Louis VII (1120 – 18 September 1180), called the Younger or the Young (French: le Jeune),

was King of the Franks from 1137 to 1180. He was the son and successor of King Louis VI, hence
his nickname, and married Duchess Eleanor of Aquitaine, one of the wealthiest and most powerful
women in western Europe. The marriage temporarily extended the Capetian lands to the Pyrenees,
but was annulled in 1152 after no male heir was produced.
Immediately after the annulment of her marriage, Eleanor married Henry Plantagenet, Duke of
Normandy and Count of Anjou, to whom she conveyed Aquitaine and produced five male heirs.
When Henry became King of England in 1154, as Henry II, he ruled as king, duke or count over
a large empire of kingdoms, duchies and counties that spanned from Scotland to the Pyrenees.
Henry's efforts to preserve and expand on this patrimony for the Crown of England would mark the
beginning of the long rivalry between France and England.
Louis VII's reign saw the founding of the University of Paris and the disastrous Second Crusade.
Louis and his famous counselor, Abbot Suger, pushed for a greater centralization of the state and
favoured the development of French Gothic architecture, notably the construction of Notre-Dame de
Paris.
He died in 1180 and was succeeded by his son Philip II.

Early years[edit]
Louis was born in 1120 in Paris,[citation needed] the second son of Louis VI of France and Adelaide of
Maurienne. The early education of Prince Louis anticipated an ecclesiastical career. As a result, he
became well-learned and exceptionally devout, but his life course changed decisively after the
accidental death of his older brother Philip in 1131, when he unexpectedly became the heir to the
throne of France. In October 1131, his father had him anointed and crowned by Pope Innocent
II in Reims Cathedral.[1][2] He spent much of his youth in Saint-Denis, where he built a friendship with
the Abbot Suger, an advisor to his father who also served Louis well during his early years as king.

Early reign[edit]
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Following the death of Duke William X of Aquitaine, Louis VI moved quickly to have his son married
to the newly ascended Duchess Eleanor, William X's successor, on 25 July 1137.[3] In this way, Louis
VI sought to add the large, sprawling territory of the duchy of Aquitaine to his family's holdings in
France. On 1 August 1137, shortly after the marriage, Louis VI died, and Louis VII became king. The
pairing of the monkish Louis and the high-spirited Eleanor was doomed to failure; she reportedly
once declared that she had thought to marry a king, only to find she had married a monk. There was
a marked difference between the frosty, reserved culture of the northern court in the Íle de France,
where Louis had been raised, and the rich, free-wheeling court life of the Aquitaine with which
Eleanor was familiar.[3] Louis and Eleanor had two daughters, Marie and Alix.[3]
In the first part of his reign, Louis VII was vigorous and zealous in his prerogatives. His accession
was marked by no disturbances other than uprisings by the burgesses of Orléans and Poitiers, who
wished to organise communes. He soon came into violent conflict with Pope Innocent II, however,
when the archbishopric of Bourges became vacant. The king supported the chancellor Cadurc as a
candidate to fill the vacancy against the pope's nominee Pierre de la Chatre, swearing upon relics
that so long as he lived, Pierre should never enter Bourges. The pope thus imposed
an interdict upon the king.
Louis VII then became involved in a war with Theobald II of Champagne by permitting Raoul I of
Vermandois, the seneschal of France, to repudiate his wife, Theobald II's sister, and to
marry Petronilla of Aquitaine, sister of the queen of France. As a result, Champagne decided to side
with the pope in the dispute over Bourges. The war lasted two years (1142–1144) and ended with
the occupation of Champagne by the royal army. Louis VII was personally involved in the assault
and burning of the town of Vitry-le-François.[4] At least 1500 people who had sought refuge in the
church died in the flames.[4]Overcome with guilt and humiliated by ecclesiastical reproach, Louis
admitted defeat, removed his armies from Champagne and returned them to Theobald. He accepted
Pierre de la Chatre as archbishop of Bourges and shunned Raoul and Petronilla. Desiring to atone
for his sins, he declared his intention of mounting a crusade on Christmas Day 1145 at
Bourges. Bernard of Clairvaux assured its popularity by his preaching at Vezelay on Easter 1146.

Géza II of Hungary and Louis VII of France. Image from the Hungarian Chronicon Pictum (14th century).

