Chapter 18 Part 5 of Volume 2 of a Popular History of France from the Earliest Times. Volume 2 of a Popular History of France from the Earliest Times by François Grisot translated by Robert Black, Chapter 18, The Kingship in France Part 5. Throughout all France, and even outside of France, the passions of religion and ambition were aroused at this summons to the Crusade against the Alpigencians. Twelve abbots and twenty monks of Sittot dispersed themselves in all directions preaching the Crusade, and lords and knights, burgers and peasants, laymen and clergy, hastened to respond. From near and far they came, says the contemporary poet-connachter William of Tudela, there be men from Auvergne and Burgundy, France and Limouson, there be men from all the world, there be Germans, Poitavins, Gascons, Rourga and Saint-Hongaise. Never did God make scribe who whatsoever his pains could set them all down in writing, in two months or in three. The poet reckons, twenty thousand horsemen armed at all points, and more than two hundred thousand villains and peasants, not to speak of burgers and clergy. A less exaggerative, though more fanatical, writer, Peter of Val-sur-Nay, the chief contemporary chronicle of this Crusade, contends himself with saying that, at the Siege of Carcassonne, one of the first operations of the Crusaders, it was said that their army numbered fifty thousand men. Never may be the truth about the numbers. The Crusaders were passionately ardent and persevering. The war against the Albigensians lasted fifteen years, from twelve-or-eight to twelve-twenty-three, and of the two leading spirits, one ordering and the other executing, Pope Innocent III and Simon de Montfort, neither saw the end of it. During these fifteen years, in the region situated between the Rhône, the Pyrenees and the Garonne, and even the Dôdoine, nearly all the towns and strong castles—Besier, Carcassonne, Carcassonne-Nodouille, Lavaux, Gaillac, Moissay, Minerv, Therm, Toulouse, etc.—were taken, lost, retaken, given over to pillage, sack, and massacre, and burnt by the Crusaders with all the cruelty of fanatics and all the greed of conquerors. We do not care to dwell here in detail upon this tragical and monotonous history. We will simply recall some few of its characteristics. Doubt has been thrown upon the answer attributed to Arnault-Almaurie, Abbott of Citeau, when he was asked, in twelve-oh-nine, by the conquerors of Bezier, Hau, at the assault of the city, they should distinguish the heretics from the faithful. Slay them all. God will be sure to know his own. The doubt is more charitable than reasonable, for it is a contemporary, himself a monk of Citeau, who reports without any comment this hateful speech. Simon de Montfort, the hero of the Crusade, employed similar language. One day two heretics, taken at Castra, were brought before him. One of them was unshakable in his belief. The other expressed a readiness to turn convert. Burn them both, said the Count. If this fellow mean what he says, the fire will serve for expiation of his sins and, if he lie, he will suffer the penalty for his imposture. At the siege of the castle of Lavar, in twelve-eleven, Ammari, Lord of Montréal, and eighty knights, had been made prisoners. And the noble Count Simon, says Peter of Bolsenay, decided to hang them all on one gibbet, but when Almaurie, the most distinguished among them, had been hanged, the gallows' poles, which, from too great haste, had not been firmly fixed in the ground, having come down. The Count, perceiving how great was the delay, ordered the rest to be slain. The pilgrims, therefore, fell upon them right eagerly and slew them on the spot. Further, the Count caused stones to be heaped upon the lady of the castle, Ammari's sister, a very wicked heretic, who had been cast into a well. Finally our crusaders, with extreme alacrity, burned heretics without number. In the midst of these atrocious unbridlements of passions supposed to be religious, other passions were not slow to make their appearance. Innocent III had promised the crusaders the sovereignty of the domains they might win by conquest from princes who were heretics, or protectors of heretics. After the capture in 1209 of Bezier and Carcassonne, possessions of Raymond Roger, right-counter of Alvie, and nephew of the Count of Toulouse, the Albert of Citeau, a legate of the Pope, assembled the principal chiefs of the crusaders that they might choose one amongst them as lord and governor of their conquests. The offer was made excessively to Eud, Duke of Burgundy, to Peter de Courtenay, Count of Neva, and to Walter de Châtillon, Count of St. Paul, but they all three declined, saying that they had sufficient domains of their own without usurping those of the vicount of Bezier, to whom, in their opinion, they had already caused enough loss. The legate, somewhat embarrassed, it is said, proposed to appoint two bishops and four knights who, in concert with him, should choose a new master for the conquered territories. The proposal was agreed to, and after some moments of hesitation, Simon de Montfort, being elected by this committee, accepted the proper domains, and took immediate possession of them on publication of a charter conceived as follows, Simon, Lord of Montfort, Earl of Leicester, vicount of Bezier and Carcassonne. The Lord having delivered unto my hands the lands of the heretics and unbelieving people, that is to say, whatsoever he has thought fit to take from them by the hands of the crusaders, his servants, I have accepted, humbly and devoutly, this charge and administration with confidence in his aid. The pope wrote to him forthwith to confirm him in hereditary possession of his new dominions, at the same time expressing to him a hope that, in concert with the legates, he would continue to carry out the extirpation of the heretics. The dispossessed vicount, Raymond Rozier, having been put in prison by his conqueror in a tower of Carcassonne itself, died there at the end of three months, of disease according to some, and of violent death according to others, but the latter appears to be a groundless suspicion, for it was not to cowardly and secret crimes that Simon de Montfort was inclined. From this time forth the war in southern France changed character, or rather it assumed a double character, with the war of religion was openly joined a war of conquest. It was no longer merely against the albergensians and their heresies, it was against the native princes of southern France and their domains that the crusade was prosecuted. Simon de Montfort was eminently qualified to direct and accomplish this twofold design. Sincerely fanatical and passionately ambitious of a valour that knew no fatigue, handsome and strong, combining tact with authority, pitiless towards his enemies as became his mission of doing justice in the name of the faith and the church, a leader faithful to his friends, and devoted to their common cause, whilst reckoning upon them for his own private purposes, he possessed those natural qualities which confer spontaneous empire over men, and those abilities which lure them on by opening away for the fulfilment of their interested hopes. And as for himself, by the stealthy growth of selfishness, which is so prone to become devout when circumstances are tempting, he every day made his personal fortunes of greater and greater account in his views and his conduct. His ambitious appetite grew by the very difficulties it encountered, as well as by the successes it fed upon. The count of Toulouse, persecuted and dispoiled, complained loudly in the ears of the Pope, protested against the charge of favouring the heretics, offered and actually made the concessions demanded by Rome, and as security gave up seven of his principal strongholds. But being ever too irresolute and too weak to keep his engagements to his subjects detriment, no less than to stand out against his adversary's requirements, he was continually falling back into the same condition, and keeping up attacks which were more and more urgent by promises which always remained without effect. Having sent to Rome embassy upon embassy with explanations and excuses, he twice went thither himself, in twelve ten and in twelve fifteen, the first time alone, the second with his young son, who was then thirteen, and who was at a later period Raymond the seventh. He appealed to the Pope's sense of justice. He repudiated the stories and depicted the violence of his enemies, and finally pleaded the rites of his son, innocent of all that was imputed to himself, and yet similarly attacked and dispoiled. Innocent the third had neither a narrow mind nor an unfeeling heart. He listened to the father's pleading, took an interest in the youth, and wrote in April twelve twelve, and January twelve thirteen, to his legates in Languidoc, and to Simon de Monfort. After having led the army of the Crusaders into the domains of the Count of Toulouse, ye have not been content with invading all the places wherein there were heretics, but ye have further gotten possession of those wherein there was no suspicion of heresy. The same ambassadors have objected to us that ye have usurped what was another's with so much greed and so little consideration, that of all the domains of the Count of Toulouse there remains to him barely the town of that name, together with the castle of Montauban. Now, though the said Count has been found guilty of many matters against God and against the Church, and our legates in order to force him to acknowledgement thereof, have excommunicated his person, and have left his domains to the first captor, nevertheless he has not yet been condemned as a heretic, nor as an accomplice in the death of Peter de Castelnau of sacred memory, albeit he is strongly suspected thereof. That is why we did ordain that, if there should appear against him a proper accuser within a certain time, there should be appointed him a day for clearing himself, according to the form pointed out in our letters, reserving to ourselves the delivery of a definitive sentence thereupon in all which the procedure has not been according to our orders. We what not, therefore, on what ground we could yet grant to others his dominions which have not been taken away either from him or from his heirs, and above all, we would not appear to have fraudulently extorted from him the castles he hath committed to us, the will of the apostle being, that we should refrain from even the appearance of wrong. But innocent the third forgot that, in the case of either temple or spiritual sovereigns, when there has once been an appeal to force there is no stopping, at pleasure and within specified limits, the movement that has been set going and the agents which have the work in hand. He had decreed war against the princes who were heretics or protectors of heretics, and he had promised their domains to their conquerors. He meant to reserve to himself the right of pronouncing definitive judgment as to the condemnation of princes as heretics, and as to dispossessing them of their dominions. But when force had done its business on the very spot, when the condemnation of the princes as heretics had been pronounced by the pope's legates and their bodily dispossession affected by his leg allies, the reserves and regrets of innocent the third were veying. He had proclaimed two principles, the bodily extirpation of the heretics and the political dethronement of the princes who were their accomplices or protectors, but the application of the principles slipped out of his own hands. Three local councils assembled in 1210, 1212 and 1213, at Saint-Gilles, at All, and at Lavar, and presided over by the pope's legates, proclaimed the excommunication of Raymond VI, and assertion of his dominions to Simon de Montfort, who took possession of them for himself and his comrades. Nor were the pope's legates without their share in the conquest. Arnold-Almerie, Albert of Cito, became Archbishop of Naborne, and Albert Foucault of Marseilles, celebrated in his youth as a gallant troubadour, was Bishop of Toulouse and the most ardent of the Crusaders. When these conquerors heard that the pope had given a kind reception to Raymond VI and his young son, and lent a favourable ear to their complaints, they sent haughty warnings to innocent the third, giving him to understand that the work was all over, and that, if he meddled, Simon de Montfort and his warriors might probably not bow to his decisions. Don Pedro II, King of Aragon, had strongly supported, before innocent the third, the claims of the Count of Toulouse and of the southern princes his allies. He cajoled the Lord Pope, says the prejudice chronicle of these events, the monk Peter of Valsone, so far as to persuade him that the cause of the faith was achieved against the heretics, they being brought to distant flight and completely driven from the Albigensian country, and that, accordingly, it was necessary for him to revoke altogether the indulgence he had granted to the Crusaders. The sovereign Pontiff, too credulously listening to the perfidious suggestions of the said king, readily assented to his demands, and wrote to the Count of Montfort, with orders and commands to restore without delay of the Counts of Comonge and of Foire, and to Gaston of Beam, very wicked and abandoned people, the lands which, by just judgment of God and by the aid of the Crusaders, he at last had conquered. But in spite of his desire to do justice, innocent the third, studying policy rather than moderation, did not care to enter upon a struggle against the agents, Ecclesiastical and Leic, whom he had let loose upon southern France. In November 1215 the fourth Lateran Council met at Rome, and the Count