Angevin Empire

Historians use the name Angevin Empire for the great cluster of lands gathered by the House of Plantagenet in the second half of the twelfth century: the English crown, Normandy, Anjou, Aquitaine and a string of other French counties, with claims stretching into Wales, Scotland and Ireland. It was assembled by Henry II from 1154 and largely lost by his son John between 1202 and 1214. Its rivalry with the Capetian kings of France shaped Anglo-French relations for centuries.

The counts of Anjou had long competed with the dukes of Normandy and Brittany for power in north-western France. In 1128 Count Geoffrey "Plantagenet" married Matilda, daughter and designated heir of Henry I of England. When Stephen of Blois seized the English throne in 1135, a long civil war followed. Geoffrey took Normandy for himself, entering Rouen in 1144, and passed the duchy to his son Henry in 1150. On Geoffrey's death in 1151 Henry also became count of Anjou, Maine and Touraine.

In 1152 Henry married Eleanor of Aquitaine, only weeks after her marriage to Louis VII of France had been annulled, and so gained the vast duchy of Aquitaine. A treaty with Stephen then made Henry his heir, and when Stephen died on 25 October 1154, Henry was crowned king of England.

No one at the time called these lands an empire. The term was coined by the historian Kate Norgate in 1887, and many scholars dispute it, since the Plantagenets claimed no imperial title and held each territory under its own separate title. In France they ruled as dukes and counts and owed homage to the French king. Some historians prefer to speak of a commonwealth or a family estate. Henry himself planned to share the lands among his sons: Richard received Aquitaine, Geoffrey became duke of Brittany, and John was made lord of Ireland, which Anglo-Norman lords had begun to conquer from 1169.

Each region kept its own customs. England, with its shires, sheriffs and exchequer, was the most firmly governed. A justiciar acted for the king during his long stays on the continent, and the court spent much of its time at Chinon and Angers. The French lands were run by seneschals with lesser officials beneath them. Henry was famous for moving rapidly from one province to another.

Tension with France was constant. Henry's quarrel with Archbishop Thomas Becket, who was murdered in 1170, damaged his standing, and in 1173 his own sons and wife joined Louis VII in a great revolt, which Henry defeated. After 1180 the young Philip II of France proved a far more dangerous opponent. Richard I spent much of his reign defending his French lands and had recovered most of Normandy before he died of a crossbow wound in April 1199.

John faced a rival claim from his nephew Arthur of Brittany. His marriage to Isabella of Angoulême provoked the Lusignan family to appeal to Philip II, who in 1202 declared John's French fiefs forfeit. Arthur vanished while in John's custody, Normandy surrendered in June 1204, and Anjou and Touraine fell soon after. John's attempt to win them back ended when his German allies were beaten at the Battle of Bouvines on 27 July 1214, and the Truce of Chinon that September confirmed the losses. Only Gascony, part of Poitou, England and Ireland remained.

The surviving lands in south-western France kept the two crowns entangled, and the quarrel resurfaced in the Hundred Years' War of 1337 to 1453. In Normandy, institutions shaped under Angevin rule lasted until the French Revolution.

Our 1200 map shows the Angevin Empire at its height, stretching from England to the Pyrenees, beside the much smaller royal domain of the Kingdom of France.