In the meantime, Geoffrey V, Count of Anjou, completed his conquest of Normandy in 1144. In
exchange for being recognised as Duke of Normandy by Louis, Geoffrey surrendered half of the
county of Vexin — a region vital to Norman security — to Louis. Considered a clever move by Louis
at the time, it would later prove yet another step towards Angevin rule.
In June 1147, in fulfillment of his vow to mount the Second Crusade, Louis VII and his queen set out
from the Basilica of St Denis, first stopping in Metz on the overland route to Syria. Soon they arrived
in the Kingdom of Hungary, where they were welcomed by the king Géza II of Hungary, who was
already waiting with King Conrad III of Germany. Due to his good relationships with Louis VII, Géza
II asked the French king to be his son Stephen's baptism godfather. Relations between the
kingdoms of France and Hungary continued to remain cordial long after this time: decades later,
Louis's daughter Margaret was taken as wife by Géza's son Béla III of Hungary.[5] After receiving
provisions from Géza, the armies continued the march to the East. Just beyond Laodicea, the
French army was ambushed by Turks. The French were bombarded by arrows and heavy stones,
and the Turks swarmed down from the mountains. Then a massacre began. The historian Odo of
Deuil reported:
During the fighting the King Louis lost his small and famous royal guard, but he remained in good
heart and nimbly and courageously scaled the side of the mountain by gripping the tree roots [...]
The enemy climbed after him, hoping to capture him, and the enemy in the distance continued to fire
arrows at him. But God willed that his cuirass should protect him from the arrows, and to prevent
himself from being captured he defended the crag with his bloody sword, cutting off many heads and
hands.

Raymond of Poitiers welcoming Louis VII in Antioch.

Louis VII and his army finally reached the Holy Land in 1148. His queen Eleanor supported her
uncle, Raymond of Antioch, and prevailed upon Louis to help Antioch against Aleppo. But Louis VII's
interest lay in Jerusalem, and so he slipped out of Antioch in secret. He united with King Conrad III
of Germany and King Baldwin III of Jerusalem to lay siege to Damascus; this ended in disaster and
the project was abandoned. Louis VII decided to leave the Holy Land, despite the protests of
Eleanor, who still wanted to help her doomed uncle Raymond. Louis VII and the French army
returned home in 1149.

A shift in the status quo[edit]

The expedition to the Holy Land came at a great cost to the royal treasury and military. It also
precipitated a conflict with Eleanor that led to the annulment of their marriage.[6] Perhaps the
marriage to Eleanor might have continued if the royal couple had produced a male heir, but this had
not occurred.[3] The Council of Beaugencyfound an exit clause, declaring that Louis VII and Eleanor
were too closely related for their marriage to be legal,[3] thus the marriage was annulled on 21 March
1152. The pretext of kinship was the basis for annulment, but in fact, it owed more to the state of
hostility between Louis and Eleanor, with a decreasing likelihood that their marriage would produce a
male heir to the throne of France. On 18 May 1152, Eleanor married the Count of Anjou, the future
King Henry II of England. She gave him the duchy of Aquitaine and bore him three daughters and
five sons. Louis VII led an ineffective war against Henry for having married without the authorization
of his suzerain. The result was a humiliation for the enemies of Henry and Eleanor, who saw their
troops routed, their lands ravaged, and their property stolen.[3] Louis reacted by coming down with a
fever and returned to the Ile-de France.
In 1154, Louis VII married Constance of Castile, daughter of King Alfonso VII of Castile. She also
failed to supply him with a son and heir, bearing only two daughters, Margaret and Alys. By 1157,
Henry II of England began to believe that Louis might never produce a male heir, and that the
succession of France would consequently be left in question. Determined to secure a claim for his
family, he sent his chancellor, Thomas Becket, to press for a marriage between Margaret and
Henry's heir, Henry the Young King. Louis agreed to this proposal, and by the Treaty of Gisors
(1158) betrothed the young pair, giving as a dowry the Norman city of Gisors and the surrounding
county of Vexin.
Louis VII receiving clergymen, from a late medieval manuscript.

Louis VII was devastated when Constance died in childbirth on 4 October 1160. As he was
desperate for a son, he married Adela of Champagne just 5 weeks later. To counterbalance the
advantage this would give the king of France, Henry II had the marriage of their children (Henry "the
Young King" and Margaret) celebrated at once. Louis understood the danger of the growing Angevin
power; however, through indecision and a lack of fiscal and military resources in comparison to
Henry II, he failed to oppose Angevin hegemony effectively. One of his few successes was a trip to
Toulouse in 1159 to aid Raymond V, Count of Toulouse, who had been attacked by Henry II: after
he entered into the city with a small escort, claiming to be visiting his sister, the Countess, Henry
declared that he could not attack the city while his liege lord was inside, and went home.