of Toulouse, his son, and the Count of Foire brought their claims before it. It is quite true, says Peter of Valsone, that they found there, and what is worse among the prelates, certain folk who opposed the cause of the faith, and laboured for the restoration of the said Counts, but the Council of Ahetophel did not prevail, for the Lord Pope, in agreement with the greater and saner part of the Council, decreed that the city of Toulouse and other territories conquered by the Crusaders should be ceded to the Count of Montfort, who, more than any other, had borne himself right valiantly and loyally in the Holy Enterprise. And as for the domains which Count Raymond possessed in Provence, the southern Pontiff decided that they should be reserved to him in order to make provision, either with part or even the whole, for the son of this Count, provided always that, by sure signs of fealty and good behaviour, he should show himself worthy of compassion. This last inclination towards compassion on the part of the Pope in favour of the young Count Raymond, provided he showed himself worthy of it, remained as fruitless as the remonstrances addressed to his legates. For on the seventeenth of July, 1216, seven months after the Lateran Council, Innocent the Third died, leaving Simon to Montfort and his comrades in possession of all they had taken, and the war still raging between the native princes of southern France and the foreign conquerors. The primitive religious character of the Crusade wore off more and more. Worldly ambition and the spirit of conquest became more and more predominant, and the question lay far less between Catholics and heretics, than between the older new masters of the country, between the independence of the southern people and the triumph of warriors come from the north of France, that is to say between two different races, civilisations and languages. Raymond the Sixth and his son recovered thenceforth certain supports and opportunities of which hitherto the accusation of heresy and the judgments of the court of Rome had robbed them. Their neighbouring allies and their secret or intimidated partisans took fresh courage, and the fortune of battle became shifty. Prices and reverses were shared by both sides, and not only many small places and castles, but the largest towns to lose amongst others fell into the hands of each party alternately. Innocent the Third's successor in the Holy See, Pope Honorius III, though at first very pronounced in his opposition to the Albigensians, had less ability, less perseverance, and less influence than his predecessor. Finally, on the 12th of June, 1218, Simon de Montfort, who had been for nine months unsuccessfully besieging to lose, which had again come into the possession of Raymond the Sixth, was killed by a shower of stones under the walls of the place, and left to his son Armory the inheritance of his war and his conquests, but not of his vigorous genius and his warlike renown. The struggle still dragged on for five years with varied fortune on each side, but Armory de Montfort was losing ground every day, and Raymond the Sixth, when he died in August 1222, had recovered the greater part of his dominions. His son, Raymond the Seventh, continued the war for eighteen months longer, with enough of popular favour and success to make his enemies despair of recovering their advantages, and, on the 14th of January, 1224, Armory de Montfort, after having concluded with the Counts of Toulouse en Foire a treaty which seemed to have only a provisional character, went forth, says the history of Languedoc, with all the French from Carcassonne, and left for ever the country which his house had possessed for nearly fourteen years. Scarcely had he arrived at the court of Louis the Eighth, who had just succeeded his father, Philippe Augustus, when he ceded to the King of France his rights over the domains which his crusaders had conquered by a deed conceived in these terms. Know that we give up to our Lord Louis, the illustrious King of the French, and to his heirs for ever, to dispose of, according to their pleasure, all the privileges and gifts that the Roman Church did grant under our father Simon of Pius memory in respect of the Countship of Toulouse and other districts in Albegroire. Supposing that the Pope do accomplish all the demands made to him by the King through the Archbishop of Bourges and the Bishop of Longue and Charter, else be it known for certain that we cede not to any one ought of all of these domains. While this cruel war lasted, Philippe Augustus would not take any part in it. Not that he had any leaning towards the Albigensian heretics on the score of creed or religious liberty, but his sense of justice and moderation was shocked at the violence employed against them, and he had a repugnance of the idea of taking part in the devastation of the beautiful southern provinces. He took it ill, moreover, that the Pope should arrogate to himself the right of dispoiling of their dominions on the ground of heresy, princes who were vassals of the King of France, and, without offering any formal opposition, he had no mind to give his assent there, too. When Innocent III called upon him to cooperate in the Crusade, Philippe answered, that he had at his flanks two huge and terrible lions, the Emperor-Otherl and King John of England, who were working with all their might to bring trouble upon the Kingdom of France, that consequently he had no inclination at all to leave France or even to send his son, but it seemed to him enough for the present, if he allowed his barons to march against the Disturbers of Peace and of the Faith in the Province of Narbonne. In 1213, when Simon de Montpete had gained the Battle of Muiré, Philippe allowed Prince Louis to go and look on when possession was taken off to lose by the Crusaders, but when Louis came back and reported to his father, in the presence of the princes and barons who were, for the most part, relatives and allies of Count Raymond, the great Havoc committed by Count Simon in the city after surrender, the King withdrew to his apartments without any ado beyond saying to those unjust. Sirs, I have yet hoped that before very long Count de Montpete and his brother Guy will die at their work, for God is just, and will suffer these counts to perish there at, because their quarrel is unjust. Nevertheless at a little later period when the Crusade was at its greatest heat, Philip, on the Pope's repeated entreaty, authorised his son to take part in it with such lords as might be willing to accompany him, but he ordered that the expedition should not start before the spring and, on the occurrence of some fresh incident, he had it further put off until the following year. He received visits from Count Raymond the Sixth, and openly testified good will towards him. When Simon de Montpete was decisively victorious, and in possession of the places rested from Raymond, Philip Augustus recognised accomplished facts, and received the new count of Toulouse at his vassal, but when, after the death of Simon de Montpete and Innocent III, the question was once more thrown open, and when Raymond the Sixth, first and then his son Raymond the Seventh, had recovered the greater part of their dominions, Philip formally refused to recognise Armory de Montpete as successor to his father's conquests. Nay! He did more. He refused to accept the session of those conquests. Offered to him by Amarid of Montpete, and pressed upon him by Pope Honorius III. Philip Augustus was not a scrupulous sovereign, nor disposed to compromise himself for the mere sake of defending justice and humanity. But he was too judicious not to respect and protect, to a certain extent, the rights of his vassals as well as his own, and at the same time, too discreet to involve himself without necessity, in a barbarous and dubious war. He held aloof from the crusade against the albergensians with as much wisdom and more than as much dignity as he had displayed seventeen years before in withdrawing from the crusade against the Saracens. End of Chapter 18, Part 5. Chapter 18, Part 6 of Volume 2 of A Popular History of France from the earliest times. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Sudeshna. Volume 2 of A Popular History of France from the earliest times by François Guizot, translated by Robert Black. Chapter 18, The Kingship in France, Part 6. He had in 1216 another great chance of showing his discretion. The English barons were at war with their king John Lackland in defense of Magna Charta, which they had obtained the year before, and they offered the crown of England to the king of France for his son Prince Louis. Before accepting, Philip demanded twenty-four hostages, taken from the men of Norte in the country, as a guarantee that the offer would be supported in good earnest and the hostages were sent to him. But Pope in Osin III had lately released King John from his oath in respect of Magna Charta, and had excommunicated the insurgent barons, and he now instructed his legate to oppose the projected design with the threat of excommunicating the king of France. Philip Augustus, who in his youth had dreamed of resuscitating the empire of Charlemagne, was strongly tempted to seize the opportunity of doing over again the work of William the Conqueror, but he hesitated to endanger his power and his kingdom in such a war against King John and the Pope. The prince was urgent in entreating his father. Sir, said he, I am your liegeman for the fife you have given me on this side of the sea, but it pertains not to you to decide ought as to the kingdom of England? I do beseech you to place no obstacle in the way of my departure. The king, seeing his son's firm resolution and anxiety, says the historian Matthew Parris, was one with him in feeling and desire. But for seeing the dangers of events to come, he did not give his public consent, and without any expression of wish or counsel, permitted him to go with a gift of his blessing. It was the young and ambitious Princess Blanche of Castille, wife of Prince Louis and destined to be the mother of Saint Louis, who, after her husband's departure for England, made it her business to raise troops for him and to send him means of sustaining the war. Events justified the discreet reserve of Philip Augustus, for John Lackland, after having suffered one reverse previously, died on the 19th of October 1216. His death broke up the party of the insurgent barons and his son, Henry III, who was crowned on the 28th of October in Glaucister Cathedral, immediately confirmed a great charter. Thus, the national grievance vanished, and national feeling resumed its sway in England. The French everywhere became unpopular, and after a few months' struggle with equal want of skill and success, Prince Louis gave up his enterprise and returned to France with his French comrades, on no other conditions but a mutual exchange of prisoners and an amnesty for the English who had been his adherents. At this juncture, as well as in the Crusade against the Albigensians, Philip Augustus behaved towards the Pope with a wisdom and ability, hard of attainment at any time, and very rare in his own. He constantly humoured the papacy without being subservient to it, and he testified towards it, his respect, and at the same time his independence. He understood all the gravity of a rupture with Rome, and he neglected nothing to avoid one. But he also considered that Rome, herself not wanting indiscretion, would be content with the deference of the King of France, rather than get embroiled with him by exacting his submission. Philip Augustus, in his political life, always preserved to this proper mean, and he found it succeed, but in his domestic life there came a day when he suffered himself to be hurried out of his usual deference towards the Pope, and after a violent attempt at resistance, he resigned himself to submission. Three years after the death of his first wife, Isabelle of Haneu, who had left him a son, Prince Louis, he married Princess Ingeburga of Denmark, without knowing anything at all of her, just as it generally happens in the case of royal marriages. No sooner had she become his wife than, without any cause that can be assigned with certainty, he took such a dislike to her that towards the end of the same year, he demanded off and succeeded in obtaining from a French council, held at Compeyne, nullity of his marriage, on the ground of prohibited consangunity.  