Philip Augustus: the Plantagenets’ greatest rival

Introducing Philip of Augustus

0:00Insurance isn't one-size-fits-all, and shopping for it shouldn't feel like squeezing into something that just doesn't fit. That's why drivers have enjoyed Progressive's Name Your Price tool for years. With the Name Your Price tool, you tell them what you want to pay, and they show you options that fit your budget. Enough hunting for discounts, trying to calculate rates, and tinkering with coverages. Maybe you're picking out your very first policy, or maybe you're just looking for something that works better for you and your family. Either way, they make it simple to see your options.

0:32No guesswork, no surprises. Ready to see how easy and fun shopping for car insurance can be? Visit Progressive.com and give the Name Your Price tool a try. Take the stress out of shopping, and find coverage that fits your life. On your terms. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs. It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen,

1:02and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching, and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. King Philip of Augustus was the Plantagenet's ultimate enemy. A ruler with an iron fist and sharp political instincts,

1:36he consistently exploited the squabbles of the English dynasty, all while transforming France into a dominant power in Western Europe. Speaking to Emily Briffitt for this episode of the History Extra podcast, historian and author Catherine Hanley reveals the cunning yet ruthless tactics he employed against the English kings to become medieval England's most formidable foe. Today we are going to be talking all about your book Nemesis. Now, your title Nemesis immediately casts Philip Augustus as the Plantagenet's greatest enemy.

2:10So, I wanted to ask you as the first question in this episode, what makes him such a shadowy figure in the English version of the history? When we look at English history from an English point of view, we tend to concentrate very much on Henry II, Henry II's sons, their disputes with each other, Eleanor of Aquitaine and so on. And Philip just sort of pops up every so often as an antagonist at various points

2:40and does something and then sort of disappears again until the next bit in the story. And if you look really carefully, it's actually Philip causing quite a lot of it. You know, use whatever metaphor you like. He's poking the hornet's nest. He knows exactly where to stick the needle in. But he actually caused and certainly exacerbated a lot of this enmity within the Plantagenet family.

3:12And I just wanted to explore that from his point of view. So, we do get a new and different portrait of Philip, I hope. But we also get a slightly different way of looking at Henry II and his boys. He seems the disruptor in this story. Now, Kath, I get the impression that you think Philip is more interesting than perhaps the Plantagenets in this story. Is that correct? Well, yes. I mean, one has to admit one's own bias.

3:42I do think he's more interesting. But it's also that he's understudied. I mean, he's not particularly, you know, an admirable person, but he's almost certainly the cleverest person ever to have sat on a European throne. And the way in which he used his intelligence and his skills, starting off from a very disadvantageous position to make France the powerhouse of Western Europe.

4:13How can you not want to study that? It's an incredible story and one that sounds completely transformative in terms of Capetian France.

Childhood and early succession

4:21So we should go back to those early beginnings and talk about Philip before he came to the throne. Yeah. So Philip was born in 1165 and his birth was very, very much welcomed because his father, Louis VII, was 45, the father of four daughters and five years into what had been a hitherto barren third marriage. Now, the Capetians have been inheriting the French throne in serene father-son succession since the year 987.

5:00And Louis really doesn't want to be the one who stops this. So when a son is finally born to him, the celebrations are incredible. But on the other hand, the pressure that was put on Philip, you know, right from the moment he was in his cradle, from when he learned to walk and talk, he was the king's only son and he remained the king's only son. And he was the great hope of France.

5:30He had to have a very intensive education in terms of politics and governance and military matters and kingship. All of this was sort of drummed into him to make sure that he was going to be ready. And as it happened, that was good because he did inherit the throne at a very young age. Something that listeners might find different from, say, the Plantagenets is that the Capetians crowned their successor while the older king or the older monarch is still on the throne.

6:02Did that happen with Philip? Yes, it did. It was originally planned to take place in the summer of 1179 when Philip was 13, but he fell very, very ill. In fact, his life was despaired of, at which point Louis VII actually became the only reigning French king to set foot on English soil because he travelled to England to pray at the shrine of St. Thomas Becket. Philip recovered, but unfortunately the stress gave Louis a stroke.

