r of the Emperor Conrad the
Salic, the other of the Emperor Henry III., were so far from happy that
in 1051 he sent into Russia, to Kieff, in search of his third wife, Anne,
daughter of the Czar Yaroslaff the Halt. She was a modest creature who
lived quietly up to the death of her husband in 1060, and, two years
afterwards, in the reign of her son Philip I., rather than return to her
own country, married Raoul, count of Valois, who put away, to marry her,
his second wife, Haqueney, called Eleonore. The divorce was opposed at
Rome before Pope Alexander II., to whom the archbishop of Rheims wrote
upon the subject, "Our kingdom is the scene of great troubles. The
queen-mother has espoused Count Raoul, which has mightily displeased the
king. As for the lady whom Raoul has put away, we have recognized the
justice of the complaints she has preferred before you, and the falsity
of the pre-texts on which he put her away." The Pope ordered the count
to take back his wife; Raoul would not obey, and was excommunicated; but
he made light of it, and the Princess Anne of Russia, actually
reconciled, apparently, to Philip I., lived tranquilly in France, where,
in 1075, shortly after the death of her second husband, Count Raoul her
signature was still attached to a charter side by side with that of the
king her son.

The marriages of Philip I. brought even more trouble and scandal than
those of his father and grandfather. At nineteen years of age, in 1072,
he had espoused Bertha, daughter of Florent I., count of Holland, and in
1078 he had by her the son who was destined to succeed him with the title
of Louis the Fat. But twenty years later, 1092, Philip took a dislike to
his wife, put her away and banished her to Montreuil-sur-Mer, on the
ground of prohibited consanguinity. He had conceived, there is no
knowing when, a violent passion for a woman celebrated for her beauty,
Bertrade, the fourth wife, for three years past, of Foulques le Roehin
(the brawler), count of Anjou. Philip, having thus packed off Bertha,
set out for Tours, where Bertrade happened to be with her husband.
There, in the church of St. John, during the benediction of the baptismal
fonts, they entered into mutual engagements. Philip went away again;
and, a few days afterwards, Bertrade was carried off by some people he
had left in the neighborhood of Tours, and joined him at Orleans. Nearly
all the bishops of France, and amongst others the most learned and