowry and the Count was unwilling to give up; the Count of Flanders invaded France, ravaging the whole district between the Somme and the Oise before penetrating as far as Dammartin.
Notified of Philip's impending approach with 2,000 knights, he turned around and headed back to Flanders. Philip chased him, the two armies confronted each other near Amiens. By this stage, Philip had managed to counter the ambitions of the count by breaking his alliances with Henry I, Duke of Brabant, Philip of Heinsberg, Archbishop of Cologne. This, together with an uncertain outcome were he to engage the French in battle, forced the Count to conclude a peace. In July 11
First Crusade
The First Crusade was the first of a number of crusades that attempted to recapture the Holy Land, called for by Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont in 1095. Urban called for a military expedition to aid the Byzantine Empire, which had lost most of Anatolia to the Seljuq Turks; the resulting military expedition of Frankish nobles, known as the Princes' Crusade, not only re-captured Anatolia but went on to conquer the Holy Land, which had fallen to Islamic expansion as early as the 7th century, culminated in July 1099 in the re-conquest of Jerusalem and the establishment of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. The expedition was a reaction to the appeal for military aid by Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos. Urban's convocation of the Council of Clermont was dedicated to this purpose, proposing siege warfare against the occupied cities of Nicaea and Antioch though Urban's speech at Clermont in the testimony of witnesses writing after 1100 was phrased to allude to the re-conquest of Jerusalem and the Holy Land as additional goals.
The successful Princes' Crusade was preceded by the "people crusade", a popular movement instigated by Peter the Hermit in the spring of 1096. Mobs of peasants and laymen travelled to Anatolia where they came up against the Turks, on the way attacking populations of Jews in the Rhineland, they were decisively defeated at the Battle of Civetot in October. The Princes' Crusade, by contrast, was a well-organized military campaign, starting out in late summer of 1096 and arriving at Constantinople between November 1096 and April 1097; the crusaders marched into Anatolia, capturing Nicaea in June 1097 and Antioch in June 1098. They arrived at Jerusalem in June 1099 and took the city by assault on 7 July 1099, massacring the defenders. A brief attempt by the Saracens to recapture Jerusalem was repulsed at the Battle of Ascalon. During their conquests, the crusaders established the Latin Rite crusader states of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the County of Tripoli, the Principality of Antioch, the County of Edessa.
This was contrary to the wishes of the Eastern Rite Byzantines, who wanted the land that the Muslims took from them returned, rather than occupied by Latin Catholics. After the retaking of Jerusalem, most of the crusaders returned home; this left the crusader kingdoms vulnerable to Muslim reconquest during the Second and Third Crusades. The causes of the Crusades in general, of the First Crusade, is debated among historians. While the relative weight or importance of the various factors may be the subject of ongoing disputes, it is clear that the First Crusade came about from a combination of factors in both Europe and the Near East, its origin is linked both with the political situation in Catholic Christendom, including the political and social situation in 11th-century Europe, the rise of a reform movement within the papacy, as well as the military's and religious confrontation of Christianity and Islam in the East. Christianity had been adopted throughout the Roman Empire in Late Antiquity, but in the 7th to 8th centuries, the Umayyad Caliphate had conquered Syria and North Africa from the predominantly Christian Byzantine Empire, Hispania from the Visigothic Kingdom.
In North Africa, the Umayyad empire collapsed and a number of smaller Muslim kingdoms emerged, such as the Aghlabids, who attacked Italy in the 9th century. Pisa and the Principality of Catalonia began to battle various Muslim kingdoms for control of the Mediterranean Basin, exemplified by the Mahdia campaign of 1087 and battles at Majorca and Sardinia. Between the years of 1096 and 1101, the Byzantine Greeks experienced the crusade as it arrived in Constantinople in three separate waves. In the early summer of 1096, the first large unruly group arrived on the outskirts of Constantinople; this wave was reported to be ill-equipped as an army. This first group is called the Peasants' Crusade or the People's Crusade, it was led by Walter Sans Avoir. The second wave was not under the command of the Emperor and was made up of a number of armies with their own commanders. Together, this group and the first wave numbered an estimated 60,000; the second wave was led by Count of Vermandois, the brother of King Philip I of France.
Among the second wave were Raymond IV, Count of Toulouse and the army of Provençals. "It was this second wave of crusaders which passed through Asia Minor, captured Antioch in 1098 and took Jerusalem 15 July 1099."The third wave, composed of contingents from Lombardy and Bavaria, arrived in Jerusalem in the early summer of 1101. At the western edge of Europe and of Islamic expansion, the Reconquista in the Iberian Peninsula was well underway by the 11th century, it was intermittently ideological, as evidenced by the Codex Vigilanus compiled in 881. In the 11th century foreign knights from France, visited Iberia to assist the Christians in their efforts. Shortly before the First Crusade, Pope Urban II had encouraged the Iberian Christians to reconquer Tarragona, using much of the same symbolism and rhetoric, used to preach the crusade to the people of Europe; the heart of Western Europe had been stabilized after the Christianization of the Saxon and Hungarian peoples by the end of the 10th century.
However, the breakdown of the Carolingian Empire gave rise to an entire class of warriors who now had little to do but fight among themselves. The random violence of the knightly class was condemned by the church, in response, it established the Peace and Truce of God to prohibit fighting on certain days of the year. At the same time, the reform-minded papacy came into conflict with the Holy Roman E
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