At ordinary times there were in medieval Europe two groups
of states with separate interests and types of polity. They were divided from
one another by a broad belt of debatable territory, extending from Holland to
the coast of Provence - the northern lands of the Carolingian Middle Kingdom.
To the west lay the monarchies of the Iberian peninsula,
of France, England, and Scotland; connected by their interest in the trade of
the Atlantic seaboard, by a common civilisation in which the best elements were
of French origin, but most of all by their preoccupation with the political
questions arising out of England's claim to a good half of the territory of
France. The rivalry of these two great powers, which dated in a rudimentary
form from the Norman Conquest of England, became acute when Henry II, heir in
his mother's right to England and Normandy, in that of his father to Anjou and
Touraine, married Eleanor the duchess of Aquitaine and the divorced wife of
Louis VII (1152). Developing from one stage to another, it alternately made and
unmade the fortunes of either nation for four hundred years, until Charles VII
of France brought his wars of reconquest to a triumphant conclusion by
crushing, in Guyenne, the last remnants of the English garrison and of the
party which clung to the English allegiance (1453).
