Chapter 29

How he restrained the count of Auvergne from attacking the bishop of Clermont

At about the same time, the bishop of Clermont in the Auvergne[1], a man of upright character and a distinguished defender of his church, was struck down and battered by the pride of the Auvergnats, both a modern and an ancient phenomenon, for it was said of them, ‘The men of Auvergne dare to claim themselves as brothers to the Latins.’[2] He fled to the king and explained the lamentable plight of his church, that the count of Auvergne[3] had occupied the city and, with the complicity of the dean, had tyrannically fortified the cathedral of Notre Dame. He threw himself at the king’s feet, thought the king tried to prevent him, and entreated him with supplications to free the enslaved church and to restrain this furious tyranny with the sword of the king’s majesty. 

Accustomed as he was to giving very prompt assistance to churches, Louis willingly took up the cause of God, despite the great expense involved. Because he could not reform the tyrant by words or letters under the royal seal, he hastened to do it by deed, collected his military forces and led a large French army against recalcitrant Auvergne.[4] On his arrival at Bourges[5] he met various great men of the kingdom, all owing service to the crown[6], and intent on inflicting vengeance on the Auvergnats for the injury done to the church and the King: Fulk, the bellicose count of Anjou, Conan, the very powerful count of Brittany, the noble count of Nevers and many others, making up a substantial force.[7] They ravaged the enemy territory and, as they approached the city of Clermont, the Auvergnats abandoned their castles perched high on the mountain tops and came into the city for protection, because it was very well fortified. 

The French mocked their naivety, and on reflection decided to postpone their march to the city, and thus forced them either to abandon Clermont for fear of losing their castles, or to stay there and consume their provisions. The French diverted to an excellent castle at Le Pont on the river Allier.[8] They pitched their tents round about, ravaged both the plain and the mountain sides, and as they seized the excellently fortified summits of the mountains, seeming in their boldness like giants reaching for the sky, they acquired booty in superfluity, not only of flocks but also of shepherds. They brought up siege engines to the keep of the castle, and by the force of millstones and a rain of arrows compelled them to surrender after much slaughter. When the news reached those who were holding the city, they were struck by fear, and in the expectation that a similar or worse fate would happen to them, they prepared to take flight, came out of the city and left it to the king’s pleasure. The king, victorious in everything, restored the church to God, the towers to the clergy and the city to the bishop, then made peace between them and the count, guaranteeing the treaty with oaths and many hostages.[9]

But less than five years later, the peace was broken by the light-hearted treachery of the counts of Auvergne. Further disaster struck the bishop and his church, the bishop again made his complaint to the king.[10] Scorning to plead exhaustion from his previous futile mission, Louis collected an army even larger than the last one and went back into Auvergne. His body was already heavy, weighed down by a mass of flesh.[11] Any other man be he never so poor, subjected to such a dangerous corpulence, neither would not have ridden. But despite his many friends’ objections, he was filled with marvellous courage and cheerfully bore the summer heats of June and August, which even young men hate, laughing at those who could not bear them. But when crossing the marshes on narrow paths, he often had to let himself be carried on the strong arms of his soldiers. On this expedition there were present Charles, the very powerful count of Flanders, Fulk, count of Anjou, the count of Brittany, an army from Normandy in tribute from the English king Henry[12], and enough barons and magnates of the kingdom to have conquered even Spain.

Crossing by the dangerous entry into Auvergne for there were castles that barred the way, he came to Clermont. When he turned his army against the weak castle of Montferrand[13] opposite the town, the knights who were charged with its defence were so frightened by the splendid French army so unlike their own, and so astonished at the splendour of their hauberks and helmets gleaming in the sun, that they stopped short at the mere sight, abandoned the outer defences and fled, just in time for them, into the keep and its outer bastion[14]. But when the houses in the abandoned area had been set on fire, the flames reduced to cinders everything except the keep and its defence. That day the great heat from the sudden destruction of the town obliged us to pitch our tents outside; but the next day, as the flames died down, we took them inside. 