6:33And so when Philip was crowned as the junior king on the 1st of November 1179, Louis actually wasn't there because he was bedridden. Now, this is just to explain the Capetians did this, but it was always recognised that the junior king was still subordinate to his father. So that they did call it the junior king or the designated king. So it didn't cause the sort of ructions that you might have seen elsewhere if anyone decided to crown their son during their lifetime.

7:05So Philip, he's 14 years old. And because his father is incapacitated, he's actually forced to take on the reins of government straight away. And in fact, Louis actually died less than a year later. So Philip, having at that point just turned 15, is the sole king of France. Now, this is a terrifying responsibility. If you're the king of a medieval European realm, you've been appointed by God, is what you believe, you know,

7:37and you are responsible for every single person and every single thing that happens in your realm. And this boy is 15 years old and remarkably, he elects to rule without a regent because he knows that France is riven by these internal domestic factions. And in appointing a regent, that's going to set all the factions against each other. So instead, he decides to rule on his own and immediately and expertly sets about playing all these internal factions off against each other

8:12so that within a couple of years, they've all completely submitted to him and made friends. Wow. OK. Can you tell us more about those challenges in those first years of his reign?

Internal factions and the Plantagenets

8:22Yeah. So, I mean, I don't know to what extent listeners are well up with internal French domestic politics, but there were two massive factions in France. One was the Blois and Champagne faction. So the Count of Champagne and the Count of Blois were brothers, and they were also married to Philip's two eldest sisters. And then there's also the Flanders and Eno faction, led by Count Philip of Flanders,

8:56who's another very, very wily character and also, unfortunately, called Philip. Count Philip very much wanted to be the influential factor over King Philip. And King Philip agreed to marry Count Philip's niece, Isabelle of Eno, when he was, I think he was 14 or 15 and she was 10, as a political sign that he wasn't going to take any nonsense from Blois Champagne, because Isabelle had actually been previously betrothed to the son of the Count of Champagne,

9:30and this sort of caused ructions. And yeah, he just expertly played them all off against each other. Then he brought Count Philip to heel by, four years later, threatening to divorce Isabelle and making peace with Flanders part of the deal in keeping her on. As I say, I mean, not particularly nice, but nice men don't make effective medieval kings. And if there's one thing everyone will agree on about Philip, it is that he was an effective medieval king. Well, Kath, there was a third and also very powerful faction in France, wasn't there?

10:05Yes, the Plantagenets. Henry II is the King of England and therefore a royal peer of Philip's, but he is also the Duke of Normandy and the Count of Anjou in his own right, and the Duke of Aquitaine by marriage. This means that he exercises direct control over more of France than Philip does. And this is a very, very dangerous situation for a young teenage king.

10:39There is a massive age difference and difference in experience. At the time Philip exceeds, he's 15 and Henry II is 47. And Henry's actually got three sons who are older than Philip. And, you know, Henry II is, to put it politely, not a person to be messed with. I think everybody in England and France is aware of this. He's a very experienced king. He's very clever. And if Philip isn't careful, he and France,

11:09they're going to get squashed like bugs under the heel of Henry II. So once Philip has sorted out these domestic factions, he can start to deal with this other problem. Philip's goal throughout his whole reign is to secure and improve and glorify the Kingdom of France.

11:40It's his God-given mission in his own mind that this is what he is going to do. So in order to do that, he needs to start on a long-term strategy to first diminish Plantagenet influence on France, and then, if possible, kick them right out of it.

