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 barons, whose most active member was Stephen I., count of Sancerre (1152–1191). Though attacked from both north and south, the king's activity enabled him to compel the count of Sancerre to implore peace in 1181. On the death of Isabel of Vermandois, wife of Count Philip of Flanders, in 1182, Philip claimed Vermandois and seized Chauné and St Quentin, and forced his father-in-law, Baldwin of Hainaut, to support him by threatening to divorce Queen Isabel. The count of Flanders was obliged to sign the treaty of Boves in July 1185, which gave the king, in addition to the expectation of Artois, his wife's dower, sixty-five castles in Vermandois and the town of Amiens By 1186 Hugh, duke of Burgundy, the only member of the coalition not yet subdued, was forced to submit. Then, secure at home, the king turned against Henry II., and by the truce of Châteauroux in June 1187, gained Issoudun and the seigniory of Fréteval in the Vendômois. Though the truce was for two years, Philip assembled an army in 1188 to invade Normandy, demanding Gisors and the conclusion of the marriage which had been arranged between his sister Alice and Richard of England, who had meanwhile deserted his father. But the news came that Saladin had taken Jerusalem and Richard took the cross. Shortly afterwards Philip took advantage of a rising against his quondam friend Richard, who was duke of Aquitaine, to seize the county of Berry. At a conference at Bonmoulins on the 18th of November Richard again abandoned his father, and after a second conference at La Ferté Bernard, Philip invaded Maine and forced Henry II. to conclude the treaty of Azay on the 4th of July 1189, by which the English king did homage and surrendered the territories of Gragy and Issoudun. Henry died two days later. Pledges of mutual good faith and fellowship were renewed between Philip and Richard of England on the 30th of December 1189, and they both prepared to go on the crusade.

Before setting out Philip arranged for the government of France during his absence by his famous testament of 1190, by which he proposed to rule France as far as possible from Palestine. The power of the regents, Adela, the queen-mother, and William, archbishop of Reims, was restricted by a council composed mostly of clerks who had the king's confidence. An annual report on the state of the kingdom was to be sent him. On the way to Palestine the two kings quarrelled. At the siege of Acre Philip fell ill, and on the 22nd of July, nine days after its fall, he announced his intention of returning home. He reached Paris at Christmas 1191, having concluded on his way an alliance with the emperor Henry VI against Richard, despite his pledges not to molest his lands. When Leopold I., duke of Austria, took Richard prisoner and delivered him to the emperor, Philip did his utmost by offers of money to prolong his captivity, and, allied with the English king's brother John, attacked Richard's domains, but upon Richard's return the Normans rallied enthusiastically to his aid Philip was defeated at Fréteval on the 3rd of July 1194, but he continued the war, generally with ill success, for the next five years. Again a formidable coalition was formed against him, including Baldwin IX., count of Flanders and Hainaut, Renaud of Dammartin, count of Boulogne, Louis, count of Blois, and Raymond VI., count of Toulouse. In Germany, Otto of Brunswick, afterwards the emperor Otto IV., allied himself with Richard, while Philip was supported by Otto's rival, Philip of Swabia. Richard's death, in April 1199, removed his archenemy, and Richard's successor, John, concluded the treaty of Le Goulet with Philip on the 22nd of May 1200, ceding to him the county of Evreux, Gracy and Issoudun, and the suzerainty of Berry and Auvergne. John renounced his suzerainty over Brittany and the guardianship of his nephew, Arthur, he engaged not to aid the count of Flanders or Otto IV. without Philip's consent, paid him a relief of 20,000 marks, and recognized himself as his vassal for his continental fiefs. Philip's son Louis, afterwards Louis VIII., married Blanche of Castile, John's niece. But in 1202 the war was renewed, John having seized some castles from the family of Lusignan, whose head was the count of La Marche, and taken for his queen a prospective bride, Isabelle Taillefer, from Hugh, son of Hugh IX, count of La Marche. At an interview at Le Goulet on the 25th of March, Philip demanded the cession of Anjou, Poitou and Normandy to his ward, Arthur. John refused, he was summoned to Paris before the royal judges, and failing to appear was sentenced at the end of April 1202 to lose all his fiefs. Brittany, Aquitaine and Anjou were conferred on Arthur. Philip invaded Normandy, took Lyons-la-Forêt and Eu, and, establishing himself in Gournay, besieged Arques. But John, joined by William des Roches and other lords of Maine and Poitou, jealous at the increase of Philip's power, defeated and took Arthur prisoner at Mirebeau. Philip abandoned the siege of Arques in a fit of fury, marched to the Loire, burning everywhere, and then returned to Paris. But John soon alienated the Poitevin barons, and William des Roches signed a treaty with Philip on the 22nd of March 1203. Then Philip continued his great task, the conquest of Normandy, capturing the towns around the fortress of Château-Gaillard which Richard had built to command the valley of the Seine. Pope Innocent III. tried to bring about peace, but Philip was obdurate, and after murdering Arthur of Brittany John took refuge in England in December 1203. The fall of Château-Gaillard, after a siege which lasted from September 1203 to April 1204, decided the fate of Normandy. Rouen, bound by ties of trade to England, resisted for forty days; but it surrendered on the 24th of June 1204. The conquest of Maine, Touraine, Anjou and Poitou in 1204 and 1205 was little more than a military promenade, though the castles of Loches and Chinon held out for a year. Philip secured his conquest by lavishing privileges on the convents and towns. He left the great lords, such as William des Roches, in full possession of their feudal power. In 1206 he marched through Brittany and divided it amongst his adherents. A truce for two years was made on the 26th of October 1206 by which John renounced all claims in Normandy, Maine, Brittany, Touraine and Anjou, but it did not last six months. Then Poitou was thoroughly subdued, and another truce was made in 1208, little more than southern Saintonge and Gascony being left in the hands of John. Philip had reduced to a mere remnant the formidable continental empire of the Angevins, which had threatened the existence of the Capetian monarchy.