Early that morning the king had achieved something which filled us with delight though it saddened our enemies. Because our tents were pitched very close to one side of the tower, throughout the whole night they endlessly harassed us with many attacks and a constant stream of arrows and spears so bad that, despite the protection afforded by armed men posted between us and them, we had to shelter under our shields. The king ordered the excellent knight and outstanding baron Amaury de Montfort to set men in ambush at an angle to the bastion, so that they could not return to it unharmed. Skilled in such matters, Amaury and his men armed themselves in their tents and then, with all the speed of their horses they charged at an angle against the enemy, while our men pinned them down, and took some of them by surprise; these they at once sent to the king. When they pleaded to be allowed to ransom themselves at high sums, the king ordered that each should lose a hand and that thus mutilated they should be sent back to their allies within, each carrying his fist in his other fist.

After this, terrified by this treatment, the others left us in peace. While the siege machines and engines which had been built remained in place, the whole of Auvergne lay at the will and discretion of the army. Then Duke William of Aquitaine[15] arrived at the head of a large force of Aquitanians. From the mountains where he had pitched camp he saw the French forces gleaming on the plain, was amazed by the great size of the army, in his impotence he regretted his intention to fight it, and sent messengers of peace to the king. Then he came himself, to talk with Louis as his lord. His oration ran thus: ‘Your duke of Aquitaine, my lord king, salutes you many times and wishes you all honour. Royal majesty in its eminence ought not to disdain to receive the duke of Aquitaine’s service, not to preserve his rights; for if justice requires the service of vassals, it also requires that lords be just. Because the count of Auvergne holds Auvergne from me, as I hold it from you, if he commits a crime I have the duty of making him appear at your court on your command. I have never prevented him from doing this. Indeed now I offer to make him appear, and humbly beg you to accept the offer. To remove from your highness any cause to doubt me, I can give many suitable hostages. If the barons of the kingdom judge thus, so let it be; if they judge otherwise, let it be as they judge.’[16] When the king had deliberated with the barons, at the dictate of justice he accepted fidelity, the oath and a sufficiency of hostages, and restored peace to the countryside and to the churches. Then he named a day to settle the affair at Orleans in the presence of the duke of Aquitaine, a condition they had thus far refused and collecting together his army with honour, he returned as victor to France. 

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[1] Aimeri was bishop of Clermont from 1111 to 1150. He had been abbot of La Chaise-Dieu.

[2] Lucan, De bello civili, I, 427

[3] William VI, count of Auvergne 1096-1136. He was born c.1069 and married Emma de Hauteville, daughter of Roger I, count of Sicily.

[4] This expedition against William VI of the Auvergne is treated out of chronological order as it occurred in 1122: ibid, Luchaire, Louis VI le Gros, Annales de son vie et de son règne, n° 318. It took Louis far from Paris, about 230 miles south to Clermont-Ferrand.

[5] He arrived at Bourges a little before 3^rd August 1122: ibid, Luchaire, Louis VI le Gros, Annales de son vie et de son règne, n° 317.

[6] Actually ‘debtors of the king’.

[7] The expedition into the Auvergne included three counts: Fulk of Anjou, Conan of Brittany (count since 1112 and mentioned for the first time as helping Louis) and William of Nevers. All three were to join the host at Reims in 1124. Suger uses the expression ‘regni debitores’ for them and other members of the force implying some sort of feudal obligation.

[8] Pont-du-Chateau, Puy-de-Dome is eight miles east of Clermont-Ferrand and is the southernmost point that Suger describes Louis as having gone.

[9] The expedition to the south in 1122 came after the unsatisfactory conclusion of his most recent problems with Henry I (chapter 26). Louis had some justification to be pleased with this result and a document in 1122 refers to him in Paris with his magnates triumphant over his enemies and in possession of a glorious peace.

[10] The second expedition probably occurred in the summer of 1126 and certainly before 2^nd March 1127 when the count of Flanders who accompanied Louis was killed. If the word ‘lustrum’ is used in its precise sense of a period of five years (though it can also have the sense of ‘four years’), dating the expedition to 1126 accords well with that of 1122 for Louis’ first expedition to the south.

[11] This is the first clear reference to Louis’ weight: see chapters 31 and 33 for additional ones.

