little more than a campaign against the Albigenses. To him Amalric de Montfort gave up all his claims in the south, and he hoped to stretch his sway from the Channel to the Pyrenees. In the weakness of the minority of Henry III. he won part of Poitou with the important haven of Rochelle, the "doorway" of the English into France. At Bourges a synod was held, in which the legate refused submission from the counts of Toulouse and Foix, excommunicated them, and proclaimed a fresh crusade, of which the king was leader. It set forth in 1226, and passed through the imperial lands on the left side of the Rhone. Here the free city of Avignon was governed by consuls, like the Italian towns. It had taken part with the Albigenses, and, for having seized and flayed alive the Count of Orange, it had been for twelve years under ban of the Church, and though a free passage was offered the crusaders, it was thought right to punish it. The siege lasted three months, and the army without was much harassed by the Count of Toulouse; and by the time the city was taken and nearly destroyed disease had taken a strong hold of the crusading army, and though they sat down before Toulouse, sickness forced one baron after another to go home, and among them the king himself. He only reached Montpensier, where he died in 1226, in his fortieth year.

7. The Leagues of Vassals, 1226.-Lewis IX., the eldest of his four sons, was but eleven years old, but their mother, Blanche of Castile, was a woman of sense and spirit, for which the vassals were little prepared when they leagued together with Raymond of Toulouse to make a strong effort against the yoke that Philip Augustus had been laying on them, and to keep down the "Spanish woman's son." At its head was a great grandson of Lewis VI., Peter of Dreux, the regent who had married Constance's last child, Alice, and was called Mauclerc, not from bad scholarship, but from hatred of the clergy. He was joined, among others, by the young Theobald of Blois, Count of Champagne, and the old Hugh of Lusignan, Count of La Marche, who had just married his old love, the widow of King John, and all marched on Orleans, where were the queen and her sons. She sent an appeal to Paris, and the burghers came out in force and escorted her safely to their city, while the rons dispersed, and only Peter of Dreux continued

war openly, though when she summoned the barons

against him, they only chose to obey literally, coming indeed, but with two men apiece. However Blanche made a great conquest by her stately beauty and high spirit; for Theobald of Champagne, a poet full of romance, was touched by the grandeur of the brave widow guarding her children, called her the lady of his thoughts, became her true knight in a distant and respectful way, and saved her from the Breton army. After three years petty warfare, a treaty was signed at St. Aubin-surCarnier in 1231, by which the barons engaged to keep the peace for three years.

8. End of the War with the Albigenses, 1229.-During the queen's distress, Raymond of Toulouse the younger, after the elder was dead, gained some successes, but in 1228 the cardinal legate, Romano di St. Angelo, devised the cruel expedient of devastating the country, not by mere random plunder, but rooting up vineyards, cutting down olive-trees, and making the land a desert. The unhappy people of Toulouse lost courage, and the Count came to Meaux ready to submit to any terms. Very hard they were. He kept Toulouse, which was to pass on his death to the king's brother Alfonso, who was to marry the count's daughter Joan. His other lands held of the French crown were at once surrendered, and France now reached to the Mediterranean. Instead of being shut up in the lands just round Paris, the kingdom now had an opening on three seas. Count Raymond was also to level all his castles, support doctors of theology in all his cities, and assist them in destroying heresy, and to pay 2,000 silver marks for the cost of the war. A remnant of the Albigenses still maintained a guerrilla warfare in the Pyrenees for some years; till they were altogether exterminated in 1244.

9. Disputes of Town and Gown at Paris, 1229.Blanche of Castile was the ablest and best of the many queen-mothers of France. She had as firm a hand as her father-in-law, and kept down lawlessness by having a band of hired men-at-arms in her pay. In 1229 she had to interfere in one of the disputes between burghers and scholars that take place in all university towns, and were the more furious in the early middle ages because the scholars came from all parts, and lived and lodged as best they might, without college discipline, but often starving and begging, robbing or fighting for a meal. rageous had they become at Paris that Blanche sent her

So out

men-at-arms to put them down, and turned a deaf ear to the complaints of the doctors, whereupon they left Paris. Pope Gregory IX. wrote an admonition to the young king, telling him that power, wisdom, and mercy were the earthly trinity, and that if wisdom were taken away the other two could not stand. The advice was accepted, and the university restored. Some years later Henry de Sorbonne, Lewis' confessor, founded a college where the young men might live under due regulation, and where theology was above all to be studied. This foundation acquired so much weight that in later times almost all questions of divinity were referred to the doctors of the Sorbonne. It was an age of great vigour and progress as well as of religious fervour. The queen was a devout woman, and the king grew up deeply pious, pure, and blameless, and with none of the weakness that had hitherto rendered the good men of his family such feeble rulers. Blanche married him to Margaret, one of the four daughters of Raymond Berenger, the last of the old line of Counts of Provence. Her three sisters married Henry III. of England, Richard, Earl of Cornwall, afterwards king of the Romans, and Lewis' brother, Charles, Count of Anjou, to whom the imperial fief of Provence was to pass on the death of Raymond Berenger. All four were in the end queens.

