Page:Readings in European History Vol 1.djvu/242

 206 Readings in European History IV. PHILIP AUGUSTUS AND HIS VASSALS 94. Philip The extracts from Suger, given above, show feudal TiSion anarcnv in France at the opening of the twelfth cen- and extends tury, and exhibit the ideal king as a ruler who sup- main? y (From pressed disorder and protected the weak, especially the] Church, against the strong. The king as an organizer o f t ne realm was a conception that could hardly exist until the more powerful of the turbulent nobles had been subdued. Philip Augustus (1180-1223) carried on the work of consolidation so well begun by Louis the Fat with Suger 's aid, and was able before the end of his long reign to begin to play the role of a king in the fuller sense of the word. He had, however, like the youthful St. Louis later, to meet a general revolt at the opening of his reign. In the first year of the reign of Philip Augustus 1 and the fifteenth year of his age, certain quarrels arose among the great of the kingdom. These were really a cloak for a league which the nobles of the realm prompted by the enemy of the Church's peace, the devil dared to form against their lord, Philip Augustus. They gathered an army and began to lay waste the king's domain. When the most Christian king, Philip Augustus, heard of this iniquity he waxed exceeding wroth and led against the rebels an army an infinite multitude. Before many days had passed, he put them all to flight. He pursued them with such vigor and might that, through the miraculous interven- tion of God, he forced them all to submit to him, and com- pelled them by his exceeding great strength to do his will in all things. 1 The title "Augustus" was conferred on Philip by his biographer Rigord, a monk of St. Denis, who explains in his preface that Augustus is derived from the Latin augeo, "to augment," namely, the bounds pf the realm. .