[12] This was the first and only time that Henry I sent troops to serve on a French royal campaign and relations between the two monarchs was more amicable than it had been for years. The main reason for this was that Henry I had to make his mind up about the succession, something he had delayed doing since the death of William Adelin in the White Ship in late 1120. Louis VI had long been William Clito’s most powerful supporter and, as William was a possible successor Louis did not want to make any moves against the Anglo-Norman state while the issue remained unresolved. The news that Henry had decided in favour of his daughter Matilda and that oaths were sworn to her in 1^st January 1127 led to an immediate reaction from Louis. By the end of January, Louis had married his wife’s half-sister to Clito and given him a lordship in the French Vexin. This is discussed fully in Hollister, C. Warren, ‘The Anglo-Norman Succession Debate of 1126: Prelude to Stephen’s Anarchy’, Journal of Medieval History, vol. i, (1975), pp. 19-36, reprinted in ibid, Monarchy, Magnates and Institutions in the Anglo-Norman World, pp. 145-170.

[13] The castle of Montferrand is today in the north-east of the town of Clermond-Ferrand. It was built at the end of the tenth century and dominated the area.

[14] In French, the outer bastion is called ‘la chemise du donjon’.

[15] William X, duke of Aquitaine (1126-1137) and VIII count of Poitou was the son of William IX (22^nd October 1071-10^th February 1126) and Audearde of Burgundy (1050-1104) who she married in 1068. He was born in 1099 and died at Saint-Jacques de Compostelle, in Spain on 9^th April 1137. He married Eleanor of Chatellerault in 1121. His only son, William died young. His elder daughter, Eleanor (1122-1204) married Louis VI’s son Louis in 1137. We know little of his second daughter Petronille other than she died in April 1153.

[16] The duke’s words, as reported by Suger, stated an important principle: the count of the Auverge is a vassal of the duke of Aquitaine but because the duke himself is a vassal of the king, the count is ultimately answerable to the king. The concept is important in the recovery of royal power by the Capetians in the twelfth century and such a clear acceptance of it by a major vassal so distance from Paris is significant. This statement demonstrates the existence, at the beginning of the twelfth century that genuine feudal duties limited the relationship between the regional lords and the Crown.

Chapter 28

With what valour he repelled the Emperor Henry's attempted invasion of the kingdom

But let us return to our aim, which is to write a history of the king. The Emperor Henry long nourished a grievance against King Louis because it was in his kingdom, at the council of Reims[1] that Pope Calixtus had excommunicated him. So before Pope Calixtus’s death, he collected together an army from wherever he could of Lotharingians, Germans, Bavarians, Swabians, and even Saxons although he was facing attacks from them, and pretended to send them in the other direction. But with the counsel of King Henry of England, whose daughter was his queen[2], and who had already taken the offensive against Louis, he planned to launch an unexpected coup against Reims and destroy it as the lord pope had done to him at the session of the council.[3]

When the plan was revealed to King Louis by his intimate friends, bravely and boldly he summoned a levy for which he did not wait and then he called up his nobles and explained to them the state of affairs[4]. Since he recognised, both because he had often been told and because he had experienced it, that St. Denis was the special patron and after God the singular protector of the kingdom, he hastened to his church to implore him from the bottom of his heart, with prayers and gifts, that he would defend the kingdom, safeguard his person and repel the enemy in his customary fashion. Then since the French have the special privilege that, when their kingdom is invaded from without, they may place the saint’s and defender's relics, with those of his companions, on the altar to defend them, this was done in the king’s presence with solemnity and devotion. Then the king[5] took from the altar the banner belonging to the county of the Vexin, which he held in fief of the church, and in accordance with his vow received it as if from his lord[6]. At the head of a handful of men to protect him, he flew off against the enemy, calling on the whole of France to follow him in strength. The unusual courage of the enemy stirred up righteous anger and inspired in the French their usual bravery; moving everywhere it called out knightly levies, and produced men and forces mindful of their past courage and their past victories.

From all sides we met together in strength at Reims. So large a force of knights and foot-soldiers turned up that they seemed to cover the surface of the earth like locusts, engulfing not only the river banks but also the mountains and the plains. The king waited for a whole week for the German incursion, and after the magnates had debated the affair, this was proposed: ‘Let us boldly cross to them, in case they should return unpunished from their proud act of audacity against France, the mistress of the lands. Their defiance should meet with its deserts not in our land but in theirs, which belongs to the French. Thus we would publicly return to them the evil that they plotted to inflict secretly on us.’

