Louis VII of France

Louis VII of France, called Louis the Younger (Paris, 1120-Melun, September 18, 1180), was King of France from 1137 to 1180, the sixth in direct line of the Capetian dynasty. He was the son of Louis VI of France and Adela of Savoy. He married Eleanor of Aquitaine, Constanza de León, and Adela de Champagne. His son, Felipe Augusto, was his successor.

Beginning of the Kingdom

He was consecrated rex designatus at Reims on October 25, 1131 by Pope Innocent II after the accidental death of his older brother, Philip (1116-1131). After his father, Louis the Fat, died, he was crowned at Bourges on December 25, 1137.

Before he died, his father had arranged his marriage to Eleanor of Aquitaine (1122–1204), daughter of William X of Poitiers, Duke of Aquitaine, and Eleanor of Châtellerault, a marriage that took place in Bordeaux on July 25 from 1137. This advantageous marriage provided him with a royal domain almost tripled since the young wife contributed with her dowry Guyenne, Gascogne, Poitou, Limousin, Angoumois, Saintonge and Périgord, that is, a part of the Midi and western France, equivalent to 19 current cities. The character of the king, devout, ascetic (he wanted to be a monk), naive and clumsy, not very energetic and indecisive, does not fit well with Eleanor's strong character; however, the first ten years seem to go smoothly.

Louis VII removed his mother from court, but retained his father's advisors, including the abbot of Saint-Denis, Suger. He continued with the same policy carried out by his father and revalued the royal domain. In 1140 construction work began on the Saint-Denis basilica. He made multiple concessions to rural communities, encouraged agriculture and favored the emancipation of the serfs. He favored the cities by granting bourgeois charters (through this concession the bourgeois obtained a series of benefits and the municipalities were administered independently from the feudal lord) (Étampes, Bourges), (Reims, Sens, Compiègne, Auxerre), grouping them around their domains. And he maintained the election of bishops consecrated to royal power.

In May 1141, Louis VII faced Count Teobaldo II of Champagne and Pope Innocent II, on the occasion of the takeover of the bishopric of Langres, since he wanted a monk from Cluny to be elected, the candidate Bernardo de Clairvaux. He returns again, to oppose the pope in 1141, trying to impose his candidate for the seat of the Bourgues against Pierre de la Châtre (supported by the supreme pontiff). The Pope excommunicates Louis and Pierre de la Châtre takes refuge in Champagne. During the summer of 1142, the king invaded the county and set fire to Vitry-en-Perthois and its church, in which the inhabitants of the town were sheltering.

To settle the problem definitively, the king signs the Treaty of Vitry with Count Teobaldo II in the autumn of 1143, accepting the election of Pierre de La Châtre and getting the veto that weighs on the kingdom to be annulled; On April 22, he participated in the Saint-Denis conference to resolve the conflict that had arisen between him and the Holy See.

The Second Crusade

To seal the agreement, the king agrees to take part in the Second Crusade encouraged by Bernardo de Claraval and, around Christmas 1145, Louis VII announces his decision to join it to help the Christian States of Palestine, threatened by the Turks who had just invaded the county of Edessa in 1144 and perpetrated the massacre of hundreds of Christians. In 1146 the king took the cross, together with numerous barons, during the assembly of Vézelay.

Géza II of Hungary and Louis VII of France. Image of the Hungarian illustrated chronicle. CenturyXIV.

On June 11, King Louis VII and Eleanor set out for the Second Crusade commanding 300 knights and a large army, followed by tens of thousands of pilgrims. They leave Metz and pass through the Danube valley, where they are received by the emperor's army that was already waiting for them in the kingdom of Hungary. King Geza II of Hungary received the Crusader kings and ensured that they were provided with food and shelter. Although the Hungarian king did not have close relations with the Germanic emperor, he did have them with Louis VII, and upon his arrival, Geza II in 1147 asked the French king to be the baptismal godfather of his son, Stephen. After stopping in Hungary, the Crusader armies continued through Asia Minor to Constantinople, where they arrived on October 4, 1147.

