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Interet Medieval Sourcebook Selected Sources: England

"This text is part of the Internet Medieval Source Book. The Sourcebook is a collection of public domain and copy-permitted texts related to medieval and Byzantine history."

links to Medieval maps and images 

The subject of The Life of King Louis the Fat  was Louis VI, the first important Capetian king of France, who reigned from 1108 to 1137.  Louis's main achievement was to consolidate royal power within the Ile-de-France by suppressing the castellans who dominated the royal domain lands. (The term "castellan" refers to a noble who possessed one or more castles.) Louis's success owed much to an alliance he forged between the French monarch and the great Churchmen (bishops and abbots) and the leading townsmen of northern France.  Suspicious of the power of his barons, Louis used clergy and burghers rather than great nobles as royal administrators. His efforts to establish peace and maintain order facilitated the development of agriculture, trade and intellectual activity in the Ile-de-France. Under his rule, Paris began its expansion which would make it by 1200 the greatest Christian city north of the Alps. The following excerpts describe Louis's military actions against the "robber barons" of the Ile-de-France and the King of England Henry I (r.1100-1135).