But others, with the gravity born of experience, persuaded them to wait longer for the enemy. When they had crossed the frontier, they could be intercepted, cut off from flight, thrown down, vanquished and slain without mercy like Saracens, their barbarous bodies left unburied, exposed to their eternal shame for the wolves and crows; such slaughter and cruelty would be justified by the need to defend the country.

Inside the palace the magnates of the realm were organising the battle lines in the king’s presence and deciding which forces should be joined together to help which. They made one corps from the men of Reims and Chalons, comprising more than sixty thousand knights and foot-soldiers; the men of Laon and Soisson, equally numerous, formed a second; those of Orleans, Étampes and Paris, with the large force from St-Denis, devoted to the crown, formed the third[7]. In hope of help from his protector, the king joined this one, explaining: ‘I shall fight both safely and bravely in this corps because, in addition to the help of our saintly lords, these are my fellow countrymen among whom I grew up well known to them; as long as I live they will help me, and if I die they will keep my body and carry it home.’

Although he was engaged with his uncle the English king in making was on Louis, the count palatine Theobald with his noble uncle Hugh, count of Troyes, answered the call of France and made up a forth corps[8], while the fifth, composed of the duke of Burgundy and the count of Nevers, took the vanguard. Raoul, noble count of Vermandois, the king’s cousin, outstanding both in his birth and in his chivalry, was sent to hold the right wing, with a large force from St. Quentin and the whole neighbourhood, helmeted and armed with mail[9]. The king approved the decision that the men of Ponthieu, Amiens and Beauvais should hold the left wing[10]. The most noble count of Flanders[11] with ten thousand men eager for battle, he would have tripled his army had he known earlier, was selected as the rearguard. These barons all came from lands bordering on the king’s. But William, duke of Aquitaine[12], the noble count of Brittany[13], and the bellicose count Fulk of Anjou rivalled them in zeal to punish harshly the insult against France.[14]

It was also decided that, wherever the army engaged in battle, provided the ground was suitable, wagons and carts carrying water and wine for the weary or wounded should be placed in a circle, like a castle, so that those whose wounds obliged them to withdraw from the battle could recover their strength by drinking and by applying bandages, that they might return to the fray with renewed force. 

The emperor heard the news of the preparations for this great and terrifying expedition and of the service of so great an army of strong men.[15] Using ruse and dissimulation to hide the real reason for it, he fled secretly, and stole off in the other direction, preferring to put up with the ignominy of retreat rather than expose his empire and his person, already in danger of ruin, to the harshest reprisals of the French.[16] When the French heard this, only the prayer of the archbishops and religious could with difficulty prevent them from devastating his kingdom and oppressing its poor inhabitants. 

Having gained such a great and famous victory, as great as or greater than if they had triumphed in the field, the French went home. The joyful and grateful king came most humbly to his protectors, the saintly martyrs, and gave great thanks to them after God, and restored to them with devotion his father’s crown which he had unjustly retained[17], for by right all crowns of dead kings belong to them. He most willingly returned the external Lendit fair held in the square, the one within the burg already belonged to the saints[18] and solemnly granted, confirmed by royal precept, the whole vicaria[19] between the limits marked by the crosses and the marble columns that were set up to resist the enemy like the pillars of Hercules[20]. During the whole time in which the army was called up for war, the sacred and venerable silver caskets in which lay the relics of the saints remained on the main altar. Night and day the brothers celebrated a continuous office in their honour, and crowds of devout people and pious women came to pray for assistance for the army. The king in person carried on his own shoulders his lords and patrons, and in tears like a dutiful some he put them back in their usual place. Then he rewarded them for the assistance he had received on this and other occasions, with gifts of land and other comforts.

But the German emperor was humbled by this episode and lost strength from day to day, then died[21] before the year was out, thus proving the truth of the ancient adage[22]: anyone, either noble or commoner, who disturbs the peace of the kingdom or the church, and causes by his claims the relics to be placed on the altar, will not survive more than a year but die without delay or before the year is out. 