The Second Crusade seemed to be off to a good start, as it was led by the two most powerful rulers in the West, who furthermore, being informed by the experience of the First Crusade, organized it very strictly. But relations quickly turned sour between the French and the Germans, and especially between the Crusaders and the Byzantines. Conrad III and Luis VII lost four fifths of their military force trying to cross Anatolia, where they were decimated by the Turks, famine and disease. Finally, after landing with the rest of their troops near Antioch, which was in the hands of Raymond of Poitiers, Eleanor of Aquitaine's young uncle, who received them with much attention, the two sovereigns crashed before Damascus. Conrad and the Germans re-embarked on September 8, 1148.

Raymond hoped that Louis VII would help him fight the enemy who had stripped him of some of his territories, but the king only thought of going to Jerusalem. Eleanor tries, in vain, to convince her husband to help her uncle Raymond hers, but the king prefers the advice of the Templar eunuch Thierry de Galeran. After her, the chroniclers of her time become furious and blame her for adultery: Guillermo de Tiro also accuses her of incest with her own uncle.

Louis VII forces Eleanor to follow him and leaves Antioch, arriving in Jerusalem in compliance with the pilgrimage that had been imposed. In June 1148, he tries to take Damascus, before which his army is waiting. The royal couple spend a year in the Holy Land before returning by sea, and separately, to France. The king is, right there, captured by the Byzantines, being released by the Norman Roger II of Sicily. In the spring of 1149, Louis VII, greatly affected by his excessive conjugal misfortunes, left Jerusalem. The disappointment in the West was very great.

In the end, the participation of Louis VII in this second crusade was very detrimental to the future of the kingdom, because the expedition had a negative impact on all his plans:

• Financial, because this expedition greatly impoverished the royal treasure.
• Politics, because the king did not deal directly with the kingdom during the two years of absence and consequently diminished his power over the great feudals.
• Military, because the crusade was a succession of military defeats and a part of its cavalry and the great army were sacrificed.
• Dynamic and patriotic, because this crusade caused the king's rupture with Leonor.
• Territorial because, after separation, Leonor recovered all the fiefdoms he had contributed with his dowry.
• Strategic, because Leonor, in marrying the future king of England, provided immense territories to the crown of England, thus allowing the presence, on the continent, of a fearsome competitor for the king of France. By his marriage King Henry II of England reigned over a territory extending from Scotland to the Pyrenees, including England, Anjou, Maine, Normandy, Aquitaine and Brittany.

Leonor's separation

During the return trip to France, in November 1149, Louis VII thought of separating from Eleanor. But Pope Eugene III, after a stop at the Abbey of Monte Cassino, and later Abbot Suger managed to reconcile them and, in 1150, her second daughter, Alix (1150-1195), was born.

However, after Suger's death in 1151, since he advised against the separation considering Eleanor's valuable possessions (greater than Luis's) and how dangerous it would be to remove them from the king's government, the latter, wishing to carry it out, found in the Council of Beaugency the reason for it: Eleanor's last grandmother, Eduarda de Borgoña, was the granddaughter of Robert the Pious, grandfather of the king (in the ninth civil degree, but in the fifth canonical degree), and this fact He propitiated the annulment of the marriage on March 18, 1152. Eleanor recovered the dowry and on May 18, 1152 she married, in second marriage, with the Count of Anjou, Enrique Plantagenet, who will be King of England in 1154. He had 19 years old and she 30.

In the spring of 1154, Luis VII married Constanza de Castilla, daughter of Alfonso VII, with whom he had two daughters: Margarita and Adela. Queen Constance dies on October 4, 1160 while giving birth to Adela.

