Angevin Dynasties of Europe 900-1500

by Jeffrey Anderson

  Firstly, who is Charles of Anjou and how is he an Angevin? Charles was the youngest son of Louis VIII and Blanche of Castile, so he was the grandson of Philip Augustus, but also the great-grandson of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. That might qualify him for inclusion in this book by descent, but of course there is a much more important factor, indicated by his being named Charles ‘of Anjou’.

  Philip Augustus, after his great victory of Bouvines, faced the problem of absorbing the Angevin domains into the French kingdom. This process was ongoing when he died in 1223 and his son Louis VIII became king. Louis VIII’s brief reign (1223–1226) at first seems almost a footnote in medieval French history, but it had an enormous impact on France’s future. Louis himself was a notable warrior, not only invading England with some initial success, but also capturing La Rochelle and significantly stabilizing Capetian control of Poitou. The Capetians faced a situation analogous to that of Henry II and had the problem of administering their extensive territories, particularly those taken from the Angevins and annexed through the Albigensian Crusades, which might be expected to resent French rule.

  Because he was blessed with an abundance of sons, Louis decided to divide some of the new lands between them, and set this plan out clearly in his will. This was similar to the strategy Henry II had used, with the attendant difficulties we have seen, but Louis’s formal creation of ‘apanages’ for the younger French princes was more successful and became the standard for the French royal family. The heir to the throne, the future Louis IX, would be crowned in his father’s lifetime, and like Young King Henry he was not included in the partition. The Capetians tended to be better at involving their heirs in ruling France and didn’t face rebellions like Henry II, though this may be because they usually died young enough that their heirs didn’t face such a long period outside power as had Young Henry and Richard the Lionheart.

  Of Louis’s younger sons, Robert would take the county of Artois, his mother’s dowry; Jean would take Maine and Anjou; and Alphonse would receive Poitou. Assigning these apanages also raised the princes to the same status as the five great feudatories of France – the Dukes of Burgundy, Aquitaine and Brittany and the Counts of Flanders and Champagne – and as all of these were independent of the king, the creation of three new and presumably loyal peers would balance their influence.1 Strikingly, the duchy of Normandy, which had always been the most powerful of the states that were technically vassals of the French king, remained in the king’s possession until the 14th century when it was finally considered safe to give to a royal son.

  However, French possession of the former Angevin Empire was by no means secure. When Philip Augustus died in 1223, there were murmurings in England that Normandy should be reclaimed from its ‘illegal’ French occupation and an English embassy to Paris formally demanded that the duchy be returned, but Louis VIII publicly asserted his right to keep Normandy.2 Louis went further, and in 1224 invaded Poitou, which was still a debatable land between English-controlled Gascony and newly French Anjou.

  Poitou might have been expected to remain subject to England, since before his death King John had engaged his daughter Joan to Hugh of Lusignan, son of Hugh ‘le Brun’ who had previously been engaged to John’s wife Isabelle of Angoulême. Isabelle spectacularly overthrew these plans when she returned to Angoulême, broke her daughter’s engagement and married Hugh herself in 1220.3 She showed no more loyalty to her son Henry III, as she and Hugh allied with Louis VIII and helped him secure Poitou, then attacked Gascony in 1225. This attack failed because Louis VIII was again distracted by the ongoing Albigensian Crusade and went on to die at Avignon in 1226, seemingly leaving Poitou ripe for an English fightback. However, Louis’s widow Blanche of Castile became regent for the young Louis IX, and showed herself more than equal to the task of managing the kingdom, and secured treaties with England and with Hugh and Isabelle to stabilize the region.

  Blanche engaged her son Jean to the Count of Brittany’s daughter in 1227, and gave control of Angers and Le Mans to the count until the marriage occurred. However, in 1229 the count defected to Henry III and raised the spectre of an Angevin reconquest of their homeland. We must remember the precariousness of Capetian control in this period. The king of France was a minor and Henry III was very interested in taking back the lands lost by his father; Henry might have restored the Angevin Empire when he launched an invasion in 1230 in conjunction with the Bretons. Although Henry’s fleet landed safely and he held court at Nantes, Isabelle and Hugh’s solid adherence to France kept the rest of Poitou from joining Henry, and he returned to England having accomplished nothing.4 Henry would soon discover that the only thing worse than having his mother oppose him was having her on his side.

