A celebrated family followed this particular course: the Villehardouins.
In many ways, as we shall see, they provide the most obvious local
parallel with the Briennes in the late twelfth and into the thirteenth
century. The future chronicler of the Fourth Crusade, the famous Geof-
frey of Villehardouin, had become a vassal of Champagne, as well as
of Brienne, by 1172. Thereupon, he rose further, to become marshal
of Champagne by the mid-1180s.^22 Certainly, from the latter point
onwards, the Villehardouins were far more closely connected to the
house of Blois than they were to that of Brienne. Yet they never forgot
the service that they owed to their own immediate suzerain, however,
and this may well have played an important role in a distant, eastern
Mediterranean context somefifty years later.
The Briennes have rightly been described as a part of the Champenois
‘old aristocracy’, an elite within the ruling elite.^23 Throughout the elev-
enth and twelfth centuries, they continued to fashion a web of aristocratic
connections – primarily within Champagne itself, but occasionally
looking elsewhere. This network derived much of its solidity through
the standard means of marriage alliances. This was the way in which the
Briennes made their greatest advances, not just in the period under
discussion but, indeed, well beyond it. We may begin by noting that
it was through opportune marriages, in successive generations, that the
Briennes acquired the neighbouring and regionally significant Champe-
nois lordships of Bar-sur-Seine and Ramerupt.
However, there were some critical differences between the Brienne
acquisition of Bar-sur-Seine in the mid-to-late eleventh century, and
what happened when the family took over Ramerupt somefifty years
later. First and foremost, Walter I’s accession to Bar-sur-Seine had the
long-term effect of elevating it to a county. Walter’s predecessor as lord
of Bar-sur-Seine, variously described as Rainard or Hugh-Rainard, had
also been count of Tonnerre, and then he became bishop of Langres
too–that is, the kind of dual office holding that the ecclesiastical reform
movement was quickly making impossible. Although he quickly divested
Tonnerre to a cousin, it seems that he tried to hold onto Bar-sur-Seine
for rather longer, ceding it to his sister Eustacia, the wife of Walter I, only
in the early 1070s.^24 These events had the effect of creating a great
(^22) Geoffrey’s early life is discussed in detail in J. Longnon,Recherches sur la vie de Geoffrey de
Villehardouin, suivies du catalogue des actes des Villehardouin(Paris, 1939), 6–67. Longnon
briefly summarized hisfindings inLes compagnons de Villehardouin: recherches sur les croisés
23 de la quatrième croisade(Geneva, 1978), 26–7.
24 Evergates,Feudal Society in the Bailliage of Troyes, 101–113.
However, the bishops of Langres retained their suzerainty over Bar-sur-Seine: see
‘Catalogue’, no. 11; and Roserot,Dictionnaire, 108–110.
The Briennois Context 15