Philip, Count of Flanders

Philip of Alsace (1143 – August 1, 1191) was count of Flanders from 1168 to 1191. He succeeded his father Thierry of Alsace.

Count of Flanders
His reign began in 1157, while he acted as regent and co-count for his father Thierry, who was frequently away on crusade. He defeated Floris III, Count of Holland and stopped the piracy; Floris was captured in Bruges and remained in prison until being ransomed in 1167, in exchange for recognition of Flemish suzerainty over Zeeland. By inheritance, Philip also recovered for Flanders the territories of Waes and Quatre-Métiers.

In 1159 Philip married Elisabeth of Vermandois, also known as Isabelle, elder daughter of count Raoul I of Vermandois and Petronilla of Aquitaine. The same year as his father died (1168), his wife inherited a major portion of Vermandois. This pushed Flemish authority further south, at its greatest extent thus far, and threatened to completely alter the balance of power in northern France.

Philip governed wisely with the aid of Robert d'Aire, whose role was almost that of a prime minister. They established an effective administrative system, and Philip's foreign relations were excellent: he mediated in disputes between Louis VII of France and Henry II of England, between Henry II and Thomas Becket, and arranged the marriage of his sister Margaret with Baldwin V, Count of Hainaut.

Philip and Elisabeth were childless. In 1175, Philip discovered Elisabeth was committing adultery, and had her lover, Walter de Fontaines, beaten to death. Philip then obtained complete control of her lands in Vermandois from King Louis VII of France. Philip's brothers Matthew and Peter also died without surviving children, so in 1177 he designated Margaret and Baldwin as his heirs, before going on crusade.

Philip's first crusade
In the Holy Land, Philip hoped to take part in a planned invasion of Egypt, for which purpose the crusaders had allied with the Byzantine Empire. A Byzantine fleet of 150 galleys was waiting at Acre when Philip arrived on August 2. Philip had other plans, however: he and King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem were first cousins, sharing a grandfather, King Fulk, whose daughter from his first marriage, Sibylla of Anjou, was Philip's mother.

Baldwin IV was a leper and childless, and offered Philip the regency of the Kingdom of Jerusalem as his closest male relative currently present there. Philip refused both this and the command of the army of the kingdom, saying he was there only as a pilgrim. Instead Baldwin appointed Raynald of Chatillon, to whom Philip would act as an assistant. As William of Tyre says, "this being the situation, the count at last revealed the secret thought of his mind and did not try to conceal to what end all his plans were." He had come to have his own vassals married to his cousins, Baldwin's sister Princess Sibylla and half-sister Princess Isabella.

Sibylla's husband William of Montferrat had just died, leaving her pregnant with the future Baldwin V; William of Tyre, who was the chief negotiator in this dispute, told the count it would be improper to marry her off again so soon. According to the chronicle of Ernoul, Philip was also rebuffed by Raymond III of Tripoli, who also claimed the regency, as well as Raymond's supporters from the Ibelins, who hoped to marry the princesses into their own family. Baldwin of Ibelin insulted the count in public, and Philip left Jerusalem in October to campaign in the north for the Principality of Antioch, participating in an unsuccessful siege of Harim before returning home. Meanwhile, the Byzantine alliance against Egypt was abandoned, but in November, Baldwin IV and Raynald defeated Saladin at the Battle of Montgisard.

War with France
Philip returned from Palestine in 1179, and Louis VII, now sick, named him guardian of his young son Philip II. The count had Philip II married to his niece, Isabelle of Hainaut, with an imprudently disproportionate dowry: the County of Artois. When Louis VII died, Philip II began to assert his independence. War broke out in 1180 and Picardy and the Ile-de-France were devastated; King Philip refused to give open battle and gained the upper hand, and Baldwin of Hainaut, at first allied with his brother-in-law Count Philip, soon intervened on behalf of his son-in-law the King, in support of his daughter's interests. The dispute between Count Philip and Baldwin was encouraged by King Philip, who went so far as to name Baldwin his representation in negotiations with the Count.

Count Philip's wife Elisabeth died childless in 1183, and King Philip seized Vermandois on behalf of Elisabeth's sister, Eleonore. Philip then married Teresa of Portugal, daughter of Afonso I of Portugal, first king of that country, and Maud of Savoy. Teresa arrived with a large dowry, but this marriage was also childless. Fearing that he would be surrounded by the royal domain of France and the County of Hainaut, Philip signed a peace treaty with his enemies on March 10, 1186, recognizing the cession of Vermandois to the king, although he was allowed to retain the title Count of Vermandois for the remainder of his life.

Philip's second crusade and death
In 1190 Philip took the cross for a second time and joined the Flemish contingents which had already gone to Palestine. After arriving at the Siege of Acre, he was stricken by the epidemic passing through the crusader camp, and died on August 1, 1191. His body was brought back to Flanders by his wife, who acted as regent during his absence, and Philip was buried in Clairvaux Abbey. He was succeeded by his sister Margaret and his brother-in-law Baldwin of Hainaut.

Legacy
Philip seems to represent the end of one kind of feudal world, and the beginning of a new type of sovereignty, put into practise by King Philip: for the first time, a king of France ruled over a count of Flanders. However, despite a costly war, the economic expansion of Flanders did not stop, as witnessed by the number of communal charters signed by Count Philip, and by the end of his reign the county had entered into a period of unprecedented prosperity.

Philip also acted as patron for Chrétien de Troyes while he was writing his last romance, Perceval, the Story of the Grail. In the opening lines, Chrétien praises Philip for providing him with the book he adapted into the "best tale ever told in a royal court". The work is unfinished, and was obviously begun sometime before Philip's death.