Provoking Henry II's sons

12:04Just how does he provoke Henry II? Yeah, Philip, he was aware already of the discord, let's call it, within the Plantagenet family. So he embarked on a long-term strategy of playing different members of the Plantagenet family off against each other. Now, as we'll see as we go along, he did this to perfection. So his normal procedure, which is what he started with now,

12:35was to take whomever was the next in line, if you like, whoever was the heir or the main challenger to the current king, and needle them in all the right places to get them to cause trouble within their own family, so that he could sit back and watch the results. So in this case, he made friends with Henry the Young King. Henry the Young King is the eldest son of Henry II. He's also Philip's brother-in-law,

13:06because he's married to another one of Philip's older half-sisters. And during his youth, Henry did actually, young Henry did actually spend a fair amount of time at the French court. Now, he's actually 10 years older than Philip, but he encouraged young Henry to have ambitions. Now, when the French kings crowned their heirs as junior kings, it was made very clear that the junior king was still the junior king.

13:38When Henry II decided to do this and crown his eldest son, this was not made kind of quite so clear. So young Henry has always thought, you know, he's the king of England just as much as his father is. And as I'm sure anyone can work out, this is not a great situation. So in 1182, Philip encourages young Henry to ask his father outright for control of Normandy. This request was unsurprisingly declined.

14:13And Philip was then quite happy to bring the other siblings into this by, you know, fomenting trouble in Aquitaine against Richard, because Richard is at this stage ruling Aquitaine in his mother's name. And he also courted the third brother, Geoffrey, who was a renowned troublemaker. And as the third son, with not many expectations, quite happy to see his older two brothers fighting against each other. So Philip sets all this in motion and then, you know,

14:43is able to sit back and go, you know, with his bucket of popcorn and watch what was going on. And how does it all play out? Obviously, we're focusing here on Philip's story, but context. Oh, yes. Henry II, I mean, very briefly tells his two older sons to, you know, sort it out, but they won't. And so he ends up siding with Richard against young Henry and it all gets a bit messy. But a couple of things happen during the mid 1180s,

15:17which are quite unexpected and cause everyone to have to rearrange their priorities, which is that Henry, the young king, dies in 1183 of illness. He's only in his twenties and nobody expected this. And he and his wife don't have any children. So now Richard becomes Henry II's heir and Philip continues to court Geoffrey. But then in 1186, Geoffrey dies as well in an accident,

15:50which, you know, rearranges everything. So Henry II's now only got two living sons. So Richard is his heir and will now step up and inherit England and Normandy. But in return, Henry wants Richard to pass Aquitaine on to little brother John. And Richard, he wants to have England and Normandy as well as Aquitaine, not instead of. So there's even more discord going on. And Philip just really smoothly changes gear and moves on from young Henry and Geoffrey

16:25and starts courting Richard instead. And Richard kind of inexplicably, given the evidence that's been in front of his own eyes for the last few years, falls for it. Richard is quite an experienced ruler of, you know, heading for 30 at this stage. And Philip's still only 21. So he must have been quite persuasive. And he starts whispering in Richard's ear about, you know, your dad's actually thinking about disinheriting you completely.

16:56And, you know, isn't it significant that he's never publicly named you as his heir? And I can be your friend. In 1188, the end of 1188, he scores a really spectacular success. When all three of them meet for talks and Richard makes demands of Henry. And Henry still says no, and he won't publicly name Richard as his heir and he won't hand over anything else. And Richard publicly in front of everyone turns away from his father and offers homage to Philip.

17:29Philip instead. Okay. It is all kicking off. The year 1189 sees a gear shift. It would be fair to say. Yes. So Richard and Philip as allies of each other have been fighting against Henry and have actually got him into a position where he is forced to come to terms and agree to give them whatever they like. But he's very, very ill by this stage. And it's not very long after those talks that Henry II dies in the summer of 1189.

18:04Now, this means that Richard is now the king. But what Richard fails to comprehend is that now he's gone from being the heir to the king. He is now Philip's primary antagonist. Philip has just smoothly switched tack again and gone, right, now Richard's the king. And I need to find other ways to cause trouble for him. Now, all of this is interrupted by news from the East.

The crusade to the Holy Land

18:32This is really quite significant. What, pray tell, is this news? Well, for a couple of hundred years since what we now call the First Crusade, there has been a Latin kingdom in Jerusalem. That is to say a Christian kingdom. And what's happened is that in 1187, the Christian forces there were heavily defeated in battle by a chap called Saladin, who then took Jerusalem. This is massive news.

