Lewis the Gross, the last sovereign, marched, at one time,
to his frontiers against the Germans at the head of an army of two
hundred thousand men; but a petty lord of Corbeil, of Puiset, of Couci,
was able, at another period, to set that prince at defiance, and to
maintain open war against him.

The authority of the English monarch was much more extensive within his
kingdom, and the disproportion much greater between him and the most
powerful of his vassals. His demesnes and revenue were large, compared
to the greatness of his state: he was accustomed to levy arbitrary
exactions on his subjects: his courts of judicature extended their
jurisdiction into every part of the kingdom: he could crush by his
power, or by a judicial sentence, well or ill founded, any obnoxious
baron: and though the feudal institutions, which prevailed in his
kingdom, had the same tendency, as in other states, to exalt the
aristocracy and depress the monarchy, it required in England, according
to its present constitution, a great combination of the vassals to
oppose their sovereign lord, and there had not hitherto arisen any baron
so powerful, as of himself to levy war against the prince, and to afford
protection to the inferior barons.

While such were the different situations of France and England, and the
latter enjoyed so many advantages above the former, the accession
of Henry II., a prince of great abilities, possessed of so many rich
provinces on the continent, might appear an event dangerous, if not
fatal to the French monarchy, and sufficient to break entirely the
balance between the states. He was master, in the right of his father,
of Anjou and Touraine; in that of his mother, of Normandy and Maine; in
that of his wife, of Guienne, Poictou, Xaintonge, Auvergne, Perigord,
Angoumois, the Limousin. He soon after annexed Brittany to his other
states, and was already possessed of the superiority over that province,
which, on the first cession of Normandy to Rollo the Dane, had been
granted by Charles the Simple in vassalage to that formidable ravager.
These provinces composed above a third of the whole French monarchy, and
were much superior, in extent and opulence, to those territories which
were subjected to the immediate jurisdiction and government of the king.
The vassal was here more powerful than his liege lord: the situation
which had enabled Hugh Capet to depose the Carlovingian princes, seemed
to be renewed, and that with much gr