It is with a sure instinct that Michelet has contrasted the fashion of the great seals of the Plantagenets with those of the Capets. The demon race of Anjou are seen fully armed, mounted, and charging, while the kings of France have no need of war horse, armour, or weapons, but are sitting enthroned, holding the orb and sceptre, full of the calm consciousness of power admitted and acknowledged. I repeat once more that the time had almost nothing of our idea of nationalities; nevertheless, as we have seen in the first chapter, its currents were setting strongly in favour of the central kingships, and especially in favour of the kings of France. Even in the matter of the Albigensian crusade, we shall see the Capets, and with them the national unity, profiting quite as much as the Church from the conclusion of the struggle. Now, in 1204, there reigned at Paris a great man, Philip, whose surname Augustus of itself recalled Rome. His character was a little detached and remote, bent altogether upon making real the great shadowy power that was lawfully his by virtue of his office. Like his father and grandfather, he was a friend to merchants and wayfaring men, a mighty slayer of bandits, and a protector of the new Municipal Communes. Like all his ancestors, he allied himself with the Church. Like some of his ancestors, and like a true Frenchman, he might quarrel bitterly with the Pope, when there was a petticoat in the business, but in spite of his dabbling in bigamy on the modern American plan, in the matter of his second marriage he remained the “eldest son of the Church” and the staunchest champion of the Papacy in Europe, and in his alliance with the Church he received quite as much as he gave.