General Notes

[1748129.ged]
Custom Field:<_FA#> Ruled 1180-1223

Philip II
b. Aug. 21, 1165, Paris, Fr.
d. July 14, 1223, Mantes
byname PHILIP AUGUSTUS, French PHILIPPE AUGUSTE, the first of the greatCapetian kings of medieval France (reigned 1179-1223), who graduallyreconquered the French territories held by the kings of England and alsofurthered the royal domains northward into Flanders and southward intoLanguedoc. He was a major figure in the Third Crusade to the Holy Land in1191.
Early life and kingship

Philip was the son of Louis VII of France and Adela of Champagne. Inorder to be associated as king with his father, who had fallen mortallyill, he was crowned at Reims on Nov. 1, 1179. His uncles of the House ofChampagne--Henry I, count of Champagne; Guillaume, archbishop of Reims;and Thibaut V, count of Blois and Chartres--hoped to use the youthfulking to control France. To escape from their tutelage, Philip, on April28, 1180, married Isabella, the daughter of Baldwin V of Hainaut and theniece (through her mother) of Philip of Alsace, the count of Flanders,who promised to give the King the territory of Artois as her dowry.

When Henry II of England arrived in Normandy, perhaps with the intentionof responding to an appeal by the House of Champagne, Philip II enteredinto negotiations with him and, at Gisors on June 28, 1180, renewed anunderstanding that Louis VII had reached with him in 1177. As a result,the House of Champagne was politically isolated, and Philip II was makingall decisions for himself and acting as he saw fit when his father died,on Sept. 18, 1180, leaving him sole king in name as well as in fact.

When the Count of Flanders allied himself with the Champagne faction,there followed a serious revolt against the King. In the Peace of Boves,in July 1185 (confirmed by the Treaty of Gisors in May 1186), the Kingand the Count of Flanders composed their differences (which had beenchiefly over possession of Vermandois, in Picardy), so that the disputedterritory was partitioned, Amiens and numerous other places passing tothe King and the remainder, with the county of Vermandois proper, beingleft provisionally to Philip of Alsace. Thenceforward the King was freeto run against Henry II of England.