10. War with the Vassals, 1235.-No sooner was the truce over than Peter of Dreux was up in arms again; and so was Theobald of Champagne, apparently to try what was the mettle of the young king; for when Lewis showed a resolute face and conquered Peter, Theobald submitted. Soon after, falling heir through his mother to the little Pyrenean kingdom of Navarre, he sold to the king his cities of Blois, Chartres, and Sancerre. In 1241, when Lewis' brother Alfonso came of age, the county of Poitou, which had been taken from King John, was given to him; but old Hugh of Lusignan, who was now the husband of John's widow, refused homage, and defied him. Lewis came to the aid of his brother, Henry III. to that of his stepfather, hoping to recover Poitou, but in a sharp fight at Taillebourg, near Saintes, in July, 1242, Lewis was victorious, and Henry fled into Gascony. The unhealthy season put an end to the war; both kings fell ill, and were glad to sign a truce for five years.

II. The Vow of Crusade, 1244.-That Southern campaign had much injured Lewis' health, and in 1244 a

fever brought him to the point of death. In it he vowed to make a crusade to the Holy Land, where the Christian cause was in a more woful state than ever, owing to the quarrels between the popes and the Emperor Frederick II. The title of King of Jerusalem had descended to the Emperor by marriage, and he had actually won back Jerusalem for a while. But the Popes opposed him everywhere. Gregory IX. had vainly tried to stir up Lewis to head a crusade against him, and had in 1240 actually offered the imperial crown to Lewis' brother, Robert, Count of Artois; but the king, whose unselfishness made his views of duty singularly clear, would not be drawn into the quarrel, and refused the offer. The preparations for the crusade occupied three years, during which he was building that gem of early Pointed architecture, the Sainte Chapelle at Paris, the chapel of the King's palace, as a shrine for what were believed to be the instruments of the Passion, the sponge, the lance-head, and above all the crown of thorns, all sold to him in 1241 by the Latin Emperor Baldwin of Constantinople. Lewis, having made peace with all his neighbours, left the government to his mother, and took with him his wife, his brothers, a body of English under William, Earl of Salisbury, and a host of bishops and knights, among whom the most valuable to us was John Lord of Joinville, Lewis' friend and biographer, who places him before us in all his blameless glory as a selfless man " full of courage and resolution.

12. The Seventh Crusade, 1248.-Saladin had had weak successors, and the kingdom had been broken up; but as part of Palestine was still united with Egypt under the Sultan Nedjid Eddin, it was thought that to attack Cairo was the way to win Jerusalem. Lewis left Aigues Mortes, a haven which he had lately founded on the Mediterranean, in August, 1248; but he was kept five months at Cyprus, the meeting place, before he was joined by numbers enough to make the attempt. Sailing at last for Damietta, he forced his way to land by great personal bravery, in June, 1249, in the teeth of the Memlooks. These were the chief warriors of Egypt, who were recruited from infant Circassian slaves, and had become a prætorian guard, as much the terror of their lord as of his foes. They did not however attempt to defend Damietta, and, had Lewis pushed on at once during their panic, he would probably have won Cairo. But he tarried another five months for his brother Alfonso with

reinforcements; and when he went forward with 60,000 men he became entangled in the canals of the delta, and was a month going thirty miles. The great canal near Mansourah barred his passage, and fifty days were lost in trying in vain to make a causeway over it before a ford was found. The Earl of Salisbury advised that no attack should be made on the enemy by the first who should cross, till the others had come to their support. But the king's brother, Robert, Count of Artois, chose to think this cowardly, and the unhappy quarrel caused both earl and count to charge the Memlooks the instant they crossed, and to rush headlong after them into the narrow crooked lanes of Mansourah. Here the knights on their heavy horses were helpless, and all were cut off, though the king's own promptness and vigour saved the rest of the army, and dislodged the enemy from their camp. There however the causeway was afterwards attacked by the Memlooks, and they had to fight a second terrible battle. The victory was indeed theirs, but they were living in a swamp which bred deadly sickness, while swarms of the Memlooks and Arabs harassed them on all sides with discharges of the missile called Greek fire, which was blown from a reed, and set in a blaze whatever it touched. There was no choice but retreat, and boats were collected for the sick, among whom was Lewis himself, though he chose to ride in the rearguard, striving to guard the passage, and charging again and again on the swarming foes. The enemy cut down every straggler, seized all the boats, and at last, after desperate fighting captured the whole army with Lewis himself, who was found with exhausted strength lying helpless on the ground. He and his two brothers were put into chains, and all who would not deny their faith were either slaughtered or sold for slaves, unless the richness of their armour gave cause to hope for a ransom. The garrison at Damietta daily expected to be seized by the Memlooks, and Queen Margaret, who had just given birth to a son, made the old knight who guarded her swear that he would kill her rather than let her be taken by the Saracens. Happily for them, the sultan was just dead, and the power was in the hands of the Memlook emir, Tourass Chah, who only wanted to make a profit of his captives. At first he threatened death or torture to all unless they yielded all the Franks held in Palestine; but when Lewis answered that they were not his, and that he