g. But now nearly all the provinces of southern and western France
were gathered into the hand of a single ruler; and though he was a
Frenchman in blood, yet, as he was King of England, this ruler seemed to
his French subjects no Frenchman, but a foreigner. They began therefore
to look to the French king to free them from a foreign ruler; and the
son of Louis VII., called _Philip Augustus_, was ready to take advantage
of their disposition. Philip was a really able man, making up by address
for want of personal courage. He set himself to lower the power of the
house of Anjou and increase that of the house of Paris. As a boy he had
watched conferences between his father and Henry under the great elm of
Gisors, on the borders of Normandy, and seeing his father overreached,
he laid up a store of hatred to the rival king. As soon as he had the
power, he cut down the elm, which was so large that 300 horsemen could
be sheltered under its branches. He supported the sons of Henry II. in
their rebellions, and was always the bitter foe of the head of the
family. Philip assumed the cross in 1187, on the tidings of the loss of
Jerusalem, and in 1190 joined Richard I. of England at Messina, where
they wintered, and then sailed for St. Jean d'Acre. After this city was
taken, Philip returned to France, where he continued to profit by the
crimes and dissensions of the Angevins, and gained, both as their enemy
and as King of France. When Richard's successor, John, murdered Arthur,
the heir of the dukedom of Brittany and claimant of both Anjou and
Normandy, Philip took advantage of the general indignation to hold a
court of peers, in which John, on his non-appearance, was adjudged to
have forfeited his fiefs. In the war which followed and ended in 1204,
Philip not only gained the great Norman dukedom, which gave him the
command of Rouen and of the mouth of the Seine, as well as Anjou, Maine,
and Poitou, the countries which held the Loire in their power, but
established the precedent that a crown vassal was amenable to justice,
and might be made to forfeit his lands. What he had won by the sword he
held by wisdom and good government. Seeing that the cities were capable
of being made to balance the power of the nobles, he granted them
privileges which caused him to be esteemed their best friend, and he
promoted all improvements. Though once laid under an interdict by Pope
Innocent III. for an unlawful marriage, Philip usually followed the
pol