Whilst the question was being investigated at Rome, Ingeburga, whom Philip had in vain tried to send back to Denmark, was marched about under restraint in France from castle to castle and convent to convent, and treated with iniquitous and shocking severity. Pope Celestine, after examination, annulled the decision of the council of Compeyne, touching the pretended consangunity, leaving in suspense the question of divorce, and consequently without breaking the tie of marriage between the king and the Danish princess. I have seen, he wrote to the Archbishop of Sons, the genealogy sent to me by the bishops, and it is due to that inspection and the uproar caused by the scandal that have annulled the decree, take care now therefore that Philip do not marry again, and so break the tie which still unites him to the church. Philip paid no heed to this canonical injunction. His heart was set upon marrying again, and after having unsuccessfully sought the band of two German princesses on the borders of the Rhine, who were alarmed by the fate of Ingeburga, he obtained that of a princess, a Tyrolis by origin, Agnes, according to others, Mary of Merania, that is Moravia, an Austrian province in German Morhen, out of which the chroniclers of the time made Merani or Merania the name that has remained in the history of Agnes. She was the daughter of Berthold, Marquis of Istria, whom about 1180, the emperor Frederick Barbarossa had made Duke of Moravia. According to all contemporary chronicles, Agnes was not only beautiful, but charming. She made a great impression of the court of France, and Philip Augustus, after his marriage with her, in June 1196, became infatuated with her. But a pope more stern and bold than Celestine III, Inocent III had just been raised to the holy sea, and was exerting himself in court as well as monastery to effect a reformation of morals. Immediately after his accession, he concerned himself with the conjugal irregularity in which the king of France was living. My predecessor, Celestine, he wrote to the Bishop of Paris, would feign have put a stop to this scandal, but he was unsuccessful, as for me, I am quite resolved to prosecute his work and obtain by all and any means fulfillment of God's law. Be instant in speaking thereof to the king on my behalf and tell him that his obstinate refusals may probably bring upon him both the wrath of God and the thunders of the church. And indeed, Philip's refusals were very obstinate, for the pride of the king and the feelings of the man were equally wounded. I had rather lose half my domains, said he, than separate from Agnes. The pope threatened him with the interdict, that is, the suspension of all religious ceremonies, festivals, and forms in the church of France. Philip resisted not only the threat, but also the sentence of the interdict, which was actually pronounced first in the churches of the royal domain and afterwards in those of the whole kingdom. So wroth was the king, says the Chronicle of Saint Dennis, that he thrust from their seas all the prelates of his kingdom, because they had assented to the interdict. I had rather turned muslimans, said Philip. Saladin was a happy man, for he had no pope. But Innosim Muthur was inflexible. He claimed respect for laws divine and human for the domestic hearth and public order. The conscience of the nation was troubled. Agnes herself applied to the pope, urging her youth, her ignorance of the world, the sincerity and purity of her love for her husband. Innosim the third was touched, and before long gave indisputable evidence that he was, but without budging from his duty and his right as a Christian. For four years the struggle went on. At last Philip yielded to the injunction of the pope and the feeling of his people. He sent away Agnes and recalled Ingeburga. The pope in his hour of victory showed his sense of equity and his moral appreciation, taking into consideration the good faith of Agnes in respect of her marriage, and Philip's possible mistake as to his right to marry her. He declared the legitimacy of the two children born of the union. Agnes retired to Puecy, where a few months afterwards she died. Ingeburga resumed her title and rights as queen, but without really enjoying them, Philip, incensed as well as beaten, banished her far from him and his court to Itamp, where she lived 11 years in profound retirement. It was only in 1212 that to fully satisfy the pope, Philip, more preserving in his political wisdom than his domestic prejudices, restored the Danish princess to all her royal station at his side. She was destined to survive him. There can be little doubt but that the affection of Philip Augustus for Agnes of Merania was sincere. Nothing can be better proof of it than the long struggle he maintained to prevent separation from her. But to see nothing of the religious crouples which at last perhaps began to prick the conscience of the king, great political activity and the government of a kingdom are a powerful cure for sorrows of the heart, and seldom is there a human soul so large and so constant as to have room for sentiments and interests so different, both of them at once and for a long continuance. It has been shown with what intelligent acidity Philip Augustus strove to extend or rather to complete the kingdom of France. What a mixture of firmness and moderation he brought to bear upon his relations with his vassals, as well as with his neighbors and what bravery he showed in war, though he preferred to succeed by the weapons of peace. He was as energetic and effective in the internal administration of his kingdom as in foreign affairs. Monsieur Le Pôle de Lille, one of the most learned French academicians and one of the most accurate in his knowledge, has devoted a volume of more than 700 pages of Tao to a simple catalogue of the official acts of Philip Augustus. And this catalogue contains a list of 2,236 administrative acts of all kinds, of which Monsieur de Lille confines himself to merely setting forth the title and object. Search has been made in this long table to see what part was taken by Philip Augustus in the establishment and interior regulation of the communes, that great fact which is so conspicuous in the history of French civilization and which will before long be made the topic of discourse here. The search brings to light during this reign, 41 acts confirming certain communes already established or certain privileges previously granted to certain populations, 43 acts establishing new communes or granting new local privileges, and 9 acts decreeing suppression of certain communes or a repressive intervention of the royal authority in their internal regulation on account of quarrels or irregularities in their relations, either with their lord or especially with their bishop. These mere figures show the liberal character of the government of Philip Augustus in respect of this important work of the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries. Nor are we less struck by his efficient energy in his care for the interests and material civilization of his people. In 1185, as he was walking one day in his palace, he placed himself at a window when he was sometimes pleased by way of pastime to wash the sand flowing by. Some carts as they passed caused the mud with which the streets were filled to emit a fetid smell, quite unbearable. The king, shocked at what was as unhealthy as it was disgusting, sent for the burgers and provost of the city and ordered that all the thoroughfares and streets of Paris should be paved with hard and solid stone. For this right Christian prince aspired to rid Paris of her ancient name, Lutessia, mud town. It is added that on hearing of so good a resolution, a moneyed man of the day named Gerard de Poissy volunteered to contribute towards the construction of the pavement 11,000 silver marks. Nor was Philip Augustus less concerned for the external security than for the internal celebrity of Paris. In 1190, on the eve of his departure for the crusade, he ordered the burgers of Paris to surround with a good wall, flanked by towers, the city he loved so well, and to make gates there too. And in 20 years, this great work was finished on both sides of the sand. The king gave the same orders as the historian Rigor about the towns and castles of all his kingdom. And indeed, it appears from the catalog of Monsieur Lyopold de Lille at the date of 1193 that at the request of Philip Augustus, Peter de Courtenay, Count of Nevere, with the aid of the churchmen, had the walls of the town of Oxaire built. And Philip's foresight went beyond such important achievements. He had a good wall built to enclose the wood of Vincennes, here to fore open to any sort of folk. The king of England, on hearing thereof, gathered a great mass of fawns, hens, doves, and bucks taken in his forests in Normandy and Aquitaine, and having had them shipped aboard a large covered vessel with suitable fodder, he sent them by way of the send to King Philip Augustus, his liege lord at Paris. King Philip received this gift gladly, had his barks stalked with the animals and put keepers over them. A feeling totally unconnected with the pleasures of the chase caused him to order an enclosure very different from that of Vincennes. The common symmetry of Paris, hard by the church of the Holy Innocence, opposite the street of St. Dennis, had remained up to that time open to all passers, man and beast, without anything to prevent it from being confounded with the most profane spot. And the king, hurt at such indecency, had it enclosed by high stone walls, with as many gates as were judged necessary, which were closed every night. At the same time he had built in the same quarter the first great municipal marketplaces, enclosed likewise by a wall, with gates shut at night, and surmounted by a sort of covered gallery. He was not quite a stranger to a certain instinct, neither systematic nor of general application, but practical and effective on occasion, in favor of the freedom of industry and commerce. Before his time the ovens employed by the baking trade in Paris were a monopoly for the profit of certain religious or laic establishments. But when Philip Augustus ordered the walling in of the new and much larger area of the city, he did not think it right to render its new inhabitants subject to these old liabilities. And he permitted all the bakers to have ovens wherein to bake their bread, either for themselves or for all individuals who might wish to make use of them. Nor were churches and hospitals a bit less than the material interests of the people and object of solitude to him. His reign saw the completion and it might almost be said the construction of Notre Dame de Paris, the frontage of which in particular was the work of this epoch. At the same time, the king had the palace of the Louvre repaired and enlarged, and he added to it that strong tower in which he kept in captivity for more than 12 years, ferron, count of Flanders, taken prisoner at the Battle of Bouvine. It would be a failure of justice and truth, not to add to these proofs of manifold and indefatigable activity on the part of Philip Augustus, the constant interest he testified in letters, science, study, the University of Paris, and its masters and pupils. It was to him that in 1200, after a violent riot in which they considered they had reason to complain of the provost of Paris, the students owed a decree, which by regarding them as clerics, exempted them from the ordinary criminal jurisdiction. So as to render them subject only to ecclesiastical authority. At that time, there was no idea how to efficiently protect freedom, saved by granting some privilege. End of chapter 18, part six. Recording by Sudeshna. Chapter 18, part seven, of volume two of a popular history of France from the earliest times. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Volume two of a popular history of France from the earliest times by François Guizot, translated by Robert Black. Chapter 18, The Kingship in France, part seven. A death which seems premature for a man as sound and strong in constitution, as in judgment, struck down Philip Augustus at the age of only fifty-eight, as he was on his way from Passeur to Paris to be present at the council, which was to meet there and once more to take up the affair of the Abagincians. He had for several months been battling with an incessant fever. He was obliged to halt at Mont, and there he died on the fourteenth of January, 1223, leaving the kingdom of France far more extensive and more compact, and the kingship in France far stronger and more respected than he had found them. It was the natural and well-deserved result of his life. At a time of violence and irregular adventure he had shown to Europe the spectacle of an earnest, far-sided, moderate and able government, and one which, in the end, under many hard trials, had nearly always succeeded in its designs during a reign of forty-three years. He disposed by will of a considerable amount amassed without parsimony, and even historians say, in spite of a royal magnificence. We will take from that but two paragraphs, the first two. We will and prescribe, first of all, that, without any gain saying, our testamentary executors do levy and set aside, out of our possessions, fifty thousand leavers of Paris, in order to restore, as God shall inspire them with wisdom, whatsoever may be due to those from whom they shall recognize that we have unjustly taken or extorted or kept back ought, and we do ordainness most strictly. We give to our dear spouse Issamber, evidently in Yabourya, queen of the French, ten thousand leavers of Paris. We might have given more to the said queen, but we have confined ourselves to this sum in order that we might make more complete restitution and reparation of what we have unjustly levied. There is, in these two cases of testamentary reparation, to persons unknown on the one hand, and to a lady long maltreated on the other, a touch of probity and honorable regret for wrongdoing, which arouses for this great king, in his dying hour, more moral esteem than one would otherwise be tempted to feel for him. His son, Louis VIII, inherited a great kingdom, an undisputed crown, and a power that was respected. It was a matter of general remark, moreover, that by his mother, Isabel of Hinalde, he was descended in the direct line from Hermengard, Countess of Namur, daughter of Charles of Lorraine, the last of the Carlovingians. Thus the claims of the two dynasties of Charlemagne and of Hugh Capay were united in his person, and although the authority of the Capetians was no longer disputed, contemporaries were glad to see in Louis VIII this twofold airship, which gave him the perfect stamp of a legitimate monarch. He was, besides the first Capetian whom the king his father had not considered it necessary to have consecrated during his own life, so as to impress upon him in good time the seal of religion. Louis was