It was a _mariage
de convenance_, and, as is sometimes the case with such marriages,
it turned out very inconveniently for both parties to it. It was not
unfruitful, but all the fruit it produced was bad, and to the husband
and father that fruit became the bitterest of bitter ashes. No
romancer would have dared to bring about such a scries of unions as
led to the creation of Plantagenet royalty, and to so much misery
as well as greatness. There is no exaggeration in Michelet's lively
picture of the Plantagenets. "In this family," he says, "it was a
succession of bloody wars and treacherous treaties. Once, when King
Henry had met his sons in a conference, their soldiers drew upon him.
This conduct was traditionary in the two Houses of Anjou and Normandy.
More than once had the children of William the Conqueror and Henry II.
pointed their swords against their father's breast. Fulk had placed
his foot on the neck of his vanquished son. The jealous Eleanora, with
the passion and vindictiveness of her Southern blood, encouraged her
sons' disobedience, and trained them to parricide. These youths, in
whose veins mingled the blood of so many different races,--Norman,
Saxon, and Aquitanian,--seemed to entertain, over and above the
violence of the Fulks of Anjou and the Williams of England, all the
opposing hatreds and discords of those races.
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