Angevin Empire - Geography and Administration

Geography and Administration

At its largest extent, the Angevin Empire consisted of the Kingdom of England, the Lordship of Ireland, the duchies of Normandy, Gascony and Aquitaine (also called Guyenne) as well as of the Counties of Anjou, Poitou, Maine, Touraine, Saintonge, Marche, Périgord, Limousin, Nantes and Quercy. While the duchies and counties were held with various levels of vassalage to the King of France, the Plantagenets held various levels of control over the Duchies of Brittany and Cornwall, the Welsh princedoms, the county of Toulouse, and the Kingdom of Scotland, although those regions were not formal parts of the empire. Further claims were laid over Berry and Auvergne, but these were not fulfilled.

The frontiers were sometimes well known and easy to draw, like the one between the royal Demesne of the King of France and the Duchy of Normandy, while in other places they were not so clear, especially as regards the eastern frontier of Aquitaine where there often was a difference between the frontiers Henry II and, later, Richard I claimed and the ones where their real power ended. One of the most important characteristics of the Angevin Empire was its "polycratic" nature, a term taken from one of the most important political pamphlets written by a subject of the Angevin Empire: the Policraticus by John of Salisbury.

• England was under a rather firm control and was probably one of the most controlled areas. The Kingdom was divided in shires with sheriffes enforcing the common law. A Justiciar was appointed by the King to make his voice respected while he was away. As the kings of England were more often in France than England they used a larger amount of writs than the Anglo-Saxon kings did, curiously this rather helped England than anything else. Under William's rule, Anglo-Saxon nobles were often replaced by Anglo-Norman ones who could not own large expanses of contiguous lands, which made it much harder for them to rise against the King and defend all of their lands in the same time. Earls held a status similar to that of the continental counts. Yet none of them were really strong enough to be a match for the King.

• In Greater Anjou, for instance, two kinds of officials enforced the rule: prévots or seneschals. These were based at Tours, Chinon, Baugé, Beaufort, Brissac, Angers, Saumur, Loudun, Loches, Langeais and Montbazon. However the other places were not administered by the Plantagenets but by other families. For instance Maine was, at first, largely self-ruling and lacked of administration. The Plantagenets made efforts to improve the administration of this land by installing new administrators such as the seneschal of Le Mans. These reforms came too late though and the Capetians were the ones that really took benefits from these reforms after annexing Greater Anjou.
• Gascony was a very loosely administrated region, with officials only stationed in Entre-deux-mers, Bayonne, Dax, as well as on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela and on river Garonne up to Agen. The rest of Gascony was left without an administrator, and was a large area compared to several other provinces. It was very difficult for the Angevin, just like it was for the previous Poitevin dukes, to install their authority over the duchy.

• As for Poitou and Guyenne, the castles were concentrated in Poitou where there were official representatives while in the eastern provinces of Périgord and Limousin there simply were none. Indeed there were lords that ruled these regions as if they were "sovereign princes" and they had powers in fields such as minting coins. Richard the Lionheart himself met his demise in Limousin.
• Normandy was probably one of the most administrated states of the Angevin Empire. Prévots and vicomtes lost of their importance to the advantage of baillis who held both judicial and executive powers. They were introduced in the 12th century in Normandy and organised the country more like the sheriffs did in England. The Ducal authority was strong on the frontier between the Royal Demesne and the Duchy but was more loose elsewhere.
• Ireland was ruled by the Lord of Ireland who had a hard time imposing his rule at first. Dublin and Leinster were Angevin stronghold while Cork, Limerick and Ulster were taken by Anglo-Norman nobles.

In Aquitaine and Anjou although ducal and comital authorities did exist it was not homogeneous. For example, the family of the Lusignans, very powerful in these lands, proved themselves opponents of importance to the Plantagenets.

• Scotland was an independent Kingdom, but after the disastrous campaign led by William the Lion, English garrisons were established in the castles of Edinburgh, Roxburgh, Jedburgh and Berwick in southern Scotland as defined in the Treaty of Falaise.
• Toulouse was held through vassalage by the count of Toulouse but the latter did rarely comply. Only Quercy was directly administrated by the Plantagenets and it remained a contested area for the time being.
• Brittany, a region where nobles were traditionally very independent, was under firm Plantagenet control. Nantes was under undisputed Angevin rule while the Plantagenets often involved themselves in Breton affairs and installed archbishops and imposed authority on the region.
• Wales obtained good terms provided it paid homage to the Plantagenets and recognised them as lords. However it remained almost self-ruling. It supplied the Plantagenets with knives and longbows which England later used with great success.