19:02It's the only news that might persuade the warring, quarrelling monarchs of Europe to put aside their differences and unite. Because this, as they see it, is a fight for Christianity, which is something that they all share. This news actually reached Europe before Henry II died, but he didn't get around to organising it because he had too much else on his plate and he was quite ill. Richard signed up straight away. But at that time, he wasn't a king.

19:33Philip also sort of made noises. But once Richard was the king and Philip was the king, neither of them can really go on crusade unless the other one goes as well, because they just don't trust each other. And, of course, Philip, like all medieval kings, France is his first priority, but he is also a Christian. The kings of France are known as Rex Christianissimus, which is the most Christian king. It will actually be good for his reputation and for the standing of France on the international stage if he goes as well.

20:09So the two of them decide to set off together and they're friends and they're allies and it's all going to be great. But is it great? Well, supposedly they are allies, but effectively they're in competition with each other and all the time they're on crusade, each of them is more concerned with getting one over on the other one. They both set off. They both overwinter in Sicily where Richard starts causing trouble and Philip stays out of it. While they're there, Richard suddenly announces that he's not going to marry Philip's last remaining unmarried sister to whom he has been engaged for about 20 years and that he's actually going to marry somebody else instead, which isn't great for Philip because it's a sort of slight humiliation.

20:57But, of course, being Philip, he doesn't take long to just immediately reorganize his priorities. So Philip sails away from Sicily and goes to the Holy Land. Richard gets delayed on his way away from Sicily and ends up on Cyprus. He just decides to conquer Cyprus, which is in fact Christian. But let's not go there. Philip, meanwhile, is in the Holy Land. But the problem is, as part of their, you know, ally agreement, he's promised not to start besieging the city of Acre until Richard gets there.

21:30I mean, he's doing what he can at Acre. He's riding around and he's making plans, but he can't actually start and he's frustrated. But he needles Richard on purpose. So Philip sends his cousin, Philip, the Bishop of Beauvais, to Cyprus deliberately because he knows that the Bishop of Beauvais is a man Richard absolutely detests. And instead of being diplomatic, the Bishop of Beauvais bluntly asks Richard what the hell he's playing at, attacking a Christian nation when he should be over in the Holy Land.

22:01And Richard gets annoyed. So by the time Richard does arrive in the Holy Land, he and Philip are already, their relationship has really deteriorated. Richard arrives with this sort of massive fanfare. And he's also got a load of pet chroniclers with him who are there writing down and praising his every deed. And he starts to pilfer some of Philip's men by offering them more money because he's got all this money that he got on Sicily and Cyprus. And, you know, things deteriorate from there. And the nadir of this comes when, at different times, both of them fall ill with quite a serious illness.

22:36But while Philip was lying very ill with a fever, we have an account that says Richard came to visit him and, in an attempt to basically kill him with the shock, told him that news had just arrived from Paris that Philip's only son and heir was dead. Philip never, ever forgave Richard for this. Up until the point of this crusade, Philip was the antagonist of the Plantagenets on a kind of political and diplomatic level.

23:13But after this point, he develops this kind of visceral, personal hatred for Richard and for everyone associated with him. And this colours all their interactions thereafter. It seems that Acre, things really go from bad to worse. He had gone there to relieve the city of Acre. So when the city of Acre fell, he considered his job done.

23:43I came here to relieve the city of Acre. The city of Acre is ours. I've got a kingdom to run. And this is another example of the difference in their personalities. I mean, to oversimplify a little bit. Richard was a knight and a crusader and a warrior who also happened to be a king, whereas Philip was first and foremost a king. And he happened to have gone on this crusade and happened to be a crusader and a warrior as well.

24:16But his first priority has to be France. And he's been away from it for, you know, nearly two years by this stage. So once Acre is there, it's a job done, I'm going back to France.

