Philip I, Count of Flanders

Philip's first crusade

Philip's grandfather Robert I had campaigned in the Holy Land, his uncle Robert II was one of the leaders of the First Crusade and his father Thierry went four times to the Holy Land, participating in the Second Crusade. His father had returned disillusioned from the Holy Land, where on multiple occasions he was forced to hand over his military conquests to local nobility. Hence when Philip took the vow to go on crusade on Good Friday of 1175, he intended to go rather as a pilgrim with limited military ambitions. He embarked on Pentecost 1177 at Wissant with a few Flemish and English knights and arrived in August in Palestine.In the Holy Land, King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem hoped that Philip would take the command of a planned invasion of Egypt, for which purpose the crusaders had allied with the Byzantine Empire. A Byzantine fleet of 150 galleys was waiting at Acre when Philip arrived on 2 August 1177. Philip however did not want to take any responsibilities that would jeopardize his timely return to Flanders, and turned down the offer. He also criticized the campaign as ill-timed since at the time of the year the Nile was at it highest level and would impede operations, and he considered it not wise to invade the place where Saladin had amassed his best troops. Philip and King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem were first cousins, sharing a grandfather, King Fulk, whose daughter from his first marriage, Sibylla of Anjou, was Philip's mother. Baldwin IV was a leper and childless, and offered Philip the regency of the Kingdom of Jerusalem as his closest male relative currently present there. Philip refused this as well, saying he was there only as a pilgrim.

Philip left Jerusalem in October to campaign in the north for the Principality of Antioch, participating in the siege of Harim, a city his father Thierry had helped to conquer in 1158, but was now back in the hands of the Malik of Aleppo. The crusaders thought it would be an easy prey as the city had recently revolted against its king, but the city put up a defence and the crusaders had to lay siege. When Saladin sent reinforcements to the region, the crusaders quickly accepted an offer from the city to lift the siege in return for a ransom. On the conclusion of the siege, Philip considered his duty as crusader fulfilled and left the Holy Land. He returned to Flanders through Constantinople and met the Byzantine emperor Manuel I Komnenos, to whom he promised to broker with the French king a marriage for the emperor's son with a French princess, which resulted in 1180 in the marriage of Alexios II Komnenos and Agnes of France.

Meanwhile, the Byzantine alliance against Egypt was abandoned. In his chronicle Historia rerum in partibus transmarinis gestarum ("History of Deeds Done Beyond the Sea"), William of Tyre, chancellor and archbishop of Tyre, blamed Philip for this failure, but historians agree William did not write in good faith as he was deeply involved in the local politics and was rather trying to excuse his own shortcomings in the affair. William could not accept the famous and battle-experienced count did not want to get involved in the affairs of the Holy Land, and suspected that Philips came merely to Jerusalem to get two of his vassals married to Baldwin's sister Sibylla and half-sister Isabella. William also blamed Philips for the botched campaign against Hakim, accusing him of abandoning the siege without a fight, which was contradicted by Arabian sources. But while Philip only participated in a minor campaign, Baldwin IV defeated Saladin in November at the Battle of Montgisard.

War with France

Philip returned from the holy land in 1179, at which point Louis VII, now sick, named him guardian of his young son Philip II. One year later, Philip of Alsace had his protégé married to his niece, Isabelle of Hainaut, offering the County of Artois and other Flemish territories as dowry, much to the dismay of Baldwin V. When Louis VII died, Philip II began to assert his independence. War broke out in 1180. Picardy and Île-de-France were devastated. King Philip refused to give open battle and gained the upper hand. Baldwin V, at first allied with his brother-in-law, intervened in 1184 on behalf of his son-in-law, King Philip, in support of his daughter's interests. The dispute between Count Philip and Baldwin was encouraged by King Philip, who went so far as to name Baldwin his representative in negotiations with the Count.

Philip's wife, Elisabeth, died in 1183, prompting King Philip II to seize the province of Vermandois on behalf of Elisabeth's sister, Eleonore. Philip then remarried, to Theresa, daughter of Afonso I, the first King of Portugal. Philip gave Theresa a dower that included a number of major Flemish towns, in an apparent slight to Baldwin V. Fearing that he would be surrounded by the royal domain of France and the County of Hainaut, Philip signed a peace treaty with King Philip II and Count Baldwin V on 10 March 1186, recognizing the cession of Vermandois to the king, although he was allowed to retain the title Count of Vermandois for the remainder of his life.

Philip's second crusade

In 1190, Philip took the cross for a second time and joined the Flemish contingents which had already gone to Palestine. After arriving at the Siege of Acre, he was stricken by the epidemic passing through the crusader camp, and died on 1 August 1191. His body was brought back to Flanders by his wife Theresa, who acted as regent during his absence. Philip was buried in Clairvaux Abbey. Since he was unsuccessful in producing an heir with Countess Theresa, he was succeeded by his sister Margaret I and brother-in-law Baldwin IV, count of Hainaut, who became count of Flanders as Baldwin VIII.

Philip had an illegitimate son, Thierry, who went on the Fourth Crusade and married the daughter of Isaac Komnenos of Cyprus.

Legacy

Philip seems to represent the end of one kind of feudal world and the beginning of a new type of sovereignty, put into practice by King Philip: for the first time, a king of France ruled over a count of Flanders. Despite a costly war, the economic expansion of Flanders did not stop, as witnessed by the number of communal charters signed by Count Philip. By the end of his reign, the county had entered into a period of unprecedented prosperity.

Philip was the patron of Chrétien de Troyes while he was writing the last of his five chivalric romances, Perceval, the Story of the Grail. In the opening lines, Chrétien honors Philip for giving him the order to write the "best tale ever told in a royal court", and for providing him with a book that he could use as a base for his Perceval story. The work remained unfinished but due to its ethical and religious themes it is considered his most important one.