Eleanor of Aquitaine who had brought Louis and France so handsome a dowry proved a wife whose conduct her husband could not countenance, though he loved her with a stern fondness. Their marriage was annulled. Within a few months Eleanor married Henry Plantagenet who became Henry II of England and she gave her new husband possessions in France which, added to those which he already had as lord of Normandy, Brittany, Anjou and Maine, made him richer in French lands than the king to whom he owed allegiance. Then began the friction between the two countries which it has required centuries to still. Louis was twice married after his separation from Eleanor. His last wife was Alix or Adelaide of Champagne, whose marriage, consecration and coronation on a November day in 1160 were the ceremonies of the last brilliant scene enacted within the walls of the ancient Merovingian church of Notre Dame, soon to be replaced by the building which ennobles the Cité to-day. After Louis’ death there came to the throne a king for whom the bird-sellers of the Pont au Change might properly have sent forth double the usual number of feathered messengers of gladness, for Philip the Great was to make France understand for the first time the spirit of nationality, and under him Paris was to develop into the brain that ordered the members. CHAPTER V PARIS OF PHILIP AUGUSTUS In Philip Augustus (1180-1223) was reincarnated Charlemagne’s wide-seeing spirit, and now it appeared at a time when it was possible to turn vision into fact. Charlemagne saw the value of a united nation under a centralized power but conditions were not ripe for the fulfillment of his vision. Philip Augustus was alert in taking advantage of the beginning made by Louis VI toward establishing the supremacy of the king and in availing himself of certain feudal rights which previous monarchs had not been strong enough to enforce. He insisted that his vassals, great lords all of them, should submit themselves to his court; that they should take him as arbiter of their disputes; that they should ask his confirmation, as suzerain, of any privileges that they granted to their vassals; and that they should make no changes in their fiefs which should lessen their value to him. As suzerain the king was heir to fiefs which fell vacant for any reason, and he acted as guardian for the many minor children orphaned in the constant quarrels in which the nobles engaged. A strong grasp of all these hitherto unurged rights gave Philip a power that enabled him to repress the disorders of the country, and sounded the note for the downfall of feudal home rule which could not live harmoniously with power centralized in the monarch.