her my life, nor my kingdom would thenceforth be
aught to me." The marriage took place at Bordeaux, at the end of July,
1137, and, on the 8th of August following, Louis the Young, on his way
back to Paris, was crowned at Poitiers as Duke of Aquitaine. He there
learned that the king, his father, had lately died, on the 1st of August.
Louis the Fat was far from foreseeing the deplorable issues of the
marriage, which he regarded as one of the blessings of his reign.

In spite of its long duration of forty-three years, the reign of Louis
VII., called the Young, was a period barren of events and of persons
worthy of keeping a place in history. We have already had the story of
this king's unfortunate crusade from 1147 to 1149, the commencement at
Antioch of his imbroglio with his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and the
fatal divorce which, in 1152, at the same time that it freed the king
from a faithless queen, entailed for France the loss of the beautiful
provinces she had brought him in dowry, and caused them to pass into the
possession of Henry II., King of England. Here was the only event, under
Louis the Young's reign, of any real importance, in view of its long and
bloody consequences for his country. A Petty war or a sullen strife
between the Kings of France and England, petty quarrels of Louis with
some of the great lords of his kingdom, certain rigorous measures against
certain districts in travail of local liberties, the first bubblings of
that religious fermentation which resulted before long, in the south of
France, in the crusade against the Albigensians--such were the facts
which went to make up with somewhat of insipidity the annals of this
reign. So long as Suger lived, the kingship preserved at home the wisdom
which it had been accustomed to display, and abroad the respect it had
acquired under Louis the Fat; but at the death of Suger it went on
languishing and declining, without encountering any great obstacles. It
was reserved for Louis the Young's son, Philip Augustus, to open for
France, and for the kingship in France, a new era of strength and
progress.

Philip II., to whom history has preserved the name of Philip Augustus,
given him by his contemporaries, had shared the crown, been anointed, and
taken to wife Isabel of Hainault, a year before the death of Louis VII.
put him in possession of the kingdom. He was as yet only fifteen, and
his father, by his will, had left him under the guidance of Phili