CHAPTER SEVEN CONCLUSION: HENRY THE SOLDIER Henry II won his vast domains through a variety of means. By 1154, he was lord over England, Anjou, and Normandy, bringing the lat- ter back to the English crown after Stephen had essentially lost it. While his marriage to Eleanor gave him Aquitaine, he was forced to fight for personal control over Poitou, Bordeaux, Gascony, and other lands south of the Loire River. He held Touraine by virtue of his homage to the count of Blois and also had a claim to Maine, which was said to have been granted to the count of Anjou by Hugh Capet.1 Henry received the county of Nantes in 1158, became duke of Brittany in 1166, and led a series of campaigns into both Berry, to the east of Touraine, and the Vexin. With the Atlantic coast under the rule of one man, trade increased between England and the Continent and Gascon wine flagons became common sights in the Isles.2 Henry had ambitions there as well: through three cam- paigns he received the homage of the princes in Wales, in 1157 King Malcolm IV (1153–1165) of the Scots paid him homage for lands in the north, and in 1171 Henry launched the first English expedition to Ireland. In the West only the Holy Roman Empire was comparable in size and wealth, but the Plantagenet certainly had a more successful military career than his counterpart Frederick Barbarossa (1152–1190). In comparison, the kingdom of France was quite small, and it would not be until after Henry’s death that the Capetians managed to retake most of the western Continent.3 Both Louis VII and Philip II were forced to settle for Henry’s homage, which by the later twelfth century was little more than a symbolic 1 Norgate, England under the Angevin Kings, I: 440–41 and 140–2; see also the more recent R. E. Barton, Lordship in the County of Maine, c. 890–1160 (Woodbridge, 2004), 32 and 120. 2 J. Dunbabin, France in the Making, 843–1180, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 2000), 346–7. 3 One contrary view holds that the revenues of Louis VII were greater than all of Henry II’s domains combined; see J. F. Benton, “The Revenue of Louis VII,” Speculum 42 (1967): 84–91, esp. 91. 222 chapter seven gesture, and could only look with perhaps a bit of envy upon what has been dubbed by some modern historians the Angevin Empire. The term ‘Angevin Empire’ is a matter of great debate.4 The problem, as Henry’s finest biographer W. L. Warren points out, is that the term implies not only a series of provinces and kingdoms welded together into a unified whole but also that Henry himself thought of his lands in such terms. The weld holding the lands together, argues Warren, was little more than Henry’s feudal lord- ship, and once he was dead fragmentation ensued. Were the col- lected lands an Empire of Britain; was Henry a king or an emperor? From early on, Charles Haskins attacked the notion of the latter by pointing out that no one thought of Henry as an emperor and his lands in no way resemble any other Western empire in history; like- wise, in the medieval documents no one ever employed the phrase ‘Angevin Empire.’ Therefore, the term is an invention of historians that bears little resemblance to the truth. Haskins was only partially correct in his analysis. There is indeed no evidence that Henry thought of himself as an emperor—the titles on his Great Seal read “REX ANGLORUM” and “DUX NORM(annorum et) AQUIT(ano- rum) et COM(es) ANDEG(avorum).”5 He is referred to by these titles in sources as well, and none of his charter salutations refer to an empire. Yet something led the poet to remark in La Chronique de Jordan Fantosme: “he is the most honourable and the most victorious king who ever was anywhere on earth since the time of Moses, save only Charlemagne.”6 Fantosme specifically calls Henry a king, but his example operates metaphorically by stirring memories of the Carolingian king who was, by virtue of his great deeds and faith, crowned emperor by Pope Leo III in 800.7 4 Frank Barlow considers the ‘Empire’ to have been present after Henry’s tak- ing of Brittany in 1166; see The Feudal Kingdom of England, 275. See also the inter- esting essay by R. V. Turner, “The Problem of Survival for the ‘Angevin Empire’: Henry II’s and his Sons’ Vision versus Late Twelfth-Century Realities,” AHR 100 (1995): 78–96. 5 Warren, Henry II, 228–9; C. H. Haskins, The Normans in European History (New York, 1915), 86–7. For the Great Seal, see Warren’s title page. 6 Fantosme, 10: “Seignurs, en la meie fei, merveille est mult grant / Pur quei li suen demeine le vunt si demenant, / Le plus honurable e le plus cunquerant / Que fust en nule terre puis le tens Moysant, / Fors sulement li reis Charle, ki poeste fu grant / Par les dudze cumpaignuns, Olivier e Rodlant.” 7 Martin Aurell has lately argued that contemporaries did think the Plantagenet lands constituted an empire; see M. Aurell, L’empire des Plantagenêt, 1154–1224 (Paris, 2003), 11..