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The minority governments of Henry III, Henry (VII) and Louis IX compared

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2012

Christian Hillen
Affiliation:
Cologne
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Summary

Sunday 27 July 1214 was a hot day. And it was a decisive day in European history. It was the day of the battle of Bouvines which the French king Philip Augustus won against the superior combined German-English forces of Emperor Otto IV and William of Salisbury, King John's half brother. The battlefield of Bouvines brought together kings, nobles and knights from three different societies or kingdoms – nations, if the word can be used in a thirteenth-century context – whose structures, customs, laws and history varied, but who were to suffer a very similar fate not too long after this battle: all three kingdoms were to be ruled by a minor.

King John of England would die on the night of 27 to 28 October 1216 and leave his realm and his problems, resulting largely from the outcome of the battle of Bouvines, to his barely nine-year-old son Henry III. He must have been very worried about the future of his dynasty, since he took a number of measures shortly before his death to secure Henry's succession. His Capetian rival over the Angevin possessions on the continent, King Louis VIII of France, on the other hand, left twelve-year-old Louis IX – Saint Louis as he was to be called from 1297 on – a relatively well-ordered realm. He did not seem to be too worried about his son's succession, since he would not have him crowned before his own death.

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Chapter
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Thirteenth Century England XI
Proceedings of the Gregynog Conference, 2005
, pp. 46 - 60
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2007

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