High and Late Middle Ages (10th–15th century)
The Carolingian dynasty ruled France until 987, when Hugh Capet was crowned king of the Franks.[39] His descendants unified the country through wars and inheritance. From 1190, the Capetian rulers began to be referred as "kings of France" rather than "kings of the Franks".[40] Later kings expanded their directly possessed domaine royal to cover over half of modern France by the 15th century. Royal authority became more assertive, centred on a hierarchically conceived society distinguishing nobility, clergy, and commoners.
The nobility played a prominent role in Crusades to restore Christian access to the Holy Land. French knights made up most reinforcements in the 200 years of the Crusades, in such a fashion that the Arabs referred to crusaders as Franj.[41] French Crusaders imported French into the Levant, making Old French the base of the lingua franca ("Frankish language") of the Crusader states.[41] The Albigensian Crusade was launched in 1209 to eliminate the heretical Cathars in the southwest of modern-day France.[42]
From the 11th century, the House of Plantagenet, rulers of the County of Anjou, established its dominion over the surrounding provinces of Maine and Touraine, then built an "empire" from England to the Pyrenees, covering half of modern France. Tensions between France and the Plantagenet empire would last a hundred years, until Philip II of France conquered, between 1202 and 1214, most continental possessions of the empire, leaving England and Aquitaine to the Plantagenets.
Charles IV the Fair died without an heir in 1328.[43] The crown passed to Philip of Valois, rather than Edward of Plantagenet, who became Edward III of England. During the reign of Philip, the monarchy reached the height of its medieval power.[43] However Philip's seat on the throne was contested by Edward in 1337, and England and France entered the off-and-on Hundred Years' War.[44] Boundaries changed, but landholdings inside France by English Kings remained extensive for decades. With charismatic leaders, such as Joan of Arc, French counterattacks won back most English continental territories. France was struck by the Black Death, from which half of the 17 million population died.[45]