were able to capitalize on very successfully, whilst playing down the incon-
venient truth that Simon himself was a Frenchman.^10 The Briennes
themselves had been on the receiving end of such proto-nationalism (if,
indeed, we can call it that), ever since King John of Jerusalem’stripacross
the Channel in 1223. However, this kind of xenophobia would become far
more significant in the late thirteenth century and into the fourteenth, in
reaction to the rise of his descendants,the house of Beaumont. The resulting
controversies shaped not only the Ordinances of 1310–11, but also the
attitude of the English chroniclers towards Bishop Louis of Durham.
The emergence of the house of Anjou can look like a quintessential
example of the kinds of internationalism that have just been discussed.
However, it can be argued that, even more than this, it represents the
triumph of a centralizing royal power over a wide range of lesser French
forces, both in the Mediterranean and elsewhere. This is symbolized by
the Angevins’assumption of the mantle, once worn by the Briennes, of
designated‘papal champion’against the hated Hohenstaufen. The house
of Anjou served not only to unify but also to concentrate French ambi-
tions in the Mediterranean, making them serve their own interests more
than anything else. Paradoxically, then, the Angevins may have helped to
drive the contraction in the main French‘field of interest’that begins to
be discernible over the course of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth
centuries, encompassing both the War of the Sicilian Vespers and the
fall of the mainland Crusader States in 1291. This contraction would
become even stronger later in the fourteenth century, as the French
monarchy itself turned to focus on severe problems at home.
The biggest of these problems was, of course, the Hundred Years’
War. Far and away the greatest conflict in north-western Europe in the
later Middle Ages, it not only consumed the attention of France and
England but also dragged in a wide range of other powers, from Scotland
and the Low Countries to the Iberian peninsula and Italy. Like so many
of their compatriots, the Briennes could not avoid becoming entangled
in the war, and it took a terrible toll on them. Moreover, the damage was
not simply confined to the aristocratic ‘culture of internationalism’
that had been characteristic of the previous epoch. Most importantly,
the conflict led to the extinction of the senior line, when Walter VI
perished on the battlefield of Poitiers on 19 September 1356. By then,
though, it had already destroyed the other main branch of the family in
France–that is, the house of Eu and Guînes–through the execution of
Raoul IV. Although these events mark, to all intents and purposes, the
(^10) For more on this theme, see J. R. Maddicott,Simon de Montfort(Cambridge, 1994), 10,
75 – 6, 127–8, 151–2, 361–2.
190 Conclusion