Ebles II of Roucy

Ebles II (died May 1103), also called Eble or Ebale, was the second Count of Roucy (1063–1103) of the House of Montdidier. He was the son and successor of Hilduin IV of Montdidier and Alice (Alix), daughter of Ebles I of Roucy. He is famous for his participation in the Reconquista (the war against Muslim Spain), as well as for being one of the unruly barons of the Île-de-France subjugated by King Louis VI while he was still a prince. His life and character are summed up by Suger in his history of the reign of Louis VI: "Ebles was a man of great military prowess—indeed he became so bold that one day he set out for Spain with an army of a size fit only for a king—his feats of arms only made him more outrageous and rapacious in pillage, rape and all over evils."

Spanish crusade of 1073 On 30 April 1073 Pope Gregory VII authorised a new crusade against the Muslims in Spain. (The Barbastro Crusade of a decade earlier had failed to achieve anything lasting.) In the bull, addressed to "all the princes [rulers] in the land of Spain", Gregory asserted Papal suzerainty over the Iberian peninsula—"we believe the kingdom of Spain to have been from antiquity the rightful property of Saint Peter"—and informed them that he had ceded this right to Ebles of Roucy. The negotiations between Ebles and the Holy See had been conducted by Gregory as legate before he became Pope on 22 April, and his letter makes clear there had been prior letters between Ebles and Pope Alexander II. Ebles made a pact (pactio) with the Holy See whereby the lands he conquered in Spain would be held by him as a Papal fiefdom "for the honour of Saint Peter". Four fragments of bulls issued by Alexander granting the plenary indulgence for engaging in a holy war have been customarily dated to the campaign against Barbastro (1063–64) but may belong to that of Ebles.

Ebles was probably a relative of Sancho Ramírez, King of Aragon, both descending from the Dukes of Aquitaine. On 25 May Sancho Garcés IV, the ruler of Navarre, and his neighbour, Ahmad al-Muqtadir, the ruler of Zaragoza, concluded an alliance by treaty against the planned crusade. For reasons unknown, the crusade never took place, or at least left no record of its accomplishments, which must in any case have been meagre. According to one historian, the crusade may have been frustrated by Gerald of Ostia, Papal legate, Cardinal and Cluniac, as part of the efforts of the Abbey of Cluny to support the Kingdom of León–Castile in its rivalry with the Kingdom of Aragon. The Papacy under Alexander and Gregory supported the king of Aragon, and at least some of Alfonso VI of Castile's actions in 1073 can be seen as a response to the projected crusade. His son, the future Louis VI, received two or three complaints and gathered an army of seven hundred knights "from the most noble and valiant of French lords" and entered the district of Reims, where he fought Ebles "vigorously" for the next two months, resting his army only on Saturdays and Sundays. Louis made war on all the barons of the region because they were allied by family ties to Ebles, who he describes as "the great men of Lotharingia". Ebles, respecting his previous oaths, refused to make war on the prince. After Louis destroyed the blockade of Montaigu, the allies turned on him. The princely army and the army of Ebles and Enguerrand menaced each other with trumpets and spear-rattling across a river for two days before the prince impetuously charged (provoked, Suger, says, by the taunts of an enemy jongleur who entered his camp). Impress by Louis's bravery, the rebels made their peace.

Around 1082 Ebles donated his section of the road at Mortcerf to the abbey of Saint-Martin at Pontoise.

Anna Komnene, in the Alexiad, records the marriage of the youngest daughter of Robert Guiscard to a certain Eubulus, a "very illustrious count". This daughter was Sybilla, the wife of Ebles of Roucy.