  After being abandoned by Henry III, the count of Brittany was swiftly defeated by Louis IX, who regained control of Anjou and Maine by 1234. Louis’s brother Jean had died in 1232, so Anjou and Maine passed into the royal domain. Louis gave Le Mans as a wedding present to his wife in 1234 and it seemed that the counties would be absorbed into the kingdom, putting an end to ‘Angevin’ rulers. Louis was active in the region, most notably rebuilding the castle of Angers to produce what is largely the building that we see today.5

  Now that his brothers were old enough, Louis IX honoured his father’s wishes and granted them their apanages. Robert duly acquired Artois in 1237 and Alphonse was granted Poitou in 1241, but this formal investiture of Alphonse with Poitou provoked an uprising by Isabelle and Hugh of Lusignan. Henry III supported his mother and step-father by launching an invasion of the Saintonge, and his alliances with the count of Toulouse and kings of Aragon and Castile might have made this a real threat to France. Instead, the revolt was a pitiful affair. Henry had no support for the project from England, and his Gascon and Lusignan allies did nothing. Worse, Isabelle seems to have instigated the revolt without proper consultation, since Hugh quickly rejoined Louis IX and led the French armies against the count of Toulouse. Isabelle was disgraced and retired to Fontevraud, where she died in 1246 and is commemorated by a serene effigy at odds with her turbulent life.6 Henry had to slink back across the Channel, and this ignominious failure disposed him towards a final peace with Louis IX in 1259, in which he recognized Capetian possession of Normandy, Anjou and Poitou. With Louis’s support, Alphonse’s management of Poitou would have no further difficulties.

  Where does Charles of Anjou figure in this? Charles was born either in 1226 or perhaps posthumously in 1227, and was the only son to survive to adulthood who was born after Louis VIII took the throne. In the arcane hierarchy of royalty, being born to a reigning king rather than an heir apparent brought extra status, and Matthew Paris claimed that Charles ‘was inclined to give himself airs as one “born in the purple”’7 (a nice dramatic irony, since this title – porphyrogenitus – originated in the Byzantine Empire, which Charles would later plan to conquer). However, Charles was the youngest son and Louis had stated clearly that only the elder sons would receive apanages and his younger sons should go into the church.

  Charles doesn’t appear in the records until 1237 when he was at Robert of Artois’s court, but by then it must have been clear that he would not be going into the church. With Jean dead, there were now only three princes remaining to support Louis IX: Robert, Alphonse and Charles. Louis VIII’s will had made plans to allocate three apanages, and Louis IX may have been thinking of making Charles Count of Anjou throughout the late 1230s and early 1240s. The brothers were very different in temperament, as neatly encapsulated by the chronicler Thomas of Tuscany: ‘two brothers Louis and Alphonse were mild and peaceful, while the other two, Robert and Charles were men who were energetic, vigorous in body, strong in arms and very warlike’.8

  However, in 1246 everything changed, when Charles made his mark on the European stage by marrying Beatrice of Provence and becoming Count of Provence. Provence had never been part of France, being rather a part of the Holy Roman Empire, though the Emperors hadn’t controlled it for centuri
es and it had been held by a branch of the ruling family of Aragon (and this passing of Provence from Aragonese control was not forgotten – after Charles lost Sicily to the Aragonese in 1282, their own ‘loss’ of Provence would be mentioned in subsequent negotiations). The previous count, Ramon-Berengar, died in 1245 leaving four daughters, who famously all became queens. Three sisters had already married well: Margaret married Louis IX, Eleanor married Henry III and Sanchia married Henry’s brother Richard of Cornwall, the future king of the Romans. For this reason, Ramon-Berengar had decided to leave his entire inheritance, which included the counties of Provence and Forcalquier, to the youngest daughter, Beatrice. Since Beatrice’s elder sisters were the queens of France and England and wife to an English prince with extraordinary wealth, and they had already received handsome dowries, one might have thought they would be content to see Beatrice inherit Provence and Forcalquier. If so, one would be foolish – as we have seen many times, most medieval rulers fought for every inch of land to which they felt entitled, and the more they had the more rapacious they became. Beatrice’s sisters were furious to be denied their inheritance, and were supported by their mother, who clung to the county of Forcalquier despite having no legal claim to it.9