consecrated at Rem no earlier than the 6th of August 1223, three weeks after the death of Philip Augustus, and his consecration was celebrated at Paris as well as at Rem, with rejoicings both popular and magnificent. But in the condition in which France was during the 13th century, amidst a civilization still so imperfect and without the fortifying institutions of a free government, no accidental good fortune could make up for a king's want of personal merit, and Louis VIII was a man of downright mediocrity, without foresight, well in his resolves, and weak and fickle in the execution of them. He as well as Philip Augustus had to make war on the King of England, and negotiate with the Pope on the subject of the Abagensians, but at one time he followed, without well understanding it, his father's policy, at another he neglected it for some whim, or under some temporary influence. Yet he was not unsuccessful in his wax-like enterprises. In his campaign against Henry III, King of England, he took Neort, Saint-Jean d'Anglis, and Rochelle. He accomplished the subject of Limousin and Paragorde, and had he pushed on his victories beyond the Garonne, he might perhaps have deprived the English of aquitaine their last possession in France, but at the solicitation of Pope Onarious III he gave up this war to resume the crusade against the Abagensians. Philip Augustus had foreseen this mistake. After my death, he had said, the clergy will use all their efforts to entangle my son Louis in the matters of the Abagensians, but he is in weak and shattered health. He will be unable to bear the fatigue. He will soon die, and then the kingdom will be left in the hands of a woman and children, and so there will be no lack of dangers. The prediction was realized. The military campaign of Louis VIII on the Roanne was successful. After a somewhat difficult siege he took Avignon, the principal towns in the neighborhood, Nîmes and Arles, amongst others, committed. Al-Marie de Montfort had ceded to him all his rights over his father's conquests in Langdok, and the Abagensians were so completely destroyed or dispersed or cowed that when it seemed good to make a further example amongst them of the severity of the church against heretics, it was a hard matter to rout out in the diocese of Narbonne, one of their former preachers, Peter Isarne, an old man hidden in an obscure retreat, from which he was dragged to be burned in solemn state. This was Louis VIII's last exploit in southern France. He was displeased with the pope whom he reproached with not keeping all his promises, his troops were being decimated by sickness, and he was deserted by Theobald IV, Count of Champagne, after serving according to feudal law for forty days. Louis, incensed, disgusted, and ill, himself left his army to return to his own northern France, but he never reached it, for fever compelled him to halt at Montpensier in Avurnia, where he died on the 8th of November, 1226, after a reign of three years, adding to the history of France no glory, save that of having been the son of Philip Augustus, the husband of Blanche of Castile, and the father of Saint Louis. We have already perused the most brilliant and celebrated amongst the events of Saint Louis's reign, his two crusades against the Musulmans, and we have learned to know the man at the same time with the event, for it was in these warlike outbursts of his Christian faith that the king's character, nay, his whole soul, was displayed in all its originality and splendor. It was his good fortune, moreover, to have, at that time, as his comrade and biographer, sired to join Via, one of the most sprightly and charming writers of the nascent French language. It is now of Louis and France and of his government at home that we have to take note. And in this part of his history he is not the only royal and really regnant personage we encounter. For of the forty-four years of Saint Louis's reign, nearly fifteen, with a long interval of separation, pertain to the government of Queen Blanche of Castile, pertain to the government of Queen Blanche of Castile, rather than that of the king her son. Louis, at his accession in twelve twenty-six, was only eleven, and he remained a minor up to the age of twenty-one. In twelve thirty-six, for the time of majority in the case of royalty was not yet especially rigorously fixed. During those ten years Queen Blanche governed France, not at all, as is commonly asserted, with the official title of regent, but simply as guardian of the king her son. With a good sense, really admirable, in a person so proud and ambitious, she saw that official power was ill-suited to her woman's condition, and would weaken rather than strengthen her. And she screamed herself from view behind her son. He it was who, in twelve twenty-six, wrote to the great vassals, bidding them to his consecration. He it was who reigned and commanded, and his name alone appeared on royal decrees and on treaties. It was not until twenty-two years had passed, in twelve forty-eight, that Louis, on starting for the crusade, officially dedicated to his mother the kingly authority, and that Blanche, during her son's absence, really governed with the title of regent, up to the first of December, twelve-fifty-two, the day of his death. During the first period of his government, and so long as her son's minority lasted, Queen Blanche had to grapple with intrigues, plots, insurrections, and open war, and what was still worse for her, with the insults and columnaries of the crown's great vassals, burning to seize once more, under a woman's government, the independence and power which had been effectually disputed with them by Philip Augustus. Blanche resisted their attempts, at one time with open and persevering energy, at another dexterously, with all the tact, address, and allurements of a woman. Although she was now forty years of age, she was beautiful, elegant, attractive, full of resources, and of grace in her conversation, as well as her administration, endowed with all the means of pleasing, and skillful in availing herself of them with a coquetry which was occasionally more telling than discreet. The malcontents spread the most odious scandals about her. It so happened that one of the most considerable among the great vassals of France, Theobald IV, Count of Champagne, a brilliant and gay knight, and ingenious and prolific poet, had conceived a passion for her, and it was affirmed not only that she had yielded to his desires in order to keep him bound to her service, but that she had a while ago, in concert with him, murdered her husband, King Louis VIII. In 1230 some of the greatest barons of the kingdom, the Count of Brittany, the Count of Bologna, the Count of St. Paul, formed a coalition for an attack upon Count Theobald, and invaded Champagne. Blanche, taking with her the young king, her son, went to the aid of Count Theobald, and on arriving near Troy, she had orders given in the king's name for the barons to withdraw. "'If you have a plan to make,' said she, against the Count of Champagne, present before me your claim, and I will do you justice. We will not plead before you,' they answered, for the custom of women is to fix their choice upon him, in preference to other men, who has slain their husband. But in spite of this insulting defiance the barons did withdraw. Five years later, in 1235, the Count of Champagne had, in his turn, risen against the king, and was forced, as an escape from imminent defeat, to accept severe terms. An interview took place between Queen Blanche and him. "'And party,' Count Theobald, said the queen, you ought not to have been against us.  The Count cast a look upon the queen, who was so virtuous and so beautiful, that at her great beauty he was all abashed, and answered her, By my faith, madam, my heart and my body and all my land is at your command, and there is nothing which to please you I would not readily do. And against you or yours, please God, I will never go.' Thereupon he went his way full pensively, and often there came back to his remembrance the queen's soft clans and lovely countenance. Then his heart was touched by a soft and amorous thought. But when he remembered how high a dame she was, so good and pure that he could never enjoy her, his soft thought of love was changed to a great sadness. And because deep thoughts engender melancholy it was counseled unto him by a certain wise men that he should make his study of canzone for the vile and soft delight ditties. So made he the most beautiful canzone and the most delightful and most melodious that at any time were heard. Histoire des deux et des camps de Champagne, by M. D. Bois de Jubanville, page 249, Chronique de Sondanie, in the recul des historiens des Gaules et des France, page 111 and 112. Neither in the events nor in the writings of the period is it easy to find anything which can authorize the accusations made by the foes of Queen Blanche. There is no knowing whether her heart were ever so little touched by the canzone of Count Theobald, but it is certain that neither the poetry nor the advances of the Count made any difference in the resolutions and behavior of the Queen. She continued her resistance to the pretensions and machinations of the Crown's great vassals, whether foes or lovers, and she carried forward in the face and in the teeth of all the extension of the domains and the power of the kingship. We observe in her no prompting of enthusiasm, of sympathetic charitableness or of religious scrupulousness, that is, none of those grand moral impulses which are characteristic of Christian piety, and which were predominant in Saint-Louis. Blanche was essentially politic and concerned with her temporal interests and successes, and it was not from her teaching or her example that her son imbibed those sublime and disinterested feelings which stamped him the most original and the rarest on the role of glorious kings. What Saint-Louis really owed to his mother, and it was a great deal, was the steady triumph which, whether by arms or by negotiation, Blanche gained over the great vassals and the preponderance which, amidst the struggles of the feudal system, she secured for the kingship of her son in his minority. She saw by profound instinct what forces and alliances might be made serviceable to the kingly power against its rivals. Then on the twenty-ninth of November, twelve-twenty-six, only three weeks after the death of her husband, Louis VIII, she had her son crowned at Reim. She bade to the ceremony not only the prelates and grandees of the kingdom, but also the inhabitants of the neighboring communes, wishing to let the great lords see the people surrounding the royal child. Two years later, in twelve-twenty-eight, amidst the insurrection of the barons, who were assembled at Corbille, and who meditated seizing the person of the young king during his halt at Mont-la-Ris on his march to Paris, Queen Blanche had summoned to her side, together with the faithful chivalry of the country, the burgers of Paris and of the neighborhood, and they obeyed the summons with alacrity. They went forth all under arms and took the road to Mont-la-Ris, where they found the king and escorted him to Paris, all in their ranks and in order of battle. For Mont-la-Ris to Paris the road was lined on both sides by men at arms and others, who loudly besought our Lord to grant the young king long life and prosperity, and to vouchsafe him protection against all his enemies. As soon as they set out from Paris, the lords, having been told the news, and not considering themselves in a condition to fight so great a host, retired each to his own abode, and by the ordering of God, who disposes, as he pleases him, of times and the deeds of men, they dared not undertake anything against the king during the rest of this year. V. de Saint-Louis, by L'Anand de Tilement, pages 429, 478. Eight years later, in 1236, Louis IX attained his majority, and his mother transferred to him a power respected, feared, and encompassed by vassals always turbulent and still often aggressive, but disunited, weakened, intimidated or discredited, and always outwitted, for a space of ten years in their plots. When she had secured the political position of the king, her son, and as the time of his majority approached, Queen Blanche gave her attention to his domestic life also. She belonged to the number of those who aspired to play the part of Providence towards the objects of their affection, and to regulate their destiny in everything. Louis was nineteen. He was handsome, after a refined and gentle style which spoke of moral worth without telling of great physical strength. He had delicate and chiseled features, a brilliant complexion, and light hair, abundant and glossy, which, through his grandmother Isabelle, he inherited from the family of the Counts of Hanald. He displayed liveliness and elegance in his tastes. He was fond of amusements, games, hunting, hounds, and hawking-birds, fine clothes, magnificent furniture. A holy man, they say, even reproached the queen his mother with having winked at certain inclinations, evinced by him towards irregular connections. Blanche determined to have him married, and had no difficulty in exciting in him so honourable a desire. Raymond Barangé, Count of Provance, had a daughter, his eldest, named Marguerite, who was held, say the Chronicles, to be the most noble, most beautiful, and best educated princess at that time in Europe. By the advice of his mother and of the wisest persons in his kingdom, Louis asked for her hand in marriage. The Count of Provance was overjoyed at the proposal, but he was somewhat anxious about the immense dowry which, it was said, he would have to give his daughter. His intimate advisor was a proven-call nobleman, named Romeo de Villeneuve, who said to him, Count, leave it to me, and let not this great expense cause you any trouble. If you marry your eldest Ty, the more consideration of the alliance will get the others married better and at less cost. Count Raymond listened to reason, and before long acknowledged that his advisor was right. He had four daughters, Marguerite, Eleanor, Sanscy, and Beatrice, and when Marguerite was Queen of France Eleanor became Queen of England, Sanscy, Countess of Cornwall, and afterwards Queen of the Romans, and Beatrice, Countess of Anjou and Provence, and ultimately Queen of Sicily. Princess Marguerite arrived in France escorted by a brilliant embassy, and the marriage was celebrated at Saint, on the 27th of May, 1234, amidst great rejoicings and abundant largesse to the people. As soon as he was married and in possession of happiness at home, Louis of his own accord gave up the worldly amusements for which he had at first displayed a taste. His hunting establishment, his games, his magnificent furniture and dress, gave place to simpler pleasures and more Christian occupations. The active duties of the kingship, the fervent and scrupulous exercise of piety, the pure and impassioned joys of conjugal life, the glorious plans of a night militant of the cross, were the only things which took up the thought and the time of this young king, who was modestly laboring to become a saint and a hero. End of Chapter 18, Part 7 Chapter 18, Part 8 of Volume 2 of a popular history of France from the earliest times. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Volume 2 of a popular history of France from the earliest times by François Vizot, translated by Robert Black. Chapter 18 The Kingship in France, Part 8 There was one heartfelt discomfort which disturbed and troubled sometimes the sweetest moments of his life. Queen Blanche, having got her son married, was jealous of the wife and of the happiness she had conferred upon her. Jealous as mother and as queen. Arrival for affection and for empire. This sad and hateful feeling hurried her into acts as devoid of dignity as they were of justness and kindness. The harshness of Queen Blanche towards Queen Marguerite, says Joinville, was such that Queen Blanche would not suffer so far as her power went that her son should keep his wife's company. Where it was most pleasing to the king and the queen to live was at Pont Toise, because the king's chamber was above and the queen's below. And they had so well arranged matters that they held their converse on a spiral staircase which led down from the one chamber to the other. When the ushers saw the queen mother coming into the chamber of the king her son, they knocked upon the door with their staves, and the king came running into his chamber so that his mother might find him there. And so in turn did the ushers of Queen Marguerite's chamber when Queen Blanche came thither, so that she might find Queen Marguerite there. One day the king was with the queen his wife, and she was in great peril of death for that she had suffered from a child of which she had been delivered.  When Queen Marguerite saw that the queen mother was taking the king away she said, Alas, neither dead nor alive will you let me see my lord, and thereupon she swooned, and it was thought that she was dead. The king, who thought she was dying, came back, and with great pain she was brought round. Louis gave to his wife consolation and to his mother's support. Amongst the noblest lords and in the happiest lives there are wounds which cannot be healed and sorrows which must be born in silence. When Louis reached his majority his entrance upon personal exercise of the kingly power produced no change in the conduct of public affairs. There was no vain seeking after innovation on purpose to mark the accession of a new master, and no reaction in the deeds and words of the sovereign or in the choice and treatment of his advisers. The kingship of the son was a continuance of the mother's government. Louis persisted in struggling for the preponderance of the crown against the great vassals. King and taming Peter McClurk, the turbulent count of Brittany, wrung from Théobald IV, count of Champagne, the rites of suzerainty in the countships of Chartres, Blois, and Saint-Sère, and the vicountship of Chateau d'Anne, and purchased the fertile countship of Macon from its possessor. It was almost always by Pacific procedure, by negotiations ably conducted, and conventions faithfully executed, that he accomplished these increments of the kingly domain, and when he made war on any of the great vassals, he engaged therein only on their provocation to maintain the right honour of his crown, and he used victory with as much moderation as he had shown before entering upon the struggle. In 1241 he was at Poitiers, where his brother Alfonso, the new count of Poitot, was to receive in his presence the homage of the neighbouring lords who suzerain he was. A confidential letter arrived, addressed not to Louis himself but to Queen Blanche, whom many faithful subjects continued to regard as the real regent of the kingdom, and who probably continued also to have her own private agents. An inhabitant of Rochelle, at any rate, wrote to inform the Queen Mother that a great plot was being hatched amongst certain powerful lords of Lomarche, Saint-Tongue, Angouement, and perhaps others, to decline doing homage to the new count of Poitot, and thus enter into rebellion against the king himself. The news was true, and was given with circumstantial detail. Hue to Lucignan, count of Lomarche, and the most considerable amongst the vassals of the count of Poitiers, was, if not the prime mover, at any rate the principal performer in the plot. His wife Joan, Isabelle, of Angoulome, widow of the late King of England, John Lacklin, and mother of the reigning King, Henry III, was indignant at the notion of becoming a vassal of a prince himself a vassal to the King of France, and so seeing herself, herself but lately a queen, and now a king's widow and a king's mother, degraded in France to a rank below that of the countess of Poitiers. When her husband, the count of Lomarche, went and rejoined her at Angoulome, he found her giving away alternately to anger and tears, tears and anger. "'Saw you not,' said she, at Poitiers, where I waited three days to please your king and his queen, how that when I appeared before them in their chamber, the king was seated on one side of the bed, and the queen with the countess of Chartres and her sister the abes on the other.  And neither at my coming nor in my going did they rise just a little from their seats, rendering me vile as you did see yourself. I cannot speak of it for grief and shame, and it will be my death, far more even than the loss of our land which they have unworthily rested from us. Unless by God's grace they do repent them, and I see them in their turn reduced to desolation, and losing somewhat of their own lands. As for me, either I will lose all I have for that end, or I will perish in the attempt.' Queen Blanche's correspondent added, The count of Lomarche, whose kindness you know, seeing the countess and tears, said to her, Madam, give your commands. I will do all I can. Be assured of that.' Else, said she, you shall not come near my person, and I will never see you more. Then the Count declared with many curses that he would do what his wife desired. And he was as good as his word. That same year, 1241, at the end of autumn, the new count of Poitiers, who was holding his court for the first time, did not fail to bid to his feasts all the nobility of his appennage, and amongst the very first the count and countess of Lomarche. They repaired to Poitiers but four days before Christmas, when the court of Count Alfonso had received all its guests, the count of Lomarche, mounted on his war-horse with his wife on the cropper behind him, and escorted by his men-at-arms also mounted, cross bow in hand and in readiness for battle, was seen advancing to the prince's presence. Everyone was on the tip-toe of expectation as to what would come next. Then the count of Lomarche addressed himself in a loud voice to the count of Poitiers, saying, I might have thought, in a moment of forgetfulness and weakness, to render the homage, but now I swear to thee with a resolute heart, that I will never be thy leechman, thou dost unjustly dub thyself, my lord, thou didst shamefully filch this countship from my stepson, Earl Richard, whilst he was faithfully fighting for God in the holy land, and was delivering our captives by his discretion and his compassion. After this insolent declaration the count of Lomarche violently thrust aside, by means of his men-at-arms, all those who barred his passage, hasted by way of a parting insult to fire the lodging appointed for him by Count Alfonso, and followed by his people, left Poitiers at a gallop, eastward to Saint-Louis, by Monsieur Felix Farr, page 347. This meant war, and it burst out at the commencement of the following spring. It found Louis equally well prepared for it, and determined to carry it through. But in him prudence and justice were as little to seek his resolution. He respected public opinion, and he wished to have the approval of those whom he called upon to commit themselves for him and with him. He summoned the crown's vassals to a parliament, and what thank you, he asked them, should be done to a vassal who would feign hold land without owning a lord, and who goeth against the fealty in homage due from him and his predecessors. The answer was that the lord ought, in that case, to take back the fief as his own property. As my name is Louis, said the king, the comped of Lomarch doth claim to hold land in such wise, land which hath been a fief of France since the days of the valiant King Clovis, who won all aquitaine from King Alaric, a pagan without faith or creed, and all the country to the Pyrenean Mount, and the barons promised their king their energetic cooperation. The war was pushed on zealously by both sides. Only the third king of England sent to Louis messengers charged to declare to him that his reason for breaking the truce concluded between them was that he regarded it as his duty towards his step-father, the count of Lomarch, to defend him by arms. Louis answered that, for his part, he had scrupulously observed the truce and had no idea of breaking it, but he considered that he had a perfect right to punish a rebellious vassal. In this young king of France, this docile son of an able mother, none knew what a hero there was, until he revealed himself on a sudden. Near two towns of Saint-Tongue, Tyleborg and Saint, at a bridge which covered the approaches of one and in front of the walls of the other, Louis, on the twenty-first and twenty-second of July, delivered two battles, in which the brilliancy of his personal valour and the affectionate enthusiasm he excited in his troops secured victory and the surrender of the two places. At side of the numerous banners, above which rose the oriflam, close to Tyleborg, and of such a multitude of tents, one pressing against another and forming, as it were a large and populous city, the king of England turned sharply to the count of Lomarch, saying, My father, is this what you did promise me? Is yonder the numerous chivalry that you did engage to raise for me, when you said that all I should have to do would be to get money together? That did I never say, answered the count. Yea, verily rejoined Richard, Earl of Cornwall, brother of Henry the Third, for yonder I have amongst my baggage writing of your own to such purport. And when the count of Lomarch energetically denied that he had ever signed or sent such writing, Henry the Third reminded him bitterly of the messages he had sent to England and of his urgent exhortations to war. It was never done with my consent, cried the count of Lomarch with an oath, put the blame of it upon your mother, who is my wife, for by the gullet of God it was all devised without my knowledge. It was not Henry the Third alone who was disgusted with the war in which his mother had involved him. The majority of the English lords who had accompanied him left him, and asked the King of France for permission to pass through his kingdom on their way home. There were those who would have dissuaded Louis from compliance, but let them go, said he, I would ask nothing better than that all my foes should thus depart for ever away from my abode. Those about him made merry over Henry the Third, a refugee at Bordeaux, deserted by the English and plundered by the gas-guns. Hold, hold, said Louis, turn him not into ridicule, and make me not hated of him by reason of your banter. His charities and his piety shall exempt him from all continually. The count of Lomarch lost no time in asking for peace, and Louis granted it with the firmness of a far-seeing politician and the sympathetic feeling of a Christian. He required that the domains he had just rested from the count should belong to the Crown, and to the count of Poitiers under the suzerainty of the Crown. As for the rest of his slands, the count of Lomarch, his wife and children, were obliged to beg a grant of them at the good pleasure of the King, to whom the count was further, to give up, as a guarantee for fidelity in future, three castles, in which a royal garrison should be kept at the count's expense. When introduced into the King's presence, though count, his wife and children, with sobs, sighs, and tears, threw themselves upon their knees before him, and began to cry aloud, First gracious sir, forgive us thy wrath and thy displeasure, for we have done wickedly and