Progress of the French Monarchy—Its difficulties—Philip III.—The inheritance to Toulouse, Champagne, and Navarre—Wars with Castile and Aragon—Accession of Philip IV. and the importance of his reign—His War with England and Flanders—His relations with the Papacy—The suppression of the Templars—His policy of annexation—His domestic government—The King’s Court and its departments: the _conseil du roi_, the _chambre des comptes_, and the _Parlement_ of Paris—The States-General—Financial maladministration—Death of Philip IV.—Louis X.—His death and the succession question—The Salic Law—The short reigns of Philip V. and Charles IV. The history of the modern kingdom of France begins with the break-up of the great Karoling Empire in the treaty of Verdun (843). Western Francia, split off from the other dominions of Charles the Great, continued for a century to be ruled by his degenerate descendants. But the decentralising movement did not stop with the division of the Frankish Empire into three fairly well-defined units. The dukes and counts, who had been provincial governors under Charles the Great, took advantage of the growing weakness of the central power to make their position hereditary and practically independent. Superficial unity was only maintained by the necessity of making head against the attacks of the Northmen. The successful resistance of Paris to these invaders gave to the dukes of Paris, the lords of the Isle de France, the royal title which the Karolings at Laon were too feeble to defend. But the early kings of the House of Capet were as powerless as their predecessors. They themselves belonged to the feudal nobles, they owed the crown to the support of their fellows, they were avowedly only _primi inter pares_. Hugh Capet himself acknowledged this when he undertook to do nothing of importance without consulting the tenants-in-chief. During the eleventh century France was little more than a geographical expression: its political unity was a mere shadow: its ecclesiastical unity was independent of the crown. But in the twelfth century two movements began [Sidenote: Progress of the French monarchy.] which were destined to exert the most decisive influence on the fortunes of France: the rise of the communes, and the growth of the royal power. There was no formal alliance between the crown and the bourgeoisie, but they had obvious common interests in opposition to the feudal nobles, and they rendered the most vital assistance to each other. Feudalism, attacked both from above and from below, seemed destined to perish. The three kings who dealt the most fatal blows to aristocratic isolation were Philip Augustus (1180-1223), Louis IX. (1226-1270), and Philip IV. (1285-1314). The third estate rendered its greatest service to the monarchy by giving birth to the class of lawyers. To their superior training and their persistent advocacy of the principles of Roman Law