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24:58Either way, they make it simple to see your options. No guesswork, no surprises. Ready to see how easy and fun shopping for car insurance can be? Visit Progressive.com and give the Name Your Price tool a try. Take the stress out of shopping and find coverage that fits your life. On your terms. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law. When you need to build up your team to handle the growing chaos at work, use Indeed Sponsored Jobs.

25:29It gives your job post the boost it needs to be seen and helps reach people with the right skills, certifications, and more. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. And so with Philip at home and Richard's still on crusade, how does the situation between them, I would say, improve, but I don't think improves the case?

26:05How do things go down for them?

Seizing Normandy from John

26:06Well, to start with, Philip can reconsolidate all his own power in France, but he can't actually attack Richard's lands because they've each made an agreement as part of the crusade agreement that they won't attack the lands of the other while the other is on crusade. Now, the important bit here is the wording, because what happens is that Richard eventually does set off back from the Holy Land and is captured and is held prisoner by the Holy Roman Emperor.

26:42And news of this comes to Philip and Philip now has to interpret the letter of the law. Has he promised not to attack Richard's lands until he gets back from the crusade? Or has he promised not to attack Richard's lands while he's on crusade? So Philip interprets this as meaning he's got carte blanche. You know, you could argue the toss about that.

27:12But the thing is, if he hadn't taken advantage of Richard's absence and Richard's imprisonment, he might have been accused of being a weak king. He's got to do what's best for France. So he takes advantage of both Richard's absence and the incredible foolishness of the final Plantagenet brother, John. Where does John come into this picture then? When John was born, he was the king's fourth son. At this stage, he is the old king's second son.

27:43And the current king is his older brother, who not only has no children, but may not ever set foot in England again. So this is a real jump in expectation for John. Up until now, his ambitions have been basically to succeed Richard. But now he gets a little bit ahead of himself and starts having ambitions to replace Richard on the throne. And so naturally, who is his best friend going to be in this endeavour?

28:18It's King Philip of France. And John rushes to Paris to throw himself, I mean literally, at Philip's feet and offer homage to him. And it's honestly quite difficult to understand why he would do something so unbelievably stupid. He spent his whole life seeing Philip playing off and outwitting his father and all of his older brothers, one after the other.

28:48And yet somehow he thinks he's going to be different. I don't quite understand how they make the same mistake. What happens when Richard is released from captivity? John realises he's made a massive mistake, throws himself at Richard's feet again and through the intervention of their mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who doesn't want discord between her two remaining sons. They now make common cause with each other against Philip and Richard leaving England to its own devices kind of comes roaring back to France.

29:25And there's a lot for about three or four years. I won't go into all the details because we'll be here all day. But there was a lot of kind of tit for tat, people taking bites at the other one's border. But Philip is kind of for the first time, just slightly on the back foot because, you know, Richard was not his match intellectually or politically. But nobody could argue that Richard wasn't a brilliant warrior and military leader.

29:58And it goes on for a few years until Richard unexpectedly dies. And this is the best news Philip could possibly have heard, you know, ever. And he immediately swings into action because there are two claimants for the English throne, which plays right to Philip's strengths. So who are these two claimants and what's Philip going to do about it? The two claimants are John, Richard's only surviving brother, and a boy called Arthur, the Duke of Brittany, who is the son of Geoffrey.

30:39You remember I mentioned Geoffrey earlier, Henry II's third son. So we have questions of primogeniture here because Arthur is younger and of the next generation down. But his father was John's older brother. Now, primogeniture isn't quite the sort of exact science that it would become later on. And there is some debate about whether the son of a king who ruled, i.e. John, the son of Henry II, takes precedence over the grandson of a king, i.e. Arthur, whose father came from the senior line but had never ruled himself.

31:23So this means that you could argue a very good case for either John or Arthur, depending on what your own priorities were. Now, as it happens, and in my interpretation, Philip actually doesn't really care because after dealing with Henry II and Richard I, dealing with either John or Arthur, who is 12, is going to be shooting fish in a barrel, isn't it? He's quite happy with either of those on the English throne.