pridefully towards thee. And the King, seeing the count of Lomarch in such humble guise before him, could not restrain his compassion amidst his wrath, but made him rise up and forgave him graciously all the evil he had wrought against him. A Prince who knew so well how to conquer and how to treat the conquered might have been tempted to make an unfair use, alternately, of his victories and of his supremacy, and to pursue his advantages beyond measure. But Louis was, in very deed, a Christian. When war was not either a necessity or a duty, this brave and brilliant night, from sheer equity and goodness of heart, loved peace rather than war. The successes he had gained in his campaign of 1242 were not for him the first step in an endless career of glory and conquest. He was anxious only to consolidate them, whilst securing, in Western Europe, for the dominions of his adversaries, as well as for his own, the benefits of peace. He entered into negotiation successively with the count of Lomarch, the King of England, the Count of Toulouse, the King of Aragon, and the various princes and great feudal lords who had been more or less engaged in the war. And in January 1213, says the latest and most enlightened of his biographers, the Treaty of Loris marked the end of feudal troubles for the whole duration of St. Louis's reign. He drew his sword no more, save only against the enemies of the Christian faith and Christian civilization, the Musulman. Istvah de St. Louis by Monsieur Felix Spar, page 388. Nevertheless, there was no lack of opportunities for interfering with a powerful arm amongst the sovereign's his neighbors, and for working their disagreements to the profit of his ambition, had ambition guided his conduct. The great struggle between the Empire and the Papacy, in the persons of Frederick II, Emperor of Germany, and the two popes, Gregory IX and Innocent IV, was causing violent agitation in Christendom, the two powers setting no bounds to their aspirations of getting the dominion one over the other and of disposing one of the other's faith. Scarcely had Louis reached his majority when, in 1237, he tried his influence with both sovereigns to induce them to restore peace to the Christian world. He failed, and thenceforth he preserved a scrupulous neutrality towards each. The principles of international law, especially in respect of a government's interference in the contests of its neighbors, whether princes or peoples, were not, in the thirteenth century, systematically discussed and defined as they are nowadays with us, but the good sense and the moral sense of St. Louis caused him to adopt, on this point, the proper course, and no temptation, not even that of satisfying his fervent piety, drew him into any departure from it. And, or friendly, by turns, towards the two adversaries, according as they tried to intimidate him or win him over to them, his permanent care was to get neither the State nor the Church of France involved in the struggle between the priesthood and the empire, and to maintain the dignity of his crown and the liberties of his subjects whilst employing his influence to make prevalent throughout Christendom a policy of justice and peace. That was the policy required in the thirteenth century more than ever by the most urgent interests of entire Christendom. She was at grips with two most formidable foes and perils. Through the crusades she had, from the end of the eleventh century, become engaged in a deadly struggle against the Musulmans in Asia, and in the height of the struggle, and from the heart of the same Asia, there spread, towards the middle of the thirteenth century, over Eastern Europe, in Russia, Poland, Hungary, Bohemia, and Germany, a barbarous and very nearly pagan people, the Mongol Tartars, sweeping onward like an inundation of blood, ravaging and threatening with complete destruction all the dominions which were penetrated by their hordes. The name and description of these barbarians, the fame and dread of their devastations, ran rapidly through the whole of Christian Europe. What must we do in this sad plight, asked Queen Blanche of the King her son? We must, my mother, answered Louie, with sorrowful voice, but not without divine inspiration, as the chronicler. We must be sustained by a heavenly consolation. If these Tartars, as we call them, arrive here, either we will hurl them back to Tartarus, their home, once they are come, or they shall send us up to heaven. About the same period another cause of disquietude and another feature of attraction came to be added to all those which turned the thoughts and impassioned piety of Louie towards the East. The perils of the Latin Empire of Constantinople, founded, as has been already mentioned, in 1204, under the headship of Baldwin, Count of Flanders, were becoming day by day more serious. Greeks, Muslims, and Tartars were all pressing and equally hard. In 1236 the emperor, Baldwin II, came to solicit in person the support of the princes of Western Europe, and especially of the young king of France, whose piety and chivalrous ardor were already celebrated everywhere. Baldwin possessed a treasure of great power over the imaginations and convictions of Christians, in the crown of thorns worn by Jesus Christ during his passion. He had already put it in pawn at Venice for a considerable loan advance to him by the Venetians, and he now offered it to Louie in return for effectual aid in men and money. Louie accepted the proposal with transport. He had been scared, a short time ago, at the chance of losing another precious relic deposited in the Abbey of Saint-Denis, one of the nails which, it was said, had held our Lord's body upon the cross. It had been mislaid one ceremonial day whilst it was being exhibited to the people, and, when he recovered it, I would rather, said Louie, that the best city in my kingdom had been swallowed up in the earth. After having taken all the necessary precautions for avoiding any appearance of a shameful bargain, he obtained the crown of thorns, all expenses included, for eleven thousand believers of Paris. That is to say, about twenty-six thousand dollars of our money. Our century cannot have any fellow feeling with such ready credulity, which is not required by Christian faith or countenanced by sound criticism. But we can and we ought to comprehend such sentiments in an age when men not only had profound faith in the facts recorded in the Gospels, but could not believe themselves to be looking upon the smallest tangible relic of those facts without experiencing an emotion and a reverence as profound as their faith. It is to such sentiments that we owe one of the most perfect and most charming monuments of the Middle Ages, the Holy Chapel, which Saint Louie had built between 1245 and 1248, in order to deposit there the precious relics he had collected. The King's piety had full justice and honour done it by the genius of the architect, Peter de Launtrill, who no doubt also shared his faith. End of Chapter 18 Part 8 It was after the purchase of the Crown of Thorns and the building of the Holy Chapel that Louie, accomplishing at last the desire of his soul, departed on his first crusade. We have already gone over the circumstances connected with his determination, his departure, and his life in the East. During the six years of pious adventure and glorious disaster he passed there. We have already seen what an impression of admiration and respect was produced throughout his kingdom, when he was noticed to have brought back with him from the Holy Land a fashion of living and doing superior to his former behaviour, although in his youth he had always been good and innocent and worthy of high esteem. These expressions of his confessor are fully borne out by deeds and laws, the administration at home and the relations abroad, by the whole government, in fact, of Saint Louie during the last fifteen years of his reign. The idea which was invariably conspicuous and constantly maintained during his reign was not that of a premeditated and ambitious policy, ever tending towards an interested object which is pursued with more or less reasonableness and success, and always with a large amount of trickery and violence on the part of the Prince, of unrighteousness in his deeds, and of suffering on the part of the people. Philip Augustus, the grandfather, and Philip the handsome, the grandson of Saint Louie, the former with the moderation of an able man, the latter with the headiness and disregard of right or wrong, laboured both of them without cessation to extend the domains in power of the Crown, to gain conquests over their neighbors and their vassals, and to destroy the social system of their age, the feudal system, its rights as well as its wrongs and tyrannies, in order to put in its place pure monarchy, and to exalt the kingly authority above all liberties, whether of the aristocracy or of the people. Saint Louie neither thought of nor attempted anything of the kind. He did not make war at one time openly at another secretly upon the feudal system. He frankly accepted its principles, as he found them prevailing in the facts and ideas of his time. Whilst fully bent on repressing with firmness his vassals' attempts to shake themselves free from their duties towards him, and to render themselves independent of the Crown, he respected their rights, kept his word to them scrupulously, and required of them nothing but what they really owed him. Into his relations with foreign sovereigns, his neighbors, he imported the same loyal spirit. Certain of his counsel used to tell him, reports Joinville, that he did not well in leaving those foreigners to their warfare, for if he gave them his good leave to impoverish one another, they would not attack him so readily as if they were rich. To that the king replied that they said not well. For, quote he, if the neighboring princes perceived that I left them to their warfare, they might make counsel amongst themselves and say, It is through malice that the king leaves us through our warfare.  Without reckoning that I should thereby earn the hatred of God, who says, Blessed be the peacemakers, so well established was his renown as a sincere friend of peace, and a just arbiter in great disputes between princes and peoples, that his intervention and his decisions were invited wherever obscure and dangerous questions arose. In spite of the brilliant victories which, in twelve-twelve, he had gained at Talborg and St. over Henry III, King of England, he himself perceived, on his return from the East, that the conquest won by his victories might at any moment become a fresh cause of new and grievous wars, disastrous probably for one or the other of the two peoples. He conceived therefore the design of giving to a peace which was so desirable a more secure basis by founding it upon transaction accepted on both sides is equitable. And thus, while restoring to the King of England certain possessions which the war of twelve-forty-two had lost to him, he succeeded in obtaining from him in return, as well in his own name as in the names of his sons and their heirs, a formal renunciation of all rights that he could pretend to over the Duchy of Normandy, the Countships of Anjou, Maine, Touraine, Poitot, and generally all that his family might have possessed on the Continent, except only the lands which the King of France restored to him by the treaty, and those which remained to him in Gascony. For all these last the King of England undertook to do lige homage to the King of France, in the capacity of full peer of France and Duke of Aquitaine, and faithfully fulfilled the duties attached to the Fife. When Louis made known this transaction to his counsellors, they were very much against it, says Joinville. It seemeth to us, sir, said they to the King, that if you think you have not a right to the conquest won by you and your ancestors from the King of England, you do not make proper restitution to the said King in not restoring to him the whole.  