When the Carolingian dynasty died out in 987, Hugh Capet, comte de Paris and duc de France, began the Middle Ages with the establishment of the Capetian dynasty. In 1154 the annulment of Eleanor of Aquitaine's marriage to Louis VII of France and her subsequent marriage to Henry II of England placed the western half of France under English control, and vestiges of that power remained for centuries. Meanwhile, vast forests and swamps were cleared (often by the Middle Ages' hardest-working ascetics, Cistercian monks), the population grew, Gothic cathedrals were begun, and monastic life contributed to every level of a rapidly developing social order. Marriages created alliances among the ruling families and doubled the size of the territory controlled from Paris, a city increasingly recognized as the country's capital. Philippe II (reigned 1179-1223) infiltrated more prominent families with his genes than anyone else in France, successfully marrying members of his family into the Valois, Artois, and Vermandois. He also managed to win Normandy and Anjou back from the English.
Louis IX (St. Louis) emerged as the 13th century's most memorable king, though he ceded most of the military conquests of his predecessors to the English. Somewhat of a religious fanatic, he died of illness (with most of his army) in 1270 in a boat off Tunis. The vainglorious and not-very-wise pretext for his trip was the Eighth Crusade. At the time of his death, Notre-Dame and the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris had been completed, and the arts of tapestry making and stonecutting were flourishing.
During the 1300s, the struggle of French sovereignty against the claims of a rapacious Roman pope tempted Philip the Fair to support a pope based in Avignon. (The Roman pope, Boniface VIII, whom Philip insulted and then assaulted in his home, is said to have died of the shock.) During one of medieval history's most bizarre episodes, two popes ruled simultaneously, from Rome and from Avignon. They competed for control of Christendom until political intrigue turned the tables in favor of Rome, and Avignon relinquished its claim in 1378.
The 14th century saw an increase in the wealth and power of the French kings, an increase in prosperity, and a decrease in the power of the feudal lords. The death of Louis X without an heir in 1316 prompted more than a decade of scheming and plotting before the eventual emergence of the Valois dynasty.
The Black Death took hold in 1348, killing an estimated 33% of Europe's population, decimating the population of Paris, and setting the stage for the exodus of the French monarchs to safer climes in such places as the Loire Valley. A financial crisis, coupled with ruinous harvests, almost bankrupted the nation.
During the Hundred Years' War, the English made sweeping inroads into France in an attempt to grab the throne. At their most powerful, they controlled almost all of the north (Picardy and Normandy), Champagne, parts of the Loire Valley, and the huge region called Guyenne. The peasant-born charismatic visionary Joan of Arc rallied the French troops as well as the timid dauphin (crown prince), whom she managed to have crowned Charles VII in the cathedral at Reims. As threatening to the Catholic church as she was to the English, she was declared a heretic and burned at the stake in 1431. Led by the newly crowned king, a barely cohesive France initiated reforms that strengthened its finances and vigor. After compromises among various factions, the French drove the discontented English out, leaving them only the Norman port of Calais.
In the late 1400s, Charles VIII married Brittany's last duchess, Anne, unifying France with its Celtic-speaking western outpost. In the early 1500s, the fascinating François I, through war and diplomacy, strengthened the monarchy, rid it of its dependence on Italian bankers, coped with the intricate policies of the Renaissance, and husbanded the arts into a form of patronage that French monarchs continued to endorse for centuries.
Meanwhile, the growth of Protestantism and the unwillingness of the Catholic church to tolerate it led to civil strife. In 1572, Catherine de Médici ordered the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre of hundreds of Protestants. Henri IV, tired of the bloodshed and fearful that a Catholic Spain would meddle in the religious conflicts, converted to Catholicism in 1593. Just before being stabbed by a half-crazed monk, he issued the Edict of Nantes in 1598, granting freedom of religion to Protestants in France.
