Angevin empire

Angevin empire The term commonly used to describe the collection of lands held, or claimed, by Henry II and his immediate successors. Henry II first brought the constituent parts of the empire together by combining under his rulership three distinct inheritances. These were, first, the former Anglo‐Norman realm, comprising the duchy of Normandy and the kingdom of England, brought into being in 1066. Henry also claimed suzerainty over the duchy of Brittany, and over Wales and Scotland, claims inherited from previous kings of England. This was Henry's inheritance from his mother, the Empress Matilda, daughter of Henry I. From his father Henry inherited the county of Anjou (hence Angevin empire), and the counties of Maine and Touraine. Thirdly, there was Aquitaine, the inheritance of Eleanor of Aquitaine, which came to Henry following their marriage in 1152. Ireland also came into the Angevin orbit following Henry's invasion of 1171–2. Henry, accordingly, was lord of a vast territory stretching from the Pyrenees to Scotland, making him the most powerful ruler in western Europe.

The evidence suggests that it was Henry II himself who created the Angevin empire. His acquisitiveness led him to exploit the possibilities and, brushing aside his younger brother, to bring together the three different inheritances between 1150 and 1156, when Geoffrey the Younger rebelled but was forced to submit. The implications of this are of profound importance. If the empire was essentially the product of Henry's opportunism, then its decline and collapse in 1204, within fifteen years of its creator's own demise in 1189, is more explicable.

Naturally, there is more to it than that. Those who maintain that the empire's collapse was inevitable stress the fact that neither Henry II, Richard I, nor John sought to centralize. Rather, each lordship remained apart in its institutions, laws, and customs, with a bare minimum of ‘imperial legislation’, no common currency, and no single political centre. On the contrary, changing circumstances forced the Angevin lords to accept ever greater implications in their feudal relationship to the Capetian kings of France, so far as their French fiefs were concerned, culminating in the terms of the treaty of Le Goulet (1200). Only in England were they juridically equal to their French overlords. Again, there was no intention that the different dominions should pass as one inheritance. As early as 1169, at Montmirail, Henry II made plain his wish that each of his sons should receive a part. In addition, the sheer extent of the Angevin lands made effective government difficult, a problem exacerbated by the extraordinary rivalries and tensions within the ruling family itself.

Powerful though these arguments are, the fact remains that until 1202–3 the Angevin empire remained essentially intact. Allowance must be made for the comparative abilities of John and Philip II, the Capetian king at the time. Philip was much more of a match than his father Louis VII had been, partly because of his own abilities, but also because he commanded far greater resources. He had a more compact principality to defend than the sprawling mass of the Angevin empire in France. In addition, John played into Philip's hands. Between 1200 and 1204 he managed to fritter away the advantages he had enjoyed.

The combination of these factors meant that by the end of 1204 only the Channel Islands and a much reduced Gascony remained in John's hands. In 1259 Henry III bowed to what now can be seen as almost the inevitable and renounced his claims to Henry II's French inheritance. In return, Louis IX acknowledged him as rightful duke of Gascony. An era had come to an end.