PHILIP II AUGUSTUS
(1165–1223). King of France, 1180–1223. Philip II was the first great architect of the
medieval French monarchy. Building upon the accomplishments of Louis VI and Louis
VII, he began the process of converting feudal into national monarchy, expanding the
crown’s political and geographical influence, by his death in 1223, far beyond what they
had been at his accession in 1180.
As was common in the case of kings ascending as children to the throne, Philip was
initially dominated by powerful relatives, in his case the influential and wealthy ruling
family of Champagne. His early struggle to assert royal influence was supported by his
father’s rival, Henry II of England, who denied himself the pleasure of taking advantage
of the fifteen-year-old king’s apparent weakness. A few years later, Henry probably
wished that he had not been so honorable, since Philip utilized the traditional patricidal
conflict traditional in the Angevin family against his former protector. This policy saw
the French king triumphant over his father’s ancient adversary and his sons by 1204,
when the luckless King John saw the Angevin territories in France dissolve. By the end
of his reign, Philip II had increased his territory nearly fourfold. The English loss of
territory north of the Loire augmented the French ruler’s lands, but he also added to his
acquisitions by the forfeitures of contumacious vassals, by political duplicity, by cleverly
arranged marriages, and by manipulation of the confusion over land possession arising
from the Albigensian Crusade. Philip Augustus was not a great military leader; he was an
astute politician.
Philip was the founder of the centralized bureaucratic state. He chose bourgeois
administrators, as well as men from the lower nobility, to run his kingdom, men whose
primary loyalty was to their king rather than to their class or to their families. Their
offices were remunerated by salary rather than farmed. Philip used feudal rights to
enhance his royal position; in his reign, the authority of the king began shifting slowly
from his rights exercised as feudal suzerain to his rights exercised as sovereign; he was
becoming less a private, feudal lord than a public figure of authority. This obviously
contributed to a decline in the functional importance of the feudal structure (it was never
a feudal system), as did the growing commutation of lordvassal relationships from
mutually exchanged personal obligations into money payments. The administrators of
Philip’s domains, baillis and prévôts, were essentially estate managers, men with wide-
ranging fiscal, judicial, military, and other responsibilities. Philip’s financial
administration improved greatly, his policies based upon the model of his newly
conquered province, Normandy. He also made Paris what we moderns would call the
capital of France.
Philip Augustus was, then, the monarch under whom French monarchy became more a
practical than a theoretical concept. His domain, larger than the fief of any vassal, was to
remain the dominant power base in France in succeeding generations. As Luchaire wrote,
at Philip’s death “the [Capetian] dynasty was solidly established, and France founded.”
James W.Alexander
[See also: BAILLI/BAILLIAGE; BOUVINES; CAPETIAN DYNASTY; FLANDERS;
HENRY II; JOHN LACKLAND; LOUIS VIII; NORMANDY; PRÉVÔT DE PARIS]
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 1370