of France.

The profligate conduct of Queen Eleanor, who accompanied her royal consort, led to serious political conditions.
Louis appealed to the pope, who consented to the divorce he desired.
This proved simply an exchange of thrones for the fascinating Eleanor.
Henry II.

of England, already the possessor of immense estates in France, inherited from his father, realized that with Aquitaine, Queen Eleanor's dowry, added to his own, and these again to Normandy, a marriage with the divorced wife of his rival would make him possessor of more than three times the size of the domain controlled by the French king.
The marriage was solemnized in 1152, and France saw her war with the feudal barons overshadowed by the fight for her very life with England, who had fastened this tremendous grasp upon her kingdom.
The first truly great Capetian king came with this emergency.

Philip Augustus, son of Louis VII., in the year 1180, when only fifteen years of age, seized the reins with the hand of a born ruler.

Before he was twenty-one he had broken up a combination of feudal barons against him.
Then he turned to England.