part this came from the study of history, in part it was a result of the blows which had been dealt to the older theocratic view in the Investiture Contest, but it was also a reflection of the way in which princes had regularized their rule, defining the obligations due to them but also recognizing the rights of their subjects. The crown had persistently if sporadically involved itself in this process through its readiness to hear the complaints of men against their lords. Here was another process which worked in favour of the Capetians, for it limited the freedom of the Angevins to deal as they might with their vassals, and at the same time encouraged those vassals to believe that there could be no wrong in supporting the king against their lord if that lord abused his position.
Little of this was evident when Richard died in 1199. Nobody could have foreseen that the bulk of the Angevin lands would have been forfeited to the French crown within five years, least of all Philip Augustus who fortified Paris and set scholars to work to counter a prophecy that the Capetians would rule France for only seven generations, his own being the seventh. This, perhaps, was the final advantage which fate dealt him; since the true nature of his strength was not fully apparent his enemies played all the more readily into his hands.
Finally, some mention should be made of political developments in Scandinavia and in the three eastern European states, Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary. In each case the principal factor which determined their history came from outside these societies rather than internally, the eastern states through the development of a powerful neighbour to their west in Germany, the Scandinavian through the reduction of opportunities for freebooting in either east or west, and through the cessation of the supply of plunder and Islamic silver which had fuelled its most formidable expeditions during the ninth and tenth centuries.
Of the eastern kingdoms, it was Hungary which least suffered from the attentions of its western neighbour, and
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