to revolt. This process began as soon as they were reaching adulthood when Louis made the grant of lands to Henry's eldest son an essential feature of the Peace of Montmirail in 1169, and it continued in Richard's reign when his brother John was similarly encouraged to revolt. Equivalent steps were taken in respect of Henry's other subjects; in the settlement following the great revolt of 1173-4 against Henry, Louis made it an article of peace that the rebels should not be deprived of their lands.
In a number of ways the tide was running in favour of the Capetians. Their position as Henry's overlord and their upholding of the rights of his vassals meant that hostilities generally occurred on their initiative and not his, on his territories and not theirs. The Angevins had to be strong everywhere and for much of the time, whereas the Capetians could use their resources more sparingly, deciding the time and place of attack, sapping the will to resist by wasting lands. The Angevins depended heavily on their English resources to finance their campaigns and Richard I drew heavily upon them after Philip had taken advantage of his absence on crusade and his captivity in Germany to secure some key Norman fortresses. But the crusade and Richard's ransom had already strained those resources, and heavy inflation in England, coupled with difficulty in adjusting revenues accordingly, was beginning to put the English king at a disadvantage. This was accentuated by Philip's acquisition of Artois, Amiens, and Vermandois as a result of his marriage to Isabella of Hainault and the more efficient exploitation of his demesne. The famine of 1194-7 hit his war effort as it did Richard's, but the economic revival in the demesne had not reached the point, as it had in England, at which overpopulation produced inflation and brought heavy pressure to bear on the nexus of relations between kings, lords, and their vassals. Here too fortune favoured the late developer.
The twelfth century saw the emergence of a more secular, utilitarian, concept of rule which evaluated the deeds of a ruler in terms of the benefits they brought to his people, and classified them as tyrannical when harm resulted instead. In
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