Sirs, answered Louis, I am certain that the antecessors of the King of England did quite justly lose the conquest which I hold, and as for the land I give him, I give it him not as a matter in which I am bound to him or his heirs, but to make love between my children and his, who are cousins German. And it seemeth to me that what I give him I turn to good purpose, inasmuch as he was not my liegeman, and he hereby cometh in amongst my liegemen. Henry III in fact went to Paris, having with him the ratification of the treaty, and prepared to accomplish the ceremony of homage. Louis received him as a brother, but without sparing him out of the ceremony, in which, according to the ideas of the times, there was nothing humiliating any more than in the name of vassal, which was proudly borne by the greatest lords. It took place on Thursday, December 4, 1259, in the royal enclosure stretching in front of the palace, on the spot where at the present day is the Place Dauphine. There was a great concourse of prelates, barons, and other personages belonging to the two courts and the two nations. The King of England, on his knees, bareheaded, without cloak, belt, sword, or spurs, placed his folded hands in those of the King of France his sous-run, and said to him, Sir, I become your liegeman with mouth and hands, and I swear to promise you faith and loyalty, and to guard your right according to my power, and to do fair justice at your summons or the summons at your bailiff, to the best of my wit. Then the King kissed him on the mouth and raised him up. Three years later Louis gave not only to the King of England, but to the whole English nation, a striking proof of his judicious and true-hearted equity. An obstinate civil war was raging between Henry III and his barons. Neither party, in defending its own rights, had any notion of respecting the rights of his adversaries, and England was alternating between a kingly and an aristocratic tyranny. Louis, chosen as arbiter by both sides, delivered solemnly on the 23rd of January 1264 a decision which was favorable to the English kingship, but at the same time expressly upheld the great charter and the traditional liberties of England. He concluded his decision with the following suggestions of amnesty. We will also that the King of England and his barons do forgive one another mutually, that they do forget all the resentments that may exist between them, by consequence of the matters submitted to our arbitration, and that henceforth they do refrain reciprocally from an offense and injury on account of the same matters. But when men have had their ideas, passions, and interests profoundly agitated and made to clash, the wisest decisions and the most honest councils in the world are not sufficient to re-establish peace. The cup of experience has to be drunk to the dregs, and the parties are not resigned to peace until one or the other, or both, have exhausted themselves in the struggle and perceive the absolute necessity of accepting either defeat or compromise. In spite of the arbitration of the King of France, the civil war continued in England, but Louis did not seek any way to profit by it so as to extend, at the expense of his neighbors, his own possessions or power. He held himself also from their quarrels and followed up by honest neutrality in effectual arbitration. Five centuries afterwards the great English historian, Hume, rendered him due homage in these terms. Every time this virtuous prince interfered in the affairs of England, it was invariably with the view of settling differences between the King and the nobility. Adopting an admirable course of conduct, as politic, probably, as it certainly was just, he never interposed his good offices saved to put an end to the disagreements of the English. He seconded all the measures which could give security to both parties, and he made persistent efforts, though without success, to moderate the fiery ambition of the Earl of Lester. Hume, History of England, page 465. It requires more than political wisdom, more even than virtue, to enable a king, a man having in charge the government of men, to accomplish his mission and to really deserve the title of most Christian. It requires that he should be animated by a sentiment of affection, and that he should, in heart as well as mind, be in sympathy with those multitudes of creatures over whose lot he exercises so much influence. Saint Louis, more perhaps than any other king, was possessed of this generous and humane quality. Spontaneously and by the free impulse of his nature he loved his people, loved mankind, and took a tender and comprehensive interest in their fortunes, their joys, or their miseries. Being seriously ill in 1259, and desiring to give his eldest son, Prince Louis, whom he lost in the following year, his last and most heartfelt charge, fair son, said he, I pray thee make thyself beloved of the people of thy kingdom, for verily I would rather a Scot should come from Scotland and govern our people well and loyally than have thee govern it ill. To watch over the position and interests of all the parties in his dominions, and to secure to all his subjects strict and prompt justice, this was what continually occupied the mind of Louis IX. There are to be found in his biography two very different but equally striking proofs of his solicitude in this respect. Monsieur Felix Farr has drawn up a table of all the journeys made by Louis in France, from 1254 to 1270, for the better cognizance of matters requiring his attention, and another of the parliament which he held, during the same period, for considering the general affairs of the kingdom and the administration of justice. Not one of these sixteen years passed without his visiting several of his provinces, and the year 1270 was the only one in which he did not hold a parliament. Istvoire de Saint-Louis by Monsieur Felix Farr, page 120 and 339. Side by side with this erythmetical proof of his active benevolence we will place a moral proof taken from Joinville's often quoted account of Saint-Louis's familiar intervention in his subjects' disputes about matters of private interest. Many a time, says he, it happened in summer that the king went and sat down in the wood of Viscennes after Mass, and leaned against an oak, and made a sit-down round about him. And all those who had business came to speak to him without restraint, of usher or other folk. And then he demanded of them with his own mouth, is there any here who hath a suit? And they who had their suit rose up, and then he said, Keep silence, Olivier, and ye shall have dispatch one after the other. And then he called my Lord Peter de Fontaine and my Lord Geoffrey de Viet. Two learned lawyers of the day and counselors of Saint-Louis, and said to one of them, Dispatch me this suit. And when he saw ought to amend in the words of those who were speaking for another, he himself amended it with his own mouth. I sometimes saw in summer that, to dispatch his people's business, he went to the Paris garden, clad in camelot coat and Lindsay sircoat without sleeves, a mantle of black taffety round his neck, hair right well combed and without coiff, and on his head a hat with white peacock's plumes. And he had carpets laid for us to sit round about him. And all the people who had business before him set themselves standing around him, and then he had their business dispatched in the manner I told you of before as to the wood of a sense. The act of benevolence of Saint-Louis was not confined to this paternal care for the private interest of such subjects as approached his person. He was equally attentive and zealous in the case of measures called for by the social condition of the times and the general interest of the kingdom. Amongst the twenty-six government ordinances, edicts or letters, contained under the date of his reign in the first volume over the recul des ordinances des Rois de France, seven, at the least, are great acts of legislation and administration of a public kind. And these acts are all of such stamp as to show that their main object is not to extend the power of the crown or subserve the special interest of the kingship at strife with other social forces. They are real reforms of public and moral interest directed against the violence, disturbances, and abuses of the feudal system. Many other of Saint-Louis' legislative and administrative acts have been published either in subsequent volumes of the recul des ordinances des Rois, or in similar collections, and the learned have drawn attention to a great number of them still remaining unpublished in various archives. As for the large collection of legislative enactments, known by the name of Etales-Mont de Saint-Louis, it is probably a lawyer's work, posterior in great part at least to his reign, full of incoherent and even contradictory enactments, and without any claim to be considered as a general code of law of Saint-Louis' date and collected by his order, although the paragraph which serves as a preface to the work is given under his name and as if it had been dictated by him. Another act, known by the name of the Pragmatic Sanction, has likewise got placed, with the date of March 1268, in the recul des ordinances des Rois de France, as having originated with Saint-Louis. Its object is, first of all, to secure the rights, liberties, and canonical rules internally of the Church of France, and next to interdict the exactions and very heavy money charges which have been imposed, or may hereafter be imposed, on the said Church, by the Court of Rome, and by which our kingdom have been miserably impoverished, unless they take place for reasonable pious and very urgent cause, through inevitable necessity, and with our spontaneous and express consent and that of the Church of our kingdom. The authenticity of this act vigorously maintained in the seventh century by Boussé, in his Défense de la Déclaration de Clergés de France, 2622, Chapter 9, page 26, and in our time by Monsieur Danot, in the Histoire littéraire de la France, Continuée par les Hommes de l'Institut, page 75, and page 169, has been and still is rendered doubtful for strong reasons, which Monsieur Felix Farr, in his Histoire de Saint-Louis, page 171, has summed up with great clearness. There is no design of entering here upon an examination of this little historical problem, but it is bound in duty to point out that, if the authenticity of the pragmatic sanction, as Saint-Louis, is questionable, the act has at bottom nothing but what bears a very strong resemblance to, and is quite in conformity with, the general conduct of that Prince. He was profoundly respectful, affectionate, and faithful towards the papacy, but at the same time very careful in upholding both the independence of the crown and things temporal, and its right of superintendence in things spiritual. Attention has been drawn to his posture of reserve during the great quarrel between the priestess and the empire, and his firmness in withstanding the violent measures adopted by Gregory the Ninth and Innocent IV against the emperor Frederick II. Louis carried his notions as to the independence of his judgment and authority very far beyond the cases in which that policy went hand in hand with interest and even into purely religious questions. The Bishop of Uxser said to him one day, in the name of several prelates, Sir, these lords which be here, archbishops and bishops, have told me to tell you that Christianity is perishing in your hands. The king crossed himself and said, Well, tell me how that is made out. Sir, said the bishop, it is because nowadays so little note is taken of excommunications that folk let death overtake them excommunicate without getting absolution, and have no mind to make atonement to the church. These lords therefore do pray you, sir, for the love of God and because you ought to do so, to command your provost and bailiffs that all those who shall remain a year and a day excommunicated be forced, by seizure of their goods, to get themselves absolved. Where to the king made answer that he would willingly command this in respect of the excommunicate touching whom certain proof should be given, Pym, that they were in the wrong. The bishop said that the prelates would not have this at any price, and that they disputed the king's right of jurisdiction in their causes. And the king said that he would not do it else, for it would be contrary to God and reason if he should force folks to get absolution when the clergy had done them wrong. As to that, said the king, I will give you the example of the count of Brittany, who for seven years, being fully excommunicate, was at pleas with the prelates of Brittany, and he prevailed so far that the pope condemned them all. If then I had forced the count of Brittany, the first year, to get absolution, I should have sinned against God and against him. Then the prelates gave up, and never since that time have I heard that a single demand was made touching the matters above spoken of. CHAPTER 18 THE KINGSHIP IN FRANCE PART TEN One special fact in the civil and municipal administration of Saint-Louis deserves to find a place in history. After the time of Philip Augustus there was malfeasance in the police of Paris. The provostship of Paris, which comprehended functions analogous to those of prefect, mayor, and receiver general, became a purchasable office, filled sometimes by two provosts at a time. The burgers no longer found justice or security in the city where the king resided. At his return from his first crusade, Louis recognized the necessity for applying a remedy to this evil. The provostship ceased to be a purchasable office, and he made it separate from the receivership of the royal domain. In 1258 he chose as provost Stephen Boyleau, a burger of note and a steam in Paris, and in order to give this magistrate the authority of which he had need, the king sometimes came and sat beside him when he was administering justice at the chateau. Stephen Boyleau justified the king's confidence, and maintained so strict a police that he had his own gods unhanged for theft. His administrative foresight was equal to his judicial severity. He established registers wherein were to be inscribed the rules habitually followed in respect of the organization and work of the different corporations of artisans, the tariffs of the dues charged, in the name of the king, upon the admittance of provisions and merchandise, and the titles on which the abbots and other lords founded the privileges they enjoyed within the walls of Paris. The corporations of artisans, represented by their sworn masters or prud'hommes, appeared one after the other before the provost to make declaration of the usages in practice amongst their communities, and to have them registered in the book prepared for that purpose. This collection of regulations relating to the arts and trades of Paris in the thirteenth century, known under the name of Libre des métiers de tien Boyleau, is the earliest monument of industrial statistics drawn up by the French administration, and it was inserted, for the first time in its entirety, in 1837, amongst the collection of documents relative to the history of France, published during Monsieur Guizot's Ministry of Public Instruction. Saint-Louis would be but very incompletely understood if we considered him only in his political and kingly aspect. We must penetrate into his private life, and