31:53Because he'll be able to run rings around either of them. But what he wants at this point is to cause as much disruption as possible. So he correctly interprets that John is the more favoured candidate and therefore decides to back Arthur. He knows John's going to win eventually, but he's using Arthur so that he can wring as many concessions out of John as possible. This is callous. This is a 12-year-old boy we're talking about here.

32:23Who is being used as a pawn in a political game. And it's not admirable, but from Philip's point of view, it works. John gains ground. He gets himself crowned the King of England and recognised as the Duke of Normandy, upon which Philip sort of comes to him and says, Well, OK, I'll drop my support for Arthur in return for this massive list of concessions from you. So this is all formalised by something called the Treaty of Le Goulet, which happens in May of the year 1200.

32:56And in return for dropping Arthur and recognising John as King of England and the Duke of Normandy, Philip gets cash, he gets lands, he gets complete overlordship of John's lands in France. Although it looks like he's kind of lost in that he's having to recognise John as King, he's actually made significant gains. And just one important point that might seem minor at this point is that this agreement, like a lot of agreements at the time, was sealed by a marriage treaty.

33:27So Philip's only child, his son and heir, Louis, is now 12 by medieval royal standards, old enough to get married. So John doesn't have any legitimate children of his own, but he rustles up a niece who is called Blanche and she is the daughter of John's sister Eleanor and Eleanor's husband, who is the King of Castile. They're married and the big loser in all of this is Arthur, because Philip has dropped him like a hot coal.

33:58But Arthur's problem is that his royal blood is never going to go away and he's always going to be a threat to John simply by existing. So his only choice is to keep fighting. And the following year when he's 15, he is captured by John's forces, imprisoned and never seen or heard of again. And Philip does have to take some of the blame. John, with Arthur out of the picture now, is Philip lining someone else up to stir problems or is he going straight for John?

34:33No, he's reached the point where he can go straight for the jugular. I mean, there aren't any other male adult Plantagenets to even play. But John is such a weak opponent that Philip can just really, really go for it and a much, much stronger position because the nobility of France are four square behind him by this stage. Because they can see how good he's been for France and for their own prosperity. And so he invades Normandy. And ruthlessly, in a methodical, well-planned, well-executed campaign, he takes the castle of Chateau-Guyard in a determined six-month siege.

35:15Once Chateau-Guyard falls, the rest of Normandy falls. And, you know, by halfway through 1204, Philip has succeeded in destroying the composite Anglo-Norman realm that has stood since 1066. In Anglophone scholarship, we read a lot about how John lost Normandy. I mean, that sounds like he mislaid it down the back of the sofa or something. But John didn't lose Normandy. Philip conquered it. Flipping that history on its head, when we talk about John, we often talk about 1215, Magna Carta, First Baron's War, then Second Baron's War.

35:53How do we get to that point? And where does Philip feature? The road to Magna Carta did start with Philip's conquering Normandy in 1204. So John is then forced to remain in England because England and a bit of Aquitaine is kind of all that he still owns. And this gives him even more of a chance to completely antagonise his English barons because, you know, he's not a popular man. He makes sporadic, not very effective attempts to reinvade France and take his ancestral domains back.

36:29But he never really gets out of Aquitaine and a little bit into Anjou. Meanwhile, most of the nobility of France is foursquare behind Philip. But there are two counts who are dissatisfied with Philip, mainly because they have ambitions of their own. And they are two counts who are situated geographically in just the right place to join John because they are the Count of Flanders and the Count of Boulogne. So they switch their allegiance from Philip to John, which gives John a bit of a foothold.

37:05And the other thing that works in John's favour, the current Holy Roman Emperor who rules Germany, Otto, is John's nephew. So John now has political alliances that sort of surround France. So their plan is that between them all, they are going to invade France from all sides at once. And Philip is going to be crushed and John is going to get his lands back and he and his allies are going to carve up France between them.

37:38They have slightly underestimated Philip Augustus if they think this is going to happen. What next?