  These family rifts would play out in the future, and in 1245 the main question was who would marry the fourteen-year old Beatrice and become Count of Provence. Multiple rivals of more and less importance came forward, including Raymond VII of Toulouse and Conrad the son of Emperor Frederick II. In the aftermath of the Albigensian Crusade, France had a significant stake in the south, but the recent skirmishes in Poitou and Gascony had involved Henry III’s allies the count of Provence and the kings of Aragon and Castile, who showed themselves to be an increasing threat. Provence could not be allowed to pass to the Emperor, a Spanish prince or southern baron, so Louis IX and Blanche of Castile proposed Charles of Anjou as Beatrice’s husband, and they trumped their rivals by obtaining papal support.

  In 1245 Pope Innocent IV was at the Council of Lyon seeking support for the deposition of Frederick II, and he particularly wanted Louis IX’s backing. Papal consent for the Provençal marriage was thus the price for Louis’s support, and Innocent was willing to pay it. The agreement was concluded quickly, and Beatrice and Charles married in January 1246 in Aix.10

  Dante famously believed that all Italy’s problems could be traced to this marriage, since it launched the French on their Italian adventures and created ‘that sick weed… that overshadows every Christian land, so that it’s rare to strip good fruit from it’. Dante portrays Hugh Capet as a penitent soul in Purgatory lamenting the horror he unleashed on Europe, which all began with Charles of Anjou:

  Until that splendid dowry of Provence deprived my blood of any sense of shame, they didn’t do much good – nor much great harm. There, there began, with violence and with lies, their course of plunderings.11

  Given the prolonged warfare between Philip Augustus and the English kings, and Louis VIII’s participation in the Albigensian Crusade that annexed much of the south to France, it is hardly fair to say that Capetian ‘plundering’ started with Charles, but Dante’s viewpoint was firmly fixed on Italy. It certainly is fair to say that Charles of Anjou may have been more easily enticed into Italy because he was count of Provence, and French involvement in the peninsula would last for another three centuries.

  Despite Charles becoming Count of Provence, in the same year Louis gave him the deceased Jean’s apanage of Anjou and Maine and knighted him. Louis was noted for being scrupulously fair, so perhaps he had already promised Anjou and Maine to Charles and honoured the arrangement. Louis seemed perfectly comfortable increasing Charles’s territories to this extent, and in fact he also facilitated Alphonse’s annexation of the Limousin and acquisition of the county of Toulouse by marriage. Having his brother in Toulouse from 1249 considerably aided Charles in his struggles in Provence, and he and Alphonse each also inherited one third of Avignon.12

  As Count of Anjou and Maine, Charles ‘of Anjou’ now had the name that he would retain for the rest of his life, the Angevin name he would give to dynasties in Naples, Hungary and Poland. Yet he was also Count of Provence, which would remain an Angevin possession until the 15th century. It might be more appropriate for Charles to be called ‘Charles of Provence’ given that it was his first title, and he certainly retained a deep affection for Provence for the rest of his life, devoting much more time to it than he did to Anjou. Furthermore, the ‘Angevin’ kings of Naples would retain Provence long after Anjou was ceded to their Valois cousins in France. Why did the name ‘Angevin’ stick to Charles and his descendants?

  The reason is, as previously mentioned, that Provence wasn’t actually part of France, though today it may seem the very epitome of la France profonde and the most stereotypically French of provinces. Provence wound its way through the Angevins of Naples and back to the Dukes of Anjou, only becoming part of ‘France’ in the late 15th century. Charles was a French prince to his core – in fact, he would be criticized for how French he remained, years after he had become King of Sicily – and he was known by one of the great titles of France, like Anjou, not a foreign title such as Count of Provence. Also, Charles became Count of Provence in right of his wife Beatrice, and although he happily used her title, he must have preferred the title that belonged to him personally. Charles was always known as Count of Anjou before becoming King of Sicily, and his French identity was critical to him, most notably in his coat of arms, the Capetian gold fleurs-de-lys on a blue background differentiated with a red ‘label’ across the top. The heraldic practice of ‘differencing’ arms of various members of the family was introduced to Italy by Charles of Anjou, spreading French heraldic customs with his conquests.13 This Angevin device can be seen on some of the most striking artworks to survive from the 14th and 15th centuries, and appears again and again in the coats of arms of various European dynasties.14

