ABSTRACT
From the divorce of Louis VII and Eleanor and the founda-tion of the Angevin Empire until the moment when Philip Augustus discovered the means of disinheriting John Lackland, three major facts dominate the history of the Capetian monarchy; its authority in the kingdom grows and it finds a new basis of support in the bourgeoisie; it was compelled to use almost all its resources, new and old alike, in a war of attrition against the Angevin dynasty; finally its ambition to settle this long-standing quarrel by victory, to live, and to grow brought it into conflict with the old traditional powers, the Empire and the Holy See who had little interest in the quarrels of the “ petty kings ” of the West and sought to re-establish peace between all Christians that it might involve them in a Crusade, in which the Capetians could do nothing but expend their resources in vain.