The Battle of Bouvines

37:46We are now in the year 1214. Philip's had Normandy for 10 years now. John's been plotting. So in the spring of 1214, this multi-pronged invasion takes place. The Emperor Otto and the Counts of Flanders and Boulogne invade France from the north. And John sails to Aquitaine with the idea that he's going to go along the River Loire and then invade from the south and that Philip will be caught in this pincer movement in the middle.

38:22Philip has several advantages. Firstly, he knows that this is happening. And secondly, he has an adult son who is very loyal to him. He's got his son, Louis, is now in his 20s and a very, very keen warrior. So Philip, what he does is he sends Louis south to deal with John while he himself takes the Royal French Army with all of the united nobility to face the threat in the north.

38:57And they encounter this big allied army at a place called Bouvines in July. Now, unknown to Philip, before the Battle of Bouvines actually happens, Louis has already defeated John down in the south at a place called La Roche-au-Moyne. And John has run away and there was a bottleneck at a river where a lot of the rest of the English army got stuck and Louis was able to make quite some gains there. So John got away, but his reputation is in shreds now.

39:29So Philip now faces off against the Count of Flanders, the Count of Boulogne, the Holy Roman Emperor and also the Earl of Salisbury. And, you know, Philip, we know he's clever, but a lot of people have underestimated that he also was a very capable warrior and military commander. And he wins this massive victory at the Battle of Bouvines. The Battle of Bouvines is as big a deal for France as Hastings was in 1066 for England.

40:05It sets the scene for what's going to happen in the whole of Western Europe for the next kind of 20 years. The Counts of Flanders and Boulogne are both captured and Philip actually declines to execute them, puts them in prison. The Holy Roman Emperor Otto flees the field and goes back to Germany in disgrace and lives out the rest of his life in exile. So Philip then supports another Holy Roman Emperor candidate against him. Thus securing his long border with Germany on one side.

40:39He's now got Flanders and Boulogne under his control and he's kicked John back to England. It's incredible. And he could have spent the rest of his reign simply resting on his laurels. But he decides he's going to take that final step and he's going to wipe the Plantagenets off the map completely. So what is Philip's plan of destruction?

The invasion of England

41:07First of all, Philip is very aware that John has become very, very unpopular in England. John's become so unpopular that his barons try to control him by means of getting him to agree to Magna Carta, which sets some limits on the power of monarchy. Now, initially in 1215, John agrees to this or is forced to agree to this because of the position that he's been backed into.

41:41But immediately that he has set his seal to Magna Carta, he reneges on it. And the barons realise that if they cannot control John, their only choice is to overthrow him. Now, in overthrowing him, they do not want to try and get rid of the concept of monarchy as a whole. Right. They just want a better king, which raises the question, who is this king going to be? There isn't really anyone else. So they look across the channel to a monarchy, which has a very powerful king, is a very stable kingdom and has a line of monarchy that has subsisted since before the turn of the millennium.

42:28However, they are just self-aware enough to know that offering the crown of England to Philip Augustus is probably not a good idea. But Philip has this adult son, Louis, who is very well thought of. He's a very able warrior and he's also got this really good, like, moral reputation. You know, he's all the things that John isn't. And crucially, he is married to King John's niece, Blanche of Castile.

42:59They've now been married for 15, 16 years and they're very, very happy together and they have several sons. So, you know, as a candidate for king, you couldn't really get a much better one. So a delegation of English barons sails to France and offers the crown of England to Louis, Philip's son. Philip had such a good poker face about all of this that people still can't quite untangle his motives 800 years later.

43:32But Philip, from everything that we know about him, is absolutely, you know, this is fantastic. Not only can he wipe the last Plantagenet off the map, but his own son will be the king of England. On the other hand, the pope, who is a pope called Innocent III, is very much King John's friend. And he forbids Philip from sending a French royal army to invade England. Now, for very long-winded reasons, Philip has just been reconciled with the pope after many, many years of dispute.

