Bertran de Born is a perfect type of the warlike baron of the middle ages, continually fighting with his neighbours or with his own vassals, and treating the villeins and clowns on his estate with a brutal contempt all the more unpardonable in his case as he openly and deliberately advocates such oppression in his songs. But his warlike ambition was not confined to the squabbles of petty feudal lords. With sword and song he fought in the great political struggles of the time, and the important part he played in the incessant wars of Henry II. of England with the King of France and with his own rebellious sons ought to secure Bertran a place in any comprehensive history of our Angevin kings. As to the exact date of Bertran’s birth the manuscripts contain no information. By inference we find it must have been about the middle of the twelfth century. The old biographers call him Viscount of Autafort, a castle and borough of about a thousand inhabitants in the diocese of Perigord. His manhood fell in a stormy time of external and internal warfare. The marriage of Henry of Anjou, afterwards Henry II. of England, with the divorced faithless wife of the French King was an abundant source of evil to the young adventurer. It is true that the possessions of Aquitain accruing to him from the marriage for the moment added to his power, but in the long run his large dominions in the west and south-west of France tended to divert his attention from the true focus of his strength—England. The tedious quarrels in which his continental possessions involved him with his feudal overlord, the King of France, greatly increased the troubles of his eventful reign. But far more disastrous were the domestic consequences of this ill-assorted union. History and popular myth have combined to depict Eleanor as the prototype of a ruthless termagant. Whatever may have been the provocations of her truant husband—provocations which, by the way, her own conduct hardly justified her in resenting too harshly—the charge remains against her that by her instigation her sons were first incited to rebel against their father. With much trouble and danger to himself Henry had in 1170 induced his English bishops to assist at a prospective coronation of his eldest son and namesake. Two years later the ceremony was repeated, young Henry’s wife, the daughter of King Louis VII. of France, being included, who for reasons unknown had been absent on the former occasion.