The English king had been an accomplice of the German, making war against Louis with Count Theobald, and conspiring to ravage or to occupy the frontier bordering his lands while the king was absent.[23] But he was repelled by one single baron, Amaury de Montfort a man with an unfaltering appetite for war, supported by the army of the Vexin. So having gained little or nothing, Henry withdrew, his hopes frustrated. 

Neither in this modern age or in antiquity has France ever accomplished a more heroic act or more gloriously demonstrated its power than when, joining all the forces of its members together, at one and the same moment she triumphed over the German emperor and, in Louis’s absence, the English king. After this, the pride of his enemies was snuffed out, ‘the land was silent in his sight’[24], and those of his opponents whom he could reach returned to their homes in grace, having given him their hands in friendship. ‘Who denies his just demands yields everything to the man with his arms held at the ready.’[25]

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[1] The council at Reims took place in October 1119.

[2] Henry V married Henry’s daughter Matilda in January 1114. After his death, she married Geoffrey Plantagenet, count of Anjou.

[3] Ekkehard d’Aura, a German chronicler wrote that the aim of the expedition was to support Henry I in his war for control of Normandy.

[4] Henry V was in Worms on 25^th July 1124. On the subject of Louis’ meeting with his knights, the compiler of Manuscript F provides several important details: ‘Some argued that they should wait for the enemy, saying that it was easier to get the better of them in the heart of the kingdom while others maintained that they should fortify the estates and garrison the walled places. But the king, fearing the violence of the Germans, afraid that damage could not be repaired if the way into the kingdom was left unprotected and recognising that there was no time to put in place defences for the cities and towns said: ‘It is not enough that I must proceed. I must call without delay a levee of knights and place them on the frontier of the kingdom, like an unshakeable wall to await the enemy’.’

[5] This took place around 3^rd August 1124. The ceremony is related in a diploma of Louis VI that fails to mention the presence of Suger. This standard was originally the banner of the counts of Vexin, vassals of the abbey of St-Denis but was increasingly conflated with the oriflamme of Charlemagne. Spiegel, Gabrielle M., ‘The Cult of Saint Denis’, Journal of Medieval History, vol. i, (1975), printed in her The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography, London, 1997, p. 154 argues that ‘..the Oriflamme had the quality of a corporate image. In handing it over to Louis VI, Suger gave the monarchy a symbol of collective unity hithero lacking, but one which retained its distinctive association with the cult of St Denis. As the special ensign of St Denis, the Oriflamme represented his spiritual leadership, as Suger declared over ‘all France’.’ Only Manuscript F calls it the ‘auriflamma’.

[6] Louis had been made count of the Vexin in 1092: ibid, Luchaire, Louis VI le Gros, Annales de son vie et de son règne, n° 4. Suger asserts that in 1124, in a full chapter of St-Denis, Louis had stated that he held the county as a fief of St-Denis and that if he had not been king he would have performed homage. According to Manuscript F, Louis declared that he would be required to make an act of homage to the church had not his royal office prevented him. These statements are stronger than the wording of the passage in Suger’s Vita but do not contradict it. It has been said that Suger forged a charter shortly after 1124 according to which Charlemagne gave all France to St-Denis: Barroux, Robert, ‘L’abbé Suger at la vassalité du Vexin en 1124’, Le moyen age, vol. lxiv, (1958), pp. 1-26 but the evidence for this position is not strong. By contrast, Van de Kieft, C., ‘Deux Diplômes faux de Charlemagne pour Saint-Denis au XII^e siecles’, Le Moyen Age, vol. xiii, (1958), p. 432 believes that it could not have been written before 1156 and sees Suger’s successor Odo de Deuil as the major force in its fabrication. Ibid, Spiegel. Gabrielle M., ‘The Cult of Saint Denis’, printed in her The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography, pp. 155-157 examines the importance of this forged charter or ‘Donation’ of Charlemagne in which he decreed that all kings, archbishops and bishops should venerate the monastery as the ‘caput omnium ecclesiarum regni’ (head of all the churches of the realm) and its abbot as Primate of France. In addition, Charlemagne declared that he himself held France in fief from God and the holy martyr and that henceforth the kings of France should be crowned at St-Denis and leave the insignia of their office at the abbey. The Donation asserted that St-Denis had a territorial right to France, a right to consecrate the French kings as against the claims of Reims, the position as treasurer of the royal insignia (ultimately achieved) and primacy over the French church. The language used in the charter is feudal in character and closely resembles Suger’s account of Louis VI’s assumption of the Oriflamme in 1124 when Louis also declared himself as a vassal of the saint calling the abbey the ‘caput regni nostri’.