44:10So he's now in a very good position vis-à-vis the pope and doesn't want to jeopardise it. So in public, he goes, I don't support my son Louis doing this. If my son Louis does this, it's all on him. But in private, there is no doubt that he supported this. The bottom line is that he's the king of France. If he wanted to forbid his son outright from invading England, he could have done. And he didn't. And there's all sorts of other clues. Like, Louis did invade.

44:40And at one point, when he was mired in a big siege at Dover, while the pope was looking the other way, a big trebuchet from the French royal arsenal, you know, somehow found its way across the channel. And when Louis was short of money during this campaign, Philip didn't give him any personally, but he did give a load of money to Louis' wife, Blanche, which she naturally used to raise more troops. So there are all these clues that Philip was just,

45:11you know, playing this double game. Unfortunately for him, Louis, although a very able warrior, was not as politically clever as Philip. He made a couple of quite elementary mistakes in that, although he was welcomed to London and proclaimed king, he never had himself crowned. And because he could only recruit to his army privately, he wasn't allowed to call upon the official French forces

45:44who owed service to the crown. His army wasn't quite as big as it could have been, and he had to split it. But the main reason this campaign failed was that King John, in October 1216, did the most kind of useful thing that he could possibly have done, which was unexpectedly dropping dead, and therefore leaving the figurehead of his campaign as his nine-year-old son. So from the French point of view, it doesn't matter how clever Philip and Louis might have been,

46:17but the optics have just changed. When Louis arrived, he was the hero arriving to save the English people from the evil tyrant John, but now he's a foreign bully boy trying to steal the crown from a nine-year-old child. Louis never did become the king of England, but they entered into talks, and he accepted a massive cash payoff to return to France and never claim the English throne again. So he went back, and yeah, okay, Philip's a bit disappointed that his son isn't the king of England,

46:47but on the other hand, you know, Henry II and all of his sons are dead. Philip has outwitted and outlived them all. At this point, he's getting on a bit now. He's been the king of France for nearly 40 years, and he's got no particular interest in fighting a war against a nine-year-old child. He's got Normandy. He's already made more than one inroad into sort of Anjou and the northern part of Aquitaine. He can now rest on his laurels

47:21while also being seen as this kind of magnanimous elder figure who magnanimously won't make war on a small child because it wouldn't be right. This takes into Philip's last years.

Legacy and final years

47:35I think at this point we should consider his legacy. His reign seems absolutely transformative. It absolutely was. So he spent the last few years of his reign in this sort of golden haze, if you like. When he came to the throne in 1179 or 1180, depending on when you count it from, you know, the royal domain of France was this quite small area just centred around Paris, and the king had nominal overlordship

48:06of this quite disparate group of powerful lords. And he's done it all. Champagne, Blois, Flanders, Hainaut, Anjou, Maine, Normandy. He's got all of that. And not only that, but England, it can pose him absolutely no threat at all. And he makes a really, really interesting will in which as well as leaving Louis, the kingdom, the patrimony, the crown, he specifically sets aside an enormous cash sum

48:38to be used by Louis for the defence of the realm against any potential invasion from England. He's still got it right up until his deathbed. Philip died in July 1223, peacefully in his bed with his son and grandson, the next two direct heirs, by his side, his kingdom at peace, completely under his control, with no enemies on the horizon.

49:10And, you know, for a medieval king, that's the crowning glory, so to speak. That was Catherine Hanley speaking to Emily Griffith. Catherine is a historian and author of numerous books, including Nemesis, Medieval England's Greatest Enemy. And if you're curious to find out more about the French invasion of England in 1217, head to the episode description to find a link to another conversation with Kath and Emily in which they discuss how tantalisingly close it came to success. Hi, this is Sam from the Good Food Podcast.

49:47If you love all things good food, join us at the festive Good Food Show from the 26th to the 29th of November at Birmingham's NEC. With a line-up of James Martin, John Turow, Lisa Faulkner, Ping Coombs and more, you'll be able to get plenty of cooking ideas for your Christmas entertaining. Find out more at goodfoodshow.com. See you there.