Philip then undertook to invade England. In the assembly of Soissons on the 8th of April 1213 he made every preparation for carrying out the sentence of deposition pronounced by the pope against John. He had collected 1500 vessels and summoned all his barons when Innocent III., having sufficiently frightened John, sent Pandulf with the terms of submission, which John accepted on the 13th of May.

Disappointed of his hopes of England, Philip turned his arms against Ferdinand, count of Flanders. Ferdinand, son of Sancho I., king of Portugal, owed his county to Philip, who, hoping to find him a docile protégé, had married him to Jeanne, heiress of Flanders, daughter of Count Baldwin IX., who became emperor of the East, using the weak Philip of Namur, her guardian, to accomplish that end. They were married in January 1212. On the morrow of the marriage Louis, afterwards Louis VIII., seized Aire and St Omer in right of his mother, Isabella, and on this account Ferdinand refused his feudal duty in the English expedition. Moreover, the trade interests of his subjects, who got their raw wool from England. drew him to an alliance with England. Philip's attack brought this about on the 22nd of May 1213. He invaded Flanders and took the chief towns within a week; but he had part of his fleet burned by the English at Damme, and had to burn the rest to save it from falling into their hands. He returned to Paris, and Ferdinand retook most of the towns which had been taken by the king. A war of fire and pillage began, in which Philip and his son Louis burned their way through Flanders, and Ferdinand did the same through Artois.

In 1214 came the great crisis of Philip's life. All the forces against which he had been struggling united to overwhelm him. Paris was to be attacked from Flanders and Guienne at the same time. A league including his rebel vassals, Renaud of Dammartin, count of Boulogne and Ferdinand, count of Flanders, with the emperor Otto IV. and a number of German princes of the Rhine region, had been formed in the north-east, while John of England