[7] The compiler of Manuscript F gives the precise figures: ‘Ten thousand men’.

[8] Manuscript F says ‘with eight thousand’.

[9] Manuscript F says ‘with seven thousand’. The duke of Burgundy was Hugh II Borel (1102-1142) and the count of Nevers was William II (1100-1148).

[10] Manuscript F says ‘with similar numbers’.

[11] Charles the Good had been count of Flanders since 1119.

[12] William ‘the Young’ (1086-1126) was seventh count of Poitou and ninth duke of Aquitaine.

[13] Conan III (1112-1148) was called ‘the Fat’.

[14] Moreover, Fulk V was clearly reconciled with Henry I in May 1119 and Brittany was increasing within the English sphere of influence.

[15] The compiler of Manuscript F added here an interesting detail: ‘Already, with the king, they had marched to the frontiers of the kingdom and when the Germans approached in disorderly groups, they killed nearly ten thousand.’

[16] The retreat began on 14^th August and according to Manuscript F it was preceded by French attacks on his position. Ekkehard d’Aura gave two reasons for this: ‘The emperor only had a few of his troops with him because the Germans did not willingly attack foreign countries. Also, the people of Worms, with the help of Duke Frederick and contrary to the wishes of the emperor, had restored their bishop to his see and had fortified it in anticipation of a revolt within the walls of their town.’ Otto of Friesing stated that Henry went as far as Metz but retired when he learned that the people of Worms were already in revolt.

[17] This is an error. Louis did give the crown of his father to the abbey of St-Denis but the charter was in 1120, before 3^rd August in the presence of Conan the papal legate. The error was perhaps partly motivated by Suger wishing this event occurred in his abbacy rather than his predecessor Adam.

[18] Levillain, L., ‘Essai sur les origins du Lendit’, in Revue historique, vol. clv, (1927), pp. 241-267 argues that the fair belonging to the monks that was held inside the burg, had its origins in the feast held on 8^th June 1048 in honour of the relics received by the abbey in the previous year. The external fair, perhaps a result of the growth of the other was probably created by Louis VI between 1110 and 1112. It was held on plain of Saint-Denis, to the east of the Roman road on land by then royal. The two fairs became confused after 1213 with the profit of the Lendit of the plain. Lombard-Jourdan, Anne, ‘Les foires de Saint-Denis’, Bibliothèque de l’Ecole des Chartres, vol. xclv, (1987), pp. 273-338 deals with Louis’ renunciation of the fair.

[19] The ‘vicariam omnimodan’ was a right of justice that Louis VI had already given to Saint-Denis in 1120. In 1124, he only confirmed this gift making clear its limitations. This error can be linked with the erroneous dating of the return of Philip’s crown. In both cases, there appears to be a manipulation of the evidence to highlight Louis’ grateful feelings towards St-Denis on his successful return from Reims.

[20] This is a further error. It was when Louis VI took the oriflamme before he left for Reims that Saint-Denis profited from his generosity. The king fixed the limits of the justice of the abbey from one side of the River Seine ‘from the mill vulgarly called ‘Baiard’’ to the other side ‘to the top of the town called Aubervilliers’, land encompassing the two parishes of Saint-Denis and La Courneuve. The marble columns are noted in several medieval acta and nearly all existed in the seventeenth century.

[21] Henry V died at Utrecht on 23^rd May 1125.

[22] The origin of this is unknown.

[23] Orderic Vitalis wrote that Henry I’s campaign preceded the German invasion by several months. On 26^th March 1124, near Bourghthéroulde he captured by surprise Galeran, count of Meulan and his two brothers-in-law who supported William Clito. As for Amaury de Montfort he took Rougemoutier in April or May 1124 and made peace abandoning the cause of William Clito.

[24] Maccabees I, 1, 3. This was a formula familiar to Suger.

[25] Lucan, De bello civili, I, 348-349