Rivalry with Henry II of England

The annulment of the marriage of Louis VII and Eleanor was the beginning of an ongoing rivalry between the kingdoms of France and England, which lasted until the middle of the century XIII. Luis VII supports the revolts of Brittany and Poitou against England, as well as those of the sons of Enrique II against his father. He contributes to this situation:

• The despotism of Henry II, which involves in the revolts his great vassals.
• The support of the clergy to the king of France for the piety of Louis VII and the narrow historical ties between the episcopate and the capital kingdom.
• The rebellion of the children of Henry II who demand the heritage and find refuge and protection next to Louis VII and who are supported by his mother Leonor of Aquitaine.

In 1158, Louis VII and Henry II reconciled and arranged the marriage between Margaret of France and Henry the Younger. This was a short-lived calm, because in March 1159, Henry II attacked the Count of Toulouse and, during the summer, Louis VII forced the King of England to lift the siege of Toulouse.

In 1160, Henry II paid homage to King Louis VII in Normandy on behalf of his son, Henry the Younger. Luis VII allies himself with the counts of Flanders and Champagne and marries, on November 13, in third nuptials, with Adela de Champagne (or Adela de Blois).

In the face of the confrontation between Henry II and Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, the King of France supported the Archbishop. Finally four knights faithful to Enrique II assassinate the archbishop.

In 1172 and 1173, Louis VII incites Henry and Richard, the sons of Henry II, to rebel against their father. At the end of 1173, Louis VII and Henry II signed a provisional truce and decided, around the spring of 1174, to marry their children Alix de Francia and Ricardo Corazón de León.

In 1177, the pope forced Henry II to conclude the Treaty of Ivry, signed on September 21, through which the two kings swore friendship; This treaty was followed, on June 22, 1180, by the signing of a non-aggression pact.

On November 1, 1179, Louis VII had his son Philip Augustus consecrated and, consumed by an illness, gave up power the following year. On September 18, 1180, Louis VII died in Melun from paralytic cachexia. The next day, he is buried in the royal abbey of Saint-Port en Barbeau that he founded near Fontaine el Port, on the banks of the Seine, between Melun and Fontainebleau. His son Felipe Augusto succeeded him, although he had already exercised power since June 28, 1180, the day his father left it in his hands.

Reign Balance

Although raised to be a monk or friar rather than a king, Louis VII played an important role in French history:

• He consolidated real power in the provinces that were under his influence and fought the feudal power.
• He surrounded himself as advisors of great quality and published important ordinances for the management of the kingdom.
• The kingdom of France was enriched under its reign, agriculture was transformed and gained in productivity, the population increased, trade and industry developed, there was a real intellectual rebirth and the territory was filled with castles-forces built in stone.

However, the second crusade was calamitous and the separation of Eleanor from Aquitaine was a tremendous mistake, since she gave a lesser vassal the means to prevail, placing the King of France at a territorial inferiority for more than half a century. She needed the collaboration of three great kings: Felipe Augusto, Luis VIII the Lion and Saint Louis, to correct the situation and minimize the consequences of that wrong decision.

Children

With Eleanor of Aquitaine:

• Mary (1145-1198), married in 1164 with Enrique I de Champaña, count of Troyes, called Liberal. Regent of the Champagne County from 1190 to 1197.
• Alix or Alicia (1150-1195) married to Teobaldo V de Blois, called Good (1129-1191), count of Blois (1152-1191).

With Constanza of Castile (1140-1160), daughter of Alfonso VII:

• Margarita (1158-1197), married in 1172 with the prince of England Henry of Plantegenet, (death in 1183), and in 1186, with King Bela III of Hungary.
• Adela (1160-1221) (or Alix, Countess of Vexin), married in 1195 with William III of Ponthieu (or Montgomery).

With Adele of Champagne (or Adele of Blois):

• Felipe Augusto (1165-1223), king of France with the name of Philip II.
• Inés (1171-1240), Byzantine empress by his marriage to Alejo II Comneno in 1180, emperor of Constantinople (1167-1183). Then, by another marriage in 1183 with Andronic I Comneno, emperor of Constantinople (1110-1185). Around 1204 he married Teodoro Branas, master of Adrianopolis.

The king also had an illegitimate son:

• Felipe (deceased young in 1161).

Ancestors