observe his personal intercourse with his family, his household, and his people. If we would properly understand and appreciate all the originality and moral worth of his character and life. Mentioned has already been made of his relations toward the two queens, his mother and his wife, and difficult as they were, they were nevertheless always exemplary. Louis was a model of conjugal fidelity as well as of filiopiety. He had by Queen Marguerite eleven children, six sons and five daughters. He loved her tenderly, he never severed himself from her, and the modest courage she displayed in the first crusade rendered her still dearer to him. But he was not blind to her ambitious tendencies, and to the insufficiency of her qualifications for government. When he made ready for his second crusade, not only did he not confide to Queen Marguerite the regency of the kingdom, but he even took care to regulate her expenses and to curb her passion for authority. He forbade her to accept any present for herself or her children, to lay any commands upon the officers of justice, and to choose any one for her service or for that of her children without the consent of the Council of the Regency. And he had reason to so act. For about this same time, Queen Marguerite, emulous of holding in the State the same place that had been occupied by Queen Blanche, was giving all her thoughts to what her situation would be after her husband's death, and was coaxing her eldest son, Philip, then sixteen years old, to make her a promise on oath to remain under guardianship up to thirty years of age, to take to himself no counselor without her approval, to reveal to her all designs which might be formed against her, to conclude no treaty with his uncle, Charles of Anjou, King of Sicily, and to keep as a secret the oath she was thus making him take. Louis was probably informed of this strange promise by his young son Philip himself, who got himself released from it by Pope Urban IV. At any rate the king had a foreshadowing of Queen Marguerite's inclinations, and took precautions for rendering them harmless to the crown and the State. As for his children, Louis occupied himself in thought and deed with their education and their future, moral and social, showing as much affection and assiduity as could have been displayed by any father of a family, even the most devoted to this single task. After supper they followed him into his chamber, where he made them sit down around him. He instructed them in their duties, and then sent them away to bed. He drew their particular attention to the good and evil deeds of the princes. He moreover went to see them in their own apartment when he had any leisure, informed himself as to the progress they were making, and like another Tobias gave them excellent instructions. On Holy Thursday his sons used to wash, just as he used, the feet of thirteen of the poor, give them a considerable sum as alms, and then wait upon them at table. The king having been minded to carry the first of the poor souls to the hotel due at Campania, with the assistance of his son-in-law, King Theobald of Navarre, whom he loved as a son, his two eldest sons, Louis and Philip, carried the second thither.  He would have all of them, even Theobald, yield him strict obedience in that which he enjoined upon them. He desired anxiously that the three children born to him in the east during his first crusade, John Tristan, Peter and Blanche, and even Isabel, his eldest daughter, should enter upon the cloistered life, which he looked upon as the safest for their salvation. He exhorted them there, too, especially his daughter Isabel, many and many a time, in letters equally tender and pious. But as they testified no taste for it, he made no attempt to force their inclinations, and concerned himself only about having them well married, not forgetting to give them good appanages, and for their life in the world the most judicial counsels. The instructions, written with his own hand in French, which he committed to his eldest son Philip, as soon as he found himself so seriously ill before Tunis, are a model of virtue, wisdom, and tenderness on the part of a father, a king, and a Christian. Pass we from the king's family to the king's household, and from the children to the servitors of St. Louis. We have here no longer the powerful tie of blood, and of that feeling, at the same time personal and yet disinterested, which is experienced by parents on seeing themselves living over again in their children. Far weaker motives, mere kindness and custom, unite masters to their servants, and stamp a moral character upon the relations between them. But with St. Louis, so great was his kindness, that it resembled affection, and caused affection to spring up in the hearts of those who were the objects of it. At the same time that he required in his servitors an almost austere morality, he readily passed over in silence their little faults, and treated them, in such cases, not only with mildness, but with that consideration which, in the humblest conditions, satisfies the self-respect of people, and elevates them in their own eyes. Louis used to visit his domestics when they were ill, and when they died he never failed to pray for them, and to commend them to the prayers of the faithful. He had the mass for the dead, which it was his custom to hear every day sung for them. He had taken back an old servitor of his grandfather, Philip Augustus, whom that king had dismissed because his fire sputtered, and John, whose duty it was to attend to it, did not know how to prevent that slight noise. Louis was, from time to time, subject to a malady during which his right leg, from his ankle to the calf, became inflamed, as red as blood, and painful. One day, when he had an attack of this complaint, the king, as he lay, wished to make a close inspection of the redness in his leg. As John was clumsily holding a lighted candle close to the king, a drop of hot grease fell on the bad leg, and the king, who had sat up on his bed, threw himself back, exclaiming, Ah, John, John, my grandfather turned you out of his house for a less matter. And the clumsiness of John drew down upon him no other chastisement save this exclamation. V. de Saint-Louis, by Queen Marguerite's Confessor, recuise des Istraïans de France, page 105, V. de Saint-Louis, by Lenin de Tilement, page 388. Far away from the king's household and service, and without any personal connection with him, a whole people, the people of the poor, the infirm, the sick, the wretched, and the neglected of every sort occupied a prominent place in the thoughts and actions of Louis. All the chroniclers of the age, all the historians of his reign, have celebrated his charity as much as his piety, and the philosophers of the eighteenth century almost forgave him his taste for relics, in consideration of his beneficence. And it was not merely legislative and administrative beneficence. Saint-Louis did not confine himself to founding and endowing hospitals, hospices, asylums, the hotel-du, at Pointe Taz, and at Vernon, that at Campagne, and at Paris, the house of Quinzevant, for three hundred blind, but he did not spare his person in his beneficence, and regarded no deed of charity as beneath the king's dignity. Every day, wherever the king went, one hundred and twenty-two of the poor received each two loaves, a quart of wine, meat or fish for a good dinner, and a Paris denier. The mothers of families had a loaf more for each child. Besides these hundred and twenty-two poor having outdoor relief, thirteen others were every day introduced into the hotel, and there lived as the king's officers, and three of them sat at a table at the same time with the king, in the same hall as he, and quite close. Many a time, says Joinville, I saw him cut their bread and give them to drink. He asked me one day if I washed the feet of the poor on Holy Thursday. Sir, said I, what a benefit, the feet of those knaves. Not I. Fairly, he said, that as ill said, for you ought not to hold and disdain what God did for our instruction. I pray you, therefore, for the love of me, accustom yourself to wash them. Sometimes, when the king had leisure, he used to say, come and visit the poor in such and such a place, and let us feast them to their heart's content.  The king took the bread, saying, it is rather hard bread, and he went into the cottage to see with his own eyes the sick man. When he was visiting the churches one Holy Friday at Campania, as he was going that day barefoot according to his custom, and distributing alms to the poor whom he met, he perceived on the yonder side of a mirey pond which filled a portion of the street, a leper, who not daring to come near tried nevertheless to attract the king's attention. Louis walked through the pond, went up to the leper, gave him some money, took his hand, and kissed it. All presents as the chronicler crossed themselves for admiration at seeing this holy temerity of the king, who had no fear of putting his lips to a hand that none would have dared to touch. In such deeds there was infinitely more than the goodness and greatness of a kingly soul. There was in them that profound Christian sympathy which is moved at the side of any human creature suffering severely in body or soul, and which at such times gives no heed to fear, shrinks from no pains, recoils with no disgust, and has no other thought but that of offering some fraternal comfort to the body or the soul that is suffering. He who thus felt enacted was no monk, no prince enwrapped in mere devoutness and altogether given up to works and practices of piety. He was a knight, a warrior, a politician, a true king, who attended to the duties of authority as well as to those of charity, and who one respect from his nearest friends as well as from strangers, whilst astonishing them at one time by his burst of mystic piety and monastic austerity, at another by his flashes of the ruler's spirit and his judicious independence, even towards the representatives of the faith and church with whom he was in sympathy. He passed for the wisest man in all his counsel. In difficult matters and on grave occasions none formed a judgment with more sagacity. And what his intellect so well apprehended he expressed with a great deal of propriety and grace. He was, in conversation, the nicest and most agreeable of men. He was gay, says Joinville, and when we were private at court he used to sit at the foot of his bed, and when the preachers and cordeliers who were there spoke to him of a book he would like to hear he said to them, Nay, you shall not read to me, for there is no book so good after dinner as talk ad libitim. That is, no one saying what he pleases. Not that he was at all adverse from books and literates. He was sometimes present at the discourses and disputations of the university. But he took care to search out for himself the truth in the word of God and in the traditions of the church. Having found out during his travels in the East that a Saracenic sultan had collected a quantity of books for the service of the philosophers of his sect, he was ashamed to see that Christians had less seal for getting instructed in the truth than infidels had for getting themselves made dexterous in falsehood. So much so that, after his return to France, he had search made in the abbeys for all the genuine works of St. Augustine, St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, St. Gregory, and other Orthodox teachers, and having caused copies of them to be made, he had them placed in the treasury of Saint-Chapelle. He used to read them when he had any leisure, and he readily lent them to those who might get profit from them for themselves or for others. Sometimes at the end of the afternoon meal he sent for pious persons with whom he conversed about God, about the stories in the Bible and the histories of the saints, or about the lives of the fathers. He had a particular friendship for the learned Robert of Sorbonne, founder of the Sorbonne, whose idea was a society of secular ecclesiastics, who living in common and having the necessarys of life should give themselves up entirely to study and gratuitous teaching. Not only did St. Louis give him every facility and every aid necessary for the establishment of his learned college, but he made him one of his chaplains, and often invited him to his presence and his table in order to enjoy his conversation. "'One day it happened,' says Joinville, that Master Robert was taking his meal beside me, and we were talking low. The king reproved us and said, Speak up, for your company think that you may be talking evilly of them. If you speak at meals of things which should please us, speak up. If not, be silent.' Another day at one of their reunions, with the king in their midst, Robert of Sorbonne reproached Joinville with being more bravely clad than the king. For, said he, you do dress in furs and green cloth, which the king doth not. Joinville defended himself vigorously, in his turn attacking Robert for the elegance of his dress. The king took the learned doctor's part, and when he had gone, my Lord the king, says Joinville, called his son, my Lord Philip, and King Thalbold, sat him down at the entrance of his oratory, placed his hand on the ground, and said, Sit ye down here close by me, that we be not overheard.  For, just as the son of Shaw, Joinville, sayeth, Yacht to be well indecently clad, because your woman kind will love you the better for it, and your people will prize you the more. For, sayeth the wise man, it is right so to bedeck oneself with garments and armor that the proper men of this world say not that there is too much made thereof, nor the young folk too little.