France had grown rich much during the thirteenth century: supported by the good government of Louis saint, industry and the trade had quickly developed.

The roads had become surer, tolls cheaper, the easier communications.

Troyes, Layered branches, Saint-Denis, Beaucaire, had famous fairs in the whole world.

Marseilles, La Rochelle, Harfleur were very flourishing ports.

This prosperity unfortunately stopped under Philippe the Beautiful one, because it increased the taxes and especially because it proscribed the Jews and Lombards, which were the bankers of the Middle Ages.

The defeat of Courtrai or the gold Spurs had due the presumption to the nobility: jealous of the bravery of the communal militia which fought in front of them, the knights crossed their lines and sprang au.grand.galop, but they had not seen a deep channel, cut à pic, which crossed into two the battle field: carried by their dash, they went to collapse the ones there on the others: in one moment the channel was filled; the disorder was put in the remainder of the army; the ones fled, the others fought with heroism, but were massacred by the Flemings (July 1302).

The three sons of Philippe the Beautiful one, Louis, Philippe and Charles were armed knights the same day.

The king of England Édouard, which had married Isabelle, girl of Philippe the Beautiful one, was invited to the ceremony, and the festivals lasted one week; the middle-class men of Paris organized cavalcades, mimes and all kinds of entertainments: "the Queen of England was avoided in a turret with several injuries and damoiselles, and they liked this festival extremely, and turned to great honor to king de France and people of Paris"

Templiers, at the same time monks and templiers, had been instituted to fight the Inaccurate ones into Ground-Holy.

But when the time of the crusades had passed, they remained organized in the various countries of Europe as they had been in Palestine; nouveau riches by donations, brave, disciplined, blindly submitted to their Large-Master, they could become dangerous for the royalty.

In France, their principal monastery was the Temple, castle extremely now destroyed, but which left its name with the district.

Since the eleventh century, where Gregoire VII had forced the emperor of Germany, Henri IV, to ask him for forgiveness barefoot out of dress of penitent, the Pope had allotted the right to judge the kings and the emperors, to dictate his wills to them and to punish their disobedience, as if they had been his vassal.

At the thirteenth century Innocent III had excommunicated the king of France Philippe Auguste, the emperor of Germany Otton of Brunswick and the king of England Jean without Ground; Innocent IV had formed against the emperor Frederic II of Hohenstaufen and against its partisans Gibelins, a formidable league, and its work had been completed under its successor Urbain IV by the defeat of Gibelins and the ruin of Hohenstaufen.

Boniface VIII attacks Philippe the Beautiful one, but the French royalty was enough strong to defend its independence.

Philippe the Beautiful one declared that it recognized of another sovereign only God, and humiliated Boniface was the last large pope of the Middle Ages.

Its seven successors established in Avignon were, so to speak, only the servants of the kings de France (1305-1378).

The Church was then torn during seventy years by a schism, i.e.

there were at the same time two rival popes, one in Rome, the other in Avignon.