  Perhaps because he was the youngest son who never expected to inherit anything, Charles seemed obsessed with acquiring as much territory as possible. What is so extraordinary about Charles is the energy and ambition he showed from the moment he stopped being the landless youngest son of a deceased king in 1246 until his death in 1285. Like his great-grandfather Henry II, he simply never stopped.

  Charles built his empire step by logical step and progressed very naturally from one project to the next, never stopping long before undertaking a new challenge. He was probably still a teenager, and certainly no more than twenty, when he became Count of Provence and Count of Anjou in 1246, and he immediately implemented the methods of government he would later use in Sicily. He sent French administrators to Provence to curb local liberties and restore comital rights that had been usurped, and created a central administration and treasury to maximize his revenues from the county. These important activities were curtailed, however, when Louis IX launched his Crusade in 1248 and Charles accompanied him. It would not be the last time Charles’s plans were seriously disrupted by his brother’s Crusading zeal, and the troubadours in Provence were loud in their condemnation of him for neglecting his duties in Provence to embark on a futile endeavour.15

  Louis IX’s Crusade Against Egypt

  Louis’s first Crusade was notable for a number of reasons. He created the new port of Aigues-Mortes, which still exists in its medieval splendour, to launch the Crusade, since ports such as Nice and Marseilles technically belonged to the Empire, even if they were now ruled by Charles of Anjou. As has been stated so many times, Crusades were as much financial and logistical enterprises as religious, and achieving political or economic goals was not incompatible with Crusading. Charles of Anjou had already brought Provence from the orbit of Aragon to France, and by founding Aigues-Mortes Louis now blocked coastal access to Montpellier, a possession of the king of Aragon and the second greatest city in the south after Toulouse.16

  The fleet that set off from Aigues-Mortes arrived in Egypt uneventfully, and we have a detailed accou
nt by Louis’s close companion Jean de Joinville that gives us many striking anecdotes about Louis and Charles of Anjou. Despite later criticism, it was an opportune moment to attack Egypt. The earlier Damietta Crusade had shown the logic of striking at Egypt, though it also demonstrated the difficulties in attacking a well-organized state rather than individual castles or cities. However, the political situation in the Holy Land was about to shift dramatically, with the collapse of the successor dynasties to Saladin and the rise of an extraordinary new power, the Mamluk sultanate in Cairo.

  The Crusade was initially successful. When the ships arrived, Louis leapt from his galley like Richard the Lionheart and waded through the surf to establish a beachhead, and the Crusaders went on to drive back the Egyptian army and take the city of Damietta. They secured this as a strong base, and since the sultan was ill and in fact would soon die, there was little coordinated resistance as the Crusaders audaciously marched up the Nile towards Cairo with every hope of success.

  Yet this quickly turned to disaster. When the Crusaders reached the city of Mansourah, due to the fatal recklessness of Robert of Artois (although Charles himself was also described as attacking recklessly and being ‘mad with rage’), the ill-disciplined attack became bogged down and the Crusaders, including Robert, were slaughtered in the narrow streets as the Egyptians hurled burning logs onto their heads. The attack on the Crusaders was organized by the young ‘Mamluk’, or slave soldier, Baibars, who would one day become sultan of Egypt himself and drive the Christians from the Holy Land for good. The Crusaders lingered for some time at Mansourah in an attempt to regain momentum, but illness devastated the army, and by the time Louis decided to retreat it was too late. He nearly achieved an amazing result anyway, since as the Crusaders began their retreat the chaotic government in Cairo offered to give Louis the city of Jerusalem if he would withdraw from Egypt. This reaffirms the political situation that we saw previously when Frederick II took Jerusalem without a fight: as the Crusaders themselves realized, Egypt was the most important state in the region, and the Egyptians would be perfectly willing to surrender Jerusalem – symbolically important but expendable in political and military terms – in exchange for peace.